I wear a tie because as a seminary graduate and a Bible teacher, that's the only way I can tie one on. So. So thank you for coming this morning. We're going to be doing something a little different from our normal procedure at Central Church. We're going to be dealing with a topic rather than a passage as such. And what I want to talk to us about is an issue that has been central in my thought for goodness sakes, how many years I can't even think. I can remember thinking, I wonder what faith is. Well, many years later, I was listening to my favorite professor, who was from Charleston, South Carolina, where he said men eat rice and worship their ancestors. And he defined faith as are you ready for this? Are you ready? You're sure? All right, all right. No titia, as sensos, and fiducia. Amen. Solved my problem, did it, yours? As we start thinking about faith, I was teaching at a men's conference a number of years ago, and a uh member of the church that I attended was there, and he said, Jim, after the after my time on the platform, he said, Jim, you're a good teacher, but we need to make a few tweaks in your teaching. And I said, Okay, what? He said, Well, um uh if you uh if you will put more application in your messages, it'll it'll make a whole lot of difference. And so I have titled this uh is anyone controlling the the PowerPoint? Ah, here we go. I have titled this Faith. Why talk about faith? All I really need to know is what I'm supposed to do. Amen? Yes? Well, one of the reasons, let's uh let's go to the next slide here. One of the reasons, and I just discovered this yesterday. I this is new information to me. Um law or commandment, those terms are used 261 times in the old in the Bible in 206 verses. Faith, trust, or believe, and these are the English terms that we use, occur 379 times in 342 verses. Which which do you think we ought to put more emphasis on? Does it make sense? Yes? All right, uh, but I have to ask the question, uh go, yeah. I have to ask the question, what is faith? And I suspect most people have never heard anyone say uh what faith is. Forsaking all, I what's the next word? I don't know what trust him. Um but you're using trust, which is a synonym for faith, and I don't know what I don't know precisely what trust means. Does that make sense to you? Yeah? Um so one of the things I've got to deal with is what faith is. Um among other things, we uh we say, and let's go to the next slide, um, trust involves reliance on another person. This can include, for example, believing what they say, depending on them, or being willing to take risks that hinge on them uh coming through for you. And this is a pretty good definition. As we shall see, what we're gonna develop from the from the Bible uh is gonna lead to this specific outcome. All right, but there are some steps that we need to take to go on to the uh uh uh to the the meaning here. So, what do we mean when we encourage people to believe in Jesus? Well, we think we know, but I'm not sure we do. So if you'll go on to the next slide there, believe in Jesus can mean accept the fact that he lived and did things written in the Bible. That's just historic acknowledgement that God, Jesus, did exist. Uh I'm interesting fascinated with ancient history. There's a guy named Tom Holland who has written a number of really good historical books on uh ancient history. He's an atheist, but he believes in Jesus. That is to say, doesn't believe there's a God, but he believed Jesus existed and probably did die, and then something happened, he's not willing to say what it is. So if you ask Tom Holland, do you believe in Jesus? And he'd say, Well, yeah, I believe in Jesus. But that's not saving faith. Would you grant that? So I have to say more than believe in Jesus, because if if I say this, I may get simply the answer of an atheist who believes that Jesus did live. He lived a very good life, he was exemplary. Uh this Tom Holland will grant all this. He was exemplary. Uh and he had a major impact on the world, obviously, through the ministry of his uh followers. But rising from the dead, nah. Can't even believe that. Um so surely we mean more than what we've just said. Uh thus uh two ways of defining a term exist. Whenever you think about a word and you want to define it, there are two ways you can do it. One is through a formal definition. That's what we gave earlier, a formal definition. Another way to define a word is to give components of the meaning of that word. And here are the uh the uh four components that we're going to be talking about. Um uh knowledge, assent, love relationship, and hope. Okay? Are you with me here? All right, um we talk about knowledge, um all of us know the saying um, knowledge builds uh puffs up, wisdom builds up. You know, some variation of that saying. So what are we talking about here? Well, folks, I can't trust somebody I don't know. Yes? Yeah? Uh then how