Engaging Scripture

How to hear God speak through the Bible

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Many people say they do not hear God. Many others say they do hear God speak. I believe them. God speaks through dreams, visions, audible voices, etc. I’m sometimes jealous of that because I do not believe I have ever heard God speak to me in an audible voice, or in a whisper in my mind, or in an inner impression. But I have heard God speak extremely clearly through the Bible. God speaks in many ways, and one is not better than the other. They are unique and different. A person who hears God speak one way should not say they are more close to God than a person who hears God speak a different way. The point is that God does still speak!

All week long we have been talking about Sola Scriptura, trying to understand why it was so important to the Protestant Reformers.

One important misconception about Sola Scriptura is when people say that God speaks only through Scripture. Is that what Sola Scriptura means? The Bible’s take on Sola Scriptura is not SOLO Scriptura. Solo Scriptura means Scripture ONLY, that God would not speak any other way. Those who hold to Solo Scriptura are reacting quite strongly about the possibility that God might speak through other means, usually because they have seen abuses of power. The Reformers spoke out strongly against those abuses of power in the Catholic Church during the Medival age. But is it right to go so far as Solo Scriptura? Well, let’s take a look ate what Scripture itself says about how God speaks.

God speaks though his creation.

In Isaiah 6:3 we read that the earth of full of his glory.

In Psalm 19:1, we read that the heavens declare the glory of God.

And in Romans 1:19-20 we read this:

Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Scripture says that God speaks through Creation. Of course God speaks a lot more through Scripture, but in Romans 1:19-20 Paul tells us that what God speaks through creation is enough that men are without excuse. When people stand before God one day, and God says to them, “Why did you not choose to believe and follow me?” those people can’t say, “Well, we never had the Bible in our language.” There is enough in Creation, in nature, in the universe to point to God so that men are without excuse.

Scripture is not Scripture ONLY, because God also speaks through creation.

God also speaks through his Spirit.

I’ve already mentioned 1 Corinthians 2:12 where Paul taught that the Spirit of God helps understand the things of God. I also encourage you to read John chapters 15-17, where Jesus talks a lot about the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. There Jesus teaches that the Spirit speaks in many ways. In fact, Jesus said to his disciples that at some point in the future, government officials would take them into custody, and when questioned, the Spirit would help them know what to say. Throughout the Bible, God speaks by his Spirit in dreams and visions.

Scripture is not Scripture ONLY, because God also speaks through his Spirit.

God also speaks through his people.

The Bible is loaded with instances where God spoke through prophets and teachers. Ephesians 4:11-13 is possibly the most important verse that talks about this. There Paul essentially gives the job description of pastors and teachers. But it is not just the fivefold gifts listed in Ephesians 4 through whom God speaks. We all have the opportunity, Paul goes on to teach in Ephesians 4, to speak the truth in love to one another.

Scripture is not Scripture ONLY, because God also speaks through his people.

Look above at the three points. We see that God speaks through Creation, through his Spirit, through his Church. That means Scripture is not ONLY.

So if God speaks in ways other than his word, why is Sola Scriptura so important?

Sola Scriptura is important because it reminds us that Scripture is the foundational way we hear God speak. In scripture alone do we learn the truths of Jesus. Through Scripture, alone, we learn what the church is to be like. Not the other way around. Everything we think or hear must be in line with Scripture.

In other words, “Sola Scriptura,” one scholar says, “is the statement that the church can err.”

Here is another summary of Sola Scriptura that if found so helpful: “Scripture comes into its own when read by God’s people in God’s way for God’s purposes.”

And what are God’s purposes for when we read Scripture?

James 1:22 says “Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”

Jesus himself said in Luke 6:46-49 that the difference between a wise and foolish person is all about whether or not we do what he says.

We are so, so blessed in our day with access to the Bible, and with access to the many, many tools to understand it. We can read it, dig deep into its meaning, review what scholars have studied about it.

But our approach to the Bible should not just be academic, not just reading it to learn trivia facts about the Bible. Instead, God wants us to read the Bible to know him, to know his purposes. We read prayerfully asking God to speak to us through his word. And then we actually make choices to live his way as taught in his word. When we read Scripture we should determine ahead of time, humbly, teachably, to do what it says.

This requires a couple important tasks:

First, we actually need to read Scripture.

How about you? How often do you read the Bible? I’m not talking about the Verse of the Day from a Bible app. That is good and can be very encouraging. I’m talking about something more. We need to read more and longer sections of the Bible. My wife and I love watching Netflix, as do many of you. Discovering new and great TV and film on Netflix has become a cultural fascination. How many of you have participated in conversations online or in person around the topic “What should I watch next on Netflix?” I love those conversations! Discovering hidden gems on Netflix’s vast catalog is so fun. In other words, many of us sit in front of a screen watching hours and hours of media content. Is it possible that would could increase the amount of time we give to reading the Bible?

I was listening to a podcast recently where the interviewee noted that those who say the Bible is boring or irrelevant probably haven’t really given themselves to truly read and study it. Will you? If so, you will find it to speak powerfully, creatively and decisively to our situation in 2017. I’ve been reading the account of Saul and David in 1st Samuel, and I feel like I am watching the 11 o’clock news. It is amazingly relevant.

Second, we need to learn how to read Scripture.

