|
Grace Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam Chess
THE POWER OF FAITH 4
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (NKJV)
I’ve been asking you this question for the last three weeks: In all
the circumstances going on in your life right now
Q: Where in your life do you have hold of a line of faith, the
other end of which connects directly to heaven and you know that
what you have hold of, on this end, links you directly into the
throne room of heaven where God himself is giving personal
attention to your specific need and the return answer here on earth
is as good as done, even though you haven’t seen evidence of it
yet?
Remember, that’s the whole of what our faith consists of:
Hebrews 11:1-2 What is faith? It is the confident
assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the
evidence of things we cannot yet see. 2 God gave his approval
to people in days of old because of their faith. (NLT)
We’ve looked at many examples of faith in the Bible….the reason
there are so many stories about people’s difficult circumstances being
solved in Scripture is so we study them and apply them to our lives….
Let’s look at another…
Matthew 15:22 A Gentile woman who lived there came to him,
pleading, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! For my daughter
has a demon in her, and it is severely tormenting her."
Up to this point Jesus’ ministry had been only among the Jews. There
was no indication that this Canaanite woman should have an audience
with the great Jewish rabbi. The Canaanites were the pagan, idol
worshipping, sex-crazed society that the Israelites had fought against
when they settled Israel to start with…. And Jesus didn’t make it easy
on this woman this day:
23 But Jesus gave her no reply--not even a word. Then his
disciples urged him to send her away. "Tell her to leave," they
said. "She is bothering us with all her begging."
There’s a whole boatload of compassion for you! They had probably
been trying to shush her long before they brought their frustrations to
Jesus…
Not only was she whining and insistent…. She was a woman among men
who didn’t place a lot of value on women, and she was on the bottom of
the list of “most valuable foreigners” to the Jews.
Jesus is not sexist or racist, like his disciples (as he proved
later.. over and over), but he plays to the whole idea of her being a
Canaanite and a woman to test her faith….
24 Then he said to the woman, "I was sent only to help the
people of Israel--God's lost sheep--not the Gentiles."
Watch this. she gets something really, really right here…
25 But she came and worshiped him and pleaded again, "Lord, help
me!"
26"It isn't right to take food from the children and throw it to
the dogs," he said. 27"Yes, Lord," she replied,
"but even dogs are permitted to eat crumbs that fall beneath their
master's table."
28"Woman," Jesus said to her, "your faith is great. Your
request is granted." And her daughter was instantly healed.
Wow!...Jesus only uses the term “great faith” three times in the
Bible. What characteristic did this woman have that
qualified her faith as great faith?____________
Persistence….. a whiny voice?
A lack of fear? Ahhh!
Of all the examples in the Bible of people who should have let
their fear overcome their faith and didn’t…this woman is near the
top. She managed to break through the fact that she was a woman, in
a society where woman were not expected to speak out…. And she was
not only a non-Jew, but a despised foreigner .
She should have been cowering in the corner saying, “I have
great needs but my fear is outweighing my faith” but she didn’t.
She probably was afraid…terrified, but she pressed on through her
fear and locked on to faith and Jesus called that kind of
faith….”great faith!”
Last week, I talked briefly, in my sermon, about fear and faith, and
a number of you came to me with examples of how God had spoken to you
about the fear you were living in and how your faith needed to rise
through the fear.
Many…most of us sitting in this room right now are finding
ourselves, in some area/s of our lives, fighting fear that paralyzes
our faith.
I told you last week:
Fear and faith never function in the same space at the same
time.
When you are fearful, faith is driven away…when faith comes
into your life fear is dispelled like a light coming on in a
dark room
After Adam’s rebellion, when he meets God for the first time…the
first words out of Adam’s mouth were: "I heard you in the garden,
and I was afraid …… (Genesis 3:10)
Adam and Eve had been consumed with faith and once their
faith connection with God was severed it was replaced by consuming
fear.
The exact opposite of faith…… is fear!
Fear activates all that is not of God the way faith
activates all that is of God.
Because of the fall.. because of the effects of sin in our lives….
these two: faith and fear, live in constant opposition to each other in
each of us.
When we are building and exerting faith in God we are starving our
fears!
When our fears are growing in us, our faith is pushed far, far away!
Faith grows as your connection to God strengthens. Fear grows as
your connection to God weakens.
That’s at the very foundation of what makes faith work…. God doesn’t
ask us to believe him for things we can already accomplish on our own.
God doesn’t challenge us to do things we can do…He challenges us
to believe him for what we cannot do!
Trying to accomplish things we, ourselves, cannot do is where
our fear comes in.
Webster: Fear- a feeling of anxiety or agitation that comes when
we sense the presence of __________________.
Fear tends to rule our emotions until:
The danger we sensed goes away…or…
Something or someone comes into the picture that/who is
more powerful than the danger we sensed…
Faith is all about relying on God for our impossibilities. When we
rely on Him for what we are incapable of doing on our own, we see the
power of God achieve the impossible on our behalf. Faith jumps forward
and fear is starved into the background.
