John 11:25-32 (Mere Faith)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

You know, one of the most disgusting and eye -opening films that I've ever seen was a 2004 documentary called

Supersize Me. You ever seen it? Morgan Spurlock decided to eat

McDonald's three times a day, and over the course of 30 days, he had to accomplish a couple goals.

The first goal was he had to eat everything on the menu at least once. The second goal was if he ate anything whatsoever, it had to be from McDonald's.

If he drank anything whatsoever, it had to be from McDonald's, and he had to do this for 30 days. The effect of this experiment was that he gained 21 pounds in 30 days.

His cholesterol was higher than it had ever been in his life. His mood and his sexual... He had mood and sexual dysfunction.

It took him 14 months to get back to normal after this just to reverse the damage that was done to his body, and in that I see sort of a metaphor for evangelical

Christianity. It's true. Maybe we're not all going and eating fast food every day.

I hope not. I pray that that's not the case, but what we've done is we've feasted upon unbiblical things, and we feasted on it so much and so deliberately and so often that we have become a fat, sick, and nearly dead church in this country, and what

I'm talking about most importantly is an unbiblical view of what faith is. What is faith?

What does the Bible say about faith? What does the church universal believe about faith? Well, I'll tell you first and foremost that faith is not intellectual assent.

The Bible calls for a whole body, whole soul kind of belief that orients every part of you towards the

Savior. It's not intellectual agreement. It's not, I cognitively understand a few data points of facts that can help me win an argument on a

Facebook group. There's a lot of keyboard warriors out there. This is not what faith is.

It's not evangelicalism. It's not I exist so that I can have an emotional experience.

It's not that I go to church so that I can have experiences or liver shivers or premonitions or Holy Spirit bumps because that's shallow and empty -headed.

Biblical faith begins with a propositional truth that changes your mind. It begins with Jesus Christ, and then when that comes in, and you understand what that is, it changes your worldview.

You don't look at the world the same way that you used to look at the world. It changes the way that you eat. It changes the way that you drink. It changes the way that you drive.

It changes everything about you. It gives you biblical categories now for you to understand. It tells you that I'm a sinner in a world that says you're basically a good person.

The Bible and faith tells you, no, you're not. You're a sinner.

The Bible says that you and I are wretched on our own. The Bible says that we're like filthy, polluted garments.

The Bible says that we're like worms in our sin. The Bible says that we've rebelled against a holy

God. And we've fallen short of His glory, and we deserve the punishment of sin.

These are biblical categories that you can't believe until faith comes into you.

You can believe them mentally. You can believe them cognitively. I've read atheists before who can describe the gospel better than I can, but faith is different than that.

It goes from the brain, and it goes down into the heart so that it produces not just intellectual concepts, but feelings that are authentic, produced by the

Holy Spirit of God. It causes you to weep over the things that you once loved, and to love the things that you once hated.

It causes you to hate the sin that you once drank deeply from, and it calls you to love holiness and purity and righteousness in a way that you've never loved them before, in a way that makes you uncomfortable, in the way that you even carry yourself.

Christianity and belief is not a finish line where you raise your hand, and you say, I know

Jesus died for me. That's it. I'm done. Got my get out of hell free card. Let's move on to some different things.

That's not what Christianity is. Faith is a starting point where you realize how wretched you are, and over the course of your life, you grow deeper and more convicted about those things.

Actually, if we're living our faith correctly, we should hate our sin more today than on the day that we were converted.

We should see more sin inside of us. It may not be as egregious as it used to be.

It may not be as awful as it used to be, but the tiny things now. I remember when

I was in the military, and we had just got back from Iraq. I was sitting in my room, and one of my friends came in, and he sat down on the seat beside of the bed, and he said, look at this, and he was wearing his military -issue

PT shorts, and he showed me a gray spot on his leg. It was just a gray spot, and I was like, what is that?

And he said, that's a piece of shrapnel. I said, my goodness, how did that get in there?

He said, it's from Iraq. You see, because when I was over there, I got some shrapnel in my body from a mortar round that landed too close to me.

Big pieces came out really quickly. Now, it's the smaller pieces that went deeper that are working themselves out a little bit more slowly.

He said, now that I can see it, it'll be about a month before it breaks through the skin, and I can take something and pull it out.

That reminds me of what sin is like. The big pieces come out really quickly when you become a Christian.

Alcoholism or pornography and some of those things, those things, you hate those things when you become a Christian, but it's deeper sins, like judgmentalism, or the way that I speak, my tongue.

James says it's a raging fire. Maybe those things are things that I get convicted about as I go, but make no mistake,

Christian faith produces a lifetime of conviction. That causes you to repent.

Martin Luther said that the whole life of a Christian is repentance. When you're done repenting, repent of your repentance because your repentance wasn't good enough.

Tainted with selfishness and self -preservation and pride. Faith causes us to grow to love who

Christ is. Faith, like Malachi chapter 3 says, when we understand it, we will leap like calves when we come out of the pasture.

YouTube it, it's hilarious. When little calves get in a brand new pasture, they leap and they jump, and sometimes they fall over because they're gangly.

But when you know Christ, it causes every part of you to rejoice, to leap for God.

It produces Christ -like emotions in you. It produces Christ -like behavior in you. Gospel notions produce godly emotions.

And godly emotions produce godly devotion. For a lifetime.

Now, why is this so important? Because eternal life hangs in the balance of whether we understand biblical faith or not.

Pleasures forevermore versus eternal torments and multiplied sorrows hang in the balance of whether we understand faith.

If we don't understand what biblical faith is, we won't inherit the promises of God. If our faith is rooted in something other than Jesus, if we've built our house on the sand, when the rain comes and the storm comes, it will destroy that house and great will be the fall.

Faith, real faith, biblical faith, changes every aspect of your life.

