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ChristianDisciplesChurch A Christian Evangelism and Discipling Ministry |
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The Meaning of Faith A Synopsis of an Easter Sermon Delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on April 7, 1985 in Christian Gospel Church, Montreal, Canada. "Because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." (Rom.10:9)
The story of "Faust" What do people want? Faust, like everyone else, longed for these things which his learning could not acquire for him. The story of Faust sums up what man wants and how Satan is able to capitalize on these longings of the heart, dangling them as bait in front of you. Satan says, "Come this way. Come to me and I will give you the kingdoms of this world", even as he promised the Lord Jesus in the Temptation. He said to Jesus, "You just bow down before me. Give me some honor. Acknowledge my name and authority, and the kingdoms of this world are mine to give you" (cf. Mt. 4:8,9). The story of Faust encapsulates this idea because the temptation offered to Faust was the same kind of temptation that was offered to Jesus and it is offered to each one of us. If we would but bow down to Satan, give him honor and praise, and be willing to give our souls over to him, he is willing to give us many things in return. Satan will tell you that eternal things are but airy-fairy intangibles. Why bother with those things when you can have concrete and tangible things such as wealth and position? These are the transient things which turn our minds away from God and spiritual things. To the carnal mind they seem so concrete, whereas the things which endure forever seem so remote. A degree in your hand seems so solid, so tangible. The problem is that when you reach the end of the road, the paper has a way of crumbling in your hand. Satan has a way of making these things look extraordinarily attractive, and he offers them to you. Moreover, he has the power to do so. Those who will choose the world can receive much from Satan. Faust's choice Faust, because He turned down my offer! But I am sure you are much smarter, and you will see the excellence of my offer, and accept it, will you not?" Faust, his ego getting bigger as he was being praised by no less an intelligence than Satan, said, "I will make a deal with you, but Satan, I have read somewhere in the Bible that you are quite tricky, and don't forget I am a Doctor of Philosophy! You have just acknowledged my intelligence. So before I sign the deal with you, I need some assurance that I can enjoy the things you promise me. Otherwise just as I swallow the bait, the hook is already in my throat and I have no time even to enjoy the bait! If you want to fry me in your pan, give me at least some time to enjoy the bait first!" Satan, who appears as a man called Mephistopheles in the story, says, "The deal is this: I will indeed give you all these things, but when you die, your soul belongs to me." Faust thinks, "Well, who cares? When I die, I die. As long as in this world I have what I want! When I die, who cares what happens after that?" So Faust signs with Mephistopheles. What will your choice
be? Does this sound like the thinking which goes on in your mind? Do you see in Faust a reflection of yourself? Faust, with all his philosophy, had precisely this kind of mentality: my life is going to end anyway. When it ends, who cares what happens after death? If I go to hell, I go to hell. If I fry in Satan's pan and he devours me, it is fine with me. But, now in this life, I am going to enjoy myself... The point is, Faust wanted to enjoy all the good things of this world, like what we Chinese have written on our chop-sticks: happiness, wealth, longevity, friendship, health. He wanted all of these things and who could give them to him? Satan, he is the one. What will you give in exchange for your soul? In the Louvre, a well-known museum in Paris, there is a very beautiful and famous painting of Faust playing chess with Mephistopheles. It portrays Mephistopheles making the final move: checkmate on Faust. Faust is not just playing a game, he is playing for his life. The message? With that checkmate Faust loses everything, including his own soul. Faust was willing to exchange his soul for these transient pleasures. The Lord Jesus asks you, "What will you give in exchange for your soul?" (cf. Mt.16:26). We are playing for our life! And just as Faust is checkmate, so also, the whole world is checkmate. None of us can win this game if left to ourselves. Not one of us is going to be able to come through victoriously against Satan. Is there hope? What is that move? What does the
resurrection have to do with you? I want to speak about how we can know in our lives that Jesus is risen. Can we somehow experience His power? Intellectual persuasion is not what salvation is all about. Salvation has to do with power (1Cor.1:18; 2:4,5 etc). Why is this question so important? Let us read what the apostle Paul says in Rom.10:9: "Because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." Paul says that the means by which you will be saved, is that you believe. That is, you must have faith. But believe what? Believe that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. Believe, a matter of
tradition? In that sense we all believe because that is our tradition. Is salvation then a matter of tradition? Are we saved because it is so easy for us to accept that Jesus rose form the dead because our resistance has been broken down by constant repetition? Are we saved simply because everybody around us believes in some sense or other? If that is what Paul means, then we are fortunate just to be brought up in a Christian tradition! Are we saved by our traditions? Is saving faith simply a faith in tradition or is it faith in the living God? Remember, when Paul wrote these words in Rom.10:9, it was an unheard of thing that anyone rose from the dead. There was no long tradition such as we now have by which we have had our minds brainwashed into believing that Jesus rose from the dead. I say that this is a form of brainwashing. It is well-known to political propagandists that by repeating a thing long enough, you can brainwash people into believing it. Is this what you call faith? Saving faith is when you accept something for quite different reasons than that. We will study the meaning of faith because nothing is so important as understanding what faith means in Scripture. Salvation and the Lordship of Christ The three aspects of
faith "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder." Every time Satan thinks about the resurrection, he shivers. It terrifies him! It does not terrify you because for you all this might not be real. There are three main points concerning the meaning of faith. 1.
