Hebrews 11 Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen..
3By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God,
4By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,
5By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God translated him: 7By faith Noah, being warned of God concerning things not seen as yet, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; 8By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 11By faith even Sarah herself received power to conceive seed when she was past age, 13These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth

A Crisis of Faith

Have you ever had a crisis in which you deliberately and emphatically and recklessly abandoned everything? It is a crisis of will. You may come up to it many times externally, but it amounts to nothing. The real deep crisis of abandonment is reached internally, not externally.

Have you deliberately committed your will to Jesus Christ? It is a transaction of will, not of emotion; the emotion is simply the gilt-edge of the transaction.

If you allow emotion first, you will never make the transaction.

I am already being poured out as a drink offering. 2 Tim. 4:6

“I am now ready to be offered.” It is a transaction of will, not of sentiment. Tell God you are ready to be offered; then let the consequences be what they may, there is no strand of complaint now, no matter what God chooses. God puts you through the crisis in private, no one person can help another. Externally the life may be the same; the difference is in will. Go through the crisis in will, then when it comes externally there will be no thought of the cost

A crisis of faith leads to rebellion or repentance.

These chapters focus on a turning point necessary in your following God’s will. When God invites you to join Him in His work, He presents a God-sized assignment He wants to accomplish. It will be obvious you can’t do it on your own.

This is the crisis point at which people must decide not to follow what they sense God is leading them to do, or to follow His leading.

This crisis is a turning point or a fork in the road that calls for a decision. You must decide what you believe about God. How you respond when you reach this turning point will determine whether or not you proceed with God in something only He can do or whether you continue on your own way and miss what God has purposed for your life. This crisis point is not a one-time experience, but can happen every time God invites you to join Him in what He has for you to do.

God has always required of human beings, both before and after Christ, an obedience to his will which arises from faith in him.

A Word on Faith

In our Western world the word “faith” commonly has one of two meanings, neither of which Paul uses:

In some contemporary contexts “faith” is the equivalent of “religion.”

We say there are many faiths, many religions. You have your faith, and I have my faith; you have your religion, and I have my religion. In this usage, “faith” is simply a synonym of “religion.”

But when it is not used in that way, in our culture “faith” means something like personal, subjective, religious choice.

That is, it is not tied in any sense to truth or to fact. It is a personal, subjective, religious choice. So if you say to some people today, “You must have faith in Jesus,” it sounds like an invitation to a blind leap: some opt for Jesus, others opt for Allah and Muhammad, and others opt for Buddhism. But although the word “faith” is used in a variety of ways in the Bible, not once is it ever used that way.

In the Bible it is crucially important to establish faith’s object, that is, what or whom you believe.

In another of Paul’s letters, one he was writing to the Christians in Corinth, Paul insists that Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead (see 1 Cor. 15). Suppose, he argues, that Jesus did not rise from the dead; suppose that claim is historical nonsense. Then what happens to your faith if Jesus did not rise from the dead?

One, the first witnesses are all deceived or liars; you cannot trust any of the five hundred of them from different sites, different times, different circumstances. They are all liars.

Two, it means that you are still lost because the Bible teaches that it was Christ’s dying and rising again that brought our redemption. That’s how we are reconciled to God.

Three, your faith is useless. In other words, if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead when in fact Jesus did not rise from the dead, your faith is worthless because faith’s validation depends in part on the truthfulness of faith’s object.

That is why the Bible never encourages you to believe something that is not true or something that it is not prepared to declare to be true. That is why in the Bible faith is strengthened by articulating and defending the truth.

The Bible never says, “Just believe, believe, believe, believe, believe—it doesn’t matter if it’s true, just believe. So long as you are sincere in your belief, that is good.”

Four, Paul goes one step farther and says that if you believe something that is not true (like the resurrection of Jesus, if it never happened), you are in fact of all people most to be pitied. Your life is a joke. You are believing something that is nonsense.

So as long as you are convinced that Christ did not rise from the dead, I am not going to urge you to sort of tighten up your stomach muscles and pretend to believe it. That is not faith, it might be the onset of a stomach ulcer, but it is not faith.

If someone were to object, “I prefer not to have any faith. I shall live my life solely on the basis of verifiable evidence,” the obvious answer is that faith is unavoidable. If you hold that any claim to superior knowledge about God cannot be true, that itself is an object of faith, an object of religious belief—that is, a belief that shapes your frame of reference about everything you hold to be important.

If you insist that no one can decide which faith is true, you are yourself making a claim grounded on a certain kind of faith, a perception of reality you have come to trust. So why should we believe you? All of us, without exception, make truth-claims of some kind or other. Doubtless it is difficult to evaluate them. But we have no alternative except to try.

