Introduction
Tom Shrader begins a four-week series on faith using Hebrews 11:1-6, defining faith as our obedient response to the commands and promises of God. He establishes that Christians are not only saved by grace through faith, but must also live by faith daily. Drawing from Romans 1-5 and Ephesians 2, he explains mankind's natural condition as children of wrath and sons of disobedience, contrasting this with God's provision of salvation through grace alone.
“It's not just that we're saved by grace and faith, we're sustained by grace and faith.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Fundamentals of Faith
Recorded: July 12, 2007
Duration: 44 min
Themes: faith, grace, obedience, salvation, hope, trust, promises, commands, new believer, struggling with doubt, daily christian living, spiritual growth seeker, questioning salvation, mature believer, young adult, seeking understanding
Scripture: Hebrews 11:1-6, Romans 1:16-20, Romans 5:1-8, Ephesians 2:1-3, Isaiah 55:8
Theological Themes: soteriology, saving faith, sanctification, living by faith, biblical authority, grace alone, justification, spiritual growth
Full Transcript
You are about to experience something that almost no one else on this planet has other than people who were with us yesterday morning. This is new stuff for me—new material. I've got four weeks. It's not a study we've done before, and I wrestled with what to do. I thought I could do a four-week study that we prepared or take a little section of scripture. But what I want to do is talk with you about something that is probably familiar to many of you, but I want to take it maybe in a different direction.
So what we're going to talk about—and you have an outline in front of you—you will notice how graphically intriguing and engaging it is. That is because I did that myself, so I'm not about to invest a lot of time making it anything other than that. What is on that outline is a passage of scripture: Hebrews chapter 11 verses 1, 3 & 6. That's from the New American Standard, and then that same passage Hebrews 11:1, 3 & 6 from a paraphrase from The Message by Eugene Peterson. At the top of that page is a definition that I have absolutely fallen in love with.
Here's what we're going to talk about for these next four weeks: we're going to talk about faith and grace. Let me tell you how this came about, and we'll just kind of go down this journey together. I mean that honestly—I'm figuring some of this stuff out as I go.
Understanding Faith and Grace
I don't know how much I just want to talk about faith, but when I hear the word faith and I hear the word grace, I tend to think in terms of what we would call saving faith or saving grace. Now if you're listening and you go, "That means nothing to me," no problem. It will be clear to you in a second.
Here's what we're saying: so often when we who are Christians, we who are followers of Christ—what does that mean? We're going to talk about it this morning—when we talk about grace, we talk about "I was saved by grace through faith." So what we're saying is I was delivered, saved, rescued from my sin and the consequence of my sin by grace, which is unmerited favor—general definition. Grace is something I can't earn or deserve. There's nothing I can do to merit grace. I'm saved by grace through faith. How do I know I have received this saving grace, this gift of God? I will have saving faith. The faith is the expression of that grace.
So often when we talk about grace and faith, we talk in terms of saving grace and saving faith. Now here's what's really important for you and for me: it's not just that we're saved by grace and faith. We're sustained by grace and faith. Huge deal. It's not just that I'm saved by grace—I have to live by grace and live by faith.
Living by Faith
The focal point of these four weeks is our living by faith. What is faith? That's the definition you have on that page: Faith is our obedient response to the commands and the promises of God.
If you have a Bible and you open it to Hebrews chapter 11, you will find in verse 1—at least as far as I know—the only definition we have in the scripture of the word faith. The author of Hebrews writes this: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The paraphrase from Eugene Peterson on verse 1: "The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see."
You and I are called to live by faith. That's what Paul writes. Paul says walk by faith, live by faith. That's what we're going to look at the next two, three, four weeks, whatever that is. So we come into this relationship with God through grace. Faith is the vehicle of that, and now we live by faith.
The Hall of Fame of Faith
Those of you that are familiar with Hebrews 11, if I say to you we're going to study Hebrews 11, I would say what is Hebrews 11? Some of you who are familiar—maybe you've been around a while—you would know and parrot the words to me that Hebrews 11 is what? The faith chapter. What else?
