Sermon on Faith

Here is part one of my 10 sermon series based on Bob Russel’s book “When God Builds a Church”.  No, I don’t just preach from his book, I pretty much just use his 10 points on what a church needs to be a church that God builds.  The first one I did for this series at the new church is “Faith”.  I’m not 100% happy with this one, but couldn’t figure out what needed tweaking.  Probably less theoretical “why we need faith to be a Christian” and more practical “how to live as people of faith”.

Anyway, here it is.  Enjoy.  Or not.  Whatever.

 

“When God Builds a Church”Robert WarrenHebrews 11May 20^th, 2007     

Johnny comes home from Sunday School and his mother asks him what he learned in the bible lesson.  The boy’s eyes got real big and his face looked excited and he said, “Mom, we learned the neatest thing in class today.  There was this guy named Moses and he was a general.  He led all of his troops out of
Egypt in an armored column.  But, then they got to the
Red Sea and they couldn’t go across the water because they didn’t have any landing craft.  So, Moses got on his walky talky, called the Corps of Engineer to the front, and they built a pontoon bridge.  Moses got all his infantry across the sea but when he looked back, he saw that Pharoah had driven all his tanks onto the bridge and were coming at him.  He radioed ahead and called in an artillery strike and they blew the bridge up, sinking all of Pharoah’s tanks, and saving the day.”          His mom looked at him, and gently said, “Now, Johnny, are you sure that that’s what you learned in Sunday School today?  Are you sure that that’s how it all happened?”          Johnny looks kind of sheepish and says, “Well, no, but you wouldn’t believe it if I told it the way the teacher did.”           Smart kid.  He knew that the story of Moses and the
Red Sea is not very believable in human terms.  God leads a bunch of slaves out of captivity from the most powerful nation on earth with a simple shepherd as their leader.  They get to the
Red Sea and that simple shepherd raises his hands and the water parts, leaving dry land for the slaves to walk across.  Once they get across, the water closes in, drowning all of the chariots and horses, freeing the slaves once and for all.  That’s a hard story to believe.  Slaves overpowering the most powerful army in the world.  Water blowing back, leaving dry land.  The horses and riders of the army swallowed up by the sea.  That kind of thing just doesn’t happen every day.  Seas don’t just open up to let people walk through on dry land on a regular basis.  Even if the “scholars” at the Discovery Channel are right in their speculation that the water just dried up as a result of a freak wind, the water wouldn’t just slide back at exactly the right time to destroy the pursuing armies.  The story of the escape through the
Red Sea is pretty incredible: If you tried to tell that story to someone who didn’t believe in God, they would laugh in your face.  You can’t really blame Johnny for wanting to make the story a bit more believable so that it would make sense to him.   

          Simply put, that story is not believable… unless you have faith.  Unless you have faith.  That’s a pretty big “unless”.  In fact, let’s be honest: Much of what you read in the bible would not be believable without faith.  God creating the universe out of nothing.  Every kind of animal being loaded onto an ark to save them from a world-wide flood.  People marching around the walls of
Jericho, causing them to collapse with just the sound of a trumpet.  A young shepherd killing a well-trained, professional giant with only a sling shot.  The sun standing still to give an army a few more hours to fight.  A widow’s son raised from the dead.  These things just don’t happen every day, and there’s no way that you can believe them.  Unless you have faith.  In fact, a lot of people refuse to believe the bible because there are so many things in there that you have to believe by faith, and not by reason, logic, or proof.  I just had a conversation with my friend Julie from back in
Huntington a few weeks ago.  She’s a lot like me, a very logical, rational person who wants to see things in order to believe them.  She was bothered by the idea that in order to completely be a Christ-follower you had to accept some things on faith.  But, that’s the way it is.  There are many things about the Christian faith that can be explained with reason and logic.  But reason will only get you so far: in the end, you have to have some faith.  Some people need just a little reason and a lot of faith, some folks, like Julie and me, need a lot more reason.  But you still have to have faith if you are going to believe.Why do we need faith?  Because there are a lot of things that can’t be proven by reason alone.  You can’t prove that God created the universe with empirical reasoning, so based on that, some insist that this universe just happened on its own.  For that matter, you can’t prove that there’s a God with charts, graphs, and figures, so some just assume that there is no God.  They don’t have faith, and without faith, they can’t believe in God.          Don’t think for a minute that all of the wonderful miracles are limited to the Old Testament, though.  Think about some of the incredible things in the New Testament that speak to our faith:  A child is born to a virgin.  He is God and Man, rolled into one.  