Path of Evangelism VI: The Object of Faith | Behold Your God Podcast

Looking Away from Self-Righteousness and Resting on Christ

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Gratiae, and I'm here again with Dr. John Snyder, author and host of the Behold Your God study series and pastor of Christ Church, New Albany.

We're here in his study for episode six in our series on evangelism. We've been getting some help from this guy, Samuel Walker of Truro, and last week he helped us to see that there are some things that we have to look away from.

Those things were what, John?

Well, we look away from any subtle tendency to self-righteousness. So experiences, how I understand my experiences, how I understand doctrine, even moods, frames, how sad I've been, how encouraged I feel, how strong my faith feels, and repentance and faith itself, if it becomes the thing we hope in.

Yeah. So you can go back and listen to episode five to dig into that. And I'm just going to get us started here by summing up what Walker wrote here. He says, in all things, the person to be instructed must be brought at all times and in all cases, in all frames, high as well as low and low as well as high.

In all attainments and in all spiritual temptations to rest on Christ only and so to give God glory by believing. That's really the point we wanted to make last week. And this week, Walker's been a real help to us, but we're going to put Walker to the side for a little while, and we're going to begin to look at some biblical descriptions of faith because all of this has been so far meant to empty our hands from all of these substitutes and help us to look at the, come to Christ, to the object of our faith.

But what do we mean by faith? What does the Bible mean by faith? It's not something that our culture is incredibly clear on. And even us, we can be, we can attempt to be biblical and what we think of as faith can often be circular.

We wind up with faith in our faith. So I think it's a good time for us to really dig in and to begin to look at what the Bible describes as faith.

Faith as Assurance of Things Hoped For

Yeah. And as you mentioned, our culture speaks a lot about faith. You can turn on the television and you can hear a talk show host talk about their faith. You are allowed in our world, in Hollywood, to say you have strong faith.

Now what the object of your faith is, that might be anything. But the fact that you possess a spirituality, a faith is acceptable. But I think that the prevalence of religious talk that includes the idea of faith has actually worked against what we thought it would be.

It hasn't created a clarity. It's created a fog and it's really muddled things. So we do want to go back to scriptures because, you know, if faith is the way that we lay hold of all that God has for us in the person of our Lord, then it's, it's life and death that we understand.

Yeah. I'd say even in the religious culture, the word faith, I mean, we have faith based things, right? And those things are okay for us in a, in a little Christian ghetto, we can have faith based movies and faith based TV shows and faith based music and faith based whatever.

And sometimes those are, we can be just as confused about what faith is after watching a faith based something than we were before we watched it. So that part's free. Our first description is found, of course, in Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11 one.

Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen. Yeah.

Wonderful passage. In fact, it's so wonderful. I think sometimes, I mean, when I read that passage, I just think, I don't know if I know what it means. You know, it's just so simple and yet so sublime.

I feel like sometimes it's flying above my head so high and, you know, I look in the mirror and say, John, do you even know what that means? But let's just take those two great statements. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.

Faith brings us a tangible, experiential assurance right now of things that God has promised, but we have not yet fully possessed. It allows, in a sense, the child, the Christian to kind of get a little taste ahead of time.

All right. It's not all here yet, but I am assured it will be. And in that assurance, there is some provision for me right now. Second, it is a conviction or it is the evidence of things that are not seen.

So things that God has revealed to be true in His Word, but I have not seen them with physical eyes. And I look around and maybe I don't see much proof of them, but I know my God doesn't lie. And so by faith, I lay hold of those things.

And what is invisible? The faith gives me the evidence that they are actually real.

So you could say that faith lays hold of reality.

Faith as Responsive Trust in God's Word

Yeah. And I think because of that, we could say faith is always a responsiveness, never an initiating quality. We don't come to God and say, God, I just really wish. And so I'm going to believe it and it's going to make it happen.

It's always we come to God and we say, thus says the Lord. And I will bring my life into harmony with that. And then I am going to cheerfully risk it all on the fact that this is the one person who has never lied.

