Faith Towards God (Video)

Hebrews chapter 6, let's again read from chapter 5 verse 12 through chapter 6 verse 3. So Hebrews chapter 5 from verse 12 to chapter 6 verse 3. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and you've come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. So he calls these things milk, the foundation, or first principles. And we're going to look at the second one in verse 1, which is faith. So last week we looked at repentance from dead works, and this week it is faith towards God. Now this is a huge subject, of course, the issue of faith, and we're going to come back to the whole thing of faith and go into it in much, much more detail when we get to chapter 11, which is quite a way down the road. So we're going to just deal with the basic principles, and then, as I said, we will get into the nitty-gritty of it at a later stage. So it is repentance from dead works, faith towards God. Remember we said that these are two sides of the same coin. Repentance and faith go hand-in-hand. And when you look at Mark chapter 1 verse 14, it says that after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. So Jesus preaches repentance and faith. Remember the word faith and the word believe is really the same word. Now the problem with the word faith, of course, is that it has become a religious term. But the Greek word pistis is not a religious term. It's an everyday term, the same way as believe or trust is an everyday term. So when we use the word faith in our English, invariably we have some religious connotation to it. When we use the word trust, well, that's just an ordinary word, and we don't have any spiritual connection with the word trust. Or even the word believe, because, you know, we talk about, you know, do you believe CNN or Fox, just as a ridiculous example. So the word believe and the word trust is exactly the same as the word faith. Faith simply is to have confidence or trust in something. So we do use the word outside of the church when we speak about, do you have faith in the government? Or do you have faith in the electrical supply system? Remember many countries, the power comes on and off all day long. It's off more than it's on. But here we can have some faith that we're going to flip the switch and the power is going to come on. But that also means that we trust the, who do we get power from here, DWP, or whichever company you get electricity from, we have some trust in the company. We trust them to provide electricity when we need electricity. And so the thing is, when we use this word faith, we have all sorts of wrong ideas about what it means, and so I'm much more comfortable with using the word trust, because that is really what it is. Do I trust in God or do I trust in something else? Do I have faith in God or do I have faith in something else? And we'll unpack that as we move along. So here you don't have the word faith but believe, which is exactly the same thing. So he says you need to repent Jesus' gospel and believe in the gospel. In Acts chapter 20, testifying to the Jews and also to the Greeks, this is Paul, repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not going to get into the details of that verse, but again, repentance and faith, these two things. Remember repentance means to turn away from and to turn to something else. Now you can't just repent in the sense that you turn away from dead works and not turn to something else. You have to, by definition, if you're going to go in one direction and you're turning to go in another direction, you're going towards something else, and that something else is believing in God. So they're two different sides of the same coin. Now faith is not a feeling, and I've got three things that I'm going to say that it is not, and we could spend much more time on this. Faith is not a feeling. What I mean by that is that people say, well, you know, if you have faith, and I say, well, how do I have faith? Well, I don't feel faith, or I feel my faith is strong. I feel I have a lot of faith. Faith is not something you feel. Faith is something you do. Remember what Jesus preached, repentance and believing. And so faith is not a feeling, it's a doing thing. It's believing. It's putting my trust in something. I know we say, well, you know, I feel I can trust this person, or I feel I can't trust that person. But in the Bible's sense of using the word, faith results in doing something, and we're going to see that in a moment. So how do I believe? Because I feel faith, or because I know I can trust God? You see, if you say, I feel I can trust the guy on the street corner who's selling me some watches from his jacket, that feeling is misplaced. How do I, on what basis do I know I can trust someone who's trying to sell me a watch, if I know who he is? So if you go to the jeweler store in the mall, and they've been there for 20 years, and they sell watches, and you do your homework, and you check online, and they've got good reviews, you say, well, I can trust this company to sell me a watch, because I know who they are. I see the store, I see the reviews, I know that this is a reputable company. This is why people get swindled out of their money, because they meet somebody online, or they meet somebody in the store, wherever, and they say, well, he