Let me provide a disclaimer. You can open up any contemporary English translation of the Bible, and you’ll be able to understand it. I use the New International Version. But we also need to remember that the Bible is book written by 40+ authors, 2000+ years ago, in different languages, in a very different cultural setting. As I said, we can be so thankful that scholars through the ages have studied those languages, that historical/cultural setting, as well as the genre and structure of the many books of the Bible. What I’m saying is that there are wonderful works by people who love Jesus that can help us read between the lines and understand the Bible much more as God intended it.

Do you want to learn how to read and study it better? I would be glad to point you to some resources that can help you.

Finally, and most importantly, whenever we read the Bible, let us determine beforehand to do what it says God wants us to do.

As we conclude this week of looking at Sola Scriptura, be encouraged by the words of Psalm 1:

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

Are you using the Bible in ways God never intended it to be used?

Image result for bible as doorstop Have you ever tried building a complicated Lego set without using the instruction guide?

Just using the guide can be complex enough. All it takes is to put one brick one spot off, and within a few steps you realize that your model doesn’t look like the one in the picture. So you turn the model around in your hand, seeking to figure out where you went wrong. Then you start pulling bricks off one by one, comparing the model to the instruction guide, still turning it around. It can be maddening when you are unable to find out where you went wrong. But sure enough, in time, pulling off bricks, looking at every angle, holding it up to the instructions, you find your mistake.

But what you would never do is use an instruction manual for a bicycle to try to build your Lego set. You wouldn’t even use a manual from another Lego set. There is only one purpose for each of those manuals. The purpose is to build the set, or the bike, they were designed for.

The same goes for the Bible. And yet we might not realize it. Is it possible that we have expected the Bible to do more than it was intended to do?

What should we do with these Bibles of ours?

It goes back to what we have been looking at all week. Sola Scriptura. Scripture Alone. What does it mean? I’ve taken a long time to say what it doesn’t mean in my previous posts this week. Today I want to start looking at what Sola Scriptura means.

What did the reformers mean when they started using the words Sola Scriptura? They meant that the Bible, not tradition or a church, is our final authority.

To explain this further, they talked about Scripture as having clarity and sufficiency. Let’s look at each.

First how does Scripture have clarity?

A church council that met in 1529, the Diet of Speyer, said that Scripture “shines clearly in its own light.” Scholars tells us that the reformers meant four things about this:

The Spirit illumines our minds to understand Scripture.
Clearer portions of Scripture illumine passages that are less clear.
If there is a part of Scripture that is hard to understand, it is because of our lack of knowledge of the original languages and original context.
If we have been enlightened, it is impossible to miss the meaning of Scripture.

There is much we could discuss about each one of these principles, and many others have done so in book after book. If you want to learn more about any of these four points, I’d be glad to point you in the direction of some resources.

For today, I’d like to comment a bit on the first and fourth ones, enlightenment by the Spirit. It should sound familiar. If you’re thinking, isn’t that what got Anne Hutchinson in trouble? The answer is yes, she thought she had clarity and the Puritan leaders did not! But there is something critical that Anne and the Puritan leaders were each missing. Humility. We need the ability to be teachable. Whenever we arrive at an interpretation of Scripture, at a moment of clarity, we need to be able to say “I think this interpretation is correct, but I may be wrong.” The principle of Scriptural clarity must always take into account our human propensity to err.

So how do we know if we are enlightened? In Ephesians 1:18, Paul says he is praying for the Christians in that city of Ephesus “that God the Father of the Lord Jesus may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you.”

Are you praying for that enlightenment? Are you praying for a clear understanding of Scripture?

We should pray for that clarity as we study Scripture, but along with it, may we always stay humble and teachable.

Second, after clarity the reformers used the words Sola Scriptura to refer to the sufficiency of Scripture.

Scripture is sufficient for everything. But just as a Lego set instruction manual doesn’t work for building a new bike, Scriptural sufficiency doesn’t mean the Bible will help us figure out how to fix the cracks in our church parking lot. Can Scripture tell us what to do if we fall off that bike and skin our knee?

We need to be careful that we don’t expect Scripture to do what God did not intend it to do. The Bible can become an idol. If we expect too much of Bible, and start revering it beyond what God intended, they we are guilty of creating a idol out of the Bible. People call that the idol of Biblicism.

Instead we need to answer the question: “What did God intend for his Word to do?”

Isaiah 55:11 says “…my word that goes out from my mouth…will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

What is that purpose?

2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful to teaching, rebuking, training and correcting in righteousness.”

The Bible is not sufficient to be used for every reason we think it should be used for. But the Bible is sufficient for every reason that God intended it for. What is the Bible sufficient for? One scholar I read said that the Bible is enough to learn about Christ and the Christian life.

That means Scripture is extremely important. God, in the Bible, has given us an amazing gift of being able to learn about him, and principles for how to live out his Kingdom in our world.

Tomorrow we conclude this week’s examination of Sola Scripture, looking at how to apply these principles to our interaction with the Bible.

The time our church was accused with the words: “That’s not worship!”

“That’s not worship.”

The person speaking the words was really frustrated at our church.

They were talking about a change we made to our worship service. In that person’s view, the change had turned our worship service into something that was not worship.

What change could we make that would take a worship service and no longer make it worship? How did this person know what worship is? Were they right?

As I look back on that situation, I see evidence of the tendrils of tradition, sneaking their way into the hearts and minds of people unawares.