It changes the way you think, it changes the way you feel, it changes the way you relate to other people, it changes the way you worship, it changes everything about you.

And if that has not happened to you, I don't say this as a matter of shame.

I say this as a matter of plead to Christ and say there's something wrong with my faith. It says in the

Bible to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Why do you think it says fear and trembling?

Because we want to make sure that we've got this question answered rightly. Do we have real faith?

Do we have faith that's producing something in us, or do we have easy believism, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer once called it?

The word faith in the Bible is a word that is called pistou.

I didn't just curse there. It's what it's called, pistou. That's the

Greek word for faith. Faith is a long -standing Greek word. We often sometimes get the impression that, or at least

I do, when you're looking at the Greek, that these words are entirely related to New Testament Greek, and they didn't have secular connotations.

This word actually was seven centuries prior to the Gospels being written. Pistou does not mean, hey,

I heard a sermon, I understand the details, and yeah, I kind of agree with it. That's not what it means. Pistou is the kind of belief that causes you to trust and causes you to lay down everything and run after an object.

It's actually better translated allegiance. Faith is not belief alone.

Faith is allegiance. You think about a soldier in a military army. He knows facts about his general, yes, but the facts don't lay dormant inside of him.

It causes him to follow his general into battle. It causes him to run with him, to support him, to fight.

That's what we're talking about. Christ is the great general of the Christian army, and faith causes us to follow him, even if it gets us harmed, even if it gets us mocked and maligned, beaten and broken.

We follow Christ. If you don't have action paired with belief, it's not biblical faith.

Now, biblical faith is not action to please God. It's because God is pleased with us.

Now, we do godly things. We have to understand the right order. Faith is not simple, easy, believism.

It's entire life transformation. Now, I remind us of this.

Because the gospel of John is all about belief. The purpose statement of the gospel of John is in chapter 20, verse 31.

And John puts belief at the center of his book. He says, these things, that means every word of John's gospel has been written so that you may pustuo, so that you may have allegiance in Christ, so you may believe that Jesus is the

Christ, the son of God, and that by believing in him, you may have life in his name.

This is not academic assent. This is trust and allegiance. If your faith has you in the same dead place that you were when you claimed it, it's not biblical faith.

Faith produces life, new life, life that transforms you, changes you, makes you, and shapes you according to the image of Christ.

And that is my hope and my prayer for this church that we would have the kind of faith that changes us.

The kind of faith that causes us to be to be in love with Jesus. The kind of faith that causes us, like Paul says, to shine like lights in a crooked and broken generation.

Do we live in a crooked and broken generation? Absolutely. Is the church shining?

Is the church radiant for her savior? Does the church have a belief problem?

Now, this passage today also has to do with belief. The next two weeks actually will have to do with belief because it's all the way through the passage.

Jesus kicks off this section in verse 25 by saying, do you believe what I just said? And then he goes on and he challenges belief and and we see that the people in the narrative are acting out what true belief is so that over the next two weeks we're going to look at what is the nature of true belief and what is the nature of true salvation.

This week we're going to be looking at true belief. What is true belief? That's the first thing we're going to look at.

The second thing is what does true belief cause to happen in us? What does it cause?

And then the third is what does true belief require of us?

That's the one where we tend to get stuck because as Christians we say it's faith alone.

Faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone doesn't require anything of me. But wait, it doesn't require anything for you to be saved, but as someone who is saved your faith makes demands upon you.

And that's what we're going to talk about today. So if you will turn with me to John chapter 11.

This is the 47th sermon in this chapter. Not really, I'm just kidding. But I think it's nine.

And we'll be in verses 25 through 32. This is what the text says.

Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies.

And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?

She said to him, yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ the son of God even he who comes into the world.

When she said this she went away and called Mary her sister saying secretly the teacher is here and is calling for you.

And when she heard it she got up quickly and was coming to him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.

Then the Jews who were with her in the house and consoling her when they saw that Mary got up quickly and went out, they followed her supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

Therefore, when Mary came where Jesus was she saw him and fell at his feet saying,

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that today as we examine your word that we would get a glimpse of what real true authentic biblical faith looks like.

That we would see what faith is. That we would see what you have done and what causality comes out of our faith that that does things inside of us.

And Lord, I pray that we would see what our faith requires of us. Lord, I pray we would see in the interaction that you have with these two delightful beautiful sisters in the faith,

Mary and Martha, that we would see what you did in their life and we would see how they responded.

And Lord, it would be instructive for us today. Lord, I pray that in a message like this where almost nothing new and novel will be shared.

No history lesson that we're not aware of. Lord, all of this will be reminder of things we already know.

Lord, I pray that in the grace of that that you would remind us like we talked about in Deuteronomy that we would remember, that we would rejoice, that we would cling to what faith is.

Lord, where we fall short, I pray that we would confess and repent. And Lord, I pray my keeper says that we would throw off every weight and every hindrance and every sin so that we could run the race that you have called us to.

Lord, we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Now, as you'll remember, we've been examining one of the most thrilling, powerful, memorable scenes in all of the gospel, which is the raising of Lazarus.

It's an incredible scene that actually writes Jesus's death certificate. The people create a commission after this event to kill

Jesus, and this is sort of the final straw that breaks the camel's back. We saw also

Jesus in John's gospel, especially, is really talented, really exceptionally great at offending the

Jewish leadership. He does it in John 10 by saying that I and God are equal. And because of that, they picked up stones for the second time to kill

Jesus, chased him out of the city, and Jesus and his disciples in December of A .D. 29 or A .D.

32, scholars debate over those two dates. But in that year, the disciples fled from Jerusalem to Galilee, and they spent three months in Galilee where Jesus was preparing them for the day of his death.

Now, they didn't fully get that. They didn't understand it, but Jesus was preparing them for the moment that he would not be there any longer.

