Real Faith Saves

Introduction

Well, the clock back there says 820, and I’ve been told I can speak till ten o’clock, so everything’s gonna be okay. No, I want to really commend you for getting up to be here by this time this morning under the circumstances. One of our little girls, when we had this con kind of night and she was very young, woke up and rubbed her eyes and said, Well, that was a little bitty night. And so many of you had a little bitty night, I’m sure, but uh you’re here, and with God’s help we’ll proceed and come into his presence for what we can learn and what we can do in worshiping him. It’s good to be here. I’ve already seen several who whose presence here stirs some very pleasant memories for me, and uh I look forward to meeting others of you whom I may not have known in the past.

I like your little announcements of the meeting. Faith does that. And you could just add most anything you want to to that, because faith is necessary for just about everything we do. Uh I wouldn’t be here this morning if I hadn’t had faith. I’m not well sure how well founded it was, but faith in the other drivers that they were not gonna run me completely off the road and kill me all the way down here. You drive along the road, and it requires a certain amount of faith. I I wouldn’t have stopped and eaten anywhere, McDonald’s or anywhere like that, if I hadn’t had a certain amount of faith in the people that produced and prepared the food. You’d never invest in any kind of enterprise if you didn’t have some kind of faith that you would receive something in return.

And if you were out there lost at sea and about to sink, and the helicopter comes over and they drop down a line and has a little basket in it, and they say, get in the basket. How do I know you’re going to pull this up? I have to have a certain amount of faith in the one who has come to rescue me from that circumstance. But if that kind of faith is urgent, then faith to be saved from sin is even more urgent. Of course, people who really don’t have faith in God are not that concerned about sin. Because that’s what sin is. It is a violation of the will of God, missing God’s mark. And that’s the last thing that concerns many persons. They want to know whether they can get by without getting put in jail, or they want to get by perhaps without some other kind of consequence that is humanly generated.

1. Two Salvations, Both Through Faith

But God, well, that’s not important to unbelievers. But if you’re a believer in God, then sin becomes a problem. And sin is something that you must certainly escape by all means. And it is faith that enables us to escape from sin and gives us the hope of eternal life after this world is ended and left by all of us. Hebrews 10, 35 through Hebrews 12, 2. All deal with this matter of faith in a very special way, though that’s not the only portion, of course, of the book that deals with it. But that’s the section from which we are going to be taking these lessons in this series this week. The Bible actually speaks of two salvations. One of these salvation is present salvation. We’re guilty of sin.

We stand condemned by God. And we need to be forgiven of those sins if we are going to be in his favor. But as we have been forgiven of these past sins, we continue to sin. All of us experience that. And we must continue to be forgiven if we’re to have eternal salvation. And the Bible speaks about future salvation, eternal salvation. In the book of Ephesians, chapter 2 and verse 8, the writer says, For by grace you have been saved through faith. And Jesus promises, he who believes and is baptized will be saved. That’s a promise of salvation from past sin. But I want you to notice that both of these have to do with faith. We have been saved through faith, and he who believes and is baptized will be saved.

And you say, well, those are two different things, faith and belief. I confess that one time years ago, before I knew better, I preached a sermon on the difference in faith and belief. I didn’t know much about Greek, apparently, because really belief and faith are the same thing exactly as translations of the Greek word. Now, the Greek word is much richer in meaning than any English word we have to translate it. But really, we’re talking about the same thing when we talk about believing and having faith. This future salvation also involves faith. Now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. And we’re kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. But even that first statement has to do with believing, having faith.

2. Do Not Cast Away Your Confidence

And if we’re going to have that eternal salvation that is awaiting us, it must be obtained through faith. This was the problem with the Hebrew Christians. They had had faith enough to be forgiven from their previous sin, the sins of which they had been guilty even in crucifying Jesus. They had been converted, they had been illuminated, and had suffered for their faith. Let’s begin reading in this tenth chapter of the book of Hebrews with verse 32. But recall the former days, and I think he’s really looking back to Pentecost and to the days immediately following Pentecost. Recall the former days in which, after you were illuminated, you were enlightened, you learned the truth about Jesus, whom you thought had been a false teacher, you endured a great struggle with sufferings, partly while you were made a spectacle, both by reproaches and tribulations, and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated.

