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Grace Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam Chess
THE POWER OF FAITH 5
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)
What is going on in your
life that you are trusting God for, that can not possibly happen, apart
from the direct personal attention of God.
This is a time of intense personals trials for many of you here at
Grace. It is startling how many people, in this body are going through
difficult times right now, ranging from your health, the health of a
loved one, financial stress, job related stress, stress in your
interpersonal relationships, …. And on and on….
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Let’s pause for a time of prayer for each other right now!
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Let’s dig back into God’s solutions to your life and let me ask
another way…
What impossible situation/s have you brought before God,
in faith, and even though your circumstances remain the same…. you
have become certain that an answer from God is on the way.
Every example of faith, in the Bible, were people who took a
hard look at their unchanging life circumstances and came to
believe, in prayer, that God was going to bring a divine solution
to their problem..
Every person, in Scripture, who had faith, were people who were able
to catch a glimpse over the hill of what is… and grasp a picture in
their spiritual mind of what God wanted to be! Into their minds came
the assurance of what was not as if it already were!
At that point, and at that point only, does real faith connect:
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (NKJV)
Let me give you another example of a person in the Bible who had to
exert faith for an impossible situation and I want to introduce a new
element into this faith picture that I think many of us here today need
to hear.
You remember the story of Abraham, father of the Israelites. God
called him from “Iran” across “Iraq” to the Promised Land that is now
the country of Israel. God promised him an inheritance of land, His
protection and blessing, and millions of descendants.
In order to have descendants you have to start with at least one
kid, and Abraham and his wife Sarah were childless….and Sarah’s
biological clock had already ticked past midnight. But God promised
they were going to have descendants…finally Abraham decides to help God
by having a child with another woman….. that was a great idea!!!
Every-time you hear of another invasion by Hezbollah into Israel or
a mortar attack from Palestine into Israel you can trace it back to the
day when Abraham lost faith and decided he would “help God” carry out
his promise.
When you are trusting God to intervene in the impossible
situations in your life you have resist the temptation to jump in
and help God! Next week I’m going to talk to you about the two
sided coin: faith and patience.
After 25 more years…Abraham in 99 and his wife is 89….Sarah
can no longer remember why she left one room of the tent and went to
the other but in the back of her mind she still remembers God promising
a child through her very old and very unused womb.
Then this happens:
Genesis 18:1 The LORD appeared again to Abraham while he was
camped near the oak grove belonging to Mamre. One day about noon,
as Abraham was sitting at the entrance to his tent, 2 he suddenly
noticed three men standing nearby. He got up and ran to meet them,
welcoming them by bowing low to the ground. 3"My lord," he said,
"if it pleases you, stop here for a while. 4 Rest in the shade of
this tree while my servants get some water to wash your feet. 5Let
me prepare some food to refresh you. Please stay awhile before
continuing on your journey."
9"Where is Sarah, your wife?" they asked him. "In the tent,"
Abraham replied. 10 Then one of them said, "About this time next
year I will return, and your wife Sarah will have a son."
Now Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent
nearby. 11 And since Abraham and Sarah were both very old, and
Sarah was long past the age of having children, 12 she laughed
silently to herself. "How could a worn-out woman like me have a
baby?" she thought. "And when my master--my husband--is also so
old?"
13 Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh? Why did
she say, `Can an old woman like me have a baby?' 14 Is
anything too hard for the LORD? About a year from now,
just as I told you, I will return, and Sarah will have a son."
Say this phrase with me: 14 Is anything too hard for the
LORD?
That is a key question here…that Sarah had to answer…and so do you!
Is anything too hard for God? Is there anything about your particular
circumstances that moves God just beyond his skills and capabilities?
Are your problems bigger than your God? Or
Is your God bigger than your problems?
You pretty well have to decide that before you can move on. If you
believe in your heart that your particular set of life circumstances
are bigger than your God’s abilities then you need to:
Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 200
dollars!
If your problems really are bigger than God you are in real life
trouble. People who really believe that end up doing things that
none of us want to contemplate.
Sarah had to make a decision about what she was going to be willing
to believe God for:
The Genesis account doesn’t paint Sarah as being full of faith;
“she laughed silently to herself. "How could a worn-out woman
like me have a baby?" she thought. "And when my master--my
husband--is also so old?"
I can show you, from the Bible, that she did not end her thinking
there. Somehow she had to make here way from:
Yeah ….Right????
Yes…. That’s right!
We don’t know how long it took her….we don’t know how much she
wrestled with her thoughts before she finally accepted God’s reality
instead of her reality, We do know that, at some point her husband
Abraham came to believe and at some point Sarah, herself, came to
believe.
Hear me when I say this…. The pregnancy would not begin until the
faith took hold. God answer did not arrive until Abraham and Sarah’s
faith grabbed hold!
Faith perceives as reality what is not revealed to the five senses..
How do we know this happened in Sarah’s mind??? It’s in the Faith
chapter which is found in :_ ___________________?
Hebrews 11:11 By faith even Sarah, herself, received ability to
conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered
Him faithful who had promised. (NASB)
(Some of your versions foul this point up by starting the verse
talking about Sarah and then giving credit for her faith to Abraham…..)
The older versions and the older manuscripts they are translated from,
give Sarah credit for her own faith.
But there is a critical point here that I don’t want any of us to
miss… After some time of thinking through Sarah’s faith grabs hold and
she believes what God has promised and Hebrews 11:11 tells us what the
foundation of her belief was based on:
Hebrews 11:11 By faith even Sarah, herself, received
ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since
she considered Him faithful who had promised. (NASB)
Sarah didn’t just blindly lock her faith onto air. There was
something very specific that gave her the ability to believe God for
her impossible event. She believed God was going to do the impossible,
in her life, because……she considered Him faithful up to that
point.
