Faith Lesson 23

Today our final exam. We're going to give us A++'s. By the way, we got right down to the very last class, the very last set of notes, so it's going to be okay. Everybody have 23? Is every man able to respond in faith to God's drawing, a man to Jesus Christ?

I refer you to Philippians when the jailer comes in to Paul, That says, what must I do to be saved? Paul and Silas answered, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. They didn't say that you had to receive the gift of faith just to believe, because this guy was an unbeliever. So, would you say then that every unbeliever has the capacity to believe the Gospel?

Yes. I wish we had our Baptist ladies here today. Why? What would they say? Well, if they're by the Calvinistic, five points of Calvinism, they would say you have to be regenerated in order to believe. Or to say, they would say, if you didn't have the capacity to believe, Paul and Silas would have said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Would not have said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. They would have never said that. Do you see that? didn't have the capacity to believe, why would they say it? They wouldn't. So Philippian Jailer, who was an unbeliever, had the capacity to believe.

Personal faith is how we receive the gift of salvation. We talked last week, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, Acts 16, 30. So, there's never, ever a case. Reformed theology is the dominant theology in Christianity today and Reformed theology says that you must be regenerated in order to believe.

That's nonsense. So I don't understand why there would be like missionaries and stuff because it seems like, do you know what I mean? It would be like, well why bother if they don't have this one? Yeah. And their whole premise is they go out in the missionary field and they're looking for people that anybody who gets saved or believes must have been regenerated before.

And it has to do with the total depravity of man. They say that man doesn't have the capacity in his natural state to believe the gospel. Which is absurd. If that were the case, then we can erase this Philippians thing out of Acts. See that? Now we're comfortable with it, but if I were to stand up in front of a Sunday school class at a Baptist church, I'd have arguments. Because they don't think that way. Or at the Third Reformed Church over here, they wouldn't believe this for a minute. because of the depravity of man. What does Romans 1, 19 and 20 tell us about God's role in communicating to all men?

You guys did read it, study, write your notes? What are you laughing at? I'm a teacher, I know what that means. Romans 119 says, That which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, and being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power in the Godhead, so that they are without excuse. So what is God's role in all of this?

He makes himself known. Nobody, no human being from Adam to the last one who isn't saved will stand at the great white throne judgment and say, nobody explained this to me. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. Every single human being, and I don't care if they live way back in the boonies someplace, the gospel message or the message of who God is has gotten to them because it's in the creation and it's in their conscience, okay? That doesn't mean that they're saved, but I'm one of those people that's convinced that no matter who they are, if they will acknowledge God as God and be thankful, he'll get the gospel to them. And oh, by the way, that is his responsibility. And he says in John 15 that the Spirit of God is about his business of convicting the world of sin. He doesn't need this China inland mission to do it. He can do it because he is the Spirit of God. So the conclusion is that God makes sure that every man knows that God exists and knows that God is powerful. Every man knows that.

Now, they may at some point deny all of that and later say, no, I don't think that's true. The problem is, is that every person born into the world, everyone knows that there's a God. Everybody knows that. God was manifest to, had manifested every single person. Every person knows there's a God. Every single person not only knows there's a God, But every single person knows that God is powerful.

Isn't it more like every person has the capacity to know? No, they know. Because that's what it says. It says, that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For God has shown it to them. It isn't that they have the potential. made me known of God, and God has shown it unto them. He showed them. Oh yeah, I mean it's out there. Yeah, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.

But it also said they're without excuse. Yeah, they don't have an excuse. There's no excuse, like they didn't have the capacity, they're without excuse. No, no, I say they have the capacity, they just choose not to. But he's made it known to them. They can't say, I don't know this. They all know it. They can deny it, but they all know it. There's a difference. That's question three.

I'm just thinking of atheists. I know you'd say they believe in something, but it's kind of like They have the capacity to know and to choose to believe in God, and they see everything, but yet they attribute it to other things. Well, you know what's interesting about an atheist? An atheist became an atheist after they were aware that God existed. Afterwards, not before. And Byrne says God doesn't believe in atheists. That's right. And you talk to a person who's an about-atheist who's really in a jam, and they're yelling out for God. They really are. You see that in the military a lot.