He spent time with his disciples. You can imagine the disciples felt like, this is great. We're with Jesus.

This is where we want to be. This is where we gave up our lives and our income and our families. We left everything for this.

This is a great moment in time. And you can imagine the consternation that they felt when they're heading back to Jerusalem.

You can almost imagine them saying, Jesus, I know the law says that we're supposed to go to Jerusalem for Passover, but do we really have to do that?

Do we really want to risk it? Because Jerusalem is where the people wanted to kill Jesus, and the disciples knew it.

Again, things were going great until a messenger showed up and said that Lazarus was sick. And you can imagine the disciples' hearts immediately falling and them saying, oh, he loves

Lazarus. Of course he's going to go. He heals people. He gives people sight. This is what Jesus does. And you can imagine the sort of relief that they felt when

Jesus said, this sickness won't end in death. Let's keep doing ministry. They were praying, oh, thank God. We're not going back to Jerusalem.

We're not all going to die. Then two days later, Jesus, after he had sufficiently bothered

Mary and Martha by delaying, now he bothers the disciples by saying, we're going. Thomas even cries out,

I guess we're all going to go and die. They got it. They understood the point. They were heading towards death when they go to Jerusalem.

It was especially dangerous as Passover drew near. The Jews would have planted spies and different people to notice if Jesus came to the city because all faithful Jewish males would have came to the city near Passover.

And this event in John 11 is about two weeks before the Passover. So they were expecting Jesus soon, maybe not as soon as he came, but they were expecting him.

All of this is the peripheral background that's happening in John 11. This is the pressure that's going on in the background of what's happening.

Now, as we've noticed, John 11 is also sort of a reprieve because it has given us a time to sit and dwell upon these wonderful, rich theological concepts that are also happening.

It doesn't feel like the pressure is there, but it's there. But as you know, for the last several weeks, we've been able to talk about a theology of death, a theology of resurrection, a theology of the end times, or as Martha calls it, the last day.

But over the next two weeks, we're going to see how this also contributes to our theology of what faith is and our theology of what salvation is.

So we have a wonderful little break in the narrative to be able to discuss some of these things and what a grace it is that we get to do that.

John 11, 25 through 32, shows us what belief is in full. It's a wonderful picture.

And the way that I'm going to be preaching the sermon is a little bit different than the way I've been preaching the last couple sermons. The last couple sermons is, let's go in the

Old Testament and let's talk about a concept and talk about it like a diamond. We'll look at it from this angle and that angle and this angle and that angle, and we'll see all kinds of beautiful things.

Today, we're going to look at the narrative as it is. We're going to be just in John 11. Today, I'm not going to have 50 different supporting verses on the screen.

We're going to look at just the narrative as it is, and we're going to see in the narrative a sort of prototype or a sort of blueprint for what faith really is.

And we're going to see it in the lives of Mary and Martha. So let's begin with what true belief is.

True belief is triune centric faith. Look at verse 25. Jesus said to her,

I am the resurrection and the life. And he who believes in me, even if he lives or he will live, even if he dies.

He who believes. Belief is rooted in the triune God. You say, where do you see that in this text?

I am is the name for God. I am is the name that God revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai.

And he said, who should I tell the people that you are? And God says, tell them my name is I am that I am.

Or maybe another way to translate it is I will be who I will be. I am pure existence.

I am God. So God, the father, sort of under the surface of this text, he says,

I am the resurrection. Well, we know in heaven that Jesus sits at the throne of God and he sends the spirit of God to resurrect the saints of God.

So therefore, you've got even the spirit in an undertone here. You've got the father who's

I am. You've got the spirit who's the resurrecting power of Christ. And you've got God in the flesh speaking to these people, speaking to Mary and Martha saying,

I am the resurrection and the life, the triune God. It's not explicit, but it's here in this text that faith, true belief is in God, the father,

God, the son and God, the Holy Spirit. And if you don't have that kind of faith, if you don't believe that Jesus is

God, if you don't believe that God, the father is God, that the Holy Spirit is God, if you don't have faith, hope and trust in the

Trinity, then you don't have true faith. Many cults believe.

That God, the father is God. That Jesus is a creation of God, the

Jehovah's Witnesses. Mormons believe that God once was not a being, but he exists now as Elohim over this planet.

And if you're a good Mormon and wear your spiritual underwear, you can be a God too. If you're male, sorry, women, you are the populators of the new earth.

Isn't that sick? These triune twistings that happen and make these disgusting sort of perverted religions.

True faith is in the triune God as revealed in scripture. And it's necessary. We have to believe that God, the father, sent his one and only son to die on the cross for our sins, the true and glorious gospel.

And that Jesus Christ, God, man, and the flesh went to the cross willingly and joyfully for you. And as he was walking up the hill called

Calvary, even though blood was dripping down his face, tears were streaming down his cheeks, and his face was broken over the pain that he was feeling, it says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despised its shame for you.

And then when Jesus rose from the dead on the third day and ascended to heaven at the right hand of the father, sat down at the right hand so that he could reign over his church, he sent forth his spirit to wake up Christians one generation after another, after another for the last 2 ,000 years, we are the beneficiary of the

Holy Spirit's work of resurrection. This is essential Christian faith, but it's just the beginning.

It's just the beginning. We can't just stop here because true faith also doesn't end in mental concepts, as we've just said, it ends in a changed life.

Look at what the same verse says in verse 25. I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies.

True faith happens when your old dead man is raised, when your old dead woman is raised, when the corpse of your soul is resurrected and new life comes into your body and into your soul and into your heart and into your mind.

It causes your old way of thinking to shame you and pain you, it causes your old desires, noxious as they were, to offend you.

It causes new passions to come in you and offend you. The changed life is one of the greatest evidences of faith.

It's not putting on a show, it's where character actually has undergone a biblical reformation.

