All right. Thanksgiving has its roots in faith. Thanksgiving has its roots in faith. Psalm 100 verse number four. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving. and into his courts with praise. Be thankful unto him and bless his name." Let us pray. Father, we thank you this morning for the opportunity to gather in the house of the Lord in freedom. We're so thankful that we still have that in our country after these many, many years. And we recognize that the forces of evil are against this. They are against you, they are against Christianity, they are against the people of God. It is very evident. And at the same time, it is very evident that you are in control of all things, that you have almighty power. And there's going to be nothing unleashed upon us unless you allow it to happen. And so we thank you today that we have just millions of people still in this country who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Millions of people who are still praying hard, and we thank you for that. May that continue. May we continue to see some wonderful turning events that are positive, that are for the ongoing ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ for our freedom of worship. for all that we have in Christ. And so we ask that you would do that. And we're thankful today that we are still able to come here freely. We're not meeting in secret. We're not having to sneak around. And we are so thankful for that. We asked that you might take the thoughts that we're looking at this morning about faith, that you would really seal that truth to our hearts today. We need it more now than ever before. And so I ask you, Holy Spirit, to fill me now for this message. I trust and depend on you for that. We ask that you help us to glean and to grow and to see our faith be stronger and more confident every day that we live. We're trusting and depending on you for that. And so please take the message now and use it in a brilliant and wonderful and a powerful way in all of our hearts and lives. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. The roots of Thanksgiving Day go back hundreds of years. It's hard to imagine that. You talk to Europeans and they think we have a very young country. Well, going back 400 years to our folks coming over here, it's kind of hard to think that that's not old. But to them, it is not old at all. The pilgrims, they came here having no idea what was ahead for them at all. It was tough. But because they exercise their faith in God, they have a legacy that continues today through all of us who are meeting here and every Bible preaching church in this country. It would be awesome if our faith right here today will have an impact on those that follow after us. That needs to be a goal, that needs to be our prayer, that needs to be what we do. We have much to be thankful for, to say it mildly. They say that the America is a great experiment. Well, in reality, it is a continued mighty work of our almighty God. We are here today because of his continued working in this country. We need to thank God for all the believers we still have here in America. That first Thanksgiving get-together of the pilgrims and the Indians, a three-day feast in early November in the year 1621. Now their meal was a little different than ours is going to be. They had venison, wild fowl, turkeys, Indian corn, spices, Dutch cheese, wild grapes, lobster. No thank you. Cod, melons, pumpkin, and rabbit. Well, I'm looking forward to those sweet potatoes smothered in brown sugar and other things. Stuffing in the bird. And that rich gravy. Wow. And all the rest of it. All right, let's get refocused. Thanksgiving observances spread throughout the colonies and became a national date in 1789. So we're going back quite a ways that it has been celebrated every year. Faith was a strong part of the pilgrims' lives. You had to have faith to get on those boats. I've been to Jamestown. I've seen the boats, the style that they came over here on. I've been on them. We toured it. We found out how they barely survived coming over here. It's incredible. Faith was a strong part of the pilgrims' lives that brought them to that first Thanksgiving day. Well, the entirety of the Word of God is the revelation of God to man. Readers will soon discover that faith, faith is the appropriate response of a person to God's revelation. We need to have a response, that response needs to be faith. Thus the entire Bible speaks to us concerning faith. It's not just a few verses, it's the whole thing. A person may respond to the teaching of any portion of Scripture by exercising their faith, any verse of Scripture. Romans 10, 17 says, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. We have to listen to what the word of God has to say. We'll be looking at that in great detail in tonight's message. This verse puts no limit on which portions of scripture God might use to generate faith in the life of an individual. It does not have to be a verse specifically on the doctrine of salvation. It could be a multitude of different kinds of verses that will spark someone's soul and speed them on their way to salvation. It's neat to listen to people give testimonies regarding the ways in which God has led in their lives and to find out what verse of scripture it was that led them there. Never forget sitting in church where you are as a young man in my 20s and listening to one of our missionaries come and talk about the fact of how he knew what God's will was as he was reading his Bible, and he came to this one specific verse, and there it was. God revealed to him what he wanted him to do. Faith is huge, yet it is also very simplistic. Faith is a childlike faith. A person can be saved at the age of five, a person can be saved at the age of 50, it doesn't matter. Faith also reaches above the bounds of our human logic. Human logic doesn't get it too far at all. Faith believes