come we can survive driving in Memphis? And that and the answer to that is uh uh we have experienced driving in Memphis long enough to know that for the most part people are gonna they're gonna do strange things, but for the most part they're gonna stay in their lane, for the most part they're gonna stop at a red light, yes? And so we trust the aggregate of people in Memphis, although there are people who won't do those things, and so we can't trust everybody, but we trust the general driver on the highways, the general driver in the city. So um knowledge of that is to say, experience of driving over the years that we have driven uh gives us a clear indication. Yes, most people are trustworthy because they don't want their cars beat up. Uh but but not all knowledge leads to faith. Uh we need knowledge of two things about God, and they're here on the screen: his character and his plan. Um I need to know the character of God. One way to get at that is to go to some of the old uh statements of faith, one of which is the Westminster Catechism. And in the Westminster Catechism, there's a question: what is faith? And the and the child or the person being catechized is taught to say, um, uh, I'm sorry, what is God? Did I say faith? I'm so focused on that. What is God? And and the and the answer in the catechism is God is a spirit. Yes? All right? Infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. So there are 11 truths about God that we are called by the Westminster Catechism to embrace, and from embracing them, we will come to know something about God. That is to say, I will know the characteristic that, characteristics that the Bible claims God has. You might quibble with whether that's a complete statement or not. That's not really the point that I'm making here. The point I'm making here is I have to know, folks, you can't trust people you don't know. Yes? So if I know a person, um I may know where they live. But that doesn't tell me the anything about the person. Yes? Um jerks live in fancy houses, and jerks live in low-rent apartments. Amen? Yeah, and jerks speak from pulpits from time to time. Uh so merely being acquainted with a person is not the issue. Then it is to know what to expect of that person, what what kinds of behaviors, what kinds of responses can I can I uh count on from this person. Uh some of you have heard this illustration before, and I apologize for the repetition, but I was I only had this experience once, and that was I was about six, we were in a um a pool, my parents and I were in a pool in southern Oklahoma. Um it was at the base of a waterfall, and yes, there are waterfalls in Oklahoma. I want to I want to affirm that. Uh and my dad was trying to teach me how to float. Okay, he had his arms out like this, and I was lying across his arms. And I remember thinking, why am I afraid he's gonna drop me? But I'm terrified that he's gonna drop me. And he said, just trust me. What I didn't know at the time, found out many years later, was that my dad was not trustworthy. Okay? Are you with me? I don't, I apparently, as a six-year-old, I had already picked up on that. Does this make sense? Um, even knowing a person may mean that you can't trust them. Right? But knowing, but trust is not possible unless you know the person. So, um, first is the character of the person. Why we have the Bible in part is to tell us what kind of person God is. So in your Bible reading and in your Bible study, one of the goals that you ought to have is what is this passage or section revealing about the character of God? What is it telling us about the character of God? Um but secondly, I need to know the plan of the person. Yes? Are you with me here? What is his life pattern like? What's this person working toward? Is this something that I can get involved in and and still trust such a person? Uh this is what we face when we talk to investment specialists. Yes, I know the plan, but I don't know whether the the specialist has the understanding to actually carry out the plan, uh, or if I'm gonna get bad advice. Uh do you some of you are old enough to remember the Gidget movies? Yes, some is and some ain't. Uh uh Gidget was asking advice from an older man on the beach. He said, Why are you asking my advice? If it's good advice, you won't take it. If it's bad advice, who needs it? Are you with me here? So there are places you can go to get advice that are not useful. Right? Uh what we're what we're going to say, and what you what you want me to say about the Bible is it is a trustworthy record of the work and and plan of God. The character, what he has done in the past. Uh, and this is so important to me. Uh, any of you who come on Wednesday nights or Sunday mornings with with us up in the Galileans class have heard this a thousand times, and this is a thousand and one, so forgive me. Folks, you need to know the work of God, what he's done in the