Okay, so if Old Testament saints and all they had to do was believe in God. It doesn't say that. What Romans says, what Paul says in Romans, to know that God exists and that he's powerful is in the creation and in their conscience, in them. It doesn't say that he's going to save them, he just holds them responsible to acknowledge him as God and be thankful. It doesn't say that they're saved. hand, the Old Testament. But after, so after Christ came, the only way, now they're saved in that respect, the Old Testament.

So is there any way that people who don't know about, they have faith in God for what they know, it's no big deal, but they don't know about the Gospel, is there that same Abraham was saved or was accounted righteous because he believed what God told him. He didn't tell him about Jesus Christ. He said he was going to bless all nations through him. He just took whatever God said and said, okay. God accounted him righteous.

So I think men are responsible for the revelation that God gives them. Now, let's say we're in 3000 BC and you live in what is now Peking, China. And do you know that God exists and do you know that he's powerful? Yes you do. And you acknowledge that. That doesn't do you any good. I don't know. You're not saved. Well at that point, what's the predominant system that God has in place? Judaism. Right? And so, I don't know how God will save a man then, but he saved lots of guys in the Old Testament, men and women, by them just believing what he revealed to them. And here's the underlying of that question.

It isn't fair for God to send somebody to hell who hasn't gotten a message. That's nonsense. Nobody deserves salvation, not a single person. God does not have a responsibility to get the gospel or any information about himself to any human being, because why? All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All. We don't appreciate sin for what it is. We think, oh, okay, I sinned, but you still have to give me a fair shake. No, you already had your fair shake. You're condemned. It isn't that you're going to go on trial, it's that you were on trial and guess who lost? You did.

When you think about God having to be fair, here I live in 2015 and I have the gospel. Not only that, I've got a King James Bible. Doesn't every man have that opportunity? No, they don't. And they don't deserve it. Read the first three chapters of Romans. But I think you touched on that earlier, you know, the Faranist doctrine.

Yes. The one who is in the deepest, darkest jungle of wherever. Sure. If he has a knowledge of God and a heart that is seeking, the gospel will get to him. You can't put a limit on God that he can't get that to. I agree. He's not limited in that he couldn't drop a missionary, drop a Bible, or whoever at that spot at that time. He's not limited by no roads.

Think about this. Is salvation an obligation on God's part? No. What is it? A gift. It's a gift. It's grace. That means he's not under an obligation to do anything. If he was, it wouldn't be a gift. Did anybody get a Christmas gift from somebody that they didn't expect to get it from? Oh, you guys are all legal. You all got the ones you thought you were going to get, right? Those are really gifts. No obligation. Somebody just decided that they would send you or give you a gift. and you didn't have one back for them. Oh my goodness, isn't that terrible? That's a gift. Well, salvation is like that. I think it's important that we understand going in that the guy across the street here and lives in the White House is not a believer.

God owes him nothing but condemnation. Nothing. Because he sins. He's fallen short. But his desire is that no one should perish. That's right. And he'll pursue anybody as long as possible. He pursues everybody. Right. Even though he doesn't deserve it, God is pursuing him at all times. And he's denying him all the time. Yeah. So it's God's desire that no one perish. That's right. Eternal love for all. It offers the free gifts. It's the denial from the individual that is the key. What's cool about that is that he's doing it in spite of the unworthiness of mankind.

Right. Grace. Yeah. It's all on grace. It has to be of grace. It can't be of any other thing. So question four is explain why salvation is totally the work of God. And faith is wholly the responsibility of man. Okay, I'll make it easy. Let's cut it in half. Explain why salvation is totally the work of God. Because we couldn't do it. Because we're finite. And he is infinite. And it's an infinite act. And only he can do those things. Why does God have to be the only one that does the saving?

I already knew of debility. You can't save me. What is salvation? What is salvation? Saved from the wrath of God. Oh, from Him. Salvation means that I'm not going to suffer this condemnation or this wrath that He has appointed to those who sin. What is sin? It's missing the mark. It's not doing his will. What's the mark?

Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? God. He's God. So in order to be saved, even a guy like Adam, he's got to measure up to God. That's tougher than being a Presbyterian. Or a Catholic. It's really, you can't do it. So the salvation has to be a work of God because he's the one that has to be satisfied. He's the one that has to lay out the parameters for salvation and implement them because we can't do it because we're a creature.

Let's say that you're the only person in the world that sins and you go to God and say, okay, I know I screwed up and I'm willing to give my life for my sins. Would it have been good enough? Why not? Well, any time we do something to contribute to our salvation, it makes God's worth unnecessary. Well, it would seem that way. I guess maybe that wasn't the right word, but it makes... Then why would he have to have, you know, why would he have to provide salvation? if we can do it ourselves. Why does he have to be the one that provides the salvation? Why him? Because he's the one that's been offended. Now, think about this. If I, as a creature, offend the one who created me, then I don't possess, as a creature, the ability to satisfy the offense. Does that make sense? I've used this in the past.

Come over to my house, my dog bites you in the leg. And you come to me and say, I need satisfaction about that. And I say, go talk to the dog. And what does the dog do? He wags and does his thing, but he can't satisfy the fact that you were insulted by him because he's a lower level of creation than we are. You see that? So when we as a creature insult the holy God, who's going to satisfy him about that?

You can't. It's got to be him. That's why Christ became a man and died. So he provides the salvation. To say that another way, God could have just sent condemned all of us to damnation. He did. We were condemned to hell. But the offense would still have existed. No. Well, if Christ doesn't come. If Christ doesn't come, yeah. But let's say that Christ did come, which he did, and he dies on the cross, he's buried, and then God raises him from the dead. So now we know from that act that God was satisfied with the insult to him was satisfied. And God says, OK, I'm done.

He could do that. He sure could have. And he'd been totally right in doing it. You know, you bummy creation. Right. And then he could have made us again, and the same thing would have happened. We don't know. Probably. It might have been. Well, if he would have given us a choice, because it did, and so that's who we are. It'd be like, great, here we go again.

But the same thing happened to the angels. A third of them had an opportunity somehow to exercise their trust in God and turn from Him. Their problem is that they don't get to take part in the redemption. But God didn't have to do it. At the point of the resurrection, He could have said, see ya, I'm done, I'm satisfied. Me and the Holy Spirit, my son, are going on into eternity and you ain't coming with us. See ya. And I got this really hot place called hell, you're all going there. Because you really did upset me by sinning.

Has no obligation. But he does it and that's what makes it gracious. No obligation to offer salvation. If there's any obligation, it isn't grace. It has to be free. Second part of the question, faith is wholly the responsibility of man. How come? Explain that. Because it's a choice.

I guess if we didn't have the choice of faith, then there would be nothing. Then God would say, oh, here's faith for you, and then that wouldn't be your chance to say, Oh, I recognize that you are God and I'm not. Can anybody stand before God and say, I wasn't given the gift of faith? We've already determined that's not true. Because everybody has the ability. No one will ever say that. Everyone will say that all men have the responsibility to believe, right?

What's the word responsibility mean? It's an easy definition. It's the ability to respond. So God offers his salvation on a grace basis and here it comes and he says, you have a responsibility now because I've acted in grace, what's your responsibility? To believe.

How much credit do you get for that? A lot? Oh, yourself. How much credit do you get for this? You get a good reward, but you don't credit? What do you mean by credit? There's no merit in it. Yeah, how much merit is there in your faith? None. None? Why not? Why isn't there any merit in your faith? The focus is the object. Yeah, the merit is in who you believe in and what you believe, not in the fact that you believe. You see that?

It has to be that way because it wouldn't be gracious if it was any other way. You know, when someone says, well, I believed in the gospel and then things got pretty tough so I turned my back on God. And so at some point they're going to say, you know God, and God's going to say, wait a minute, you believed and you got the gift of salvation.

And what you did from that point forward doesn't matter because it was a gift. salvation is God's deal, not yours. Your entering into it is based on your faith, which is a non-meritorious act. So when you become a Christian by faith, and then you start to read and learn about all these other wonderful things that are ours, and we believe them, they're still on the same basis. Everything is provided for us by God. That's why positional truth is so important. You need to find out what God has done and then what does he say to you as a Christian? What's your responsibility? To believe him. Do nothing else. Don't need any spiritual push-ups. You don't need to go to the mission field. You don't need to act like a Christian. You just need to believe me. That's it.