looks like a good guy, I feel I can trust him. That's not faith, that's not believing or trusting, that's stupidity. We believe and we trust the things that we know. You see, because we have this wrong idea that faith is blind. We speak about blind faith. No, we don't have blind faith. We know in whom— Paul says, I know in whom I have believed. I know in whom I've believed. We're serving a God who has revealed himself to us in the Scriptures, and in his life on earth, and his death, and his resurrection. He has revealed him. We know who he is. So our faith in him is based on knowledge, not on blind faith. Well, maybe I can trust him. I mean, I think we all know how scary it is to vote in any kind of election, because the guy looks good on paper and then turns out to be a total—needs to be recalled. We don't know. But when it comes to God, he reveals himself. He shows himself to be faithful, to be reliable, to be dependable, from the book of Genesis right through the book of Revelation. Remember that the Bible is not biased in the sense that it only tells us the good stuff. It tells us the times when God was angry. It tells us the times when God destroyed nations. It tells us when people failed. It tells us about David, the man after God's own heart, and yet he did some terrible stuff. It tells us in the New Testament about the apostles, about Peter and his hypocrisy. So the Bible is a very honest book, and tells us the way it is. But nowhere in the Bible can you read of God not doing what he said he would do, or of God proving to be unreliable. Well, is he going to be there today? Remember the prophets of Baal, and the prophet of God comes, and he says, well, where's your God? Maybe he's out hunting. Maybe he's sleeping. Maybe he's busy somewhere else. That's not a very reliable God. Our God is totally reliable. He's proven himself. So it's not based on a feeling. I'm going to run out of time, seriously. Faith is not a force. Here's another wrong doctrine that is taught in the Word of Faith churches, and the Word of Faith churches say that faith is a force. It is a power, and that when you direct your faith at a situation, then the faith will change that situation. So if your wallet is empty, you need to direct faith at your wallet, and your wallet will come full. If you feel sick, you need to direct faith at your body, and you will be healed. Faith is not a force. The stuff they're talking about is humanistic, soulish stuff. We have a mind over matter, and I'm not going to get into that in great detail, but the human mind has real power, particularly when it comes to your own health. You can make yourself pretty sick pretty quickly if you allow your mind to go down that route. You obviously can't necessarily heal yourself, but you have the ability to to get yourself sick. And the mind is powerful. It's able to do all sorts of amazing things, but it's not God's power, and it's not faith. So faith does not do anything. It's God who does things. If there's going to be a miracle—and I'm going to come back to the idea of miracles in a moment—but if a miracle needs to happen, it's not my faith that's going to make the miracle happen. It's God that's going to make the miracle happen. My faith can do nothing except to put my faith in God, and He does the power. He does the work. It's exactly the same as turning the lights on. In the old days, when you still had gas or you had candles, you would have to bring some kind of lighter, and you'd have to light each one of the lights in the building and make it work. Now we just flip the switch. Now, by my flipping the switch, has that made the light burn? No, it's the electricity that makes the lights come on. All I have to do is flip the switch, and the rest happens. And by the flip of a switch, we can do the most amazing stuff. We can turn on huge, powerful machines that can do all sorts of—and you just press a button, and it all happens. And faith is the same thing. It's God who makes it all happen. All I have to do is to trust Him, and in that sense, I just need to press the button. Now, obviously, it doesn't mean God is going to do everything I want Him to do, but the point is that it is not my faith that makes things happen. It is God who makes things happen. All I need to do is to put my trust in Him. So, faith is not a force that I direct at something. And so, if I have a small problem, I feel, well, I need just a little bit of faith, and then I can pray, and I can get my faith directed at this little problem, and it's going to go away. But if I have a big problem, well, now I need big faith. And maybe I need to get a lot of other people to stand with me and to direct their faith collectively at this particular problem. An example, when I first came here to LA, there was a preacher who was struggling with prostate cancer—a very well-known guy. And he would have his PSA test done literally every day. In those days, it was before inner came. In fact, I was living in the church in Burbank, and there was an old TV, and the TV only got one channel, and that channel was KDOC, and he would be on KDOC every night. And every night, he would come, and he would say, well, my PSA is up. That is what it is. Yeah, it's the count to see whether the cancer is receding or not in the case of prostate cancer. And