For you had compassion on me in my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and enduring possession for yourselves in heaven. All this beginning of following Christ was based on their faith in Jesus Christ. But we learned that they were in danger of casting away their confidence. Look at the next verse. Therefore, do not cast away your confidence from the Latin word for faith, belief. Don’t cast away your confidence, which has great reward. They needed endurance. And continuing with verse 37, 36, you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he who is coming will come and will not tarry. You’re going to have to have continuing faith if you’re going to receive this eternal salvation which lies ahead.

And then he quotes actually from the Old Testament.

That’s a quotation from Habakkuk 2 and verse 4. My righteous one, that is one who is forgiven, will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we’re not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. Live by faith, and it’s by faith that the soul is preserved. But suppose faith fails. Well, he says, if he shrinks back, my soul will have no pleasure in him. The Lord may have been pleased when we first had faith, have believed in Jesus and obeyed him. But if we shrink back, then the Lord has no more pleasure in us, and the result is destruction. He shrinked back to destruction. And so this becomes a very important fact, both for those who are lost and for those of us who are saved.

3. What Is This Faith?

We must continue in our faith. And this is essential to our ultimate salvation. What is this faith? Well, he goes on to describe that faith in Hebrews 11 1. Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. You know, this really puts two statements that we are commonly make uh to re in reverse. We say sometimes a burden of a hand is worth two in the bush. You’ve heard that. It’s better to have one thing in your hand than two things that you just really kind of hope for. But but this puts that in reverse. When there’s faith, faith in a promise of two is better than just one in the hand. I could tell you, I’ll give you a thousand dollars right now.

Or if you’ll wait till the end of the week, I’ll give you two thousand dollars. Which are you going to choose? Well, it depends on how much faith you have in me. If you don’t believe in me, you say, Well, I’ll take a thousand dollars right now. But if you have faith in me, you trust me. Then you say, Well, I I’ll wait for the I will at the end of the week for sure. I’d rather have two thousand at the end of the week than one thousand now. Not only that, but we sometimes say, Well, seeing is believing. When you really understand faith, believing is seeing. If you really believe that something exists, that’s just as strong as seeing it. You can picture it, you anticipate it with the same kind of confidence or faith as if you had actually seen it with your eye.

I suppose every one of us has bought a ticket on a plane or a bus or train or something, older one on a train, to some place that we have never seen at all. But we put a good bit of money into a ticket to go to that place we haven’t seen. It’s just as real as if we had seen it. That’s what faith really, really does. The fact is that faith has always been the basis of salvation. It has never been on the basis of doing exactly what’s right. Now, we look at people sometime in the oldest and say, Well, he must have been really, really good. Every one of those men of the old testament are men who sin grievously, and nearly every one of them has his sin revealed for everybody to know.

Well, when you think about Moses, I’ve been teaching a class on Moses, and Moses made some serious mistakes, not only in striking the rock, but in his attitude sometimes about what he was having to endure for the Lord. Think of David, a great man of faith. But look at his sins. Not one of those men could be saved on the basis of their righteous, pure, innocent, perfect life. Well, how were they saved? By faith. By faith. Now, the commands of God were different from them for than what they are for us. Noah was saved by, as we’re going to see, by his faith in building an ark. We’ll see that. And uh Abraham was saved by his faith when he left the land of. God hasn’t asked us to build an ark, but he’s told us other things, and the same faith that caused Noah to build an ark is the very same kind of faith that’s going to cause us to do what the Lord told us to do.

4. Two Worldviews: The Believer and the Unbeliever

And so salvation has always been by faith. And that’s exactly what Hebrews 11 2 says. By it the elders obtained good testimony. What’s this idea of testimony? God called them righteous. They were not righteous, but God bore witness that they were righteous because they trusted God rather than trusting themselves. They obeyed God’s will instead of doing what they wanted to do. And he goes on, really, to speak about what it is that they must they must do. What is it that distinguishes people of faith? Well, I’ll tell you what it is. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things that do appear or things which are visible. That’s what makes a difference.

Those who are men of faith, people who are living by faith, believe in God. They believe that He created all things. This is their worldview in contrast with the people of the world. Hebrews 11:60 a little more clearly. He who comes to God must believe, one, that he is, and two, that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. You haven’t seen God, but he’s just as real as if you had seen him. And you believe he is a rewarder, that he’ll do for some people what he says he will do. And consequently, you diligently seek him, because you believe that he will give you the reward that he has promised. That’s exactly what drove those old testament characters to do the things they did.