Faith: Taking hold of God's promise When Paul says that if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead you will be saved (Rom.10:9), he means believing in the sense in which Abraham believed the promise of God. Paul was expounding "faith" in Romans 4 (v. 13 ff) before he got to Romans 10. It is very important if you claim to be a Christian that you understand what faith is. Do not think that you are saved simply because you believe Jesus' resurrection from the dead is a historical fact. Believing it only as a historical fact saves no one because if that is saving faith, then Satan would be the first one to be saved! It is only when you recognize that the resurrection is a promise to you from God, and that you must take hold of this promise by faith - it is only then that you will be saved. What kind of faith? What meaning has the resurrection got for you and for me unless we see that God is making a promise to us and for us? That Jesus rose again was good for Him; but what does it have to do with us unless He died and rose, as the Bible says, for you and for me (cf. 2 Cor.5:15)?! He did not die for Himself; He did not need to. He did not rise again for Himself. The whole event was for us. This is the first point. Can you grasp it? It is a precious promise. It gives us hope. Faust was without hope. He looked at the chess board, studying it back and forth, but he was checkmate and with all the chess skill he had ever acquired he could not save himself. There was no hope. Promise and hope From Romans 4 to Romans 8, the word "hope" (elpis) occurs 7X (13X in Romans; 36X in Paul's writings). Let me tell you the story of Abraham again. "In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations; as he had been told, 'So shall your descendants be.'" (Rom.4:18). Abraham had no child, and the Lord gave him a promise, that he was to become the father of many nations and his descendants were to be as numerous as the stars of the heaven (cf. Gen.15:5)! God spoke the word and Abraham had to take hold of it by faith. It seemed impossible to fulfill, but he took hold of God's promise. He hoped against hope. What does that mean? It means there was no human ground for hope. Everything stood against the possibility of hope. Why? Because he was one hundred years old and his wife, ninety years old. Out of these two people, "as good as dead" (Heb.11:12) in terms of reproduction, God would bring forth life. So Abraham, one hundred years old, hoped against hope because he trusted God's promise. The promise spoke to him and he took hold of it. The resurrection speaks to you. Do you take hold of it? If you aim to be saved, this Easter day cannot be just another holiday. The message of Easter has to be a promise to you, which indeed it is. If you do not see it as a promise, then of course, it says nothing to you. Do you see it as a promise? Faith takes hold of the promise and says, "Jesus rose from the dead for me, because that is what God says, as it is written, "He was raised because of our justification"(Rm. 4:25). By faith I take hold of this promise and claim it for myself. This is what Paul means in Rom.10:9, that if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead for you, that His resurrection is a promise to you, you will be saved. Are you able to take hold of this promise? Hope comes from the resurrection, and Paul speaks of the resurrection of Christ 10X in Rom.4-8. If you and I are going to have any hope in this chess game against Satan, it will come only from the fact that Jesus broke the chains of death and rose up, and I take hold of this promise to me. 2. Faith:
Experiencing the transforming power of God Take the case of Abraham. He was one hundred years old and Sarah, ninety. God said, "I am giving you a promise. This time next year, you will have a son" (cf.Gen.17:21). Once Abraham accepted the promise, something was going to happen to him in order for it to be fulfilled. For Abraham and Sarah, the moment they took hold of the promise, something began to happen. Up to that point in time, they could not produce children. There was, a natural deficiency. They were barren. For the promise to be realized in them, God had to do something to them. God had to do a transforming work in their bodies so that the bodies that could not even in their youth produce a child would, in the face of the now even greater impossibility due to their old age, produce a child. He had to bring about an inner transformation whereby the impossible happens: life comes out of the dead. Signs of life It begins with the stinging prick of conscience. Have you felt it? You used to think to yourself: "I committed this and that sin, but so what? Everyone does it." Then suddenly the power of God entered your life, your conscience was pricked and you felt uncomfortable. There is a powerful conviction inside and you kneel down saying, "Lord, have mercy on me. I am a sinner. Lord, forgive me. I am a hypocrite. I have lived hypocritically to this day..." Suddenly, you have a sense of sin! There is the evidence of God's power, the resurrection power to bring you back to life; you experience the pins and needles of repentance, and thanks be to God you are coming alive! The Spirit of God is coming into your life and He is working. When you hear the testimony of people sharing and confessing their sins, I ask you, what moves them to do this in public? It is the pins and needles that come when their conscience is being bothered. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is moving in their soul, and life is coming back into the deadness of their soul. That's wonderful! Experiencing the resurrection: the