so, he would come, and the count is up, which means the cancer is advancing. And he would lay into the congregation, because you guys aren't exercising faith. And then the next night, then the count would be down. And he would say, yeah, you guys are doing good. Your faith is working. It's pushing the numbers down. That's nonsense. That's absolute rubbish. It's God who heals or doesn't heal. It's God who does the stuff. It is not my faith. Faith is not a force. Faith is not a law. Also, from the Word of Faith, preachers, faith is a law. In other words, if I do certain things, then God is obligated by law, by His law, they say, to do what I say He must do. So, if I say God must heal someone, then there's a law. God must do what I say. God must do what I believe, and now God must heal or perform the miracle. Faith is not a law, and God is not subject to us. God is sovereign. He is higher than we are. We don't get to tell God what He does. God chooses to do whatever He chooses to do, but I need to trust in Him. Now, here's the thing about faith. If it's this kind of wrong faith, which is a law, so if this happens, therefore God must do that. No, faith is trust. So, first of all, I trust God to help me in my time of need. I'm sure many Christians and churches in Ukraine have been praying and trusting God that war will not come for a long time now. So, now what happens now that the country has been invaded, and there's bombs flying, and there's airplanes flying over, and people are getting killed, and all sorts of terrible stuff is happening. True faith continues to trust God, even in spite of not seeing what I want to see. In other words, I trust God that God will do the right thing for me, and the right thing for me is not necessarily what I want, because God knows better. He has a greater plan, and so trust is not dependent. Faith is not dependent on whether God does what I tell Him to do or not does what I do, but I'm still trusting Him. Remember Job? Even if He kills me, though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. That's true faith. It's one thing to say, I have faith when everything's going great, everything's going well. It's another thing to trust Him when my whole world is falling apart. And you remember the story of Job, how he loses everything, and the only thing he has left at the end of the day is his life, because God says to the devil, you can do everything, but don't take his life. That's the last thing you can't do. And Job says, Lord, if you even take my life, all I've got left is life. And it was a pretty miserable kind of life at that point. But, Lord, even if you take my life, I'll still trust you. That is true faith, and that puts the faith of these modern faith teachers to shame. All right, now, if I have faith, the problem is, what do I put my faith in? Now, I've already said that we don't put our faith at the problem. We don't aim our faith at the problem. But there are other things where my faith is misplaced, where I'm putting my faith in the wrong thing. As I said to you, the guy on the street corner who's selling watches out of his coat, if you trust him, you're putting your trust in the wrong place. And so there are places where we, as Christians, put our faith in the wrong place. And the first one is dead works, the previous part of that verse. Remember what dead works is. Two things. One, works that lead to death, sin. But then, on the other hand, it is works that don't count, works, things that I do in the hope that it will save me or give me brownie points with God or somehow enhance my situation. If my faith is in what I'm doing, it's in the wrong thing. And that's why these two things are connected. Repentance from... stop trying to save yourself. Repentance from dead works. But put your faith in God. Now, we know that most of the religious world, whether it's various forms of Christianity or whether it's Eastern religion, whatever it is, is some kind of faith in works. If you do these things, you will come back in your next life at a higher level. If you do these things, then your good works will outweigh your bad deeds, as in Islam, and you get to heaven. If you... and so the list goes on and on and on of the things that we... and so where are those people's trust? And there are many Christians who do exactly the same thing. They go to church, they give money to the church, they've been baptized, they do all these different things, and they... but their faith is not in God, their faith is in what they're doing. And it's in the wrong place, because my works cannot save me. Faith in ourselves. So, either faith in the things we do, or in ourselves, in our own inherent goodness. I'm not as bad as some other people. Thank God that I don't sin so much. I can pull myself up by my own shoelaces. And folks, there are... again, there are many people in the world who are trying just to save themselves by reforming themselves, by trying to change their lifestyle, trying to change their habits, trying to change their thinking patterns. I heard this morning about George Washington, who would get up every morning, and the first thing he would do is he would think positive thoughts. And I'm abbreviating the whole thing, but he would think positive thoughts about who he is and where he's going in