It's where cursing and speaking in noxious ways have been put away. It's when loving people, even when they malign you and hate you, and you do it joyfully and authentically, it's when you pray for your enemies, you look for churches that preach the gospel, it's when you read the

Bible out of joy and not out of duty, it's when you hunger for the things of God, when you hate sin, when you love purity, love righteousness, you've been made new.

It's not just in your head. I remember a sermon from Tim Keller one time.

He said, what's happened in American Christianity is like a vending machine. He said, we put the quarter in.

Actually, it was an old sermon. I think he said we put the nickel in. We put the quarter in and it gets stuck so the drink doesn't come out.

So you have to go and beat on the side of the machine to get the coin to drop down. He said, it's very similar to what's happened in the modern church.

We understand the gospel cognitively, but we need something to beat the gospel upside of our head so that it trickles down into our heart because we need changed life.

When Nicodemus heard the gospel, it confused him mentally, but it didn't change him until later when he saw the risen

Christ. We need life change to say that we have true faith. The Bible says that there are many who on that day will say,

Lord, Lord, didn't we do many miracles in your name? Didn't we serve you? Didn't we lead a

Bible study? Didn't we plant churches? Didn't we read the Bible and pray to our children, with our children? Didn't we share the gospel with so -and -so?

Didn't we cast out demons? Didn't we do miracles? Didn't we do this? And Jesus will say, depart from me.

I never knew you. One of the hardest verses in the Bible, and it hinges upon the reality of true faith.

We can deceive ourselves. Many will deceive themselves.

Many means majority will deceive themselves. I don't want,

I wanna be one of the only churches that the many doesn't apply to, but this is a serious thing that we have to consider when it says many will come and he will say, depart from me,

I never knew you. The point of faith is not what you know. The point of faith is if you are known by Christ.

Do you know God or does Christ know you? That is the essential piece of faith.

And if Christ knows you, it won't be intellectual, it won't be a set of data, it won't make you smart to win theological arguments, although you can be smart, you can win theological arguments, that's not the point.

My point is, is that if Christ knows you, his spirit will come in you and it will change you and you will bear much fruit.

You'll have new affections, a new heart. And if this is not happening to you, pray and seek

God and cry out for salvation. Because that kind of faith will burn just as crispy in the fires of hell as any atheism, paganism, or hedonism on that faithful day.

He will say to some who thought that they were Christians, depart from me, I never knew you.

It's worth fearful, trembling examination. My goal in sharing this with you is not to scare you, because the true believer in Christ has assurance that causes us to leap with joy and causes us to cling to the gospel, and the true believer in Christ does not walk around constantly believing that they're going to hell.

But many deceive themselves, and I'm just appealing to you to examine yourselves thoroughly, because this is important.

Jesus did not say, I am the right theology. If you would simply believe in that, get all the grammar right, learn some

New Testament Greek, then you'll be saved, he didn't say that. He said, I am the resurrection and the life.

And if I know you, if I know you, if I've anointed you, if I've saved you, then you will be changed.

You'll have new life. Look at how Jesus continues, this is the second or third aspect of faith.

It's triune faith, gives new life, third aspect is gives eternal life.

Jesus says, everyone who lives, which means life now, and believes in me, belief now, will never die, that's life everlasting.

I'm not going to spend a tremendous amount of time on this section, because we often, in evangelical circus, circles, circus,

Freudian slip, but we often preach about everlasting eternal life and we forget life today, we forget sanctification today.

We want to go from justification to glorification, and most sermons I've ever heard on eternal life were about the life that is to come, instead of how we are to live today.

So I want to focus on that more. But that reality, that reality is true.

Jesus will return, Jesus will return and he will call his people home.

If you're living at that time, 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that you'll be called up, 1

Thessalonians 4 tells us you'll be caught up with Christ. If you're dead, don't worry, he can reanimate your body.

If you're cremated, don't worry, he made Adam out of dust, he can make you out of dust. He will give you new life, new body, resurrected body.

That is what is to come, but let us not forget to live now while we're still here, to live as Christ and to die as gain.

Let us not forget to live now, even while we wait on the hope of eternity. The summary of what faith is, what pistouho is, is whole mind, body, heart, allegiance to the triune

God that changes your life both now and forever. That's a definition now that we've got for faith.

I'll repeat it again, in case you want to write it down or scratch some notes. Faith is a whole mind, heart, body, and will, allegiance to the triune

God that causes life change today and eternal life forever.

It's a definition that we can work with. But it's more than that. We gotta move beyond what just faith is and what faith causes in us.

It causes life, causes eternal life, but we have to now move to what faith requires of us. This is the sort of downhill runway, planes coming into the airport sort of part of the sermon, but we have to talk about what faith requires.

Because Jesus said, if you love me, then you'll obey my commandments. What does Jesus command? What kind of things are we supposed to do when we are called to love

Christ? I'll share with you an example of what faith is. Faith is like a tree.

The root of that tree is Christ. The root of that tree is the triune God. If you're rooted in anything other than triune

God, you're not saved. You're not a tree planted by living water that bears its fruit in season.

You're a tree that will wither and will fade, doubly dead, as the book of Jude says. But if your roots are in Jesus, and if your root is in the triune

God, then the trunk of the tree is what God has done in you. Justification, resurrection, new life.

These are things that God, by his power, has done inside of you because he's planted you by streams of living water.

The fruit that comes out of that trunk and those branches is the result of faith.

Our faith is not in our fruit. Our faith is in the root. But if we have faith in the right root, we will produce fruit.

That's a lot of rhyming there. Maybe that's, maybe I'll write a poem someday. We have to have the right root to bear fruit.

That's the point. John 11 paints this picture perfectly when he talks about what true faith requires.

