Heart-Faith and Not Mind-Faith - Part 5

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and what is the enemy of faith? Now listen to the enemy of faith. Don't lean on your head, on your mind. Do you know that the mind is the enemy of faith? It hinders your faith, your understanding.

That's what this verse says. Don't lean on your own understanding but trust in the Lord with all your heart. It's like an opposite, you know.

Like Jesus said, you can't love God and money. We can understand that. But here's another thing.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean upon your mind. But we're leaning upon our mind all the time. We hear a message and say, I've got faith now.

Where? In your mind, you understood something. No, that's not it. We really need to ask God to give us light on this.

And if you do that and you acknowledge Him in all your ways, He will make your paths absolutely straight. What a wonderful verse. He will make my path, my crooked path, He will make it absolutely straight.

He'll do that. He will do it if I trust Him with all my heart. See, so, this is one of the big deceptions of Satan that he's, he doesn't mind people talking about faith and urging people to have faith so long as it stays in the mind and you understand it all and you think you've got it all and you look at your life and it doesn't seem to work and nothing seems to work and you say, well, I suppose it's like that.

I just say, well, I suppose it's God's will. Well, 99% of the things you ask for don't happen and you say it's God's will. Well, how in the world am I supposed to know if anything is God's will? Jesus said, if you earthly fathers know how to give good things to your children, how much more shall your heavenly father give good things to those who ask him? And I've been tremendously exercised by that.

I say, Lord, I know what I would give my children. And compared to you, I'm an evil father. You're supposed to be much better than me.

And do you give your children something which I don't give? How the devil has fooled so many Christians. It's like God sitting in heaven and that child of mine, what do you think I should give him? I think I'll give him a road accident. What about that one there? Maybe tuberculosis, that's the best for him.

And what about that one there? Maybe cancer for him. And that one there, perhaps AIDS, that would be really good for him. Can you imagine a God in heaven? Can you imagine a father planning like this for his children? And the number of believers who sit and say, oh, it's God's will.

Well, if you accept it, according to your faith, be it unto you. I don't believe I have a father in heaven who's sitting there planning all these evil things for me. It's the devil who plans all these things.

The first book written in the Bible, I believe, was the book of Job. You've heard me say that before. And the very first thing it says there, in that first two chapters, is that the devil is the one who causes all those problems for Job.

It's not God. I mean, the devil, God may allow it, but it's the devil. So, first of all, identify where it comes from.

I won't say that that's God. It's not God, it's the devil. Let's identify the source first.

Otherwise, you'll submit to something which you are supposed to resist. The Bible speaks of sickness leading to death. And the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15 that death is an enemy.

You know that verse? The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. So, is death an enemy or not? Sure. Death is no friend of mine.

And when it says that in 1 Corinthians 15, I can't understand how some Christians say, oh, I'm just waiting to die. And walk on the streets of gold. I'll tell you, I'm not waiting to die.

I've got a lot of work to do before I die. Death is an enemy. How many of you say, I'm just waiting for my enemy to come and kill me? But that's what a lot of people say when they get old.

You know, if I'm 100 years old, I'll say, I'm not ready to die. I've got to finish my work. Death is an enemy.

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Sickness is an enemy. Death is an enemy.

Everything evil is not what a heavenly father gives to his children. You take that position, brother. And we have been so brainwashed by the devil for so many years.

Just submit, submit, submit, submit, submit. That it's very difficult for us to even believe when we hear something like this. So, Hebrews chapter 11.

The other way in which the devil deceives people is something you've heard me say many times recently. It's okay, if I can't get people to put their faith in their mind, the other way he can deceive us is, let's get believers to have faith only for material things. Faith and God will make you rich.

And faith that God will give you a better house and get a better car and all types of earthly things. And teach them to pay their tithe and God will reward them. Do business with God.

And look at the number of people whom the devil has deceived with this type of doctrine. But where do you see it in the Bible? Jesus never preached that even once. And you read Hebrews 11.

Let's take Old Testament people. People say, oh, that is Old Covenant. Okay, let's take these Old Covenant people, what type of faith they had.

Which person in Hebrews chapter 11, which is the great list of Old Testament saints, which of those people does it say by faith that fellow got a better house? Or by faith he got a chariot with four horses. He had only one horse in the beginning. Where do you read that in this? Or by faith he got this material thing or that material thing from God.

It's one of the greatest deceptions of the devil today. And because the world is full of people who love material things, and the unconverted, godless, atheists also love it, that's a good message. They come to Jesus for getting all these things.

Okay, Abel. What did he do by faith? Did he get something from God? No, he offered a sacrifice to God. If you have faith, you won't get something from God, you'll offer a sacrifice to God.

That's the first example. Okay, let's go to Enoch. What did Enoch get? By faith did he get a better house? No.

He walked with God. And by faith he was taken up. He got a house up there, not here.

That's the faith of this Old Testament man. Okay, let's go to Abraham. What about Abraham? By faith Abraham, he left his house.

He didn't get one. He had a good house and he got a tent because he had faith. It says there, by faith he gave up what he had and he lived in a tent.

And what does that prove? It says here, these people, verse 14, they are saying by their faith that they are seeking another country. If they have been thinking of that country which they left where they had big houses and all that, they would have wanted to go back there. Verse 15.

But they desire a better country and a heavenly one and that is why God called himself the God of Abraham. You want God to call you to say God of so and so your name? You got to have that type of attitude. They were seeking something else.

Another thing, by faith Abraham when he was tested, he gave up his son. Okay, you can take it God. It was sacrifice.

Giving up his house, giving up his son, Abel offered a sacrifice. Sorry, I missed out. No, verse 7. By faith, he didn't get more in the world.

It says in verse 7, he condemned the world. He said, I won't do anything with this world. That was the faith of these people.

And like that with all those people. What about Moses? By faith, verse 24, he refused to say I am the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He didn't want position.

He refused, verse 25, the pleasures of sin. He refused the treasures of Egypt. These old covenant people, what were they seeking? They were seeking the reproach of Christ.

Verse 26. They were looking for a reward in heaven. They were choosing, verse 25, to suffer ill treatment with God's people.

That's the type of faith they had. Faith to fulfill God's purposes, pulling down the walls of Jericho, verse 30. And what about faith like this? Some people, verse 36, by faith, they experienced mocking, scourging.

You know, it's because you have faith that people mock you in your place of work. You're in this group here, this wonderful group, of those who faced mockings, scourgings, chains, imprisonment. They were stoned.

And yet, it says, men of whom, verse 38, the world was not worthy. I love that verse. Lord, make me a man of whom this world is not worthy.

Spray that. Make me a woman who is not fit to live in this world. This world is not worthy to have such godly men and women.

This rotten, sinful world is not worthy to have such a godly man or a godly woman walking around here. And that's why God's going to take us away one of these days. And he says, all these people, you may think they did wonderful things.

They gained approval, verse 39, through faith. But, God has provided something better for us, verse 40. Something better than all this.

And that is, we can, chapter 12, verse 1 and 2, look at Jesus, who is the author of our faith. The author of my faith is not Abraham or David who killed some human being. The author of my faith, according to Hebrews 12, 2, is Jesus.