Paul in Romans 3 commends faith, what he is wanting from us is a God-given ability to perceive what God has done by hanging Jesus on the cross, reconciling us to himself, setting aside his own just wrath, demonstrating his love, and declaring us just even though we are not. Because the righteousness of Christ Jesus is now counted as ours and our sin is now counted as his. And he has anchored this in God’s gracious self-disclosure across enormous tracts of time, across the Bible’s entire storyline, climaxing in the shattering reality that the God who made us, the God who is our Judge, bled and died for us and rose again. Apostle

That is the kind of Jesus you can trust. It is the kind of God in whom you can place your faith.

A person who claims faith in Jesus Christ but whose pattern of life is utter disobedience to God’s Word, probably has never been redeemed and is living a lie. Faith that does not manifest itself in obedient living is spurious and worthless (James 2:14–26). We are not saved in the least part by works, no matter how seemingly good; but we are saved to good works. That is the very purpose of salvation as far as our earthly life is concerned (Eph. 2:10).

Affirmation of faith leads to the practical, lived-out faithfulness without which a professed faith is nothing more than dead and useless (James 2:17, 20). Genuine faith is obedient faith.

A Word on Faith

In our Western world the word “faith” commonly has one of two meanings, neither of which Paul uses:

In some contemporary contexts “faith” is the equivalent of “religion.”

We say there are many faiths, many religions. You have your faith, and I have my faith; you have your religion, and I have my religion. In this usage, “faith” is simply a synonym of “religion.”

But when it is not used in that way, in our culture “faith” means something like personal, subjective, religious choice.

That is, it is not tied in any sense to truth or to fact. It is a personal, subjective, religious choice. So if you say to some people today, “You must have faith in Jesus,” it sounds like an invitation to a blind leap: some opt for Jesus, others opt for Allah and Muhammad, and others opt for Buddhism. But although the word “faith” is used in a variety of ways in the Bible, not once is it ever used that way.

In the Bible it is crucially important to establish faith’s object, that is, what or whom you believe. For example, in another of Paul’s letters, a letter in which he is writing to the Christians in Corinth, Paul insists that Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead (see 1 Cor. 15). Suppose, he argues, that Jesus did not rise from the dead; suppose that claim is historical nonsense. Then what happens to your faith if Jesus did not rise from the dead?

One, the first witnesses are all deceived or liars; you cannot trust any of the five hundred of them from different sites, different times, different circumstances. They are all liars. Two, it means that you are still lost because the Bible teaches that it was Christ’s dying and rising again that brought our redemption. That’s how we are reconciled to God. Three, your faith is useless. In other words, if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead when in fact Jesus did not rise from the dead, your faith is worthless because faith’s validation depends in part on the truthfulness of faith’s object. That is why the Bible never encourages you to believe something that is not true or something that it is not prepared to declare to be true. That is why in the Bible faith is strengthened by articulating and defending the truth. The Bible never says, “Just believe, believe, believe, believe, believe—it doesn’t matter if it’s true, just believe. So long as you are sincere in your belief, that is good.” And four, Paul goes one step farther and says that if you believe something that is not true (like the resurrection of Jesus, if it never happened), you are in fact of all people most to be pitied. Your life is a joke. You are believing something that is nonsense.

So as long as you are convinced that Christ did not rise from the dead, I am the last person who is going to urge you to sort of tighten up your stomach muscles and pretend to believe it. That is not faith. It might be the onset of a stomach ulcer, but it is not faith.

It is important that we avoid deluding ourselves. If someone were to object, “I prefer not to have any faith. I shall live my life solely on the basis of verifiable evidence,” the obvious answer is that faith is unavoidable.

If you hold that any claim to superior knowledge about God cannot be true, that itself is an object of faith, an object of religious belief—that is, a belief that shapes your frame of reference about everything you hold to be important.

If you insist that no one can decide which faith is true, you are yourself making a claim grounded on a certain kind of faith, a perception of reality you have come to trust.

So why should we believe you? All of us, without exception, make truth-claims of some kind or other. Doubtless it is difficult to evaluate them. But we have no alternative except to try.

Thus when Paul here in Romans 3 commends faith, what he is wanting from us is a God-given ability to perceive what God has done by hanging Jesus on the cross, reconciling us to himself, setting aside his own just wrath, demonstrating his love, and declaring us just even though we are not, because the righteousness of Christ Jesus is now counted as ours and our sin is now counted as his. And he has anchored this in God’s gracious self-disclosure across enormous tracts of time, across the Bible’s entire storyline, climaxing in the shattering reality that the God who made us, the God who is our Judge, bled and died for us and rose again.

Certainly that is the kind of Jesus you can trust. It is the kind of God in whom you can place your faith.