The first thing that true faith requires, after you've believed in the triune God, after you've had the life change of the

Holy Spirit coming into your life, faith requires a sincere biblical confession.

Jesus asked Martha, do you believe this? He's unlistening from her a confession.

He asked her, do you believe that I'm God? Do you believe that I am the power of the resurrection? Do you believe that I'm the only one who could ever give you life?

These are asking her to confess her faith. Confession of our faith is a biblical necessity.

Biblical faith always requires a response. There is no such thing as a private, quiet, silent

Christian faith. Jesus says, if you're ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you. Faith requires confession.

And look at how she responds to Jesus. She responds with a faithful confession. She said to him, yes,

Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, even he who comes into the world.

This is not a meaningless point. Jesus asks her the question. He's God, he knew the answer.

He knew already what was in her heart. He asks her to get her to share the confession because confession is necessary.

Necessary for Mary here, necessary for Peter in John chapter six when he says, are you gonna leave me too?

And Peter says, where can I go? You have the words of life. Jesus knew where Peter was at in his heart, but he had him speak it because there's something about us saying what we believe in our heart that makes it real to us.

It's a grace to us that he has us confess the faith that he's given us. He knows what it is, he gave it to us.

It's not like he's saying, tell me what the thing is that I gave you again. No, he knows what it is, he thought and paid for it.

He deposited inside of you. He's asking you to confess it because it's good for you. It helps you, makes you grow.

After conversion, you and I grow in confession. We come to know him more, transformed by him more.

We become more capable of speaking the truths of the word of God. And we do that in a variety of different ways.

The means of grace, we talk about the means of grace a lot here at the Shepherd's Church. Do you know what the means of grace are?

If you don't, I wanna tell you because they're really important. The means of grace are the conduits by which

God brings grace into your life. You imagine someone laying in a hospital bed with an

IV in this arm and something else in this arm bringing the nutrients into them that they need.

God is giving you things that if you will connect with them, if you will appropriate them, if you will use them, if you will make use of them, they will bring grace into your life.

What is that? That's the Bible. If you will just sit down with, instead of Facebook, oh, put your face in this book.

If you will do that, God will bring grace in your life. If you will pray,

God will bring grace in your life. If you'll go to a church consistently where Jesus says we're two or more gather in my name, there

I am, you will experience more grace in your life.

There's no place on earth except the church that God has said I will be there consistently, every week in a special, unique kind of way.

There is no place, your yard, the football game, your kids' soccer match, your vacation.

I go on vacations too. I go to church on my vacations though because God is coming in to be with his people at the church.

And it's better than any place else on earth that I could ever be. That's not a rule, that's not legalism, that's a desire that we grow in as Christians.

God is here in our midst in a way that is better than anywhere else on earth until we get to heaven.

The church is a picture of heaven. It's a means of grace. The sacraments where we feast upon the bread and the wine, that's a means of grace.

Baptism is a means of grace. All of these things are means of grace in our life. So if you want to grow in your confession, confess him in the means of grace.

Confess him in the way you read the scriptures. Confess him in your prayer. Confess him in your worship. Confess him in the way that you talk about him to other people.

Confess Jesus and you will grow in your confession. There's another way, a very forgotten way that we can grow in our confession and that's through confessions.

I'm gonna take a moment just to give a little plug for the reformed confessions because they're so necessary.

When I went to seminary, I had never heard of catechisms. I thought that that was some kind of animal abuse.

I didn't know what they were. I didn't know what confessions of faith were. I was in my last year of seminary when

I had to take a class on spiritual formation and I was too busy taking classes about Jonathan Edwards and the

Reformation. I was like, let me take something else but I had to take this class and it just so happened that this class was on catechetical training.

I was like, this is gonna be such a bore and I took it and the first thing that the professor told us to do was to write a paper on one of the confessions of faith.

So I went home and I was like, what are the confessions? And I came upon the

Heidelberg confession or the Heidelberg Catechism and I read it.

The very first question, what is my only hope in life and in death, that I am not my own, that I belong to my faithful savior,

Jesus Christ. I was like, oh, that's good and I kept reading and I kept reading and then eventually,

I started talking to other people about it. Derek and I, eight years ago, were meeting at Panera at a restaurant that I really don't like but we were meeting there because of the confession, because the catechism, it changed me.

So ever since then, I've been reading these sort of reformed confessions that succinctly and biblically and accurately tell me what it is that Orthodox Christians believe.

See, the Bible is a 66 book book. It's a book of books.

It's a lot of material. How do you, as a person who goes to work 40, 50 hours a week who has a family, who has demands and has everything, how do you understand what the entire

Bible says? How do you grow in what the Bible is trying to teach you? Well, these confessions were written by godly men in church history that say, this is the essence of Christianity.

They're short, they're consumable, they sound high and lofty, confession of faith, but they're not, they're accessible and they teach us what biblical

Christianity is. If you wanna grow in what you know about Jesus, read a confession. There's many of them.

The church, Shepherd's Church, we have decided that out of all the reformed confessions, the

Westminster Confession of Faith is our confession. That tells you what we believe. That tells you what we will preach on Sunday mornings.

That tells you what our small groups will look like, what our prayer time will look like. The reformed, the

Westminster Confession of Faith is the one that we say that that's ours. And not because it replaces the

Bible, it's like guardrails that keep us in biblical orthodoxy. You watch a child playing bowling with the bumper rails up and the ball's da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da, bam, hits the, and they're so excited, they're like, look at what

I did, and you're like, sure glad those bumper rails were there. That's us.

We need bumper rails to guard us. If we just say, I'm a Bible Christian, the

Bible's my only confession, well, look at how the Bible's been twisted throughout church history. Look at how people have made the

Bible a weapon or have misinterpreted the Bible and have come up with a million different doctrines, 25, 30, 40 ,000 different denominations.