He is able to turn water into wine, walk on the waters, calm the storm, raise the dead, heal the lame, give sight to the blind.  He is killed in a horrible manner by the religious people of his day, but he rises up from the dead.  Not only that, but by his death he is able to give salvation to all who believe in him, and those who believe in him and obey his commands can receive salvation, forgiveness, and eternal life.  That’s hard to believe.  In fact, it’s impossible to believe.  Unless you have faith.  Unless you have faith, many things are impossible.  You could never trust another person.  You could never fall in love.  You could never fly in an airplane.  But, most importantly, without faith, there is no way that you can be an effective Christian.  Listen to what the writer of Hebrews has to say about faith:  Heb 11:6  And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.           Without faith, it is impossible to please God.  Why?  First, you need faith in order to believe that there is a God.  God has made himself known to us, but only if we have eyes of faith to see him.  Rom 1:20-22 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.  21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  What this verse is saying is that we have no excuse for not believing in God, for the evidence of his existence is all around us.  If there is a Creation, then there must be a Creator.  It would be silly for me to assume that the pen in my pocket just happened to be formed together: it is far too complex, somebody had to create it.  I’m always so in awe of God when Susan and I go on vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and see God’s handiwork laid out in such a powerful way on the beach.  It amazes me to think that God was the one who traced out the shoreline and told the ocean, “You can only go this far.”  It was God who designed certain birds to be able to fish from the ocean, crabs to be able to live beneath the sand, dolphins that could frolic in the waves, and so forth.  All around us there is evidence of God’s existence, whether we are looking up at the fathomless stars or the minute details in a leaf.  But only if you have faith.God will not force himself on you.  An atheist could look at the same stretch of ocean and see evolutionary processes, natural selection, geological forces, and declare that there is no God.  And God will let them wallow in their ignorance.  We may have no excuse to not believe in God, but he will let us reject him if we want, for we have to come to God in faith.  I can tell you from personal experience that living like an agnostic is an empty way of life.  The word “agnostic” literally means “without knowledge”.  These are folks who say that they are not willing to deny that there is a God, but that they are going to reserve any decision until they have absolute proof in God: in other words, they are reserving their judgment on whether there is a God or not until they can make that decision with absolute proof.  I used to be that way: I was too yeller to say firmly that I didn’t believe in God, but that I wouldn’t live for him until I had proof that he existed.  Well, I would have been waiting for a long time.  Because even though I believe now that there is a God with every fiber of my being, I do so based on faith, not because God’s existence was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Oh, to be sure, I have many reasons to think that there is a God, from the Spirit operating in my life to the evidence in Creation, but when you get down to it, my Christian life is anchored in faith.Without faith, it is impossible to believe in God. But, equally important, without faith it is impossible to live for God.  This is hard for most of us.  We like to have everything all planned out, with no surprises, no element of chance or faith.  Very few of us would go on a trip without looking at a map first.  We wouldn’t go camping for a week without packing a week’s worth of food.  We wouldn’t feel very comfortable if we didn’t know where the money to pay our bills was coming from.  We wouldn’t move to a new part of the country without the assurance of a job when we got there.  We wouldn’t buy a car based on our faith in the car dealer without looking at it, test-driving it, and getting some sort of assurance that the car was road-worthy.  These last few months have been very hard on my logical, orderly side.  We are operating on a lot of faith by coming here: we had to have faith that we would be accepted by you, that we would sell our house, that we could find a new one, that Susan would find a job, that you all would be a good church to come too.  That’s a lot more faith than I like to run on!  Operating on faith makes us nervous: we like to have things planned out.  The same is true in our spiritual lives.  We want things all planned out, assured, guaranteed, safe and secure.  And for most of us, that’s what our spiritual life is like: no surprises, no leaps of faith, no blind faith.  ·        We worship in a safe, predictable setting: we have a bulletin every week, but don’t really need one since we have the exact same order of worship each and every week.  We’re not really that worried that the Holy Spirit is going to come into our sanctuary and lead us in some new, unpredictable path that might lead us to change what we have planned or the way that we have worshiped.