Yeah. You know, this, Christianity is about truth. And I've heard Steve Lawson say truth. He says, you know, I love that word. You know what that word means? Means reality. Like, what's real? That's what truth is.

And that's what we as Christians are. That's what faith is for us. It's just laying hold of what's real, what God has revealed to be real in his word. And you know, there's a pagan concept of faith that really has to be guarded against here.

It shows up in lots of pagan cultures. The aboriginal, and I'm not an expert in this, but I'm familiar with the aboriginal concept from, you know, time primordial where you speak a thing into existence.

We speak and it makes a thing come to be. Well, in our day, that would be called positive mental attitude or positive thinking. And that's a very sort of Christianized, moralized thing in our culture.

And yet that is not faith. Like you just mentioned, we're not initiating, we're not causing something to be by visualizing it or by speaking it. We're coming to what God has said in his word. And faith is our response to that, accepting it to be what it is, laying hold of it.

You could say appropriating it, bringing it to ourselves, making it ours.

Yeah. So positive thinking, all those things you mentioned, they only affect us. It's really more like a psychological self-manipulation. I don't like my attitude toward life. I don't like my life. So what can I do?

Well, I can't change my circumstances. I can't change much, but I can change my outlook. So I'm going to have a positive view, you know, and I'm going to have one of these poster kind of mentalities, these positive statements.

And the funny thing is, you know, the trick there is it does alter your attitude. It does. But it does not alter reality. And if a man cannot distinguish between those two, his soul is in jeopardy. The thought that I feel like I'm just right with God and being made right with God by God in the only way he makes anyone right with him.

If we don't get those two things clear in our mind, a man can go to hell. Walking up to the throne of God, so to speak, right before the judgment, just confident that this God has the same positive thoughts that that man's had, only to be shocked by the declaration that God has never known him as his.

That's terrifying.

I think about the doctor here. I can hear his voice in my head warning that the cults can give experience. And so experience can never be our guide in the Christian life. Experience is part of the Christian life, but it can never be our guide because the cults can give experience.

I think of Norman Vincent Peale and his positive mental attitude. And, you know, that that really can lead to a change. If you're a negative, I'm wired like Eeyore, you know, I need to not be pessimistic all the time.

That's sort of just the way that I'm naturally bent. Well, I could make a change in my life just by deciding I'm just going to be positive. I'm going to just never entertain a negative thought. I'm only going to have positive thoughts.

And that might make me a more pleasant person to be around. That might make me get a little bit more discipline in my life. And, you know, I'm able to get some good habits going. And those would be good things.

But eternally, that has had no net effect on my eternal destiny. And that cannot be a substitute for faith, especially faith in Christ in the context of evangelism.

The Object of Faith Is More Important Than the Amount of Faith

Yeah, when we think of faith, really, the primary thing to get right is not the degree of it or the, you know, the extent of how much faith. If we have the slightest amount of genuine faith, of really looking towards something else with hope, it's the object of our faith.

So we've talked before about faith and faith. Faith is not a boomerang that you throw out and comes back and focuses on itself. Imagine a man standing on it, on a, you know, on a jump rope and trying to pick himself up.

You know, faith in faith doesn't work. It can't operate that way. It has to have a substance greater than itself. It has to look away from itself. It can never look at itself, so to speak. So when you think of let's use the word hope, a person feels basically hopeful.

They come to church. They hear stories about Jesus. Their kids bring home, you know, Sunday school drawings where they've colored sheep and shepherds. And you get this general idea that God is for me and everything's going to be good.

Well, you develop a fundamental hopefulness. Well, I'm just pretty hopeful. And someone asks you, are you a Christian? Yes. Are you right with God? Oh, I'm right with God. How do you know? Well, I just feel such a strong sense of hope in that.

And so wait, so your faith is in the amount of hope you're feeling. But is it in the scriptural description of how a man is made right with God? And that's a very important question.