It may sound apathetic when somebody says that, The gospel and positional truth and the grace will have a profound effect on your life. You find out that, well, I am saved, but what did I get in that package? What came with that? Well, Schaeffer says 33 things. I've got another list that says 210 things that came with the gift of salvation. What did you get? And you earned none of it. None of it. Because, real simple, salvation is God's doing. Your responsibility is to believe what he did. You have nothing to do with salvation. Nothing. He did it all. I know, it assaults your ego, especially you Republicans, you don't like that.

I guess I look at, when it comes to that, what you're talking about, I look at Galatians 2.21 and that kind of helps me to kind of cut the knife for, you know, my works and God's grace. You know, there's nothing, and I think that we struggle with that all the time, you know, thinking that we need to do better. I'll show you another place where it is that I think is At least initially, a complicated verse to understand, but I don't. I don't think it's all that tough.

How do I say this? God is pleased to save those who believe. It pleases Him to do that. See that? I'm looking at Romans 3.16. And here's the verse. It says, It, which is salvation, is of faith that it might be according to grace. Therefore, salvation is of faith that it might be according to grace. Grace is the principle. How do you get in and function under the principle of grace?

The only way to do it is by faith. That's the only way to do it. There's no other avenue. You all right with that? I know it is. Courtney and I have taught a grace class a couple of times and one of the things we discover in that class is there are people that really get nervous about grace and they actually get angry about it. You know why grace makes a person angry?

Because you can't pay it back. There's nothing you can do. You have no merit. You can't pay it back. The only thing you can do is receive it. How do you receive it? By faith. And especially people who have strong egos, they do not like that principle. They want something to do. And if God won't give them something to do, they're mad. Something other than a non-meritorious act.

Ephesians 2.8 By grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. Salvation. It is the gift of God. Totally gets you out of it. It's not all by grace but the process. Your obligation is by faith. And it's not of ourselves. That's the meritorious. You did nothing in this other than believe. You know what's great about that? It leaves us in the perfect position to grow.

Because the principle doesn't ever change in your Christian life. It continues to be by faith. And it shows what God wants. God wants our whole mind, heart, everything, none of the works, you know, God doesn't want, it just shows what's most important. God wants, like, that decision right there is who you, that becomes who you are. Right. Right. Question five.

Define personal biblical faith. Somebody take a shot at it. What is it? If we go back to the very beginning, you know, be faith, that's our object. That's what we're placing our faith in. Okay. Tell me what it is. Define what biblical personal faith is. It's what we put our dependence on. Okay. Okay. Personal biblical faith is subjective trust. That's where we come in.

It's subjective from within and rest. We do the resting in the objective truth, something that's outside of ourselves from the Word of God. That sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? It's a response on our part, but the key parts of it are the fact that it's what we do, and we do the resting in the objective truth that's outside of us. Personal biblical faith as an object, what is it?

The Word of God. The things of God. The Word of God? The things of God. No. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's the person of God. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Himself. Well, there's biblical stuff before Christ. I mean, the whole Old Testament. But it won't save you. No, but it's personal. You can't say like, oh, I'm just going to ignore the whole Old Testament.

Right? Isn't that part of the Bible? Oh yeah, it is. It is. But personal faith is believing in the personal work of Christ from Genesis 1-1 through Revelation. Who's it about? It's about Christ. The whole thing is. So here's, define personal unbiblical faith. define personal, un-biblical faith. And you think you have to work for it? No, no work. Would it be everything you believed until the time that you believed on Christ?

How about this? It's the subjective trust in the ways and wisdom of men, or man, which is assumed to be reality, and actually is uncertainty, resting in man's unrest." How do you like that? I like this, it is the subjective trust in the ways and wisdom of man. That's really what it is. So what's the point here? What's the object of your faith? Is it the Lord Jesus Christ, and like Marla said, the Word of God? Or is it in the ways of men? Is it in man's wisdom? Self.