·        We share our faith in a safe way: we might be willing to share our testimony if a friend or co-worker came up and asked us point-blank to give a reason for our faith.  But few of us would go up to a stranger and start telling them about Jesus: that wouldn’t be safe.·        We give in a safe way.  Sure, we might give a tithe or even more, which is a lot of money, but very few of us are going to give if that means that we might not know where we are going to get enough for our bills or our next meal.  Very few of us would go out on a mission field without the assurance that we would have financial support.  I’m guilty of this myself: there are many times that I would have gone off and planted a church, but I didn’t because I would have had to rely on faith to meet my needs instead of a guaranteed weekly paycheck.  Many of us are generous givers, but few do so relying on faith.There is nothing inherently wrong with living in these safe ways, but God wants us to live a life of faith: the safe life is often a life lived outside of faith.  Consider some of the people of God in the bible and their lives of faith:·        God told Abraham to pack up everything that he owned, take his family, and head West to a Promised Land that he knew nothing about, with faith that God would lead him there.·        After waiting for a lifetime for a son, God then told Abraham to go up on a mountain and sacrifice the son that he had waited a lifetime for, with faith that God would provide another one.·        God told Moses to go and boldly stand in front of Pharaoh and demand that his people be set free, with faith that God would give them their freedom.·        God told David to go stand up before the giant Goliath, with faith that God would win the battle.·        God told Jonah to go preach to some of the most wicked people in the world, with faith that God would convert them.·        God told his people, the Jews, to wait for a Messiah to come, with faith that God would use that Messiah to free his people.And then, when the Messiah came, he came speaking about faith as well.  Jesus taught that to please God we must live a life of faith.  Most of the times that Jesus healed someone he made it perfectly clear that it was the faith of the person being healed that made them well.  In fact, in one town Jesus could not do many miracles and was only able to heal some of the very sick.  Jesus wasn’t able to do many miracles?  What was wrong?  Matt 13:58  58 And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.; Why could he only heal some of the very sick?  Because they alone, in their desperation, had the faith needed to believe and be healed.  Over and over he would say to someone who had been healed something like he did in Mark 5:34  He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”Jesus made it very clear that the life lived in service to God would be a life of faith.  Matt 17:  20 “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”And another time he said in John 14:12-14  “12 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”          You know, it is very easy to be religious without having faith.  You can read your bible, say prayers, go to church, put a bumper sticker on your car, throw some bills in the offering plate, and be the perfect picture of what people expect a Christian to be.  I’ve been a minister close to 15 years and have seen many religious, church-going people who have absolutely no faith.  In our nice, predictable lives, we can operate for a very long time with no faith.          But, to live the kind of life that God expects, we have to live in faith, because there are heights that we can only climb by faith, there are depths that we can only rise above with faith, there are things that we can only accomplish with faith, there are sights that we can only see with faith.  Listen to what the writer of Hebrews says about faith in Hebrews 11, the famous “faith chapter”: 

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, and without faith, it is impossible to please God.God wants us to have faith in him because our faith in him shows our dependence on him, our trust in him, and our obedience to him.  None of us likes it when someone doesn’t trust our judgment and protection, and God is no different: he wants his children to rely on him for their needs and their care.  Granted, God doesn’t want us to test him by reckless acts or foolish endeavors: he doesn’t ask us to pick up snakes or to jump of cliffs to show our faith.  But, he does want us to live with the faith that he will provide for us, care for us, and protect us.  Faith is knowing that God is there, even when you can’t see him.  Faith is knowing that God will take care of you, even when you can’t be sure of that, believing what Jesus said about God feeding the sparrows and clothing the flowers.  Faith is knowing that God will reward those who take a step to do the work of his kingdom with success even when the future is uncertain.Our Christian lives will never be truly fulfilling until we live with faith in God and trust in him instead of only trusting in what we alone can do.  For too long we’ve lived our safe Christian lives, never stepping out of our comfort zones, afraid to go anywhere that our own efforts could not carry us instead of trusting in God to help us do the things that we can not.  When Jesus came walking across the water, all of the disciples looked out and saw the impossible.  