Faith That Believes God

Faith that Believes God

Galatians 3:6-9

just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

The gospel of Jesus Christ was preached to Abraham, in that we are saved by God's grace and our faith that believes God. That is the blessing "all nations" receive through Abraham - we believe like he did, and we are saved. In the same way, you and I are a blessing to "all nations" by our decision to believe God and walk according to that belief, for men are still saved by grace through faith. That fact has always been and forever will be. Without faith, it is (and always will be) impossible to please God - believing that He "is" and that He is good is the bedrock of saving grace. (Hebrews 11:6)

Our flesh and our carnal nature, however, war against the simplicity of faith, always seeking to justify itself through its own goodness and nobility. Therefore, we hear numerous messages, some mixed and some perverted, telling us there are other ways to God and other ways to please Him. Jesus is often left out and relegated to a sideshow in God's plan of redemption (and if I can be pleasing to God some other way, why do I need redemption???). So you will hear none of the rugged, bare truth of our lostness and our desperately sinful nature, little about the awfulness of the Calvary, the Blood of the Lamb - that is left out, no longer central to today's message. It's all about people and their needs, and our responsibility to relieve those needs. We are told we must fix the wrongs, change the world, procure justice, etc. But there is no acknowledgment of our inability to do anything worthy without Christ - and who needs faith when we can accomplish our goals by being good on our own? (By the way, "giving back" is nowhere in the scriptures, and is, in fact, antithetical to Christ and His Word - the world never gave you anything to "give back" but sin. This is the voice of the Anti-Christ).

Believing God is the greatest thing any man or woman will ever do, and this cannot be learned in a day, or in a laboratory, or in any field of our choosing. The Lord will place us in impossible and dire straits, he will squeeze and strain us, He will frustrate and offend us until we surrender to Him or forsake Him. The purity of our faith makes all the training and testing worth it to Him. Even Jesus learned obedience through suffering, and so will we.

You will never hear this message preached by great preachers of the day. What message are you preaching?

Love you,

Pastor Eric