For me it is certainly the faith chapter. It's the Hall of Fame of faith—here are the giants of that Old Testament faith. So look with me real quickly at just Hebrews 11, flying over at a thousand miles an hour: verse 4, "By faith Abel." Verse 5, "By faith Enoch." Verse 7, "By faith Noah." Verse 8, "By faith Abraham." Verse 11, "By faith Sarah." Verse 20, "By faith Isaac." Verse 21, "By faith Jacob." Verse 22, "By faith Joseph." Verse 23, "By faith Moses." Verse 31, "By faith Rahab." Verse 32, and then He said, "And here's all these other guys." There's a whole bunch of other guys that I don't have time to write about, and He lists a few of them.
The Structure of Faith
So what the author of Hebrews does in Hebrews 11 is this: He says here's what faith is, defines it in verse 1, and in verse 3 He kind of gives us this practical outgrowth of this: "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." And then in verse 6, payoff pitch: "Without faith it is impossible to please God, for He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."
That right there is the outline for this. Here's what I want to do today: I want to talk about faith. What I want to do in weeks 2, 3 & 4 is just illustrate, illustrate, illustrate. I want to go into the lives of the men and women that are listed there in Hebrews 11—not all of them, some of them—and say here's what faith looks like. If I'm a man or a woman of faith, it's not just faith to enter into a relationship with God—it's faith that sustains me in the balance of my life.
That's why for me now, I love that definition we have on that page: Faith is our obedient response to the commands and promises of God. When you work your way through Hebrews chapter 11 and you start to look at these people's lives, what you see is that they are obediently responding to what they know God has told them. They're obediently responding to God's promises and commands. What does God want from you and me? Our obedient response to His promises and His commands. See that? It's really simple.
It gives absolutely back to me what something that we say in here all the time: understanding the Christian life is not a complicated thing. It is very simple to understand. I think what the Christian life is. It's not very easy to do, especially as we begin to evaluate it because that's what I want to know. Don't you? Oh, no, how am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing?
What's absolutely contrary to the way we think is God's answer to how we're doing is not based on results, but it's based on obedience. Now that obedience may or may not produce results in our life. So for example, I may be obediently living and sharing my faith. I may be making the invisible God visible and speaking the truth boldly. But if God's not blessing and intervening, those people whom I'm touching, their lives will never be transformed in a saving way. But that doesn't matter because that's not my job. My job is to proclaim the truth.
We have a family that left our church about a year and a half ago and they moved to Morocco. They're living in Morocco. They had a meeting when they got there with virtually every Christian in Morocco—all seven of them were together in one room. You have people that have been there for decades, and to this point God hasn't moved in a significant way beyond these seven in terms of fruit and people whose lives are being transformed and saved. That doesn't mean these people are failures. It's because the success measurement isn't whether there's people responding. It's whether they've been obedient. God calls you and me to be faithful.
Laying the Groundwork for Understanding Saving Faith
Here's what I want to do. We're just going to move through this. We're going to take a time today to really lay some groundwork to make sure we're on the same page with what we talk about when we talk about saving faith. This absolutely connects, and it was unintentional, with where we left off last time when we talked about knowing God. J.I. Packer talked about if we know God our lives change, we risk more, we desire big thoughts, our lives are transformed in the pursuit of Him.
J.I. Packer in the book Knowing God talks about five basic truths or five foundational principles that have to deal with our knowledge of God. Let me give them to you and I'll try to give them to you in a nutshell so I know some of you immediately grabbed a pen. If you're going to write this, I'll try to give it to you in a way where you can get it.
Five Foundational Principles About Knowing God
Number one, God has spoken to man and the Bible is the Word of God. So there's our first point. It's given to us to make us wise unto salvation. That's what Packer writes and I just added, how presumptuous of me to add to J.I. Packer. But I just added just a little bit to this. Packer writes, God has spoken to man and the Bible is the Word of God given to us to make us wise unto salvation and I just simply added the phrase "and into life." It makes us wise in how to live.
Here's the second thing: God is the Lord and King over the world. God rules over all things for His own glory. He displays His perfection in all that He does in order that men and angels may worship Him and adore Him.
Next Wednesday night when we do hot summer nights on worship—and again I think I know enough about church and churches because we deal with so many people from so many other churches—I know worship is a big topic. Almost all the discussion that we have on worship misses the whole idea of worship and the whole thing becomes a discussion on form rather than on purpose. It really even precedes all of that by a kind of an artificial distinction when we say let's gather together in the worship center as though we come in here and worship and everything out there is somehow different. There is no secular or sacred in our lives. Our whole life is an act of worship. That's what Packer's saying.