They believed in the existence of an unseen God, and they trusted him to do what he promised he would do. And that’s right at the very heart of the life of faith. There are two worldviews that are characteristic of people living today, just as they have always been. One is the worldview of a believer who believes that God in the beginning created all things, made them out of nothing, created them by his word, and the unbeliever. The believer begins with God. God is the most important thing in his thinking. Not only that, but he recognizes that God made him. God created me. And since he created me, I belong to him. In a class this past week, we talked a little bit about the argument that’s so often made by people.

Well, that’s one of the arguments regarding abortion. It’s my body, I can do with it what I want to do. Or it may be anything that’s harmful to the health. It’s my body, who’s going to tell me what I can do, what I can’t do. No, it’s not your body. You didn’t make it. Nobody made it except God. God made it. And whatever I made is mine. But when we were lost and Satan took us away from God, he sent his son into the world to buy us back. We’re bought with a price, 1 Corinthians 6 says. And so our bodies belong to God. Not only that, but we believe we’re accountable to God. If I borrow a car from someone, and it’s his car, it’s not mine, and I’m accountable to him for the way I use it, what I do with it.

I’m accountable to God. And God’s word tells me what he expects of me. It’s the standard of right and wrong and truth and error. And to a believer, this life is lived in the hope of a life to come. It’s not for the rewards of this life, though being a Christian has its rewards in this life. But Paul said, if in this life only we have hope, we’re of all men most miserable. I’m not sure if that’s true of us now, but it was a Paul when he was having to face the kind of persecution and hardship that he was having to face. But I wouldn’t be a Christian if I didn’t have a hope of something hereafter. I wouldn’t engage in some things that I can see are harmful, but I wouldn’t live the life I live if it were not for the hope of eternal life with God.

That’s the life of a believer. That’s the world view of a believer, and it demonstrates itself in the way he lives his life. What about the unbeliever? No place for God. Now, he may say I believe in God, or whatever I may consider the supreme being. You know, it’s gotten pretty general these days. Yeah, but God really doesn’t have any real important place in his life. He’s here by chance. Sometimes people say, why do you preachers get so upset about the theory of evolution? It makes all the difference in the world, whether we were created by God or whether we just happen to be here. If we just happen to be here, really we’re not accountable to God or accountable to anybody for anything. We do what we want to do because we’re just here by chance anyway, and if things is done by chance, it has no purpose.

What am I supposed to accomplish in life? Nothing. Nothing if I’m just here by chance. Furthermore, there’s no standard of right and wrong. There’s no truth. Who’s going to say this is right and who’s wrong? And you know that’s that’s exactly what we’re being told in this postmodern world that there’s no absolute truth, there’s nothing that’s absolutely right, absolutely wrong. I heard on the on the television day before yesterday. Something I’m not even going to repeat to you this morning. That would be okay. Who can say you can’t do it? And it was so vulgar, so vile, I would not even repeat it this morning. Now, probably ten years from now, we’ll have to be preaching against it. There was a time when I wouldn’t even mention homosexuality from the pulpit.

5. We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight

Now we have to preach against it and call it by name, of course. But if we’re just here by chance, then you do what you want to do. Whatever’s going to give you pleasure, you just do it. Whatever seems to be your advantage, you just do it, no matter what it may do to somebody else. Furthermore, he lives his life for here and now, because as far as he’s concerned, there’s no hereafter. No hereafter. I believe that in the scripture, we have two excellent views of these two points of view. Turn with me to the book of 2 Corinthians, and we’re going to read a fairly lengthy statement here from the Apostle Paul regarding his life of faith. Beginning with verse 16 of this fourth chapter of the book of 2 Corinthians.

Are you with me? 2 Corinthians 4, 16. After speaking about some of the things he has suffered, he says, therefore we do not lose heart. That’s okay. What I’ve suffered makes no real problem for me at all. We do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing. Yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. Now, Paul, have you ever seen that inward man? No. No, no. But I know he exists. And I know he’s the real man. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment is far is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Why we do not look at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary.