We need guardrails in our life because we're frail. The Westminster Confession, the

Heidelberg Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dort, the Apostles' Creed, the

Nicene Creed, these are confessions, creeds, and catechisms of the church that help you grow in your faith, and they're on our website.

If you go on the Shepherd's Church and you meddle around on it for a little while, you'll find that the confessions are there.

Westminster's there, Heidelberg's there, Canons of Dort are there, they're all there. Take some time and read them. Put them into your quiet time.

You would say, well, that's not the Bible, but they're so saturated with the Bible and they have lists of how the verses are being used, you could read the confession and then you could chase down all of the different Bible references and 20 minutes of your life would be dedicated to this deep dive into the word of God just by looking at the

Westminster Confession of Faith or the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Do you know that the

Westminster Shorter Catechism was written for parents to teach their children? Biblical literacy has suffered a lot in our day because I read the

Westminster Shorter Catechism and I'm like, oh, that's deep. That was meant for our children. The larger was meant for the parents, the confession was meant for the church.

Read them. I'm so proud of Derrick and his group, Pastor Derrick and his group. On Monday nights, they go through the

Westminster Confession of Faith. That's their small group. Every day, I dream that I wish that I was in their group, although I love my group.

But what a wonderful use of their time to be in such a guardrail sort of document.

I can't stress it enough. These are helpful for you. Mary confessed her faith.

We are gonna be called to confess our faith. Why not use tools that have been given to you to help you grow in your confession of faith?

So that's my excursus on that. That's my plug for confessions. Martha confessed her faith.

We're gonna be called to confess our faith to Christ, but we're also called to confess our faith to one another.

Now, I wanna introduce another term here just for a second because this is an important distinction.

We're called to confess our faith to Christ. It's me and Jesus. But your faith is not just you and Jesus. Your faith is also,

I'm gonna confess my faith to other people. That's what I would call confessional evangelism and confessional discipleship.

Confessional evangelism is taking what you know from Scripture and sharing it with someone who doesn't know

God. Confessional discipleship, which is what's happening in this chapter, is taking what you know of God and bringing it to a believer who's struggling in their faith.

Look around. All of us here are on this rollercoaster ride of faith.

We come to church and we pretend like we're okay, don't we? We put on our Instagram story face and we look like we've got everything together.

Most everyone in this room is dealing with some sort of brokenness, if you ask them, and if you dig down deep. We confess our faith to one another because we encourage one another, we bear one another's burdens, we love one another, share the gospel with one another, care for one another, serve one another.

And this is exactly what we see Martha doing in verse 28. When she had said this to Jesus, when she confessed her faith to him, she went away and called

Mary, her sister, secretly saying, the teacher is here and is calling you. I want you to notice something about Martha.

Martha did not stay with Jesus. She left Jesus standing there to go tell someone else the good news that she just learned.

Isn't that a fascinating thing? When we think about what would I be doing, I would probably be like,

I'm not leaving. I want to ask you a bunch of other, I got a whole list of questions I want to ask you. I want to hang out with Jesus.

She left Jesus standing there while she went and got her sister. That, I think, is one of the most beautiful pictures of what it means to be a confessional

Christian. Discipleship is not being an intellectual scholar who knows everything about the

Bible so that you can teach everyone else. Biblical disciple is someone who shares the hope that they have in Christ with those who have no hope, who are broken.

You look at Peter and his brother Andrew. Andrew met Jesus in John 1 for 15 or 20 minutes and he runs to go get

Peter. Why? Because he knew it was better for Peter that if he brought him to Jesus than if he sat there and was gluttonous on the graces of God.

Christians don't make a habit of sitting in their quiet time, sitting in their prayer time, sitting in the graces of God, gluttonously drinking and drinking and drinking to their delight and never sharing it with anyone else.

That's not what Christians do. Yes, we want to, I want to read books all day long.

I don't want to do anything else. If I had it my way, I would live on a house and a thousand acres with a dusty driveway with my family and a million books.

That would be heaven for me. But that would be sin for me because Christians are sharing people.

We take the things that we know about God and we share with the people who God has put around us. That's what the body is.

The body helps each other. When there's one part that's suffering, the other parts come and aid and help.

That's what Martha is doing here. She's taking what she knows and sharing it with the one she loves to encourage her towards godliness.

Discipleship is commanded for all of us, for every Christian. Matthew 28, 18 through 20 says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Jesus has all authority and we don't, so we have to listen to what he says. Now go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you and lo, I'm with you always. Jesus does not say, go into all the world and make acquaintances at a church service.

He doesn't say, do a few back slaps, a few fist bumps and then go home and live your life just how you are.

He says, go and make disciples of all the nations. That's telling people who don't know

Christ about the good news of Christ, but it's also encouraging your fellow brother and sister who are hurting and who are broken.

You think about Mary. Mary, her brother had died four days prior to this event.

The Jews were surrounding her, weeping with her, crying with her. She was broken. I'm sure she probably struggled thinking, is

Jesus gonna come back for me? Is Jesus gonna come? Where is

Jesus? That's the heart of every biblical struggle that you and I have ever been through. When the pain of life kicks you in the face.

When someone betrays you, when someone hurts you, when someone says all manner of evil against you, when you lose your job, right?

When you just buy a brand new house and you're like, what am I going to do? And we weep and we're in tears.

Discipleship is when someone else who is sitting at the feet of Jesus comes to us and says, this is where Jesus is.

Follow me, come with me, and you will see the hope that you can have in Christ.

If you show me a Christian who cares nothing at all about confessing their faith, then sadly,

I can show you a Christian that doesn't have true biblical faith. It's a part of it. It's essential.

There's too many biblical commands. You can't be a disciple if you don't confess your faith, and you can't be a disciple maker if you're not doing what

Martha is doing for Mary. It's important. I know that we don't feel qualified, but there's good news.