How reliable is self? Well, up until you begin to grow some, and the Spirit of God comes and shows you how reliable self is, you think it's pretty good. The problem with self is, it's an un-biblical object for me and you. If you're walking in un-biblical faith, you're walking with the object of yourself. That's what you're doing. Self-sufficiency, self-worth, self-wisdom, self-esteem, you name it, all the selves, that's the way unbiblical faith is. You're the object of your faith.

So then could you say that personal biblical faith is never complete until we go home to be with them? Oh wow, what a question. What do you think? Because the essence is always complete. The faith is always complete. The principle of faith is always complete. Our apprehension on the earth, is it ever completed?

Well, how do I say this? 13 mentions faith, hope, and love, and it kind of mentions faith and hope as something that has an ending point, which would be in glory. I would say it this way, to answer your question, that if Christ is the object of our faith, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we initially get rolling and get going on the biblical things, you know, Christ died for our sins, But that, like Miles Stanford used to say, that faith goes from biblical fact to love and affection with a person. So as that love and affection is fostered and built up by the Spirit of God, I would say that the focus is on the person, and that completes the circle, so to speak. That no matter what the circumstances are, I may not even know the biblical answer to a circumstance, but I trust Him, no matter what.

So are you talking positional rather than conditional? No, I'm talking conditional. Yeah, I am. Yeah. Why are so many teachers, you know, they may have this much of the truth that they miss. Well, they haven't been coordinating my class. I think it's a couple of different things. It's completed when we step into eternity on a couple of different bases. We have spiritual growth and we're being conformed.

That never ends until we step into eternity. So that's a process that's always going on, so that the biblical faith goes until. The other is, biblical faith is things unseen. When we step into eternity, we see. It's done. I think it's a process. We never get to a final finality of biblical personal faith until we step into eternity. Because it's not faith anymore. It's not faith, that's what I'm saying.

It ends because things unseen are 11-1. Well at that point we see. And it would be like, like you're saying Donna, it's like if it got done while we were here, It's like you probably can't think of one example of one person that that happened to. No, it's true. Because that's the way God has us function. It's spiritual growth. That's why it's growth. We never stop growing. This leads right into the last two questions, then we're going to be done.

So Hebrews 12.2 says, Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, where it says fixing our eyes, you could say looking away unto Jesus.

So the question is looking away from what to what? From self to Him. So we look away from self to the Lord Jesus who is the essence of faith. We look to Him. When we're wrapped up with self and self-interest and all this self stuff, self-pity and trial circumstances, all those things in the context of Hebrews 12, it says that these weigh us down. They just weigh us down. The goal is, wonderful goal, to look away from all of that to Christ. Therein lies the tough part. That's the tough part.

One of the reasons, and one of the big reasons we actually have Sunday school So that you can learn what to look to. You can learn to trust them in circumstances. Because there isn't any circumstance you'll find yourself in that the Bible doesn't have an answer for. If it has an answer for self, what's the answer for self?

Death. Whack. Crucifixion. What happens when we look upon Jesus and behold him by faith? What happens? Did I give you a hint of 2 Corinthians 3.18? Beholding as in a mirror, with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord? What happens?

We are changed into his very image, even as by the Spirit of God. That's the cool thing, and probably goes more to answer what Donna's talking about. The Holy Spirit is forming Christ within us, and the Holy Spirit manifests outwardly what's being formed in us. What are we doing? Nothing. We're beholding Him. That's what we're doing. We're beholding Him.

What's the mirror? God. Most Christians don't understand that the Word of God is a mirror in which you behold a person. They think it's a book of facts in which to garner historical testimonies and all kinds of cool stuff so that you're going to always have the right answer. What it's really is the mirror That reveals Christ. Last question of the whole course. Is the Lord Jesus Christ your rest? Subjective question.

Thank you for the class. It was great. We enjoyed it immensely. We will see you next week. Not everybody, but some of you. Let's close. Father, how we thank you that you have placed in the system of grace and we enter into it by faith. And we can rest. And I suppose that the most, the thing that's missing most in every human being's life is rest. So you promise that if we came to you, you would give us rest. And you promise that as we behold your son in the word, that we would be able to rest in him. And we thank you, Father. We pray in his precious name. Amen.