past. Because what God has done in the past, first of all, is a reflection of his character. Right? But more importantly, God repeats the things that he's done in the past. What God has done in the past is a model and a promise of what he will do in the future. There's a caveat on that, and that is he's too creative to do the same thing the same way twice. It's going to be similar, and similar enough that you will identify the similarity. You'll think about it, you'll you'll recognize it. I was writing an essay on uh uh David and Goliath a number of years ago, and as I was studying the passage, um one of the things I I thought was, oh my goodness. Here is the chosen but not yet crowned king of Israel going out to battle against an impossible enemy. Yes? Um what does he take with him? Five stones. Why did he pick five stones? And somebody said, Well, Goliath had four brothers. But uh he's he's going out against an impossible enemy with an improbable armament, he has no armament, and improbable um ammunition, and he expects in this, what everybody else expects about this is he's gonna get killed. Yes? What he expects is that God is gonna direct his actions. Yes? Does that sound like anybody else? And he's gonna come back and come to rule the nation of Israel. Does it sound like anybody you know? I heard somebody say it. Who's it sound like? Jesus. Yeah. Same story, different person, different circumstances, far more serious issues involved. Yes? But what God did in the days of David is anticipating what it's he's giving us a pattern in the scriptures to see that pattern worked out subsequently in very much larger venue where much more is at stake. And Jesus trusts his father like David trusted Jesus' father. Yes? All right? So I get to know the character uh by looking at how he's revealed himself, what are the attributes that he has, uh, his plan. I need to know that God is going to repeat things over time. And as he repeats things, when I start seeing the pattern repeated, I know God's at work. So the so the issue is God could ask David to do what no one else in Saul's army would do. No one else in Saul, including Saul. One of the things that you must know about Saul was he's head and shoulders taller than anybody else in Israel. He's the biggest man in Israel. But he won't go out against Goliath. Um, here is an off kind of a side issue on this. Why did Israel want a king? And I get the answer. I got this at Dallas Seminary, I get this here. Well, to be uh to be like the other nations, and that's true, but that's not really the point. A king is a warmaker. Okay? The whole point of having a king uh is, and this this is what they say in 1 Samuel, uh they say that we want a king who will fight our battles for us. Well, instead of King Saul going out and fighting Goliath, he gets a boy who's a shepherd who will go out and fight Goliath. But that was Saul's job. Yes? This is one of the reasons that God would not allow David to build the temple because he's a man of war. He wants a man of peace. And so he waits till Shlomo comes on the throne. Shlomo is Solomon's name in Hebrew. What does it sound like? Shalom. That's what it is. Shlomo. He's a man of peace. Um so the the issue for us is we've got to have two sets of knowledge. One set of knowledge is the character of God, and another knowledge set that we need is what is the plan of God? What is he about? What is he heading us for? It is this that motivates our reading and study of the Bible. You don't read the Bible so that you'll know the stories. You read the Bible so you'll understand the stories. What am I learning about the character of God? What am I learning about the plan of God? How does God lead his people? How has he led them in the past? How does he lead them in the Old Testament period? How does he lead them in the New Testament period? Then how is he going to lead us? Because his character hasn't changed and his plan hasn't changed, then how does he lead us today? And it's pretty much gonna be the same way. Yes? All right. Um, so let's talk about knowledge. We've just been doing this. It is this knowledge that motivates our reading and study of the Bible. If in our reading and study we do not encounter the truth about God, it is all useless. There's no sense in reading it if all you're doing is checking off a box. When I was a kid, we had uh offering envelopes, you put your tithe in there, and there were, what were there, six boxes at the bottom, present, on time, Bible brought, uh, and and one of them was attending church, and so I checked them off. I I I didn't read my Bible daily, but I checked it off because it would look bad if I didn't. So um, but I didn't have a reason for reading the Bible, it was just stories. These are not just stories, the most powerful thoughts you have ever encountered were in the middle of stories. Are you with me? Uh the movies that most affect you