You don't have to be. You don't have to be. Jesus is the one who's qualified.

Jesus is the one who saves you and Jesus is the one you will be pointing other people to.

If it was all about you, then you could go to someone else and encourage them with how great you are. That's not what discipleship is.

Discipleship is one beggar telling another beggar where to find the food. You don't have to be real qualified to do that.

You have to be obedient to do that. I also wanna point out here that true faith receives the encouragement when it comes.

True faith receives the encouragement. If you're truly a Christian, when the

Martha in your life comes and you are sad, sulking, depressed, frustrated, angry, bitter, anxious, and everything else, you're locked up in your feels, when

Martha comes into your life, you rejoice in the gospel. You praise

God that someone cared enough about you to come and share the truth of Christ with you, to remind you to stop weeping, to look to Jesus.

That's a joyful thing. How many of you had that happen? Where a friend, a true friend, a true brother, a true sister has come to you and said, why are you so downcast?

Why are you so broken? Why are you wonging in your sin right now? Look to Christ.

Why are you paying attention to what that person said about you? Don't you know Christ has already accepted you?

Why are you living in shame over that sin that was so long ago? Don't you know that Christ has forgiven you?

Have you ever had a friend talk to you that way? If you're a Christian, that's a glorious thing.

If you're a Christian, that's someone bringing you a pearl of great price because you've been playing in the mud.

A true Christian hears the hope that a friend shares to them, and they say, you're right.

Let me repent. Let me turn to Jesus. Let me remember. We don't dig our heels in. We don't attack the messenger.

A true Christian, this is one of the ways that you can tell a true Christian from a false Christian. A false Christian, if you correct them and you tell them, hey, this is not right in your life, they'll get angry with you.

They'll attack you. They'll say evil things about you. They will turn away from you. They will gossip about you.

If someone, and you're reminding them in love of the gospel, and they get angry, it's a sign that maybe they don't have true faith because the

Christian rejoices at Christ. The Christian rejoices in the gospel. There's a humility.

If we're all slaves and you tell me, Kendall, you've got this wrong in your life, you're probably right. And you know what?

You don't even know the half of it because there's a lot of things you haven't seen about me that are probably also wrong that you need to call me out on as well.

A true Christian can have humility when someone comes to them and tells them that this area of your life is not aligned to the gospel.

And you can say, praise God, brother. Praise God, sister. Thank you for pointing me to the hope. We all need one another.

There's none of us who are lone ranger Christians. None of us who figured it out. No one in this building today has their faith figured out.

We need the gospel and we need one another. We need to confess our faith and we need to confess it to one another.

That's how we grow strong in the body of Christ. The next thing that we see is that true faith causes you to run to Jesus.

When Martha comes and tells you that you've got everything wrong, when you're living in your tears, your sorrows, your fears, true faith stands up and runs to Christ.

True faith doesn't buckle under the weight of criticism. It doesn't weep continually when falsely accused.

It doesn't continue to drink out of the troughs of sin. True faith stands up and runs to Christ.

We see that in Mary and that's certainly true for us today. The next thing is that it's a public witness.

Our faith is not private, even though the last 50 to 75 years have tried to teach us two things we don't talk about.

I remember my grandpa telling me that when I was a kid. There's two things you don't talk about, Kendall, God and politics.

I can agree with one of those. We've been taught, we've been conditioned, we've been discipled by our country to shut up about our faith.

We've been discipled to stay quiet. Look at the Gospels. Now we may be tempted because we say,

Martha came to Mary privately, quietly. Mary got up secretly. She walked away.

The Jews followed her because she didn't tell them where she was going. We can look at that and we could say, faith is private, but that's a unique situation where those dear women are trying to protect

Jesus from impending death before his death was to occur. Look at what happens after the resurrection.

There's no private men. The Gospels declare, or the apostles declare the

Gospel and they get beaten for it and they rejoice and say that we were counted worthy to suffer for Christ.

Paul goes into the middle of a city. They beat him to the point that he is unconscious, wakes up, goes back and tells them again.

Then they put him in prison and he says, give me a hymnal. I'm going to convert everybody in here. Our faith is not private.

Our faith is going to create controversy in a world that hates God. Our world or our faith is going to make known

Jesus to people who don't want to hear about Jesus. That's ordinary Christianity, a public, joyful faith.

And that's exactly what we see here in this story, verses 30 through 31. Now, Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha met him.

Then the Jews who were with her, that's Mary in the house and consoling her, when they saw that Mary got up quickly and went out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

My point is, is that she got up and she ran to Jesus. She didn't let the pressure of the moment.

The Jews want to kill Jesus. She didn't let that pressure keep her silent, keep her sitting, keep her quiet. She got up and she knew that others were going to be tagging along, wonder where she's going.

And I'm going to tell you that if you live your faith publicly, people will follow you and wonder what you're doing. Just like it's happening here in this account.

Some of them are going to follow you and they're going to mean you no harm. They're what theologians would call the non -combative reprobate.

They're going to follow you and they're going to say, this person's crazy. They believe in Jesus. I don't want anything to do with Jesus. So I'm going to leave them alone.

And treat them as a pariah. That will happen to you. If you live publicly for Christ, people should not have to ask you whether you're a

Christian. If you're a Christian, they will know it. They will know it by your words. They will know it by your deeds.

They will know it by your heart. They will know it by your witness, your behavior, everything. And when they know it, it will produce a response.

They will either leave you alone and ignore you or they will hate you and they will malign you and they will ridicule you and they will gossip about you or they will be converted.

It's the only options. Especially right now, Mary had a lot of pressure to sit still in that moment.

She had a lot of pressure not to get up and to run to Jesus because she wanted to protect Jesus. Think about the pressure that you and I have now to stay seated, to stay quiet.