in the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. We cannot explain it, but we believe it. We believe it in our hearts. Faith sings hymns in jail. Paul and Silas. That led to people getting saved. Faith continues through hard times. Hebrews 11 one says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. An example of faith is the blind man who approaches a rickety bridge across a chasm, but he listens to the still small voice of someone on the other side who guides him across that bridge. Now that's faith. For some of us, it would be faith to even attempt to walk across that rickety bridge with our eyes wide open. Point number one this morning, the prerequisite of faith is divine initiative. The prerequisite of faith is divine initiation. Faith does not begin with the ingenuity of the human heart. We're not involved at all. A lot of people think that they are. Who sets in motion the opportunity of faith? It is God. God is the one who sets in motion the opportunity for faith by communicating faith, truth, and revealing himself to us. Now that God has completed the canon of scripture, he reveals himself through his inspired word. A closed Bible, does not do anyone any good. It must be opened. It must be read. It must be meditated upon. Romans 10, 17, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Then up to Romans 10, 14, how then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher That word is also translated a messenger. So the excuse, it's the preacher's job, no. It's 100% believer required. We have the message, we are the messengers. We are to give that out. The preacher declares the word of God. The messenger shares those gospel verses with that individual. So God then reveals himself and communicates scriptural truth to the individual hearts. At this point, the hearer, the one who has now heard the message of the gospel, has the opportunity to respond to the gospel. He has heard it, and now he can respond. When there is no communication from God, there is no true opportunity of biblical faith. That is a scary, scary thought. The whole possibility for faith rests on the assumption that a person has received some kind of illumination. Illumination of the gospel from what? From the word of God. given by someone who's preaching it or sharing it. The communication of God that makes faith possible is illumination. What does illumination mean? It means to receive light or to be enlightened. Now, let's apply these truths. We must guard against making decisions that begin with our own desires, our own ambitions, our own dreams. We must dig deeply into the word of God every day so that we may listen and respond in faith. That's the only way it can happen. We have to listen. We have to be illuminated. We have to get into the Word. We must humbly seek God's will and then respond to His will in faith. If you're going to respond to God's will in faith, that requires something of you. That means you have to get up and do it. All right? You have to get up and you have to do it. The more a believer's flesh desires something in life, the more danger there is that that believer will bypass God's will in order to achieve the desired end. It is dangerous to not seek God's face in our decisions. Do not get after those fleshly desires. The believer who is sincerely and obediently applying God's word in his life is the believer who can pray boldly and in whom Almighty God delights to move his hand in answering those prayers. So we've gotta be in tune with God if we want our prayers to get answered. We need to be into his word. Then we can pray boldly. We have to obey his word. Then the coast is clear and God is free to just put his hand out and do that thing that you have asked him to do. That's a big deal. There is no greater basis for boldness than when a believer knows he is responding to, thus saith the Lord. And thus saith the Lord happens when we get into our Bibles and seek the direction of our God. True faith is willfully responding to inner promptings of the Holy Spirit as he directs us by means of his word that we're meditating in on a daily basis. Point number two, the essence of faith is willful responsiveness. The essence of faith is willful responsiveness. Faith is essentially a response. That's something we're not used to thinking about in our hearts and minds. Faith is essentially a response. It is a response of our will. We all have a will. And some of us have a will that is much stronger than others. Some of us, we get something in our mind and there's no stopping it. It's just the way it is. That's what my dad said about me. Faith is a response of the will, the appropriate response in the heart of one who receives a portion of God's Word, one who is illuminated, then they respond. How will we respond to that? There are four practical truths I'm gonna look at this morning as we consider the essence of faith is willful responsiveness. Four practical truths. One, or letter A, the action of faith is dependence. The action of faith is dependence. Faith is not a feeling. Just went over that with the kids and youth group on Wednesday night. Faith is not a feeling. One of the past preachers of our age used to say, I don't feel saved in the morning until I've had my third cup of coffee. You see, faith is not a feeling, but that was his way of kidding people. Three cups for me will make me get excited. Faith is not a feeling, but coffee will give you a feeling, that's for sure. The word that best describes the action of faith is the word believe. Believe, the word used by young John almost 100 times in the Gospel of John, believe. The primary Greek word for faith in the New Testament is often translated by the English words believe or believing. Faith is believing. Faith is to believe what God said is so. The term saving faith. implies that the person believes in what the word of God is telling him in the gospel. Saving