This October 2017 at Faith Church we are looking at the Five Solas of the Reformation, because it was 500 years ago this month that a German Catholic monk name Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation leading to sweeping changes in Christianity. The Five Solas are summaries of the teachings of Luther and his fellow reformers. After Sola Gratia (Grace Alone) and Sola Fide (Faith Alone), we have begun to look at Sola Scripture (Scripture Alone). I started by asking questions about the Bible and Sola Scriptura here and here.

To begin to answer those questions, I said yesterday, we need to attempt to understand the religious culture Luther lived in. I am no church historian, so this summary is basic at best.

Luther was trained in the Medieval age of the church, during which time the church placed a high value on tradition alongside of or even above the teaching of Scripture. In Rome, which was the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, there is something called the Magisterium, the group of leaders of the church including the Pope. What the Magisterium said in Luther’s era was given equal or greater weight than what Scripture said.

The problem is that so often the line between Scripture and tradition starts to blur. We can assume that a certain tradition is taught in the Bible. Luther confronted his Medieval church about these blurred lines. He said that if a doctrine or practice is not taught by scripture, it must be seen as just an opinion. He held the writings of the church fathers, and the creeds, church councils, in high esteem, but said they too must be judged by Scripture. Luther taught that Scripture birthed the church, not the other way around. Therefore Scripture should be more foundational than the church.

To demonstrate this, Luther translated the Bible into German, and some believe that was his greatest contribution. He wanted German farm boys, for example, to feel the words of the Bible in their hearts, and that was only possible in their own language.

Prior to Luther, the Bible was in Latin. You had to be a priest trained in Latin to read and teach the Bible. Of course the rare Latin scholar could read it as well. But most people didn’t know Latin. They were Germans who knew German. They were French who knew French. English who knew English. They would go to church, however, and the church service, including the Bible reading would be in Latin! Copies of the Bible were too expensive to own, so in the Medieval age, most people did not have a copy of the Bible, and thus they couldn’t be like the Bereans in Acts 17:10-15 and test out what the priests and church magisterium said. They just followed along.

That meant the church had tons of power. Luther felt they abused their power. One way they abused their power, and this really got under Luther’s skin, was the practice of indulgences. Indulgences were pieces of paper that the church sold to people. The paper was a certificate saying that a person had purchased forgiveness of sins.

The church leaders in Rome were trying to build a big new cathedral. They were strapped for cash to build this monstrosity, so they sent representatives around Europe to sell indulgences. These reps told people that paying money can get your sins forgiven. Would it surprise you to learn that the church made a lot of money? It reminds me of this In Living Color skit (starting at the 9:00 minute mark):

Luther seethed at this. As he should. The church was seriously abusing its power. They were creating a tradition that was not supported by Scripture.

This is very reminiscent of Jesus’ concern with the Pharisees. Jesus would say to the Pharisees “haven’t you read the Scripture?” “Don’t you know what the Scripture says?” Imagine that scene. Jesus telling the Bible experts that they need to go back and read their Bibles! (Matthew 12:3 and 19:4 are a couple examples.) How did this happen? How could Bible teachers miss out on the true teaching of the Bible? It happened because the Pharisees were so concerned about their traditions that they allowed the tradition to be more important than the heart of the Scripture.

But thank goodness we don’t do this anymore, right? We don’t lay any traditions on top of Scripture. We have the Bible in our own language. Like the invention of the printing press made it very possible for Luther and other reformers to get the Bible in the language of the people, we have the internet making it even easier yet! So that means we don’t have any problems with tradition and false teaching, right? We have this Sola Scriptura thing are cared for, right?

Wrong.

That takes me back to the situation I mentioned at the beginning of this post where someone at my church said, in response to worship changes, “That’s not worship.” Here’s what happened.

In 2006-7 we participated in a church health survey sponsored by our denomination, the EC Church.

We took the survey in 2006. Results came back saying that we needed to work on our worship service. So we started making little changes here and there. One of the changes was that we opened the accordion dividers separating our fellowship hall and sanctuary. The dividers are there in case our sanctuary is so full we need overflow space. Normally they are closed. As a result of the survey, we opened the dividers and invited people to sit in the fellowship hall during worship if they wanted. Our thought was that maybe some people wanted a less formal setting.

The accordion dividers were open for one month, and then closed again. Why? Because some people reacted negatively against them being open.

That’s not worship?

It was in a worship committee meeting, as we were reviewing the changes and negative response that the person said, “That’s not worship.” They were adamant about it.

But think about that. “That’s not worship?”

What did that person mean? They meant that a worship service, in their understanding, should only take place in a sanctuary with all the trappings of a sanctuary. And they wanted the accordion dividers closed.

Where did they get their idea of what worship is, that it can’t be in room that has pews on one side and tables and chairs on another side? I can tell you they did not get it from the Bible.

You read how the early worshiped in the New Testament, in the book of Acts and the Epistles. They met in homes. They worshiped on riversides. There were no church buildings and sanctuaries in the Christian church for a couple hundred years. Worship is not about a building, we read in the Bible, but worship is about worshipers, people, who are worshiping the Lord. Not a location.

So what did this person mean when they said, “That’s not worship”?

That person was talking about tradition! They had grown up in and become comfortable with and appreciated a certain kind of worship. There is nothing wrong with worship services in buildings that have rooms with pews and pulpits and pianos or organs or praise bands, or movable chairs, or any of the many variations that sanctuaries in church buildings have. There is nothing wrong with it, but we cannot say that the Bible tells us to worship like that.