John 15:9 Even as the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you: abide ye in my love. 10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love

The injunction to remain in Jesus’ love, turns, at least in part, on our response to it.

If we are the recipients of Jesus’ love in a way analogous to his own reception of the Father’s love, we must remain in Jesus’ love by exactly the same means by which he has always remained in his Father’s love: obedience, that total obedience which finds Jesus testifying, ‘The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him’ (8:29).

The obedience of Jesus is one of the central Christological realities articulated by this Gospel. Elsewhere that obedience ensures that Jesus’ revelation is nothing less than divine (5:19ff.); here it serves as the supreme paradigm for the obedience we owe.

If obedience is the condition of continuously remaining in Jesus’ love, it is no less important to remember that in 14:15, 21 our love for Jesus is the wellspring of our obedience to him, as our obedience is the demonstration of the reality of that love.

These two verses do not impose on the believer an absolute alternative, perfect obedience or utter apostasy; rather, they set up the only ultimate standard, the standard of Jesus himself.

Jesus insists that his own obedience to the Father is the ground of his joy; and he promises that those who obey him will share the same joy, indeed, that his very purpose in laying down such demands is that their joy may be complete (1 John. 1:4).

What is presupposed is that human joy in a fallen world will at best be shallow, incomplete, until human existence is overtaken by an experience of the love of God in Christ Jesus. That love for which we were created, a mutual love that issues in obedience without reserve. The Son does not give his disciples his joy as a discrete package; he shares his joy insofar as they share his obedience, the obedience that willingly faces death to self-interest (12:24–26).

15:12. The individual commands that must be obeyed if a disciple of Jesus is to remain in his love (v. 10) are now subsumed under one command: Love each other as I have loved you.

Jesus’ point is not that love for fellow believers exempts one from the call to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, but that genuine love for God ensures genuine love for his Son, that genuine love for the Son ensures obedience to him, that obedience to him is especially tested by obedience to the new commandment, the command to love.

Sin primarily is disobedience, and God commands us to repent and repudiate it.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “Sin is not just that which I do that is wrong and which makes me feel miserable afterwards … not just that which spoils my life and makes me feel miserable and unhappy … not just that thing which gets me down and which I would like to overcome.”

It is that, but it is also much more. Primarily, sin is rebellion against God. “Sin is refusal to listen to the voice of God. Sin is a turning of your back upon God and doing what you think.”

So, when the gospel is preached, it must be preached not merely as an invitation to experience life to the full or even to accept God’s invitation.

It must be preached as a command. We are commanded to turn from our sinful disobedience to God and instead obey him by believing in and following the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior.

We do not obey God, because we cannot obey him physically, but because we will not obey God. It is this that makes the command to obey so important and our disobedience so reprehensible.

Jesus said, “For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven, that person is My brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:50). Jesus made it clear that obedience is the outflow of our love relationship with God (John 14:15–21).

James, in his letter to believers, emphasized that faith without active obedience is dead, useless. When the disciples obeyed Jesus, they saw and experienced God’s mighty power working in and around them. When they did not act in faith, they did not experience His mighty work.

Crisis of Belief

We imagine we would be all right if a big crisis arose; but the big crisis will only reveal the stuff we are made of, it will not put anything into us. ‘If God gives the call, of course I will rise to the occasion.’ You will not unless you have risen to the occasion in the workshop, unless you have been the real thing before God there. If you are not doing the thing that lies nearest, because God has engineered it, when the crisis comes instead of being revealed as fit, you will be revealed as unfit.

Crises always reveal character.

Many have gone back because they are afraid of looking at things from God’s stand-point. The crisis comes spiritually when a man has to emerge a bit farther on than the creed he has accepted. Oswald Chambers,

Are you returning to a commitment to God?

How do we lose intimacy with God?

Lost sheep Luke 15

How do sheep get lost? They typically are drawn away by distractions. They don’t consciously choose to wander from the rest of the flock. They simply follow whatever catches their interest at the moment.

Going from one thing to the next gradually draws the sheep farther and farther from where it should be until it is hopelessly lost and in grave danger.

Lost coins Luke 15

Valuable possessions are generally lost through carelessness. No one means to lose something precious, but by not taking precautions, we can misplace a treasured object.
Nothing is more priceless than our relationship with God. Yet we can neglect it because of our preoccupation with daily concerns.

The prodigal son Luke 15

The son chooses to leave home to indulge in a lifestyle that dishonors his father. Tragically, there are those who deliberately abandon their fellowship with Christ. Perhaps they decide they want to pursue worldly pleasures or they refuse to obey what God has clearly commanded.

Many have moved far from where they once were with God. Only a willful, repentant choice to return to God can bring someone back who has moved far away.