Hebrews 10: 35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be
richly rewarded. 36You need to persevere so that when you have done
the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. 38 But
my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I
will not be pleased with him." 39 But we are not of those who
shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are
saved. (NIV)
Great example when Israel goes in to the Promised Land and meets the
Canaanites for the first time.
Numbers 13:33 We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak.
We felt like grasshoppers next to them, and that's what we looked
like to them!"
They were so afraid, so lacking in faith in God…so imprisoned by
their fears, that they walked back into the wilderness and wondered
around for 40 years…when the promise of God was just across the Jordan
River. All the power and provision of God was completely available to
them….all they had to do was have faith in God and the fear would have
melted away.
Forty years later, when Israel finally decides to exert their
faith in God to give them what he had promised, they send spies into
Jericho and they meet a woman named Rahab. What she tells them makes
them sit up and take notice.
Joshua 2:8 Before the spies went to sleep that night, Rahab went
up on the roof to talk with them. 9 "I know the LORD has given you
this land," she told them. "We are all afraid of you. Everyone is
living in terror. 10 For we have heard how the LORD made a dry path
for you through the Red Sea when you left Egypt. And we know what
you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan
River, whose people you completely destroyed. 11 No wonder our
hearts have melted in fear! No one has the courage to fight after
hearing such things. For the LORD your God is the supreme God of
the heavens above and the earth below.
Imagine that…they very people that they had been so afraid of …were
actually scared to death of them!
I wonder how often that happens in our
lives??____________________________
Our faith is what God responds to. Without faith we are left
with nothing except worry, and fear, and doubt. Faith is what
pleases God…the absence of faith…and the mushrooming of fear….
leaves God unable to do what He has planned and promised in, and
through, our lives.
Faith moves the hand of God…Fear turns off the faucet.
Very capable people without faith have done little of eternal
significance for God. Very incapable people with growing faith have
literally shaped the course of history.
Hebrews 11: 32 Well, how much more do I need to say? It would
take too long to recount the stories of the faith of Gideon, Barak,
Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and all the prophets. 33 By faith
these people overthrew kingdoms, ruled with justice, and received
what God had promised them. They shut the mouths of lions, 34
quenched the flames of fire, and escaped death by the edge of the
sword. Their weakness was turned to strength. They became strong in
battle and put whole armies to flight.
Please don’t get the wrong idea of these people…they were not
supermen! Look at the list…. Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David,
Samuel, and all the prophets. These were all the people who had all the
right stuff…but didn’t know it.
The Bible goes to some extent to give us the history of most of
these people and they all started at the bottom of the “most likely to
succeed list”. Looking back later these are the one’s pointed out as
the great of Scripture. So what did they do that was so great?
They learned to trust God to do through them what they could
never have done on their own!
Were these people fearless? Not at all. Most of their fears are laid
out in the Bible for all of us to see. What they learned was to push
through their fears and put their complete trust of the Creator of the
universe…… and what he gave them in return for their fears was
“great faith”.
You remember the story of Gideon , the angel coming and calling him
a mighty warrior who was to deliver Israel and Gideon whining and
moaning about how inadequate he was ….and then remember his multiple
fleeces? (Many of us have done the same thing….)
Later on, once Gideon has learned to trust God and he’s involved in
that famous choosing of his commando army…look what God tells him to
say to his soldiers:
Judges 7:3Therefore, tell the people, `Whoever is timid or
afraid may leave and go home.' " Twenty-two thousand of them went
home, leaving only ten thousand who were willing to fight.
None of this is about God making fun of “fraidy
cats”. It’s about God trying to teach us, all, to trust completely in
him…. Because it’s when we learn to trust in Him that our fears move
into the background, our faith moves in to the foreground…and God is
able to do through us what he intended to do all along!
It’s the quality of our connection to God that dispels our fear.
As you move in God’s direction your faith increases and your fear
decreases.
Your closeness to God determines your level of faith….and your
closeness to God (or lack there of) determines your level of fear!
Psalm 23:4 Even when I walk through the dark valley of death,
I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. (NLT)
God, Himself, constantly linked peoples fear (or lack
thereof) with His presence.
Genesis 15:1 Afterward the LORD spoke to Abram in
a vision and said to him, "Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will
protect you, and your reward will be great."
Isaiah 43:1 But now, this is what the LORD says—
he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear
not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine. 2 When you pass through
the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the
rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the
fire, you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze. 3 For I am the LORD, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
1 John 4: 15 All who proclaim that Jesus is the Son
of God have God living in them, and they live in God. 16 We know how
much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him. God is love, and
all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17 And as we
live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on
the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we are
like Christ here in this world. 18 Such love has no fear because
perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of
judgment, and this shows that his love has not been perfected in us.
|