have great stories. Yes? And, folks, is it for nothing? Sometime this afternoon, take your Bible and uh turn to the the uh narrative books, the beginning narrative book, Genesis, and then put your finger there, and then turn to uh the ends, the end of 2 Chronicles and see how many pages are given to narrative in the books in the Old Testament. Then go to the New Testament, do the same thing with the Gospels and Acts. Folks, it's a huge percentage of the Bible is story. And if we don't think about how story works, we're not going to understand what God can do, what God has done that reveals his plan and his character. And if he can do these things and has done these things for those who trust him, then we can trust him today with the one caveat that he never does the same thing the same way twice. It's always going to be a surprise. I'm convinced that God loves surprises because he holds back so many things that when they finally come to pass, and many of you have lived long enough to see this, things that you thought in early life were just disasters, turned out to be incredible blessings. Yes? So I gotta have knowledge of this God, of his character and his plan. Second, assent, and this is a word I find I consistently have to define for people. So when we talk about assent, if I read the Bible and come out thinking, what hogwash, I have no assent to the message of the scriptures. Yes? But if I come out and say, boy, that was a good story, and then I forget everything about it, I have no assent to the truth of the scriptures. When I assent to the truth of the scriptures, uh, if if you're buying a house or if you're renting your dwelling, you put your name on a contract. Yes? Saying that you assent to everything in the contract. Yeah. So assent is important, but if we stop with this in faith, all we have is an election an intellectual level of knowledge about God. Surely we are to go farther with that. And so I have added here the word carries subtle distinctions worth noting. Assent specifically involves one's understanding or judgment and applies to propositions or opinions, an intellectual or deliberate form of agreement. This is not something that you say, well, yeah, I think that's true. It's it's boy, that's true. Uh this I this is important. Uh May 5th, yes? Is that an important day? Isn't it May 5th? Voting day? Yes? Is that right? Somebody shake your head. Yes, okay. Uh I told my students, uh, if you don't move or smile or something in class, I think you're dead, and we may have to cancel class and call for the mortuary. Wake it up. This I know this is a church, and I know this is a church building, and you're not supposed to do stuff in here. Amen. I can't do that. That's the house of God. Your body is the house of God, so get over it. Uh I've got to go deeper than simply saying, yeah, that's probably true. Yeah. I've got to recognize what we say here in blue, an intellectual or deliberate form of agreement. Yes? Um then, theologians have used a Latin term for the third element. It's very helpful, fiducia. Uh, in Latin, that word means reliance or confidence in a source of help or safety. But we can say more about it. The best I can do with this, and all I can do is say, go read the book of Deuteronomy, especially chapters one through twelve. Uh, what is God really looking for from Israel? And we would say, well, Deuteronomy means second law, and that's true. It has no relevance to the Hebrew text, okay? Because the book of Deuteronomy is not called Deuteronomy in the Hebrew text. Moses never heard that word. It's a Greek word. All right. Um, what he's looking for, and we would all say in chapters 1 to 12, what he's looking for is obedience. Yeah? But that would be wrong. Because multiple times in Deuteronomy he says, um, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, so that you may keep the commandments. Oh, what's the relationship between loving God and keeping the commandments? So that, yes? And that English grammar is uh far removed from our thought. But it can, but if you're a Bible student, you have to learn English grammar. And so that is the result. How am I going to obey God? I have to love Him with all my heart, soul, and strength. So the presupposition of all obedience is love. My wife can ask me to do things nobody else can ask. Yes? Are you with me here? And my grandkids can ask me to do things my wife would never ask. Am I making sense? All right. So when I am in a faith relationship, the Bible defines that as loving God with all your heart, soul, and strength. Hence the Great Commandment, Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5. The Great Commandment remains the same all the way through Scripture. So if faith is what loving God with all your heart, soul, and strength is, then I then this fiducia category was a satisfactory category 500 years ago. It's not a satisfactory uh category today. Well, what