Here's the third thing: God is Savior, active in sovereign love through Christ to rescue believers from guilt and power of sin and to adopt them as His children and to bless them accordingly. Not only is our destination changed, our designation has changed. We are no longer sons of disobedience, children of wrath. We're now children of God.
The Trinity and Salvation
Here's his fourth point: God is triune, meaning one God, three persons. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit work together in salvation. The Father purposing those that will be redeemed, the Son securing those, the Spirit applying those.
Let me tell you what he's saying there because that may be kind of different terminology for you. Here's what Packer's saying: when we put away what we think or what our experience is and we go to the Scripture and we talk about salvation—we're going to come back and talk about what does that mean in a minute, what is salvation—when we talk about salvation we discover that salvation is entirely of God. The Father before the foundations of the earth determines those that He will save. The Son goes to the cross and dies for those people. At the exact time in God's divine plan, the Holy Spirit opens those people's eyes, ears, and hearts to hear that truth.
Let me illustrate it from my life. Before the foundations of the earth God, the Creator God of the universe, determined that He would save me. Now what's really important is it had nothing to do with me. That can sound—and I have people who go, gee that sounds so arrogant—I don't understand, I'm not communicating well if that sounds arrogant. God determined to save me, listen now, in spite of me not because of me. God did not look down the corridors of time and say, "Boy that Tom is a diamond in the rough, if I could just get him on my team that would be something really special." No, God looked down the corridors of time and saw nothing but a sinful derelict and God said, "I'm going to save him."
The Son goes to the cross and at that moment in time there's a divine exchange that takes place.
Where God takes our sin and guilt and thrusts it on Christ and in return for that we get Christ's righteousness. That's a pretty good deal, that's better than dealing with a guy who says let me ask my manager if I can get that price for you. That's a good deal right there.
So when Christ is on the cross and there's the agony of the cross, what's happening at that moment is all of God's judgment on our sin is poured out on Christ. When Christ said it is finished what He meant is He's paid the price for the sin of His people. How do we know the sacrifice was acceptable? How do we know that? The resurrection. God's amen to Jesus it is finished.
Now at this appointed time and it just so happens that it was about 8:15 on March 6th in 1980 that at that appointed time the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to see that truth and brought that together. Now we'll come back to that but that's what Packer's saying. Packer's saying is salvation is the work of the triune God.
Here's the last thing Packer writes. Godliness means responding to God's revelation in trust and obedience. Trust and obey there is no other way. That's what he's championing. We respond in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in light of God's Word. This and nothing else is true religion or true faith.
God's Holiness and Otherness
So when we left off last time we were talking about God and we were saying God is holy and that's a tough word to define because what it means is otherness or separateness. What we're saying is God is different than us. So in Isaiah 55 verse 8 God speaks and says this, my ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are higher than your ways, says the Lord. What God is saying is we see things differently. I'm God, you aren't. I'm God and this is what it means to be God.
This is so important. This is absolutely critical. You've got to get this right. We can't waver here.
What Matters Is What God Says About Himself
So if we get out of here and you go down to Starbucks and you're meeting a buddy and you're just talking to him. He's like I'd like to talk about God. I love to talk about God. Let's talk about God. You say all right well why don't you go first and he says I just love God. What do you love about God? I just love the fact that God is love and you know a God of love is not going to allow bad things to happen to good people. I mean a God of love is not going to send anybody to hell. And then he just gives you boom boom boom boom.
Now you come along and he says what do you think? Now he's excited. He's a little ginned up from drinking the espresso and now his juices are flowing and he's engaged and you've listened politely and now you have the opportunity. He says well why don't you speak? What do you think? And you say it doesn't really matter what I think. What I think, this will throw you for a loop, what I think that you said really is great and really makes sense and really makes me feel good. The problem is it's not what God says He is. You see that? Not asking you to agree. I'm just asking you to say you see it. You see that?
If I want to know who God is I got to see what God says He is. Not what I think or Oprah thinks or Rush thinks. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what any of those people think. It doesn't even matter what you think. It's who is He? That's what we have to get our arms around.