That person had elevated tradition over the Bible.

Years ago we did a summer reading club and read Frank Viola’s book Pagan Christianity. It is eye-opening about how much tradition we have placed over the Bible.

Sunday School is another example. You won’t find that in the Bible. But I once had someone tell me Sunday School is the backbone of the church, insinuating that we better not mess with it. That person was elevating tradition over the Bible.

I could go on and on, but instead I encourage you to read Pagan Christianity. Perhaps we are just as guilty of elevating tradition over the Bible, though 500 years Luther warned us of this very thing.

So what do we do with these Bibles of ours? What is Sola Scriptura? By Scripture Alone. What does it mean? I’ve taken a long time to say what it doesn’t mean. Now that we have asked the questions, showed Scripture’s primacy over tradition, we can examine Sola Scriptura, and that is where we’re headed tomorrow.

Is Sola Scriptura broken? (or Can we really read the Bible and hear from God?)

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When you read the Bible, do you think that God will speak to you through it? How do you know that you will understand it properly? What if God wants to tell you X and you believe he said Y?

Does Sola Scriptura mean that any Christian can just open up the Scriptures and understand it by the work of the Holy Spirit in their minds? Do we need the church to interpret Scripture for us, or can we interact with Scripture alone?

We might say, “Yes! We can definitely read the Bible for ourselves and hear from God.” Take a look at 1 Corinthians 2:12. Paul says that we have been given the Spirit of God so that we might understand what God has given us. Seems like that could really apply to understanding the Bible. Actually, it does apply to the Bible. When we read Scripture we can and should pray that the Holy Spirit will help us understand it.

But let me push back on this idea a bit.

Anne Hutchinson’s example is a case about how this view of Sola Scriptura didn’t work. Why?

She felt the Holy Spirit was helping her understand the Bible.

Her Puritan religious community also felt that the Spirit was helping them understand the Bible.

You see the problem yet? They both claimed the Spirit’s help, and they came to different interpretations. Now do you see the problem? If they both had the same Spirit’s help, then shouldn’t they have arrived at the same interpretation?

Would the Holy Spirit give them conflicting interpretations? No. So what was going on in Boston in 1636?

The reality is that Christians arrive at conflicting interpretations all the time, and we have done so from nearly day 1 of the church. So if the Holy Spirit isn’t giving out conflicting interpretations of the Bible, what is going on?

I think there are many possible ways to answer that question:

Maybe there are Christians who claim to have the Spirit’s interpretation, but they actually don’t? I’m sure that happens more than we realize. But how would we ever know who had the Spirit’s interpretation and who didn’t?
And shouldn’t preference be given to church leaders who go to seminary and get ordained, because they have training?
Is it possible that the Puritans were not correct in their teaching of Sola Scriptura, or maybe Anne Hutchinson just misunderstood what it meant?

More importantly, what does all this mean for us?

How many of you own a Bible that is printed in English that you can read on your own? How many of you have the Bible on your electronic device, like the Bible app on your phone?

We believe that we can read those Bibles and understand what God is speaking to us, right?

Are we wrong to believe that? Perhaps we should be a lot more cautious? Should we only get our interpretations of the Bible from ordained pastors, from those who have gone to school to learn the Bible?

To answer those questions, it will be very helpful for us to go back to Martin Luther. His 95 Theses pretty much set things in motion for us to ask all these questions. So to arrive at some answers, we first need to get an idea of how Martin Luther’s religious culture looked at the Bible. And that is where we’re headed tomorrow.

American Jezebel

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Have you heard the story of the American Jezebel? The original Jezebel was an evil queen in the Old Testament. The American Jezebel was Anne Hutchinson who lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636? Her actions threw the Colony into turmoil, and in fact led to a significant exodus of people from the Colony. Who was this American Jezebel?

Think back through our American history, and what famous group of Protestants do you think might have brought Protestant theology to the New World of the Americas, say, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony?

The Puritans. Her bonnet is a giveaway, isn’t it?

This October at Faith Church we have been studying the Five Solas of the Protestant Reformation, as they pretty much summarize this Protestant teaching. We have looked at Sola Gratia, which is Grace Alone, and we have studied Sola Fide, which is Faith Alone. This week we are looking Sola Scriptura, which means Scripture Alone, pretty obviously, and that is what brings us to the story of Anne Hutchinson, the American Jezebel in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636.

Anne was a Puritan. And Puritans really latched on to the idea of Sola Scriptura. In fact one scholar I read says that the Puritans distrusted a group of religious leaders, like the Roman Catholic leadership, that seemed to make tradition equal to or even above Scripture. The Puritans, like the Protestant Reformers, wanted Scripture alone.

Image result for john cotton — John Cotton

Living in England, Anne and her husband came to admire the dynamic Puritan preacher John Cotton. When Cotton was suppressed for his Puritan views, he moved to Boston, and Anne convinced her husband that they should follow him. Are you getting a sense about Anne?

In London the Hutchinsons were people of status, so when they moved to Boston they were considered prestigious. Of course they attended First Church in Boston where John Cotton was preacher.

Through Cotton’s preaching, revival broke out. Anne started hosting small group Bible studies in her house to discuss Cotton’s preaching further. People loved the Bible study. Soon Anne had upwards to 60 people showing up at her house. Her studies started growing in influence too.

