Choice of Faith

I'd like to begin by reading the last few verses of Psalm 27. Psalm 27, starting at verse 11. Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path because of mine enemies.

Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies, for false witnesses have risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart.

Wait, I say, on the Lord. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Here we have a picture of a man or a woman who's surrounded by enemies, problems, obstacles, enough trouble to destroy that person a hundred times over.

Now they have a choice. They can look at the situation and faint, or they can believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. They can choose to trust God and take courage.

Now that's the situation we find ourselves in every day of our lives as believers. And that's the situation this congregation finds itself in every day of its life. It has a choice.

It can look at the situation and faint, or it can believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Okay, Peter. Launch out into the deep and let down your net for a catch.

Master, we toiled all night and took nothing. Peter's ready to faint. He's about to give up.

Then he changes his mind and says, Nevertheless, at your word, I'll let down the net. Not necessarily believing that his net's going to come up loaded with fish, but he has at least taken the step of enough faith to trust Jesus far enough to do what he says. And that step that he takes is responded to by God with the sign of the kingdom, and up comes this net loaded with fish.

Master, we got 5,000 people on our hands. They've run out of food. Send them away to get some food for themselves.

You feed them. With what? Tell the people to sit down. And very soon the multitude is fed.

Jesus keeps leading these wavering, wobbling, wishy-washy disciples to make that choice of faith. Don't get nervous. Don't panic.

Don't faint. Trust me. Trust me.

Over and over and over, he's calling for that choice of faith. Make that decision. Trust me.

All right? Let's go back to Judea. Judea. They were trying to kill you in Judea just last week.

That's why we came here. Now you want to go back. Are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world.

But if he walks in the night, whoever walks in the night stumbles because the light is not in him. To walk in the day is to walk by faith. To walk in the night is to walk in the draining fear of unbelief.

And when we walk in unbelief, we stumble. I had fainted, except unless I believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of Elizabeth. I chose to trust God.

I took courage and I turned my heart over to him, and he strengthened me, and the door opened. We hear a lot of talk these days in Christians about faith. But it's interesting that the vast majority of us, American Christians, when it comes to actual daily living, for all our talk of faith, are all the time looking for something a little bit more.

For instance, if I spend the first 15 minutes of my radio program preaching to you about faith, and then the last 15 minutes I'm begging for your money. Where my trust is, and if you come and you get drawn into that, you deserve to be ripped off. Jesus, beware of false prophets.

You'll know them by their fruits. Look at what they're doing. Or if we're forever in our testimonies and prayers, talking about faith, and yet in our personal decisions, our family life, our congregational life, we're forever choosing the safe way, the secure way, the comfortable way, the insulated way.

This is evidence, clear evidence, you know, that our trust is immanent instead of in God. Perhaps the simplest way to describe the changes that have been going on in this congregation over the past year is to say that the Lord is calling us as a congregation to live by faith, to live by faith. He is developing here, for all the pain of it, and all the upheaval of it, He is developing here a people who can honestly say, I have fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

He's raising up a people here whose message to each other every time they gather is, basically, be of good courage, wait on the Lord, be of good courage, He'll strengthen your heart, wait on the Lord. And to be that people, and to develop into that people, it comes down to basically making that choice of faith all the time, trusting God in the face of all kinds of shaky circumstances and shaky feelings inside and out. Reading from Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 35, Therefore do not throw away your confidence, don't throw away your faith, which has a great reward.

For you have need of endurance in your faith, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised. For yet a little while in the coming one shall come and shall not tarry, but my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and keep their souls. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. The Lord is calling for this choice of faith in three specific areas of our lives.

Easy to remember, our past, our present. By God's grace, we now can choose to turn away from our past, to be free from our past, to trust Jesus, to cover our sins from the past, and to break us loose and free from all the bondage of the past. Secondly, by God's grace, we can choose to wake up to the present moment and trust that the Lord Jesus will give us sufficient heavenly bread to get us through this day.

And three, by God's grace, we can choose to face the future with confidence, with courage, trusting that the Lord will give us everything we need to win every battle that lies between here and glory. First of all, by God's grace, we can choose to turn away from our past and trust Jesus to cover our past sins and to free us from our bondage to the past. If the Spirit of God were to run a video across our eyes right now and show us our past, the whole thing, I mean, there would be things in that video in each of our lives that would shame us and discourage us and really fill us with despair, cause us to faint.