Yeah, absolutely. And not to confuse or muddy the waters with what we hit on in our last talk about doctrinal precision, but there are certain things, something must be known and felt. And if the gospel didn't have to be known, well, then we wouldn't be evangelizing to begin with.

We wouldn't be sending missionaries across the planet with this great message of reconciliation from our king. And so our hope cannot be in, as you said, our hope or in just a general sense of things are getting better.

Our hope has to be in the truth of God as revealed in the gospel. When we get back from this break, we'll go into another great example of faith. Of course, that's Abraham. We'll look in the chapter four of Romans.

Yes. Yeah. So when we come back, we will look at Abraham. And Paul gives him at that critical point in his argument in Romans where he's laying out that with such clarity, the desperate need of the gospel, what is the work of Christ in the gospel, how men embrace Christ through the gospel and then what changes.

And but right there in chapter four, Abraham, a man who is able to believe in spite of the fact that nothing around him seemed to confirm God's word and a man who refused to reduce the immensity of this promise, not just a son, an entire nation, an entire world being reached through someone that comes through you.

Abraham, do not reduce that promise to make it easier to believe. And we'll talk about that when we get back. Well, stay with us. We'll be right back. I think that we all would say, well, I need to know God better or perhaps my grasp on the doctrines of the gospel should be clearer.

But if there's any area of life that we think we haven't figured out, it's us. I know me. But what does God say about us? Discerning the plight of man is a book by Paul Washer. Here in this book, Paul takes us through the scriptures and shows what God says about all mankind, what's going on underneath the surface.

Paul divides up his 26 short chapters into four main sections, the creation and fall of man, the moral depravity and sinfulness of man, God's disposition toward the sinner and God's judgment of the sinner.

We've used this book in our Sunday school classes, particularly with an evangelistic emphasis. It's a great resource for anyone who wants to know what God says about us.

For more information about discerning the plight of man, you can visit themeansofgrace .org.

Abraham's Faith in the Promise of God

Welcome back to the Behold Your God podcast, episode six of our evangelism series. We've just defined faith as that which apprehends reality. We've said that it's not positive thinking. It's not faith in faith, believing in your hopes.

And now we want to go to another great biblical example of faith. And that's, of course, Abraham in Romans four. We'll begin here in Romans four and verse 18. In hope against hope, he believed so that he might become a father of many nations.

According to that which had been spoken, so shall your descendants be. Without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body now as good as dead since he was about 100 years old and the deadness of Sarah's womb.

Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully assured that what God had promised, he was also able to perform.

So here's the example of faith for us. You know, always we're pointed back to Abraham and the believer is called a child of Abraham, not only because the Messiah comes through this promise, but because the spiritual descendant of Abraham is like his dad.

He's a believer. And so, you know, the wonderful twofold description of Abraham's faith here. There's a promise made. There's a long gap of years before it's actually fulfilled. And during all this time, two things are having to be done.

First is verse 19. Without becoming weak in faith, without giving up hope, he contemplates his body. He looks at all the evidence around him, which seems to contradict what he has on the other side. And that is the word of a living God.

And he holds on to the word of a living God. And then second, in verse 20, with respect to the promise, he did not waver in unbelief. Lloyd-Jones talks about this and talks about the immensity of this, the immensity of the promise.

What if God would have said to Abraham, look, Abraham, you and your wife, you don't have any children. I'm going to try to give you one. Well, he could do that. You know, I can believe that. But I'm going to give you a son and I'm going to give you a son that through whom there will be a nation come.

And you won't be able to number them, Abraham. In fact, they're going to impact the entire world for generations to come because one of them, you know, will be the Messiah. And so we understand that fully now, as we look back, Abraham looks at the immensity of that promise and doesn't shrink it, doesn't waver at the bigness of it and say, well, that can't be for me.

And so those twofold aspects really helpful.