The True Nature of Humanity
In Ephesians chapter 2, we're going to work here. I may tell you where we're going. We're going to Romans 1. In Ephesians chapter 2 Paul's writing and he said you were dead in your sins and trespasses in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world according to the Prince of the power of air of the spirit that is now working. Now here's God's description of you and me. It was according to working in the sons of disobedience. That's you.
Among them we too also formerly lived in the lust of the flesh indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind. So here's what he's saying. He's writing to this church now. He's writing to these believers and he said we too were those sons of disobedience. We too lived according to the flesh. We too did just what we wanted to do. And he said we were by nature children of wrath. That's who man is.
It's Just People Being People
As I was driving in this morning I called my brother because he had left me an email and he said I talked to an old friend of ours. He said I talked to an old friend. Call me tomorrow morning when you get a chance. So I called him. I said what'd you see? We have this conversation. So we're talking about a situation with a mutual friend of ours. And I said did you hear about this? And he said no. I said let me tell you this story. So I tell him the story. I cannot fathom the mindset that this guy has. Here's what my brother says. It's just people. That's what the Bible says. It's just people.
So when you're engaged in business today and this guy said to you, yeah, I'll do that, and then at five, because he said he's going to be there at 4:30, at five, he's not there, and then you call him and you say, you know what, I told you I could do that, but even when I told you, I didn't think I could really do it, but I told you I could do it. It's just people. That's who you are.
The Reality of Human Depravity
You are Jeffrey Dahmer. You are Adolf Hitler. You are that. They are you. They lift the veil a little bit and see how bad you really are. In all likelihood, you're never going to molest your neighbors and cut them up and eat them, but you're capable of it. Now, that's really important, isn't it? We're depraved. That's what he's saying. I'm by nature.
So remember after 9-11, we talk about it every once in a while, the following week when they had that love rally at Yankee Stadium and Oprah presided over that, and they had all those faces, and they did, remember that? And they did everything but sacrifice a goat, and they went through this whole exercise, and they're
The Fallacy of Universal Brotherhood
There's a whole fallacy in the idea that we're all children of God and should just get along. What's the fallacy? We're not all children of God. All of that breaks down because we're not children of God. We say, "Oh my gosh, that makes me feel good," and "We are the world," and we love it. Here's the problem: it doesn't matter how it makes you feel, or what you think. Here's what God says: You're a son of disobedience and a child of wrath. The tense that Paul uses is that's what we were, so there's hope.
The Gospel as God's Power
Let's go to Romans chapter one, where we're going to hang as we lay this groundwork for faith—saving faith, and then living by faith. In verse 16, Paul writes, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, also to the Greek."
Paul says that in somewhat of an odd way. He doesn't say I'm proud of the gospel. He says I'm not ashamed of it. Why? I would suggest that at this point in writing, Paul has been through a lot of humiliating experiences. He's been beaten and stoned, and all the things that go with it—suffering hardship in prison and out of prison. He's saying I'm not embarrassed by that because that flows from the gospel.
Paul: A Bondservant of Christ
Look at verse one. Paul certainly doesn't have low self-esteem. In Romans 1:1, Paul calls himself "a bondservant, a slave." Paul's saying I'm a slave of what? Of money, power, sex? No, I'm a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul tells us in scripture we were bought at a price: "Don't enslave yourself to men." He does not say don't become a slave. The teaching of scripture is clear: You are a slave.
Everybody's going to serve somebody, but you can't serve two masters. You can either serve God or you can serve the world, but you can't serve both.
The Quality of Life Paradox
Last night with Barry Asmus, we had a blast, and when everybody left, Barry and I sat there for an hour just talking about all the things I didn't want to talk about earlier. We were talking about the quality of life. Almost wherever you are on this planet, the quality of your life is vastly better than it was just a short period of time ago. The world economically and materially is getting better.
At the same time, we're spiraling down morally. Both are moving quickly, but the downward spiral is moving faster, primarily because of technology. We're spiraling down morally faster, and ultimately, the morality that's down-cycling trumps the upward mobility of the material thing. So are we better off? No, we're in real trouble.