They knew that men can not walk on water, it’s simply impossible.  But when Jesus held out his hands and beckoned to Peter, Peter showed  great faith and stepped out towards him.  He knew that he couldn’t walk on water, but he had enough faith to believe that if Jesus called him out of the boat, he would enable him to walk on water.  It wasn’t until Peter took his eyes off of Jesus and started relying on his own abilities that he sank beneath the waves.We need to start relying not on our own abilities, but on our God.  There are places that we will never go until we let Jesus carry us.  There are things that we will never do until we allow Jesus to lead us.  And the same applies to churches.  In my first weeks here I want to talk about us becoming the church that God builds.  Let me tell you, no matter how good you folks are, no matter how good our leaders are, no matter how good your ministers are, we will never be the church that God builds without faith.  I think that we would all like to see this church built up to the glory of God.  We’d like to see our numbers grow by leaps and bounds.  We’d love to see the ministries of the church expand greatly.  But, this will never be a great church if it is the church that we build.  This is not the church that WE build, it is the church that God builds.  Let’s be honest about this: it’s very easy for us to build a church without faith, but it is impossible to be a church that God builds without faith.Many churches tend to be built by human hands without faith, but they are not churches that God is building.  Most churches rely more on their own efforts, their budget, their committees, their planning groups, and their own wisdom than they do their faith in God.  I’ve been around churches all my life that would not take a step unless they knew for certain that everything was secure according to their own abilities.  A program would come up, but it was shot down because nobody could see how it could be done with the people present at the church.  A ministry would be proposed, but people would look at the budget and say that there was no way that the ministry could be done with the money at hand.A bold opportunity would present itself, but the folks would be too timid about acting on it for fear of failure.A problem would present itself, but rather than turning to God in faith, the folks would try to solve it on their own.…and every time the efforts were met with failure.  That’s why a dozen churches close their doors every week.  When we rely on our own efforts instead of turning to God in faith, we will always fall short of what God expects of us.  Too many churches are barely hanging on because they refuse to act in faith but will only do what they can be “safe” in doing.  My home church is a great example; the church I attended when I was in high school.  They were a great church with some wonderful people.  It was there where I first heard the Gospel and was baptized, so I will always be indebted to them.  When I went there they ran about 120 people.  Today they run about 12.  What happened?  They had many opportunities to expand their ministry, to reach out to new people, to take bold steps of faith.  But they were too afraid to do anything that would take them out of their comfort zone.  They were afraid to trust God in faith and now they are about to close the doors for the last time.  In contrast, you can see a church like Southeast Christian Church in
Louisville, that has always been one step ahead of their growth, trusting that God would make ends meet and that he would fill the sanctuary if they built it.  They have moved numerous times, started numerous ministries, and trusted in God each step of the way.  All over
Louisville there are churches that have stayed the same size, declined, or even closed their doors in the last 40 years.  Yet, Southeast, in the same 40 years has grown from 50 people to over 16,000.  What’s the difference?  It’s faith.  It’s faith that our God is able to do more than we can even imagine.It’s easy to be a safe church that relies on its own strength.  We can maintain our little building until Jesus returns.  We can put on our safe worship services that challenge no one.  We can keep our nice safe budget in a conservative way so that when Jesus returns we have a lot of money to give him… as if he needed our money.  We can put our lamp under a bushel  We can simply not do anything that might involve faith or risk and bury our one talent in the ground.  A lot of churches are doing this, and a lot of them are dying. But, instead of doing that, we could step out in faith.  We need to be like my friend Wes.  He was one of the elders of a church that we served in the past.  He was a man of great faith.  He would propose many things that many people, including myself, said couldn’t be done.  He didn’t have much foresight, but he had a lot of faith in God.He wanted to lead our church to the point that we would have short term missions going to Mexico and
Honduras every year.  We said that it couldn’t be done, that there wasn’t enough money, enough interest, enough planning to do it.  Well, today there are two, sometimes three mission trips a year going that involve dozens of people in the church.He wanted to do a theatrical production that would bring in people from the community to the church as an outreach project.  We said that it couldn’t be done: there wasn’t enough money, enough talent, or enough interest.  Recently they had a production that brought in hundreds of non-church people to the church.He wanted to build a life-size drive throughvillage of