If you think of our description from Hebrews 11, Abraham was able to be gripped with an assurance that the promise was real by faith. And then he's given the evidence of things he'd not yet seen, the birth of a son, the blessing of the nations through that spiritual seed by faith before he ever saw it.

And that was counted to him as righteousness.

Now, let's apply it to us, though. It's one thing to look back, you know, at Sunday school pictures in your mind of Father Abraham. What about us? Is that still the way the Christian lives? And it is wonderfully so.

When we look at the new covenant promises, there are many promises that we have not yet received. And so there's a gap of time between when we heard the promise and when we are going to receive them. And during that period, we're going to have to live like Abraham, believing the word of God, even if nothing else seems to back it up and not shrinking the bigness of these promises so as to make it easier to believe that God would actually treat me that way.

And there are some things that God has given us right now. I mean, there are some things that Matt Robinson has from Christ continually supplied that you have never seen with your eyes. Yeah. And you must live on those realities or you will be shipwrecked.

And I mean, we think of just some of them like justification that I really am declared right with God through the finished work of a man that lived and died two thousand years ago and was raised again.

That Roman six that I am positionally, I am the old me is dead. A new me has been raised by union with Christ through faith. And now all that Christ has done when it's applied to me, it puts me in a completely different positional standing with God and a completely different relationship to the old master of sin.

That's right. Sometimes the old me doesn't feel so dead. Yeah. And so, you know, and that's the sin that still lives in our members. As you know, we remember the example of natives who are still in rebellion against the king who's come to conquer the island.

And so the sin and the members. But what what do I do in that moment? I lay hold of what God has said by faith. No, Matt, the old man is dead. And so I live as if he is dead. Yeah. Adoption.

I look in the mirror. I don't look like my new heavenly father very much. And I had hoped I've been a Christian twenty nine years. I had hoped that John Snyder would have a lot more family likeness by now.

So do I throw my hands up and say this is just insanity? God doesn't adopt sinners. Who who would believe that? Well, I go back to the scriptures and I say, in spite of everything that screams around me that I'm insane for trusting you, I will not let go of that.

You know, we think of union with Christ, that certain certainly at the heart of so much. And yet I have never seen myself united to Christ. Faith allows me to have the evidence of the reality of that even now.

Yeah, Christ died, I died with him. Christ is now seated and was ruling through all the worlds alone, and we're told that we are presently seated with him in heaven. I don't see that. I feel like I'm seated here in New Albany.

But I lay hold by faith of those realities. Now, that's not positive thinking. That's not something that we just came up with. But that is what God has revealed to be true and real. And faith will empty our hands of all of the things so that we can lay hold of those truths.

Faith as Belief in the Immutability of God

Yeah.

If we go to another aspect of faith, as wonderful as that is, we want to we want to keep moving. When we read the scripture, we do see that faith at its most basic is a belief in God. So we could think of things like this.

I believe what God says about himself. He can't be mistaken. He cannot be altered, not from within or for with or from without. We call that the immutability of God. It is rooted in his every all the other perfections that we you know, it's almost as if we try to look at God through all these these different facets of a diamond.

But they're really all one in one perfect harmony. God cannot be altered. God, God cannot be mistaken and God cannot lie. And whatever he says about himself and whatever he says about my spiritual depth of my need and whatever he says about the sufficiency of his son's work, I can rest my life.

On that. So a lot of things flow from that belief in God. Some of them are so closely linked, we might even think that they're synonymous, that they play a part in those things. But they're really not.

It's an issue of root and fruit. And so faith is the root. But we would say that we are saved by faith alone, but that that faith is never alone. It's always going to be accompanied by some things. And that is one of those is good works and obedience.

The scripture is very clear about that.

Faith Working Through Love and the Fruit of Good Works

Yeah. So, you know, Paul talks in Ephesians two, of course, about God. We are his workmanship. He's just said you're saved by grace through faith. And even faith is a gift. It's not of yourselves. There's nothing for you to brag about in yourself.