The Only Hope: The Gospel
The only hope—and that's what Paul's saying—is the gospel: that Jesus Christ died on the cross, according to the scripture, for our sin, and that He rose on the third day. If I confess that with my mouth and believe in my heart that God raised Him from the dead, I will be saved. What does the word "saved" mean? Delivered, rescued. Saved from what? That's the whole issue here, and that's what Paul's going to lay out in Romans 1, 2, and 3.
God's Wrath Against Suppressed Truth
Look at verse 18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them." What's He saying? The wrath of God will be poured out on ungodly and unrighteous people. Here's what they've done: There's a great phrase in verse 18—they suppress the truth. The idea there is not that they're in denial; it's that they're actively suppressing it.
A Personal Illustration About Annoying Toys
Susan made a purchase the other day that is an extraordinarily stupid purchase. I didn't know she was going to make this purchase. At our house, I don't run any of the money—I don't know where the money goes. You may ask, what kind of a leader are you? I'd say a great one. I sleep well; I don't know where it goes. Susan doesn't spend money stupidly, typically, but she made a purchase—a bad purchase.
When our kids were small, my parents gave our kids a popcorn popper. Do you remember that thing you push? It was like a little plastic dome with all these things that pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I hated that. Well, Susan bought Brayden the equivalent of that. It's a lawnmower that he just pushes and he loves to walk behind it. It goes pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Now he's developed new motor skills—he can move backwards: pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I said, "Susan, what in the world are you thinking about?" "Well, he'll really like it." I'm going, "It doesn't matter. I don't like it. I hate it."
When our girls were small, they had another toy that I found annoying: a jack-in-the-box. It would go do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. The dexterity that the girls had was such that it basically kept them busy for the day, because once the thing came out, they couldn't get it back in. You've got a two-year-old and there's just no way. Sarah figured out that there's that little hook on there, so what she figured out is she
Could hold down the top and go do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Whoa. So the first night I heard that, I said, this isn't good.
That's when she came out one morning and said, "Where's the jack? Honey, they broke in last night. They didn't take the television or the credit cards or the cash, but they wanted that jack-in-the-box." So it's gone.
The Suppression of Truth
Now, here's what's important to see. Her holding down that top is the same idea that Paul's using here in verse 18 of suppressing the truth. They're suppressing the truth. They're actively engaged in rejecting the truth.
Well, how can that be? That's what he says. Because this whole idea of God is evident within them. We are eternally searching for something, right? Why? Verse 20, "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes and its eternal power and His divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made. So they're without excuse."
In other words, the very first missionary ever sent to this earth was the earth. To this world was the world. To this universe was the universe. That's what he's saying. He's saying, here's the very first missionary. You look at the stars and you go, there's a God.
Creation as Evidence
If I were—I'm looking around and you can't see it, but this existence here, this Coke machine tells me that there's Coke. There could not be this machine if there wasn't something that assembled that machine. We do the same thing when we use an overhead projector or a computer—the existence. When you open up your laptop, it tells you that there's a Dell.
Now, how do I know that? Because this thing didn't assemble itself. It wasn't like there were microchips and stuff playing around, and then one day, bam, they all came together. We would say, "Well, that's preposterous. It couldn't do that." And so here's what we would say: that's correct. That's why it took billions and billions of years for that Dell to assemble. No, there had to be a Mr. Dell to put it together, right?
Now, here's what God's saying in His word. This is bigger than that because what Dell did—now this is really important—what Dell did was not create, was assemble the computer. They didn't create it. They took these resources, maybe had to change them a bit, and it comes to the computer. God didn't assemble the universe, He created it. He started with nothing.
Without Excuse
That's what Paul's saying. Since the creation, God's invisible attributes, His powers, divine nature are clearly seen. You're without excuse. "For even though they knew God, they didn't honor Him as God, nor give thanks to Him, they became futile in their speculation. And their foolish hearts were darkened."
So let's tie this together. Verse 18: God's wrath is poured out on the ungodly and the unrighteous. What do I have to do to be ungodly and unrighteous? Nothing. That's his whole point. That's what he's saying in verse 21.
What do I have to do to be ungodly and unrighteous? Nothing. They didn't give Him thanks, they didn't give Him honor. Ungodly and unrighteous is who you are apart from Christ. See that? And that's what Paul's building in this whole case.