life. Now, that works when it comes to the world, but it doesn't work when it comes to getting into heaven. And so, putting your confidence in yourself is... well, I guess some people have more to have the confidence in. I have no confidence in myself to do anything. Faith in the church, or in religion. So as opposed to faith in me doing good works, my church will save me, or my religion will save me, or my pastor will save me. No, the church cannot save you. Religion, pastors, whoever, priests, imams cannot save. And then finally, faith in faith. What do we mean by that? Well, everything that I said earlier about the word of faith thing is that their faith is not in God. Their faith is in their faith. Can you get that? So what are they trusting? They're trusting their ability to believe. They're trusting in their faith. And we hear that all the time. When somebody dies, they say, well, you know, he was a man of faith. Doesn't mean he believed in Jesus. It just means he was religious, and he had faith, and they have faith in his faith, that now he's looking down on everybody up there. So, faith in faith is not faith. Faith in anything other than Jesus Christ is not biblical faith. It may be faith, it may be trust, in the sense that, yeah, you trust your religion, you trust your dead works, but it's not going to save. The only faith that saves, the only place you can put your trust that will save, is in Jesus Christ and the work that he has done at the cross of Calvary. All right, so what do we believe? Because, you see, again, we tend to get so airy-fairy about this stuff, so loose in our thinking. We say, well, you know, repentance from dead works, faith towards God, so yeah, well, you just need faith. I mean, even the unbelievers use this, you know, just have faith. When things go wrong, they always say, just have faith. Well, what am I having faith in? And we've said the things that I shouldn't be having faith in, but what is it that we believe? Well, the first thing I need to believe is that God exists. That's where it begins. That's why atheism is such a big problem. Hebrews 11, verse 6, for it is without faith it is impossible to please him. So without trust, without faith, belief, it's impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. So without believing that God is, there's no start. It's a non-starter. You say, well, obviously I need to believe that God is, but you know that there are Christian ministers and theologians who don't believe that God is. I mention his name often because he just stands out, but George Jefferson is upheld, and I read an article the other day. People were saying, here's a great example of a man of faith, but he did not believe that God exists. How can you have any kind of faith if you don't begin with the first thing, and that is that God is? So that's the first thing I must believe. The second thing I must believe is that Christ died for my sins. And of course, again, this cannot be a general thing. I don't know what percentage, but at least half of America believes that Jesus died on the cross. And probably most of them believe that he died on the cross for sins. But until I understand that he died for my sins, until it becomes personal, it doesn't count. It's dead works, dead faith. And so just to believe that Jesus exists, that he was born, that he died on the cross, is not sufficient. I need to believe that he died in my place, that I was supposed to die because the wages of sin is death, but that he died in my place. So it needs to become personal, and it needs to come to a place where I believe that he died for my sins. I also need to believe in the resurrection. Now, remember that those days in the time of the New Testament, I think anyone who lived in Palestine or in Israel at the time believed that Jesus died. Remember that when Jesus speaks to the men going on the road to Emmaus, and he says to them, why are your faces so long? And what is their response? He says, where are you from? Are you a stranger around here, that you don't know what's just happened? You see, the whole city—and remember, the city was not just the inhabitants, but the Jews from all over the world had come to the Passover, and Jesus wasn't executed in a dungeon somewhere at the rising of the sun. He was hung on the cross in front of everyone, on the main road into the city. Everybody saw. There was no question that Jesus had died on the cross. And you ask the Pharisees and the Jews and the Sanhedrin, did Jesus die on the cross? Yeah, he died on the cross. Of course, they didn't believe that he died for them. But the second problem was—well, the real problem was, but he's risen. No, no, no, no, he didn't. They stole his body, all sorts of stories. And so the message that the New Testament church preached was not just his death, but his death and his resurrection. And so Paul says in Romans 10, verse 9, that if you confess with your mouth that the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Now that gets harder. It's easy to believe that Jesus died. I mean, millions of people die. I don't know how many people die every day, but thousands, at least, of people die every day. Millions of people have died over the centuries. To believe that people die, I mean, that doesn't take much. But to believe that someone