I need is I'm entering into a love relationship with God. Yes? I begin to recognize his love for me, and this is why you read the story, is to begin to realize his love for his people. I begin to realize his love for me, and in experience, I begin to experience his love for me. And as I experience that love for me, I should love him more. Yes? So if that's the case, then one of there are two things that are always associated with um uh uh love relationships. First, all love relationships entail changed behavior. When you said I do, you didn't realize how often you would. Am I making sense? Yes, no? Move your heads. Yeah? Um Jan and I got married. We're coming up on our 56th anniversary in two months or so. Uh and we got married eight, what was eight? Uh nine days later, I reported from the Army. It was not until after basic training that we actually lived together finally. But oh my, the changes. Yes? And and she has said to me recently, there are things you do that just I just don't comment on. I I try to keep it keep my mouth shut. And she's right. Uh see, change behavior is not always for the better. Because if I don't know the person that I'm in a love relationship with, and I if I don't know the plan of that person, I don't know how to conform. I don't know how to change my behavior so that I don't I don't um uh uh make an enemy out of the person I love. Is this true? Right? So changed behavior is is always important, but I say again here it's not always for the better. Why not? And the answer is because I don't always know the person, I don't always know the plan. And until I know the person and the plan, I can't change such that it will be fitting to the relationship. Yes? How does that bear on our Bible say? Well, this is the whole point. The reason we study the Bible is not to find out what we're supposed to do tomorrow. What we're to do, what the reason we study the Bible is to come to know our God, to know his character, to know his plan, to love him enough to get to want to get involved in that plan and pursue it and carry it out to the extent that we are able. Yes? All right, but that's not all. Love relationship always entails changed behavior, but secondly, my favorite professor once said this when he was in his 60s. I know my wife. I know that I know my wife. I know that I know that I know my wife. But sometimes I don't know her. And if that's true of another human being, how much more true is that of God? One who is infinite. Yes? I know the Lord. I know that I know the Lord. I know that I know the Lord, but sometimes I don't know him. My aunt was rebellious spiritually all her life. And uh one one uh summer we were coming back from a uh vacation in Colorado, and uh when we got home, um I don't remember whether it was Jan or someone else who called and said, uh, uh Jim, your aunt is in the hospital. She's been born burned over 40% of her body. Um and we went to the hospital immediately. Uh she was in the hospital six months, uh, maybe longer, it might have been nine months. Um and she had skin grafts. She she was damaged the rest of her life. Um and you begin to wonder, well, Lord, what are you doing? Well, in her case, I thought I had an idea of what he was doing. Um she was a rebel against the Lord all her life, and she never could see uh the goodness of God in anything. Our son uh in August last year had a major stroke. Um and he on Facebook his posts are filled, and and this is this is altogether the Lord's work. His posts are about the love that he's experiencing from God in the midst of his recuperation, and the faithfulness of God and the grace of God that he's experiencing. Some of you have read the posts. Um what's the difference between the two? Well, one had no concern for God, the other has always had God in his life, but he's now beginning to understand a facet of God's work and his love and his grace and his mercy and his power through great suffering. Am I making sense? So the the second entailment of faith, of love relationship is risk. Any love relationship is risky. I know my wife, I know I know my wife, I know I know I know my wife, but sometimes I don't know her. Uh it's a risky thing. Um in human relationships, all love is risky. In our relationship with God, there is no genuine risk. But if you've read the Bible, you know that he leads his people into really tough situations. He has called us to embrace a plan that may risk our risk our lives. I don't know where the end came from there. May risk our lives. Are you with me? I just just several months ago I completed teaching the Gospel of John. I don't know how much teaching I actually did, but I finished commenting on the Gospel of John. And the Gospel of John just it hit me in a way I've never seen that gospel before. Jesus is telling his disciples, you're going to go through the same things that I've gone through. I hadn't seen that in John before. It