Paul's Assessment of Mankind
So consequently, we're without excuse, and then he builds this case about religious people, non-religious people. His conclusion is in chapter three, he says, "Therefore, here's what I'm saying to you, there's none righteous, not one, there's none who understands, there's none who seek for God, all have turned aside, together they become useless, there's none who does good, not even one."
That's Paul's assessment of mankind. Paul's assessment of mankind is that there is not one person who does good.
Now, you may look and say, "Oh my golly, how did Paul miss it? Just the other day, we had a guy in our neighborhood and he needs a kidney transplant, and his neighbors got together in this giant garage sale, and we sold all this junk. It was stuff we didn't want anyway, but not a big sacrifice on our part—that's immaterial to the conversation—but we sold all of this junk, we took the money, and we gave it to him as a down payment for his kidney transplant. Are you telling me that's not good?"
God Looks at the Heart
And I'm saying I'm really impressed that you do that, but God's not, because He looks at your heart, not at the action. So I could be doing my Bible study, I could be getting up at some weird and godly hour to come to something like this, to sit in a sauna and listen to this. I mean, I could be doing that, and I could be sitting right next to two people who've made that same thing, and God could be looking at one and saying, "This is good," and looking at another and saying, "This is no good," because it's not the action, it's the heart, the motive, the mindset of the actor. That's what he's saying.
So I'm separated from God by nature, who I am, started in the garden, born into this world. Haley has Brayden—Brayden's 18 months. Sarah has Gracie—Gracie's seven months. In about eight weeks, Haley's going to have another baby, Yale James will be the name.
Born in Rebellion
Yale will be born, and all three of these kids have one thing in common: they all, by nature, hate God. They're disobedient, they're rebellious, they like their own way versus God's way.
Now, that kills Susan when I say it. She said, "Isn't that cute?" I go, "No, I don't think so. He's a delinquent that lacks the dexterity and creativity to burn down the house, but he would if he could."
How do we get out of that? We're going to take like six, seven minutes here. How do we get out of that?
Man's Instinctive Solution
Man instinctively wants to fix it. Man instinctively wants to make it right. So what man does is create something called religion. That's man's solution. So you got a group of—and there'll be some people that say, "Oh, I don't buy that at all, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there is no God, you know, if it—"
Feels good, do it. Whatever, I'm fun loving, free, I'll take care of it myself. Life's short, play hard. But that's not very many people. Most people want to begin to respond to that.
So they'll look at this news and either discount it, which God says they know is true, but they're dismissing it. Or they'll play the game that a lot of people play, which is, "I may be bad, but have you met my friend Bill? Because Bill's really bad." And so if I can hang around enough guys like Bill, I have to be okay. That's why some of you have friends, because people need people like you to make them look good.
The Problem with Religion
Most people flinch towards something called religion. It has a lot of shapes and sizes, but it's anything other than biblical Christianity. And that whole process is about somehow me taking my life and making it good enough so God can go, "Yep, yep, you're in, you're in, you're in, you're in." And ultimately it fails. That's what He's saying.
And it takes all shapes and sizes. It can be very stringent, it can be very legalistic. I have in my life basically attended three churches: a community church, a community church, and then a Bible church. What I've noticed in the Bible churches, and it can go beyond that, it's in some of the denominations as well—you wouldn't find it in many of them, but some of them—is that as the Bible church guy grows, the Bible church lady grows spiritually, they tend to get very serious. They tend to get their shorts in a knot pretty quickly. They tend to say, "This is serious stuff," and it is. I don't want to minimize how serious it is.
This is us dealing with the Holy God. This is serious stuff. But we become so fearful of interacting with God that we begin to legislate joy right out of our life. And so everything has to be measured.
It drives us nuts, doesn't it? We would love it if God said, "Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, do this, do this, do this." Because at the end of the day I could go, "Check, check, check, check, check," when He doesn't. What's He say? Love me with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. Oh my gosh.
The Impossibility of Perfect Obedience
Well, I don't know, what does that mean? How much should I love you? Well, with all your heart. How much is that? Have I ever in my life sustained a love of God with all my heart for a period of 10 seconds? Have I ever experienced it once? Not even close to the idea of love my neighbor as myself.
Now I'm beginning to say, you know what's going to sustain me in my walk? Grace. I'm saved by grace, I'm sustained by grace. I'm saved by grace through faith, and that faith that saves me is not just faith alone, but it's faith that sustained me to live a life that's pleasing to Him. See that? So I'm now living by faith, which is the obedient response to the commands and the promises of God.