Right now, it's Sodom and Gomorrah month, where the flag that was meant to be

God's grace to sinners is flown with pride in our rebellion against God.

And how dare you Christians tell us that that's not true love or that that's not acceptable.

Think of the pressure that we have today to stay quiet, to keep our faith private, to go through the motions and to not share the hope that we have in Christ.

If someone comes up to you and says, what do you think about homosexuality? And you don't say that it's a sin from God that needs to be repented of by the gospel of Jesus Christ so that you can live a new life and leave your sin.

If you don't say something to that effect, you're compromising and you're letting the pressure get you and you're causing your job and your career to be higher than God.

You might get fired. You might lose your job, you might lose your house, you might lose your status, you might lose your friends.

Who's worth it? If Jesus isn't worth it, then just admit that you're not following him, you're following something else.

I know it's hard, it was hard for Mary. It was hard for Paul, it was hard for Timothy, hard for Peter, hard for James.

Every one of them was murdered. John's the only one who wasn't murdered and he was beaten often for his faith.

It's going to be hard to live a public testimony for Jesus Christ, but Christians are not fair weather fans.

I'm a fair weather fan. I started watching Boston in the playoffs. I'm from North Carolina where we don't have pro teams, so I'm a college basketball fan.

I just started watching the Celtics and I'm acting like I'm a true fan. No, I'm not. I don't know anything about any of these players.

I just started watching them because Graham wanted to watch it. That is my story. That's not what Christians are. Christians don't follow

Jesus when it's in season and then go do something else when it's out of season. We are people who declare the gospel when it's in season or out of season, whether it gets us fans in favor, whether it gets us hatred.

We are people who declare Christ because Christ is worthy in all seasons. And it's not just for super Christians and it's not just for pastors.

We are a kingdom of priest. You ever thought about what that means? All of us in this room, if you're in Christ, have been made a temple of the living

God. There's not pastors who are temples. That's just a new kind of Judaism where Christians will come to the pastor to mediate their relationship with God like the

Old Testament Christians went to Jerusalem. You don't have to do that anymore. You're a temple of the living God. Christ is your high priest.

You go directly to the throne of grace. All of us in this room are called as a kingdom of priest and as disciples of Jesus to declare the manifold witness and majesty of our great

God. We're all submitted to one Lord, one Christ, one faith, one hope, one baptism, one table.

We all are submitted to one Lord. Mary doesn't run and kneel down at anything except Jesus Christ.

Look at what she does. This is the final thing we're gonna talk about is a life fully submitted to Jesus. Verse 32, when

Mary came where Jesus was, she saw him and she fell at his feet saying to him,

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would have died. I want you to see something so beautiful here.

Submission to Christ does not require Christian perfection. Submission to Christ doesn't mean that you have to have everything figured out.

How many times have we said in our life, I'll go to church when I clean my life up. I'll pray when

I've got this holiness thing down a little bit more. Martha was crying alligator tears.

She was trying to suppress every emotion in her body. She ran to Jesus and fell down at his feet, still kind of a mess, but she got one thing right.

It's Jesus that we run to, no matter what's going on with us, no matter how we feel, no matter if we're a mess or if we've got things semi together, it doesn't matter, we run to Christ.

We bow down at the feet of Christ. We call him Lord, even when we still have questions and even when we still have concerns and even when we still have doubts.

She says, Lord, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn't have died. She's asking real questions. She has doubts, but she knows where the answers are found and they're found at the feet of Jesus Christ.

True faith is faith in the triune God. True faith is a faith that causes new life to bubble in you right now.

True faith is life eternal that you will spend with Christ forever. True faith produces, transform living in you, confessional faith in you where you confess who

Christ is. It produces evangelism, discipleship. It produces public confession and it produces submission to Jesus.

He is your Lord. That is the kind of mere faith that we're talking about.

C .S. Lewis wrote a great book, we'll end with this, called Mere Christianity. He wasn't talking about how

Christianity is only merely this. He was talking about what is the essence of Christianity?

What is the foundation of it? What is the bare minimum that I must understand if I'm to be a Christian? I'm telling you this message today is the bare minimum that you must understand if you wanna have true biblical faith in Christ.

All the things that we talked about are the minimum. My prayer is that we would be a church that has this kind of faith, this kind of vibrant faith, this kind of love for Jesus that causes us to sing

His praises with delight, the kind of faith that overwhelms our heart. I'm praying that the

Holy Spirit will use this message as a reminder to all of us that if you have wandered, wandered away from Jesus for a season, you're in different pastures than Jesus for a season, that Romans 8, 13 would be true and you would mortify those deeds of the flesh and you would run back to your

Savior. If you're like Mary and you're broken right now and you're hurting right now, someone has died in your family or someone has abused you or spoken evil against you, you don't know how you're gonna make your next paycheck or your next rent payment or whatever your situation is, if life is bigger than you, don't sit in that, run.

Let me be Martha for you and remind you to run to Christ and run to Him with all you've got.

He will make your path straight. He will give you great joy. Lord Jesus, thank you for showing us a picture of what faith is through these wonderful saints,

Mary and Martha. And Lord, I'm so thankful that you showed us a picture, not with a high and mighty

Pharisee, not with a distinguished professor of religion, but with two humble sisters who teach us how to respond to you in true authentic biblical faith.

Lord, I pray by the power of your Holy Spirit that you would make this kind of faith true for us.

Lord, I pray that we would not be content and comfortable with subpar dead faith that gets us by, that gets us from Sunday to Sunday.

Lord, I pray, as you said in Matthew 28, that this world belongs to you. Lord, I pray that Christians would start living that way, start praising you that way, start thanking you that way, start worshiping that way, having a boldness and a confidence in that direction.

Lord, I pray that all of our hope, all of our fears, everything would find its culmination in you, like Mary, worshiping at your feet.