Bethlehem in the field next to the church in order to present the Christmas story to the community.  We said that it couldn’t be done: there wasn’t enough money, enough people in our little church, enough interest in the community.  The drive-through Bethlehem is now a yearly tradition in the community involving every church and bringing in thousands of cars from as far away as
Charlotte.Wes is a man of great faith: he believes that if God is in something, it will get done.  We need more people like him in our churches, people who believe that we can walk on water if God calls us to and we keep our eyes on Jesus.  You’ve heard it said that where there is no vision the people will perish.  In like manner, where there is no faith, the church will perish.There is a lot that I believe that God is calling us to do here at Southside Christian Church.  If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t have moved here, dragging Susan across the state and moving that ridiculously heavy piano.  I believe that God has a job for us to do.  He wants us to reach our community with the truth of the Gospel, he wants us to win the lost, he wants us to worship him in spirit and in truth, he wants us to care for the needy, he wants us to teach people how to follow Jesus.  That’s a lot of work to do.  And it will never be done unless we operate in faith, because without faith it is impossible to please God.I don’t know what direction God is pointing us, but I know that we will never be able to do his work until we turn everything over to him in faith.  We can not rely on our own wisdom.  We can not rely on our bank account.  We can’t rely on our own abilities.  We can only rely on our faith in a God who is able to part the
Red Sea if that’s where he wants his people to go.  It may be hard to see where God is leading us now, but it is not hard to see when you look with eyes of faith.  But, we will never get there until we learn to step out in faith; not looking at what WE can do, but asking what GOD can do.It’s easy to be the disciple safe in the boat, insisting that it is impossible to walk on water.  But it’s a whole lot more fulfilling to be the disciple stepping out in faith and doing what is only possible for God to do.This congregation will never be a church that God builds until we turn to God with faith.  No, we don’t need to be reckless or naïve in our actions: God doesn’t want us jumping off cliffs and expecting a miracle to catch us.  But, he does want us to trust in him with sincere faith.  Not trusting in our money, not trusting in our abilities, not trusting in our wisdom: but trusting in God with faith.  The difference between the little Christian church in
Louisville that has had 35 members for the last 50 years and Southeast which has seen explosive growth is just one thing: faith.Remember Matt 19:26  Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” We need to be people of faith if we are going to serve God: he wants disciples that are willing to step out of the boat, not those who are content to keep their feet dry out of fear of failure.We need to trust him when he calls us to do the impossible.  We need to trust him when he says that his word can change the heart of the lost.  We need to trust him when  he says that he can multiply our offerings and give us blessings.  We need to trust him when he says that he will never leave us nor forsake us.  We need to trust him when he says that if we have the faith of a mustard seed we can move mountains.There is so much that God can do in this congregation, but it will never be done by our own efforts, it will only be done when we trust God.  I encourage each and every one of you in this congregation to spend time on your knees before God this week asking him to bless this congregation and to give us the courage to act on that faith.  Ask him to give us the courage to trust him, to look beyond our resources and abilities and to trust in the one who turned a little boy’s dinner into a feast for 3,000.  Ask him to do something through this congregation that is so astounding that only God can get the credit, not us.But most of all, we need to trust him with our salvation.  Many people don’t believe that God can forgive them of their sins.  They don’t think that God would give salvation to someone as bad as they are.  They can’t believe that salvation is as easy as the bible describes it.  They can’t believe that eternal life can be free.Faith means that we believe that Jesus died for our sins.Faith means believing that if we repent of our sins that God will forgive them.Faith means believing that if we confess Jesus with our mouth that Jesus will vouch for us in heaven.Faith means believing that if are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ that our sins will be forgiven and we will be given the Holy Spirit.Faith means believing that if we continue to live for Jesus here on earth that one day we will live with him forever in heaven.Faith means that you will give your life to Jesus.  And if you are already  a Christian, it means that you are going to start stepping out in faith and seeing God do miraculous things around you.  And when we individuals start living with faith, we will see our congregation accomplish amazing things by God’s power.