The material things, things you can see with a physical eye. But the things which are not seen, those things you perceive by faith, they are eternal. For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, this physical body that we can see and feel, is destroyed, we have a building from God. A house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Paul, you ever know have you seen it? No. But my faith is strong enough in it that it’s just as real as if I had seen it and even existed in it. In this, that is, in this physical body, we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven. If indeed having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, it’s not that we don’t want a body, but further clothed, a better body, the one God has made for us, that mortality may be swallowed up in life.

Now he who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has also given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we’re always confident, knowing that while we’re at home in the body, we’re absent from the Lord. And then look at this verse. For we walk by faith and not by sight. We’re confident. Yes, well pleased, rather than be absent from the body and present with the Lord. Therefore, and here’s the very attitude. Here’s the very world view described of a person who has faith. We make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to him. The man of faith has above all other expectations and desires to please God. No matter what makes difference it makes to people around, no matter how it feels, the whole question is, does it please God?

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Just as the student in college, I think we have one or two here this morning, just as a student in college works the whole semester in view of that final exam that he must pass if he’s going to pass the course. So the Christian lives his whole life in anticipation of that final exam that is going to determine his destiny. Eternal destiny. That’s the worldview, the goal, the purpose, the life of the person of faith. Well, what about the person, the unbeliever? Well, let’s just turn back to 1 Corinthians 15, where the Apostle Paul is dealing with a characteristic view of the Gentile world, of which Corinth was a special example.

They didn’t believe in resurrection. They said the body is evil, and why you want to resurrect it? There’s nothing, no hereafter. Well, if there’s no hereafter, beginning in verse 32, in the latter part of the verse, if he says there is no hereafter, if the dead do not rise, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. If that’s the end of all things when we die, then let’s just get all the pleasure we can get out of life now. Let’s do all the things we want to do. Let us not be restricted by any kind of restrictions, because life is all there is.

I started looking for it one time and found it right here in the middle of the discussion of the resurrection. Do not be deceived. Evil companionships corrupt good, and I like the King James morals, habits, this says, different translations have different things. What’s he saying? I think he’s saying this. If you’re constantly associating with, surrounded by people who don’t believe in the resurrection and whose manner of life simply is based on that, do what you want to do, get all the pleasure out of life you can. Don’t let anything restrict you. Don’t let anybody tell you what you can do and what you can’t do. If you’re surrounded by people like that, who don’t believe in the resurrection, don’t believe in eternal destiny, don’t believe in judgment, if you’re not careful, even though you do believe in resurrection, even though you do believe you’re going to stand before God in judgment, even though you do recognize that there is an eternal destiny, you may be influenced by those around you who don’t believe in it.

Conclusion

And the first thing we know, we as Christians are justifying our conduct by the fact that everybody’s doing it. But everybody doesn’t have the kind of faith we have. Everybody’s not living by faith. People around us are not being influenced by faith in God nearly as much as they are faith in human wisdom. And so the question we want to ask this morning is what is your world to you? How do you live your life? What is the most real thing to you? Is it God? Or is it something you can see and feel and taste? What is the real man? This body that is material or that unseen man that is within, that is eternal and mortal. What does your life really indicate? Really, that determines your that that tells you what your worldview is, what you live your life for, how you spend your life.

Not what you say, what you do, how you live. That’s the thing that really, really counts. I’m afraid there’s a tendency on the part of some of us to say, Well, I believed and I was baptized and I was saved, well, that’s wonderful. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t question that one bit. But remember, the one who is righteous must live by faith as well as obey the gospel by faith. The life we live has to continue to be dominated by our faith in Christ. Or, well, that passage we studied a moment ago said what? You live by faith, and but if we shrink back, if our faith grows weak and we’re more influenced by the world around us than we are by God, then God has no pleasure in us.

We may be members of the church of Christ. We may have believed and been baptized years ago. We may even come to church every Sunday, even on the morning after the time changes. But the real question is, the real question is, is our life being dominated on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday by faith, or are we living more in by the under the influence of the world? May God help us to have faith to the preserving of the soul, and that’s the real purpose of this entire series of lessons. I hope you can be back with us. It’s been a r and a helpful study to me as I’ve prepared the lessons, and I believe as they’re presented, it’ll be helpful to you. Because the most important question we can ask is this Am I living by faith or walking by sight?