Romans 5: Justified by Faith
So look at Romans chapter five, and then we'll wind this down. Romans chapter five: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." We were sons of disobedience and children of wrath, we now have peace with Him. We have now been reconciled to Him.
Verse six, how did that happen? "While we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly." Verse eight: "God demonstrated His own love toward us, and then while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." I am saved by grace through faith.
I listen periodically, because I have to, to some of my tapes. I don't do it for joy, I do it because I have to, in certain instances, for a certain assignment. I think that if I were to grade, and I think I see myself pretty accurately, if I were to grade myself on a one to 10 as a teacher, I would give myself a six. Sometimes I spike to 6.5, maybe tweak a seven once in a while, but I fall to five as well. So I'm a solid six, and I'm comfortable with that.
Learning Through Experience
In that whole process of dealing with teaching, I want to get better. And one of the things I learned, it's kind of like golf, it's like flying a plane. You can sit in a simulator all you want until you fly the thing, you don't know if you can pilot it. Same thing with teaching.
When I first started teaching I would go anywhere that somebody invited me. One day, I'm at West Chester nursing home. Now let me tell you what's at West Chester nursing home: wonderfully kind servant people who are taking care of pretty much really old hard to take care of people. I'm doing their Sunday morning service. There's a lady in the back who can barely hear, and when she hears she feels compelled to share what she hears.
I am teaching what I think the Bible teaches is salvation by grace through faith. She's in the back saying, "I don't buy that. I don't buy that. I don't believe that." So finally I said, "You know, let's stop because obviously you have something you want to share with everybody. Why don't you tell us what you're thinking?"
Here's what she said: "I don't think that's true." I said why. She goes, "It can't be that simple."
Grace is Counterintuitive
That's what grace is. It's that simple. You see how religion... grace is in a sense counterintuitive. I instinctively want to do something. When I come in contact with grace all of a sudden, I'm going, "It's too simple," or "It's too soon. God could never for... you know what I've done. God could never forgive that. Let me clean my act up just a little bit to make myself acceptable to God."
Well, you can never get that. You got that right? You understand that right? All my response there. It's too cheap. Grace is humiliating. Religion isn't. Religion builds me up. Grace tears me down because it takes away all my efforts. See that?
Grace is counterintuitive. Max Lucado writes this. We got to close, please. "No salvation. Salvation is God given, God driven, God empowered, God originated. It's a gift not from man to God but from God to man. On the basis of this point alone, Christianity is set apart from any other religion in the world. No other system, ideology, religion proclaims free forgiveness and a new life to those..."
who have nothing to deserve it but deserve judgment instead. Every other approach to God is a bartering system. If I do this, God will do that—I mean to say by works what I do, by emotions what I experience, or by knowledge what I know. By contrast, Christianity has no whiff of negotiation. Men are not the negotiator. Indeed, man has no grounds from which to negotiate.
All of that to say: I'm saved by grace through faith. Now, how do I live? That's the starting point.
The Gospel We Never Outgrow
You know what I've discovered? I've discovered that though I've heard that over and over—I've heard what I just told you a thousand times and many of you have heard it a thousand times—what I've discovered is I never grow tired of hearing it. Because I need to, and this is really important: I need to preach the gospel to myself every day. I need to hear that gospel every day. I need to be reminded of God's provision and God's strength and my weakness every day.
I need to be reminded every day of who I am because I start to see—I'll just be really honest—I start to see in my life some kind of good things. Some of me wants to go, "Oh my golly, there's some good things in here," and the next words can be "I really am..." And then I go, "Oh no, no, no. God's beginning to do that in my life. God's beginning to do that." And now what sustains me is what brought me into that relationship: faith.
Faith for Daily Life
So we're going to talk about for three weeks my obedient response to the promises and commands of God. How practical is it? It's the very way you're going to get through this day. It's exactly what happens when the doctor says there's a spot on the x-ray. It's exactly what happens when the boss comes in and says we're downsizing and you'll be first. It's exactly what happens when the light stays red and you're about to lose it and forfeit all of that testimony that you've amassed over the last day.
Some faith. We'll talk about it for the next three weeks.
Father, help us see this truth.