And as we looked at this video of our past, we would even see evidence that there are still some sins and some bondages and some weaknesses that bind us to our past still. But you know what we can do? We can look at that video for all the things that we see there that trouble us about our past and we can say, I have fainted, except that I believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. And believing that, trusting that he'll take care of it.

You know, we look to Jesus and we see him on that cross and we see his blood covering our sins and breaking us loose from all these things that have cursed us and defeated us and made us a mockery out of our willpower. And we see him rising from the dead to set us free. And today we hear him as we come to eat his body and drink his blood, saying to us again, your sins are forgiven.

And we now choose to trust him when he says that. Your sins are forgiven? They're buried under my blood. Your chains are broken by the power of my resurrection and your eyes are open.

We trust that. We take hold of it. We hold on to it.

We begin to thank God and praise God for it. And we walk out of here today free from our past. By God's grace, we can choose to wake up to the present moment and trust that Jesus is going to give us enough heavenly bread to get us through this day.

And by the way, when we have enough heavenly bread, we're also going to have enough earthly bread. It'll come. And should there be people in this room right now who are kind of lacking in some of that earthly bread, you know, the word of the Lord is, it's going to come.

And if there are some of us in this room who have a little more than we need and we're aware of a sister or a brother, even if we don't have more than we need, we can share whatever we have. If we're aware of a sister or a brother or a family that is lacking in that bread, we're part of God's answer. You know, and if we don't respond, God will have to raise up somebody else who will.

But the issue really is the heavenly bread. That's, you know, if we have that, we're going to be all right. And this heavenly bread somehow is not the kind of thing that you can store.

You can't store it up like money in the bank. You can't stash it in the basement. You can't put it in the closet.

You got to get it fresh every day. Every day it has to come fresh by faith. The heavenly bread is a living word from God to get me through this day.

A word from God that will nourish my soul for the work I have to do today. The battles I have to win today. And so I go to God, just like the man in the parable going to his friend at midnight, and I ask, unto thee will I cry, O Lord, my rock.

Be not silent to me, lest thou be silent to me. I become like them that go down into the pit. I have to have a word from you.

I must, you must be growing. When we cry out like that, we then choose to believe that he's going to hear us. He's going to answer us.

He's going to speak to us. He's going to give us exactly what we need, and he does. It never fails.

By God's grace, we can choose to face the future with courage, trusting that Jesus will make us more than conquerors in every battle that lies between here and glory, and even the battle that we may be involved in right now. Reading from Romans 8, verse 35, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are being killed all the day long. We're accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

No. In all these things, we're more than conquerors. We win through him who loves us.

For I am persuaded. I'm convinced. I'm certain.

I'm sure. I believe. I trust that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor anything else in all creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And when that love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, is with us, we don't just lie around and bask in it. We get up and conquer. We set the captives free.

We conquer evil. We conquer sin. We conquer lies.

We conquer despair. We conquer death. We free the captives.

We bring back the strayed. We raise up the fallen. We strengthen the weak.

And we do this in the midst of a battlefield, right under the nose of Satan. God has not put us in a rose garden. Praise His name.

He's put us at Toledo. And if you think that's a rose garden, go out and have another look. He has located us amid closing factories, crumbling warehouses, bankrupt trucking firms, wounded, thirsty, longing, discouraged human souls.

And we can go out and we can look over that mess and think. Or, we can believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living right here. John, chapter 11, verse 7. Then after this, he said to his disciples, Let us go into Judea again.

The disciples said to him, Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone you, and you're going there again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. In the days of his flesh, our Lord made that choice of faith himself.

Hour by hour, he chose to trust his Father. He walked in the day of faith. And don't get this idea that Jesus didn't have to have faith because he was the Son of God.

He divested himself of his divine prerogatives and become truly human, though he was the Son of God, and he needed to walk by faith and he did it. He pioneered the way, he showed us the way, he opened the way, and then he died on that cross and rose from the dead so that we can walk that way of faith. Now, we can walk in the day by faith, just as he did.

We can believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. We can take courage, we can be strong, we can trust him. And when we do, he strengthens our hearts and doors open before us.

Every time. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.