Controversy broke out when Hutchinson claimed that Cotton was a true Christian minister, based on a doctrinal dispute. In other words, Anne interpreted the Bible in a way that was different from her community. Given her prestige and the influence of her Bible studies, there were many who began to agree with her.

Guess how the other pastors felt after being told they were not true ministers? Not too happy. You can start to see where the name American Jezebel came from. An intelligent, influential woman, in a man’s world, questioning her religious community’s theology and Bible teaching? This was too much.

Cotton himself was a bit more moderate. When examined by the ministerial community in Boston, he was cleared of heresy. But Anne? She became antagonistic, and the community put Anne on trial. Her supporters were banished, Anne was excommunicated by the church, and the Hutchinsons had to move to Rhode Island.

All because of a disagreement about how to interpret the Bible. What was going on here?

Anne felt that her interpretation of the Bible was correct. The problem was that her interpretation put her in disagreement with her community! In fact, she said that she was inspired by the Holy Spirit when she read the Bible, and her interpretation of the Bible was better than theirs!

In Anne’s way of thinking, she was just practicing Sola Scriptura!

Was she though? Does Sola Scriptura mean that any Christian can just open up the Scriptures and understand it by the work of the Holy Spirit in their minds? Do we need the church community to interpret Scripture for us, or can we interact with Scripture alone?

These are the questions we’re looking into this week. Tomorrow we start to dig deeper into Sola Scriptura.

How to grow your faith

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In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus tells what I think is one of the scariest stories in the Bible. It is a story of people who thought they had faith. But their faith was primarily intellectual, belief. Jesus says to them that something important is missing. They did not have the kind of faith that he said mattered. They didn’t having saving faith. Their intellectual faith was not matched with physical faith. Saving faith has both! How does Jesus describe saving faith in Matthew 7:21-23? People who do what the Father says.

If you say that you have faith, but you do not do what the Father says, you only have an intellectual faith, not a life of faith.

This is why James says “faith without works is dead.” And dead faith will not gain you entrance into the Kingdom of heaven.

And it is in James 2 starting in verse 14 where we learn about this important element of faith. Notice how different James’ conception of faith is. It is not just intellectual belief. James says, even the demons believe. The demons know that Jesus is Lord; they know in their minds what is true. But clearly that doesn’t mean that the demons are a part of the Kingdom of heaven.

The point that James is trying to make is that faith must go beyond belief.

Faith goes beyond belief when we keep pursuing Jesus, when we learn from him how to live. When we place our faith in Jesus, we are saying to him, “Jesus I want you to change me. I am not just believing things in my mind about you. I want my faith in you to be the impetus, the spark of a total life change.”

That change might be over night. But it could also, and I think should also, last a lifetime.

This past week our Faith Church Nominating Committee had the privilege of interviewing candidates for our Leadership Team. We’ve been doing these interviews for three-four years now, and each year during the interviews I am reminded of how they are one of the favorite things I get to do as a pastor. Why? Because we hear the stories of how faith in God has transformed people.

Sometimes the candidates tell a dramatic story of how God radically changed their lives in a moment. Sometimes they tell an equally powerful story of how they were raised in faith from a young age, and they gradually slowly placed their faith in the Lord. When we place our faith in God, there are many ways he works transformation in our lives!

I want to ask you, therefore, to evaluate your faith.

Have you ever really, truly placed your faith in Christ? Can you say that you really believe in Jesus, that he is God, that he died for our sins, that he was raised to life victorious over death? Maybe you’re reading this now, and you’d like to accept the gift of God’s grace by faith. I would love to talk with you about how to do that.

But maybe you’ve already placed your intellectual faith in Christ. You would say that you believe in him. I also ask you to evaluate your faith. Is it just intellectual? Just in your mind? That is not saving faith.

Faith learns from Jesus how to live. As I said last week, and now again, study Jesus’ life, watching for how he demonstrated faith.

Seek out someone whom you would say has great faith. Ask them to teach you how to grow your faith.

Read those stories in the Bible in Hebrews 11 about people who had great faith. Search out the original telling of those stories in the Old Testament, and see if you can learn why the author of Hebrews included them.

Finally, take a step of faith. You can grow your faith by doing something that stretches your faith, your trust in God. Maybe serving in a position in your church, a position you might feel iffy about. Maybe starting up a conversation with a neighbor who you’ve always wanted to talk with about faith, but you’ve been shy. Maybe give a financial gift of faith to the Lord.

Get a faith accountability partner. Each of you make one faith goal, and hold each other to accomplishing that goal.

Know this. Faith is not faith if it only resides in the mind. Faith without works is dead. But you can grow your faith!

An early church MMA match – Faith and Works: Paul versus James, Round 1

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Did you know that the early church had an theology MMA match? James vs. Paul.

Paul said Faith doesn’t work.

James said Faith does work.

Each was an important leader in the early church. Paul its greatest missionary. James the bishop of its biggest church (and brother of Jesus). They really seem to conflict with each other.

I’ve mentioned that Ephesians 2:8-9 is a critical verse when considering Sola Gratia and Sola Fide. There Paul puts these two Solas together, teaching that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works.

But right up against it, we have James 2 who says that faith without works is dead.

What gives? Is faith just in our mind? Just a set of beliefs that we think? In other words is faith “not works”?

Or is faith without works dead? Meaning, if faith is just a set of beliefs in our mind, is it an empty, worthless faith?