joy of life in Jesus Take the picture of Abraham and Sarah. Can you imagine Sarah - ninety years old and she is becoming great with child? It is something to behold! God's promise is going to be fulfilled. That is fantastic! Out of two dead bodies, there is coming forth a life, and that life will become a channel of blessing to all the nations. Imagine as Abraham looks at Sarah and day by day she is moving towards the fulfillment of the promise, how he walks with a spring in his step! "My God is real! He said it could be done." Genesis records that Abraham laughed to himself (Gen.17:17-18). It was not because he doubted God. He believed God. He laughed because he thought to himself: "My God is very humorous. He has a very interesting way of doing things. He waits till I am a hundred years old and then He gives me a child." The Christian life is meant to be very joyful. So Paul says in Rom.12:12: "Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." Do you have that Abrahamic quality in your life? God has done a mighty work in us. We have experienced His resurrection power spiritually, and we are going to experience His resurrection power physically on that Day. What a glorious message! What a glorious hope! Paul calls it "the hope of the Gospel" (Col. 1:23). But look at the average Christian today. Do you see that gleam in his eye and spring in his step, or do you see him stumbling along? Will anyone become a Christian through his witness? Think of the impact Abraham and Sarah had upon their world, their community. Everyone in the country would be talking about this couple, "Did you hear about that ninety year old woman? She is going to have a child next year!" All the newspapers would be writing their story! A sign to the world Every Christian is meant to be a living sign of the resurrection, just as Abraham and Sarah were in their generation and still are to this day. Are you that kind of message? You will not be until you have experienced the resurrection power in your life. Then those around you will see and ask, "What is the reason for the hope that is within you?" (cf. 1Pet.3:15). "Why are you so joyful in hope? Why is there such a confidence and richness of meaning in your life? What is it about your life that makes you different?" What kind of sign are you? Why am I confident? I can speak about the resurrection of Christ because I took hold of the promise and I experienced it in my life. Have you? If Christians do not experience the reality of Christ's resurrection power, then what kind of Christianity are we talking about? Are we not then left with simply a nice-sounding theory, perhaps a fairy tale? You do not know it is not a fairy-tale or a piece of ancient tradition passed down from generation to generation until you have experienced God's resurrection power in your life. 3. Faith: Making us channels of
blessing Freedom from self This is the glorious transformation that takes place. When God's life comes into our lives and changes us, it also changes the direction of our lives. How? Before it is all inward: me and myself. Now you are thinking, "How can I live in such a way that I can bring blessing to others?" On the day when we give an account of our lives before God, will there be anyone around to say, "I bless the day I met you. You were the channel of God's blessing to me. The water of life came to me through you, and I bless God for the day that I saw you...."? Or will you just pass from the face of the earth with nobody aware that you are gone? Does your existence make any difference? Do you only live for yourself? Channels of living water The point is, it seems that the Lord Jesus is thinking of Gen.15:4 and of Abraham when He says these words in Jn.7:38. That is remarkable. It means God has done a mighty work in us, so mighty that through us the nations of the world will be blessed. How will they be blessed? They will be blessed through salvation, of course. What greater blessing is there than salvation? We are here to channel salvation to the world. In other words, the message of the resurrection is also a commission to us. It is a promise, it is an experience, and it is a commission. These are the three things that faith accomplishes by the power of God in us. May you today not just hear or think about the resurrection, but experience its reality in your life. |
Difficult in reading?
Special Messages: - Building a Friendship with God Through Prayer - Death with Christ - The Path to Life - He Is Not God of the Dead But of the Living - How to Understand Prophecies Concerning End Times - Jesus, the Sign Spoken Against - Meet with the Everlasting God - Steps in Preparation For His Coming - The Lord's Coming and Events Preceding It
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