was raised from the dead, that's another story. And Paul says that it is essential to my faith to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. The resurrection is central to our faith. And as I said, it's harder to believe and to accept than just believing that he died. Now again, we have a problem here, because many, many, many, many—it's very popular in modern seminaries and in theologians—to reject the resurrection of Jesus. They say, yeah, we believe the Bible. I'm going to come to that in a moment. We believe the Bible. We believe that Jesus died on the cross, but that he was raised from the dead. No, he was maybe raised spiritually, but he wasn't physically raised. That's where the problem is. And remember that Jesus makes a point of Thomas, and he says, come, I'm not a ghost. I'm not an apparition. Come and put your fingers. Feel. Give me something to eat. I'll show you. I'm real. I have physically, corporally been raised from the dead. And he's going to come again in the same way. All right. And then finally, we need to believe God's Word. With a heart, one believes Romans 10.9. If you confess with your mouth that the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with a heart, one believes unto righteousness, and with a mouth, confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. So what does it mean to believe on Jesus? Clearly, what Paul is saying is it's not just believing that Jesus walked in Galilee, but believing in his death and his resurrection. Now, Numbers 23.19, God is not a man that he should die, nor the son of man that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good? So God's Word is infallible. God does not speak and not do. God does not lie. And so God's Word, in the form of the 66 books that we have, is infallible. And this is essential. I do not believe that you can be a Christian and not believe that the Word of God is fully inspired. Now, as we've gone down this list, this is the first domino to fall. In fact, I was communicating with somebody who is studying at a theological college, and my question to him is, do they teach the inspiration—in fact, the verbal plenary, don't worry about that—but do they teach the inspiration of Scripture? And you say, well, what kind of question is that you ask of somebody who's studying at a Bible college? It's the first question you have to ask, because very few Bible colleges still believe, and seminaries still believe, that the Bible is inspired by God, word for word. They don't believe it anymore. They have all sorts of various explanations for it. Now, if you don't believe that the Bible is inspired by God, then how do you believe in the resurrection? Because how do I know about the resurrection, except the Bible tells me so? How do I know that Jesus' death was not just the death of a martyr for a cause? Many people die a martyr's death for a cause. People are dying in the Ukraine right now for a cause, the cause of their country. That doesn't make them saviors for us. So Jesus had to die not for himself or for a cause, but he died for our sins. Now, how do I know that? Because the Bible tells me so. If I don't believe the Bible, well, then on what basis do I have faith? On what basis do I believe in the cross? On what basis do I believe in the resurrection, or in the existence of God even? Yeah, we can prove the existence of God by nature or creation, but at the end of the day, without the word, we have nothing. And yet there are many Christians who are rejecting the inspirational scripture today, and they say, no, it's not that way, but we can still be Christians. No, you cannot be. Now, this is where it really gets complicated. When I first started preaching 50 years ago, we didn't have to speak about these things. It was taken for granted that if you believe in Jesus, you believe in his death, you believe in his resurrection, you believe in the word of God, you believe that God is real. But no longer. We don't believe. People don't believe these things anymore. And so when he says faith towards God, it's now we have to spell it out, and we have to say, well, you know, if you're going to have salvation by faith, which I'm going to come to, then you must believe in the existence of God. You must believe in his atoning death, in his resurrection. You must believe the word of God. Without that, we do not have salvation. Matthew chapter 24, verse 35, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. And we've spoken about that a lot over the years. All right, now the last thing I want to deal with this evening, as I said, we'll deal with the rest of it when we get to chapter 11, is the results of faith. And I'm going to just give you three things. You see, one of the problems we have here is that the moment we speak about faith, people say, well, what does faith produce? And I'm not going to ask any questions here because I don't want to embarrass anyone, and you should know better by now. But if I was preaching in another church and I'd say, what does faith produce? I can guarantee you the answer is going to be, faith produces miracles. And that's nonsense. There is nothing in the Bible that says faith produces miracles, and I'll show it to you in a moment. So, the first thing that faith produces is salvation. Obviously, it's not my faith—remember, it's not my faith that produces the salvation, but it's by faith that I accept, I grab hold of, appropriate salvation. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and then not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are his workmanship, graced in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. By grace are you saved through faith. Faith is the means by which salvation becomes mine. Remember, we've spoken before about coupons. You get a coupon from Baskin-Robbins, I guess once a year, and it gives you a free ice cream. Or you have to buy one, you get one free, I can't remember. So, how do you get the free ice cream? You have to go there and you have to present the coupon, and you get the free ice cream. Now, you go there without the coupon, well, I don't know, I guess you can argue with a guy, maybe, you know, he'll give in. But you sit at home, you say, well, I've got this coupon, so let me call up Baskin-Robbins and say, well, you know, I've got this coupon, free ice cream, where's my ice cream? No, there's certain things you have to do. You need to take a coupon and go to the store, give them the coupon, and they give you the ice cream. It's pretty simple. Now, the ice cream is free, it doesn't mean you have to work for it, but there is something you have to do in response to the offer. And if you don't respond to the offer, you get nothing. And mostly, Inna and I don't get anything because we don't want to stand in a two-mile long line. Sometimes we drive by and we see, oh, the line goes around the block, it's not worth it. God offers salvation. It's free. You can't earn it, you don't work for it, but there's something you have to do in order to get it. In order to appropriate is the technical term we use. In order to make it yours, what do you have to do? Believe. Faith. Just believe. Believe the gospel. It's as simple as that. So the first thing, then, that it results in is salvation. The second thing, and we're going to go to Hebrews chapter 11. I didn't want to go there, but if you go forward in your Bible to Hebrews chapter 11, there are only—and remember, Hebrews 11 is a chapter on faith, so the whole chapter, all 40 verses, deal with faith. In Hebrews chapter 11, there are only three miracles. Only three miracles. And those three miracles—and I don't have time to deal with each one, we'll deal with that when we get to chapter 11—but those miracles had nothing to do with the individual's faith. They were things that God sovereignly did. And I know that raises questions, but I must leave that until we get there. So, what does faith produce in Hebrews chapter 11? Well, the first thing that faith produces is obedience. Now, I know you've probably heard that from me before. There may be those who've never heard this before, and it may be revolutionary, because you say, well, I've never heard a preacher say that's what faith produces. Yeah, faith does not produce—if you're going to read the Scriptures, particularly Hebrews chapter 11, you'll see that it does not produce miracles, it produces obedience. And that's the last thing you connect with faith. So, let's have a look. Hebrews 11, and I'm just going to grab a few verses you can go through, we can analyze them, we will do when we get there. Verse 4, by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. He was obedient. Verse 5, by faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death. Now, there's one of the miracles. Was it his faith that raptured him? No, it was because he had this testimony that he pleased God. By faith he pleased God. He did that part. God did the catching away part. Verse 7, by faith Noah, being divinely warned of things yet not seen, moved with godly fear, built an ark. There was no miracle in building the ark. It took him a hundred years of hard, hard labor. But he built it, because God told him to, and he believed God. He believed God. Verse 8, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. I'm going to skip over Sarah, because I'm going to make some very important points about Sarah when we get there. And so, we can go on and on and on. Verse 17, by faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. Verse 21, by faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each one of the sons of Joseph. Verse 22, by faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children. Verse 23, by faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months. And so, we can go on and on and on. Faith produces obedience. Now, how does that work? And I'm running out of time, but I must deal with this quickly. How does that work? Well, it's simple. If I believe God, I will do what he tells me to do. If God says to me, build an ark, I say, well, what do you want with an ark? And God says, well, because I told you so. And every day, Noah goes out, and he says, well, where's the rain? No rain. For a hundred years. But God said, build an ark, and he said, I'll build an ark. That's faith. Faith is simply believing what God says. And again, we say, well, you know, does that mean I need to suspend reason? No, you don't suspend reason. But do I believe God, or do I believe everything else? And that's the problem we have today. We believe the scientists, we believe the politicians, we believe the stock market, we believe