Is Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9 a contradiction of James 2:14-26?

I think we need to look at Abraham a bit more. Turn to Romans 4, and let’s take a deeper look at Paul’s description of Abraham’s faith.

Read verses 1-3. Paul says Abraham believed, and God credited righteousness to him.

Paul explains this in verses 4-5. Read this. We employees understand what Paul is saying. How many of you are hourly employees? You work one hour, you earned one hours pay. How many of you are salaried? You work and do your job, and you receive your pay. But when you believe in God, you haven’t done any work, you haven’t earned anything, you deserve no pay, no grace. And this is where grace comes in. Though you don’t deserve it, God credits you his righteousness anyway. That is grace, received by faith, not by works.

Paul talks about this a bit more, but jump down to verse 18. Here he really gets to the heart of the matter. He explains that though Abraham was old, as good as dead, “he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith!” He was fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised, and this is why it was credited to him as righteousness. What is more, we can ALL have God’s righteousness credited to us the same way if we do what Paul says in verse 24-25.

“Believe in God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”

Now jump down to Romans 5, and let’s keep reading. Read verses 1-11. This is the message of salvation in Christ that is the by grace through faith.

Praise God! Though we are sinners, God loves us, and through faith in Christ, we can be forgiven!

Remember what Paul said Ephesians 2:8-9? We are saved by grace through faith, not by works. There Paul is describing faith at the moment of salvation. We might say this is where a relationship with God starts. But note what Paul says, it is not by works. Jesus had to do the work. We cannot earn our salvation. We have to place our faith in what Jesus did through his life, death and resurrection.

But how do we place our faith in God? Let’s review what we have learned so far.

We have seen the intellectual side of faith:

I believe that God exists.
I believe that I am separated from God because of my sin.
I believe that God graciously forgives my sin through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection.

But there is also a physical side of Faith:

God, I give my life to you, and I want to know you, to serve you, to live for you. You are now my leader, you show me how to live.
And then you actually make life choices based on God’s pattern of life, most clearly displayed by Jesus in the Gospel. A life of faith is a life that says “Jesus, teach me how to live.”

How to have faith that pleases God

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Do you know what faith is? Do you know if your faith is pleasing to God?

Yesterday I mentioned a definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1. After teaching that description of faith, the writer of Hebrews begins to describe some of the heroes of the Bible and how they demonstrated faith in God. First he mentions Abel and Enoch.

Then in verse 6 he says this: “Without faith it is impossible to please God…”

That’s pretty serious. If we want to please God, we have to have faith. What kind of faith? How much faith? What will it look like or feel like? Will we know if we have true faith that pleases God?

The writer goes on, still in verse 6: “…because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

It seems to me that the writer is mostly talking about the intellectual side of faith. The New Testament often refers to it as “belief”. It is saying, “I believe God exists.” That alone is quite an astounding thing to say and believe in this day and age. Statistics point to a rise in those who do not believe in God. Belief in God can be construed as crazy. “You believe in God? How quaint.” In our scientific world, belief in God can be ridiculed, or said to be a crutch for the weak minded. So when we believe in the existence of God, we are stepping out in faith.

Faith, then, is a matter of my mind, what I believe. But that’s not all the writer of Hebrews says about faith. Look at the last part of the verse. He talks about “those who earnestly seek” God.

He describes an active faith, how we live our live. God rewards those who earnestly seek him.

As we continue along in Hebrews 11, this concept of an earnestly lived out faith is what the writer of Hebrews wants to illustrate for us through more heroes from Bible stories. He has already mentioned Abel and Enoch. Now he mentions Noah.

I want us to think about Noah’s faith. Was it just a belief in his mind?

Not at all. Noah did something totally bizarre. He built a giant boat in preparation for a great flood. And the only reason was because God told him a flood was coming, and he better build a boat. For those of you that are woodworkers, carpenters and builders, what would you do if God came to you and said, “I want you to build the Titanic out of wood, because I’m sending a giant flood?”

If I heard God say that, my first thought would be, “Uh…what did you say? I don’t think I heard you right.”

But Noah? He started building a giant boat. It takes much more than just intellectual belief to choose to do what Noah did.

Next comes Abraham. Abraham, an old man, gets a wild promise from God: “You and your old wife Sarah are going to be the parents of a great nation.” In other words, “You are going to have a baby.” Those of you who are in your 50s, 60s, 70s, what would you do if you had a dream, a vivid dream, and in it God says to you, “You are going to have a baby?” Many of us would laugh, just like Sarah did.

But in the end, Abraham and Sarah believed and followed through, and God gave the a son. It takes much more than just intellectual belief to choose to do what Abraham did.

Interestingly the Old Testament Hebrew does not have a strictly intellectual concept faith or belief. Instead the Hebrew is the word “faithfulness”, which is active. Noah’s faith was pretty active wasn’t it? And Abraham’s faith was too.

Our picture of faith is starting to fill out. Faith is intellectual beliefs, and it is physical action. How does your belief and life match up to this picture of faith?

Does God require faith that is 100% without doubt?

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Faith Church. That’s the name of our church. Back in 1968, when they got this church started, why would people choose to name a new church, Faith Church? I wonder what they were thinking.

What is faith? Most often we think faith is belief. And for good reason. Faith does mean belief. It means that in our minds we agree with certain statements or facts or ideas.