You are the workmanship. You are the poem, the Greek word that you are the crafting of God. He has crafted good works for you to do. So we read in Galatians in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision or uncircumcision means anything but faith working through love.

Think of the connection. Faith believes what God says. Hard life and death, but by the grace of God, I believe God when I believe what God says about himself and me in the gospel, I cannot help but love that God.

And if I love that God, John chapter 14, verse 15, if we love him, we obey him. So I believe that God that speaks in scripture, what he says brings me to love him, love to him, moves me to obey faith working by love.

These are inseparable qualities, but they are not all synonymous. Faith is the root.

The other things flow from it. Right. Secondly, they're accompanying faith, often experiences in the Christian life. And again, we don't need to confuse those for the foundation. We're not saved by our experiences.

We mentioned earlier that the cults can give us experiences, but the Christian life is given certain experiences. And we know that they're legitimate when they line up with what the scriptures tell us to expect.

And so I think of Romans 15, 13. Now, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you'll abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, I mean, so many passages and we probably don't have time to go much further with those, but just take that one. It is as the Christian is grasping hold of the truthfulness of God moment by moment, even if my even if my hands are weak, I have hold of the right God.

It is as I believe him that these gifts are continually being supplied and experienced and life is so very different.

But again, faith and these experiences are cause and effect. It's not that the experiences happen. And so therefore I have faith because I have faith in my experience. It's it's very having that. I mean, you give the you gave the illustration in our last episode about the house and you don't build the foundation of the house on the picture frames from the wall.

I think that's very helpful. And that's that's really what we're trying to drive home here.

Faith, Repentance, and Living on the Truth

Yeah. And again, we have a dual warning here. We don't want to say faith is believing God. That's the end of the story. And a person says, well, hey, I agree with everything the preacher says. I mean, I never have a problem with if it's from the Bible.

I'm with it, man. Doesn't change your life, does it? Well, that's work salvation. No, that's a living relationship with a God who, when he rescues a man, he really rescues him. And you can't hide that.

You know, the changes begin to show. So if we think of an or if we think instead of the house illustration, think of a plant. There is an organic living connection between all that God does in the person.

Faith, repentance. These are connected. You couldn't really separate them. Faith, love, faith, love, good works. These are all in a living line, a connection. So if we imagine faith as the root system that's gripping or sinking itself into the truths of God, I remember you gave an illustration when you preached here at the church that faith is like a handful of straws.

And, you know, it's kind of like a shocking illustration, but I've never been able to feel it. I forget it like you plunge the straws into the realities that God has given us and we draw on that continually.

So faith is the root system that is gripping the truths that God has revealed in scripture. It's laying hold of God himself, then flowing up through that. There's this living, enabling grace that produces changes in me.

But so we never would be happy to have a plant without the flower. So if a person tells me I'm a Christian and they look like a dead stick on the ground every day, year after year, I think you've got the wrong Christ.

But we don't take the wonder. If you look at a person whose fruit is wonderful, I mean, you know, in every way they're encouraging to us. We don't say to them, you know, I know you're a Christian. Look at all that fruit.

Boy, I tell you, God's lucky to have a person like you. No one takes a beautiful rose plant, rips the roots out, sticks the beautiful roses down in and buries it upside down and say, the reason I know that's a good plant is because those roses, you know.

So never be satisfied to have a Christian faith that's not connected and never look at the fruit and say, that's my hope.

Well, to sum up all that we've said so far, I hope it's clear. Faith is believing God and living on his words. It does produce changes in us and that those changes are obedience and experiences. But faith isn't synonymous with the things that it that it produces in the believer.

So we can never confuse those foundational issues, those foundational results with the actual faith itself. Let me read this quote again from Walker. In all things, the person that we are evangelizing, the person that we hope to see come to faith must be brought at all times and in all cases, in all frames, high as well as low and low as well as high, in all attainments and in all spiritual temptations to rest on Christ only and so to give God glory by believing.

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