this, we believe that, but we don't believe God. If we believe, we will do what he tells us to do. And then the last thing that faith, or the third thing that faith produces, faith produces salvation, faith produces obedience, and faith produces endurance. Now here we're 180 degrees from the popular view of faith, because the popular view of faith is that faith gets me out of trouble. So if I've got a problem, I need faith, and then the problem will be solved. But again, that's human stuff. I don't know where people come with these ideas. It's not the word of God. So if we go to Hebrews 11, and we go to verse 36, still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sown in two, they were tempted, they were slain with a sword, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. So we look at those guys, and we say, well, where's their faith? And folks, there are preachers in the faith movement today who will say, these guys, you know, they're failures. Because they say, if you have problems, it's because you don't have faith. You're a failure. These guys were the biggest failures of all, because look at the stuff they had to go through. And yet God's testimony is different. Verse 39, and all these having obtained a good testimony, a good testimony with who? A good testimony with God, not with man, but with God, through faith, did not receive the promise. So faith produces endurance. Even if the promise doesn't come true, I still trust God. And so here were these guys, they were sown in two, they were fed to lions, they were burnt, all sorts of things happened. But they continued to believe, because they saw beyond the temporal, and they believed in an eternal God, and in a heaven that was coming, and in an eternity. That's real faith. And folks, I know that we've covered a lot of ground this evening, and I trust that God would give us grace that we might be able to just grab hold of some of these ideas and begin to change the way that we see faith. You don't need some kind of mechanism whereby you wind up your faith, and, yeah, I must believe, must believe, must believe, must believe. No, you just need to know the God that you're dealing with. And if you know the God you're dealing with, you say, no, but this is a reliable, trustworthy, faithful God who does what he says. He is not a man that he will lie, or the son of man that he would say and not do it. I can put my trust in him. And folks, today we see the world around us. I have more faith in God than I have in anything in this world. I trust him more than any man, or any government, or any financial system. And I know many people have tremendous faith in the greenback. I have no faith in the greenback, and if you have money on the stock market, you'll see the value going right down right now. But I have faith in God. I don't have faith in this world, and the older I get, the less faith I have. We've just heard for the last few weeks, trust me, I won't invade. Trust me. Folks, that's just the world. When God says, trust me, he will do exactly what he said he will do. And who are we going to put our confidence in? Ourselves? When we're so prone to failing? How many times a day do we determine to do something, and we don't do what we determine to do? We get up in the morning, we say, I'm going to do this, this, and this, and we don't get to do what we plan to do. But God is faithful, and when God says that he will do it, when he says that he's gone to prepare a place for us, he's preparing a place for us. And when he said he's coming back again to receive us to himself, he's coming back to receive us for himself. When he says there's going to be a time when there's going to be peace on this earth for a thousand years, there's going to be peace on earth for a thousand years. That's someone that I can trust. May God help us that we have our trust in him and not in the wrong stuff. So, Father, we pray that you'd help us. Sometimes, Lord, we become so skeptical about everything, because everything and everyone around us seems to be failing us. It seems to be letting us down. And, Lord, sometimes we transfer that skepticism to you, and we feel that you're just like people, and that you will also just fail us. But we thank you, Lord, that you have never failed. You've never failed in all of eternity, and you will never fail again in the future, because that is your nature. You're an unfailing, faithful, reliable, dependable, trustworthy God. And so, Lord, I pray that you'd help us to know you better, because the better we get to know you, the greater we will trust you. And the more we trust you, the more we will be obedient to the call of God upon our lives. And so, Lord, we pray that you'd help us to put this into reality, Lord, that we would turn away and repent of those things that we do that are dead or that lead to death. And, Lord, that we may turn to you, as this principle says, faith towards God. Lord, forgive us for putting our faith in our religious deeds, putting our faith in ourselves or in our church or in whatever. But, Lord, that we may put our faith in you, because you're the only one who's reliable. We ask this in Jesus' name. Help us, we pray. Pray that you'd go with us now, keep us and protect us, and bring us together again safely on Sunday, we ask in Jesus' name.