When she looked back on her life… God had not ever failed to come
through for her…ever! Her life had not been a piece of cake. She had
been ripped out of her familiar surroundings and hauled all over
Creation, at one point her husband allowed her to be taken into the
harem of Abimelech just to save his own hide….but her God had never
failed her…not one time.
Based on that one fact; that her God had been faithful to her…she
threw all her eggs into one basket and trusted God for this
absolutely impossible miracle…. And what do you know.. God didn’t
fail her this time either!!
This is some seriously heavy theology….
There is no such thing as blind faith.
All faith is based on faithfulness!
When you came to God, you had little to base your faith on but
somebody told you enough to cause you to believe that this God you were
putting your trust in was, in fact trustworthy.
When you check your e-mails each day you have several people who
are offering you prizes. All you have to do is claim their freebies
and you are “movin’ on up” What do you do with those e-mails?? You
delete them…unopened…why? Because you don’t deem the people on the
other end of those e-mails as trustworthy. They can be promising
you a $500 gift certificate to Home Depot and with a flick of you
finger you throw it away. Why?....You don’t have faith in their
ability or willingness to deliver what they have promised!
The only way you develop faith in anybody is when you have some
reason to believe that they will not fail to come through for you.
Your faith is based on their faithfulness. If you believe a little
in their faithfulness you will have a little faith.
As your belief in their faithfulness grows… your faith grows
right along with it.
The whole of your relationship with God is built around this
concept. God doesn’t expect you to believe in Him blindly. The who
point of the Bible is to progressively reveal who God is to you. All
the stories are designed to give you a firm understanding of God’s
ways, to help you come to know him, and learn to trust him.
He wants you to grasp the fact that he has always had your best
interest at heart and has always done, for you, since the first day of
creation, what is for your best good, and from his track record you can
learn that he will never fail you, not ever!
We get clear voices from Scripture assuring us that God is 100%
trustworthy:
Psalm 40:10 10 I have not kept this good news hidden in my
heart; I have talked about your faithfulness and saving power. I
have told everyone in the great assembly of your unfailing love
and faithfulness. – David
Psalm 89:1 I will sing of the tender mercies of the LORD
forever! Young and old will hear of your faithfulness. 2 Your
unfailing love will last forever. Your faithfulness is as enduring
as the heavens. 8 O LORD God Almighty! Where is there anyone as
mighty as you, LORD? Faithfulness is your very character. -
Psalmist Ethan
Jeremiah- Lamentations 3:22-25 The unfailing love of the LORD
never ends! By his mercies we have been kept from complete
destruction. 23 Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin
afresh each day. 24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!" 25 The LORD is wonderfully good to
those who wait for him and seek him. (NLT)
I have preached 11 sermons on faith this year.. but if we don’t
connect with this point I’m wasting my breath. You faith is unshakably
linked at the hip with your belief in God’s faithfulness to you.
In order for your faith to grab hold and grow for the present
impossibilities in your life you have to fully grasp what God has
already done for you.
Has God ever let you down? I know when we are going through
turbulent times we sometimes feel like God is absent . I’ve gone
through very difficult times in life, and I have, at times felt
ignored by God…but as time has progressed and my backward vision
has gotten clearer and clearer… I have become increasingly more
convinced that there has not been any time…ever…when God let me
down.
More and more in the last 18 months I’ve been able to look at
some of the turbulent, times in my own life and see that I was not
experincing God’s absence during those times, God was so, very
present that… I now see that had he not been there those times
could have been so much worse than they were. In my own life…I lot
of what I blamed God for then, I now see was largely my own fault.
God has never failed me…not one time.
Has there ever been a time when he dropped the ball in your
life?
Faithfulness is one of God’s attributes. He doesn’t act
faithful…He is faithful! God can never be or act inconsistent with
himself. He is immutable…He cannot change…He cannot become something
different then who he is….and “Faithful” is who God is!
2 Tim 2:13 If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he
cannot deny himself.
If you are looking for the faithfulness that you can plant your
unrestricted faith in… you go to the source. From creating you, to
saving you from your sins, to growing your spiritual life, to offering
you an eternal reward…He is Faithful…
Hebrews 10: 22 Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in
full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us
from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure
water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for
he who promised is faithful.
1 Corinthians 1: 8 He will keep you strong to the end, so that
you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God,
who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our
Lord, is faithful.
When you are up against the evil one…who cares nothing for your
eternal welfare, lies to you constantly, is never faithful….. you go
back to the source..
1 Corinthians 10:13 But remember that the temptations that come
into your life are no different from what others experience. And
God is faithful. He will keep the temptation from becoming so
strong that you can't stand up against it. When you are tempted, he
will show you a way out so that you will not give in to it.
For those of you who seem to be struggling with all life can
throw at you at one time.
1 Peter 4:19 So if you are suffering according to God's will,
keep on doing what is right, and trust yourself to the God who
made you, for he will never fail you.
Plant both feet of faith directly in the source..God is
faithful!
Conclusion: I’ve shared with you several times in the past what the
Hebrew word for faithful is: Does anyone remember?___________________
Aleph…Mem…Nun..
Amen!
In Old Testament times when Spiritual Leaders would give some truth
the people would respond like this:
1 Chronicles 16:36 Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting. Then all the people said "Amen"
(faithful) and "Praise the LORD."(hallelujah)
Nehemiah 8:6 Ezra praised the LORD, the great God; and all the
people lifted their hands and responded, "Amen! Amen!" (faithful,faithful)
Then they bowed down and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the
ground.
Let’s practice:
Psalm 72:19 Praise be to his glorious name forever; may the
whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen.
_______________ and ____________!
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