But we also read in the Bible, in James chapter 2, that “faith without works is dead.”

Think about that. Faith is belief. But it also must have works, James says, or it is dead. So what is faith?

Just belief in our mind, or must faith also have some kind of work?

As I mentioned last week, this October at Faith Church we’re commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation by talking about the Five Solas of the Reformation. The Five Solas or Alones are what many scholars consider to be the best way to summarize the teaching of the Reformation. Last week we looked at Sola Gratia, or Grace Alone. The second one is Sola Fide. Fide in Latin means faith. Today we are talking about Faith Alone. In Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul combines Sola Gratia with Sola Fide: “it is by grace you have been saved through faith, not by works, it is the gift of God.”

So somehow, Paul says, we receive the gift of grace by faith, and not by works. But as I mentioned above, James said faith without works is dead. See the apparent contradiction? This brings us back to the question I started with? What is faith?

In Hebrews 11:1 we read, “faith is being sure of what hope for, certain of what we do not see.”

Does that clear it up for you? I have to admit that on first reading, that definition of faith doesn’t really help me. So we have to look a bit deeper.

The writer of Hebrews describes faith two ways. Let’s look at each:

First, Faith is being sure of what we hope for. We have hopes. We want them to come true. It may be a promotion we hope is coming. It may be hopes for our children and grandchildren. It may be hopes that we will get out of debt. It may be a hope that eternal life is in our future. What hopes do you have?

Faith is being sure of those hopes, that they will become reality. It is saying, “I know that I know that I know that what I hope for will come true.” But if we’re honest, we rarely feel that certain. The opposite of being sure is being unsure. Uncertainty also goes by the name “doubt”.

Frankly, when we read the Bible, it can be a bit tough to understand how the interplay of faith and doubt works. On one hand we read Jesus teaching that if you have faith, you can move mountains. On the other hand we read the psalms and the psalmists express their doubts quite a lot. Does that mean they are lacking in faith?

Is the writer of Hebrews saying that the only true faith is a faith that doesn’t have even one little tiny iota of doubt? Is that even possible? Haven’t we been told that expressing our doubts is healthy, and that God welcomes us to converse with him about our doubts? How would we know if our faith is totally without doubt? What would that feel like?

Before we can answer that, let’s see what else the writer of Hebrews says about faith.

Second, faith is being certain of what we do not see. What the writer of Hebrews is saying is that there is a side of life that is beyond what we can perceive with our five senses. You can’t touch it, smell it, taste, see or hear it. It is the spiritual side of life. The realm of God, angels, demons, heaven and hell. Faith believes it is real, though we cannot see it. Again, though, the writer says that faith is certain of this. And I ask the writer, “how certain?” Is it okay to doubt a little bit? Is it okay to wonder or speculate? And don’t we all do that at least a little bit?

As I wonder about the tension between faith and doubt, James the brother of Jesus says in chapter 1:

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

“He must believe and not doubt”? If 100% belief is required by God to answer our requests for wisdom, then it seems to me that very, very few of us will ever receive wisdom from God.

Does faith require 100% perfect belief, with no doubt whatsoever?

I don’t think so. Here’s why. I personally appreciate the honesty of a guy Jesus once encountered whose child was really in a bad way. The child was possessed by a demon. The man brought his child to Jesus, but ran into Jesus’ disciples first. They tried hard, but couldn’t cast out the demon. When Jesus shows up a bit later, the man is desperate, pleading with Jesus to help. You know what Jesus says to the man?

“If you can believe, all things are possible for him who believes.” Wow. All things? I like the sound of that, but I also think, “Whew, I don’t know if I can believe like that.” It seems similar to what the father of the demon-possessed child might be thinking too, because he says back to Jesus,

“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

I love that line. It resonates with what I so often feel. The tension between faith and doubt. The knowledge that while I have faith, I don’t think it is perfect faith. Jesus knew this about the man, and you know what Jesus did?

Maybe Jesus said, “Wait a minute, you have some unbelief in there? Sorry, man. Game over. Take your demon-possessed child elsewhere.”

But Jesus did not say that. He saw the man’s tension of faith and doubt, and he healed that man’s child.

Let’s remember this man’s tension between faith and doubt, and think about it in light of the definition of faith in Hebrews 1. God doesn’t require us to have perfect faith. He does require faith, though. And tomorrow we’ll talk more about what it means to place our faith in God.

For now, I think we should be like the man who brought his demon-possessed child to Jesus, and say “Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief!”

How to become more gracious

Image result for responding graciously Have you ever had an encounter with someone who was less than gracious? Have you been accused? Confronted?

Or maybe you’re in the store, waiting in line at checkout, and right in front of you is a family with young children. Just then one of the kids start freaking out because the parent won’t let them have candy. Is it hard for you to be gracious?

What if the parent is you and the kid is yours? Are you able to graciously stand firm while your offspring is throwing a tantrum? What if the other customers around you start acting frustrated with you, as if it is your fault your child is losing it? So you’re being hit with your child’s poor behavior on one hand, and the poor behavior of adults on the other. Are you gracious then?

What if your boss cuts your hours? Gives you a poor performance review? It can be very hard to be gracious.