hadn't hit me that way. And as I was reading through the upper room discourse and teaching through the upper room discourse, I thought, Lord, can I, do I have a faith that will endure these things that you're talking about? And what I was reminded of immediately is you don't have the strength now. You don't need it. But God has promised to provide the resources when they are needed. This is something that is risking on God. Is God going to come through? And a lot of us, I am included, a lot of us think, I don't know, that's too big a cost. I don't think I can bear that. Does this make sense to you? He has called us to embrace a plan that may risk our lives. And if that's the case, then where there is no risk, there is no faith. I want you, sometime when you're reading through the New Testament, to watch for the word endure. Blessed is he who endures discipline. Remember this? You don't endure birthday cake. Yes? You don't incur, you do, you don't endure Christmas Eve. Unless you're little and you can't wait till the presents are open the next day. You endure hardship. Am I right? Things you don't like, things you don't want, things you can't understand, but you're called in faith to endure them for the sake of Jesus, that his name may be honored in this world. The fourth component of faith, and the only way that you can endure, is this fourth component of faith. And this is the one the theologians always left out, but it's the key one in Hebrews chapter 1, chapter 11, verse 1. Faith is the substance of things what? Hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I don't see the power of God right now because I don't need it. I don't see the love of God right now because I don't need it. I'm comfortable. Yes? I don't see the power of God when I don't risk on ministry, aspects of ministry that God has called us to. But they seem too risky. So, hope, we I I will define is confidence about the future. How in the world can I have confidence about the future? Pray tell. Because I know because first, you embrace the risk. But you can do that because you've already tried God and found him faithful. Yes? If he's been faithful once, you suppose he's going to fail the next time. You endure, you, you, you, um, you grow to be confident about the future by living with confidence in the known character and plan of God. But you have to know the character of God, and you have to know the plan of God. And thus we study scripture. And by seeing his character revealed in Bibles, in the Bible's history. Rather, uh, yeah, Bible's histories. So why do we read the stories of the Old Testament? Because they're good stories, that's true. But that's not the reason. God is showing us his character in those stories, he's showing us what he does for people who trust him, he's showing us what he does for people who don't. So, what God has done in the past is a model and a promise of what he will do in the future. But he's too creative to do the same thing the same way twice. So you think in the middle of trouble, okay, well, God's gonna do this. No, he's not, because you thought of it, he's not gonna do that. He's gonna do something entirely different. He's gonna it's come from come from left field where nobody expected anything to come from. Nothing is coming from that region, but God brings it in because it will be a surprise. He apparently is a God who just absolutely loves surprising his people. But you and I, and I'm speaking to myself as much and perhaps even more than you, you and I rob him of that opportunity by not taking on the risk. Um I close with three verses. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will bring it to pass. Romans 14, 23, and this is terribly important in light of what we've been saying. Paul says, yes, and everything that's not of faith is sin. So obedience to the law of God without faith is sin. Are you with me? Yes, no? That's why Moses wrote, love the Lord so that you may obey him and keep his commandments. And then finally, 2 Corinthians 5.7. I looked it up and made sure that I knew it. And my memory has failed me once again. For 2 Corinthians 5.7. For we walk by faith, not by sight. I can't see any way through this problem. Good. And God's gonna get it work. I can't see where where I can do this. This is too big. I can't do this. Of course you can't, otherwise it wouldn't be God's plan. But if you'll get involved with it, then you will find that he is faithful to everything that he has said, and he will work out these things for us. Let's close with prayer, Father. Um, I'm revealing my own lack of faith as I talk about all these things. Move me, Father, before I am fearful. Uh, cause us to know that you are reliable in everything that you have said, in everything that you have done, and in everything that you take us through, you are reliable. And in that confidence, let us face the future. For Jesus' sake, we pray. Amen.