I use the app IFTTT on my phone. “If this, then that.” It is an app that automates your phone to do tasks. I have found it to be amazing. For example, IFTTT helped me set up my phone so that I send myself a text message reminding myself to take out the trash on Thursday nights. It sends me a text each 1st of the month to remind me that the mortgage is due. IFTTT can do so much. One interesting feature it can do is a rescue call. And by “rescue”, I don’t mean rescue from danger. Instead IFTTT will rescue me from one of those conversations when I badly need to go, but the other person won’t stop talking. Or maybe they’re talking about something awkward, maybe politics, and I want to get away, but I don’t know how to do so graciously. All I need to do now is tap the IFTTT phone icon on my home screen, and within seconds, IFTTT makes an automated phone call to me. All I have to do at that point is say to my conversation partner “I’m so sorry, I need to go and take this call.” Gracious!

There is hope! Not only can we use technology to graciously rescue us in difficult situations, we can learn to become more gracious. If you know there is bitterness or a habit of poor responses coming out of you, then you can be changed from the inside out. You can become a more gracious person. Read on!

This week we’ve been talking about grace. When we accept God’s gracious gift, we are not only taking on a whole new family name, but we are also saying that we will live like a child of grace, to live like Jesus lived.

If you want to know how to live a life of grace, study Jesus. In 1 John 2:6 one of Jesus closest friends, John, says “Whoever claims to live in Jesus must walk or live as Jesus did.” Accepting God’s gracious gift, then, is not just saying “I believe in and receive the gift of God’s grace”. It is living a life that looks more and more like the gracious life of Jesus.

But a life of grace is not always easy. In fact, when calling us to a life of grace, God calls us to something that can be difficult.

I recently read the book, Messy Grace, by Caleb Kaltenbach, and I highly encourage you to read it as well. Caleb is a pastor who parents are gay. They were married, divorcing when he was 2yrs old. Soon after the divorce, his mom started a lesbian lifestyle, and she raised Caleb in that community. To him, therefore, it was normal. His dad remained single, though years later Caleb learned that his dad was gay. So Caleb grew up in a family environment, mostly with his mom and her partner, that normalized the lesbian lifestyle and felt the pain of hate and discrimination from less-than-gracious Christians.

But something unexpected happened. Caleb, through friends, a youth group, and reading the Bible, learned about and received the gift of God’s grace. As he studied the Bible, he changed his mind about same-sex relations. Caleb then had to come out to his parents. But it was a very different coming out. Instead of announcing to his Christian family that he was coming out as gay, Caleb announced to his gay parents that he was coming out as a Christian and he no longer agree with their lifestyle. It was brutally difficult for Caleb to live out the gracious life of Christ in his family.

Living in families is like that. We all know this. Sharing life together as a church family is like this.

Grace is not easy. Grace can be very difficult when people are unkind to you. Grace can be difficult when people make bad choices that affect you. Grace can be difficult because people can be difficult. But as we learn from Jesus how to live the gracious life, we’ll notice how, time and time again, he chose grace when people were being extremely difficult to him and others.

Another difficult aspect of living a gracious life is that it doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want because, “God is gracious, and he’ll forgive me. His grace covers it all anyway!” One of the writers of the New Testament, Paul, referred to this thought process in Romans 6. There he asked, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace will abound?” Have you ever thought something like that? That you can do something sinful “just this once” because God will forgive you anyway? If we’re honest, I suspect most of us have thought that about God’s grace. Guess how Paul answers his question. “Should we go on sinning so that grace will abound? By no means!” Accepting God’s gift of grace means that we surrender to our way of doing things, and we give our lives to do things God’s way.

In another writing, Paul says to Titus who was a pastor friend of his, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

What this means is that we respond to God’s gift of grace by living lives of grace. A graceful life is one that pursues self-control, purity, and treating others with grace. That’s where this grace thing gets messy. Imagine what it is like for God to be gracious to us when we are regularly thinking, doing, and saying things that are not self-controlled and pure. Imagine how he feels. He was so gracious to us, to the point of sending his son to give his life for us. And how do we respond to that grace? We choose to ignore it by sinning.

And just as we can messy to God, others can be messy to us.

So what will it look like to be gracious to people in your life? Sola Gratia means that we are children of grace, and we should be known not only for receiving God’s grace, but also for showering that grace on those around us.

I want you to think. Who do you have a hard time being gracious to? Remember that grace is undeserved favor. Who rubs you the wrong way? Who do you need to be actively gracious to? Have you allowed yourself to develop a less than gracious attitude to people in your church family? What about in your own family? Is there anyone for whom grace is very messy for you?

What will you do to show more grace? What will you do to demonstrate that you are a child of grace?

Evaluate yourself. Have people ever told you that you are less than gracious? That you are intimidating or difficult or argumentative? Have someone who is able to speak the truth in love to you evaluate you. Don’t trust yourself to give yourself an accurate accounting. Some of us are too hard on ourselves. Some of us are too easy. Get a true perception of whether or not you are living as a child of grace.
Learn to live graciously. Study Jesus’ life in the Gospels (the four accounts of Jesus’ life, recorded in the Bible), Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And as you are reading, ask God to help you to learn to be gracious from Jesus. Write down the ways you see Jesus being gracious. Then seek out someone in your life who is known for being gracious, and ask them to teach you. Get the book Messy Grace. It is excellent.
Practice. Are their people in your life who you have been less than gracious to? Do you need to go to them and ask forgiveness? And to show that you are seeking a new gracious pattern with them, what is a gracious act you can to do to start treating them differently? Maybe a small gift, maybe a nice card, maybe a compliment?