faith is believing the gospel, believing it with all my heart. The confessing sinner must go beyond a head knowledge to a believing knowledge in the heart. which means an actual trusting in Christ's sacrificial atonement and death on the cross as payment for his or her sin, and then complete dependence upon Christ as one's savior. And I trust that that's where all of us here this morning are in our lives. So the words that best describe the action of faith are believing, trusting, and depending. So whenever you think of the word faith, it's about believing, it's about trusting, it's about depending. Then the believer lives by that faith. You live by it. And the believer continues to believe God's word and trust in the Lord and depends upon him throughout the day. You know, when you're trusting God through the day, sometimes things are gonna go beautifully. I've had a number of those kinds of days in the recent weeks. I love those kinds of days. You depend, you trust, you pray, you ask God to lead, guide, direct, got all these things that gotta be done. And boy, sometimes it's just beautiful. God says, yes, I'll do that. Other times, not so much. Other times God says, you know what? You need a challenge today. You've been a little soft, a little bit too easy. We'll throw a couple challenges in here today to get you to stay on track. So you gotta do it. You gotta believe, you gotta trust, you gotta depend all day long. B, or secondly, the object of faith. Invisible reality. Invisible reality. The objects of faith, invisible reality. Faith goes farther still. It goes farther than trust and dependence. It believes and trusts in the unseen. The unseen. The primary object of faith is our invisible God. We believe in our invisible God. We believe in our God who is a Trinity. We believe in him. And as we trust in God and believe in his word, we will trust the unseen truth that God reveals to us in his word. Hebrews 11.1 divides the unseen into two broad categories, things hoped for and things not seen. Things hoped for and things not seen. Things hoped for are unseen future things. Things not seen, unseen present realities. Letter C, the attitude of faith is confidence. The attitude of our trust and dependence is confidence. The attitude that accompanies true faith throughout the Word of God is confidence. Do you have confidence in your God this morning? Do you have confidence in Him? Do you have full assurance of faith? Doesn't matter what hits you, you're gonna make it. Doesn't matter. Nothing and no one is more trustworthy than the eternal, unchanging, all-sufficient, sovereign God and the Word of God. How is faith a substance or an evidence? How is faith a substance or evidence? Faith is the act or state of mind which makes things that are as yet but objects of hope as substantial as if actually possessed. How about your salvation this morning? You got that one sealed down? Do you really believe in that one? Are you trusting in that one? It's unseen. But we trust and we believe our God makes it happen. It is assured confidence. Notice the difference in attitude between Elisha and his servant in 2 Kings 6. The king of Syria sent an army to capture Elisha. If you're sending an army to capture one prophet, you're scared of him. You're scared of him. Indeed he was. He believed that this prophet continually thwarted his battle plans. This Elisha is always getting in my way. He's messing things up. He's communicating all my intentions to the King of Israel. That's what he's doing. Well, this army that he sent surrounded the city where Elisha was. And Elisha had a servant with him as they spent and passed the night. In the morning, the servant exclaimed with dismay, alas, my master, how shall we do? Elisha's confident voice strongly contrasted the feeble servant, fear not. For they that be with us are more than they that be with them. The Lord then answers Elisha's prayer requesting that the servant might see thee invisible. And God answered that prayer. The Lord answered by allowing his physical eyes to behold the spiritual armies. I'd like to witness that. I'd like to see those flaming angel soldiers with flaming swords. I can picture it, but I'd like to see it. And can you imagine how many there were? I'll tell you what, that'll give you a little bit of confidence. No, that'll give you a boatload of confidence. Elisha, what did Elisha do? He believed and he trusted. The servant was clueless. Elisha believed, trusted, and depended upon invisible armies and the invisible God of those armies. That is what we call faith. That's where we need to get to in our own lives. It provides confidence. The doubting servant required a visible display. As believers who just went, we wanna get to the place in our life that we do not need a visible display, that we have full faith, full confidence in our great God. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. And fourth and finally, D, The quality of faith is endurance. The quality of faith is endurance. The backdrop to the entire book of Hebrews is the writer's exhortation to the Hebrew Christians not to turn away from the truths that they've been given. Endure, keep believing, keep trusting. Don't wade back into the decaying swamp of religious Judaism. Something that some of them would never get up and leave. They were stuck. It's like the believer sitting in that apostate church with the beautiful stained glass windows. They just won't get up and leave. And they know that it's God's will for them to do so. It is God's will that they get to a place where they hear the word of God preached and not some liturgy and a bunch of stories. True faith continues on. It continues on. And that's what it has to happen. That's the way it has to happen in our lives here this morning as well. It has to continue on. We cannot fall away. We cannot go back to the decaying swamp of whatever it was where we were before. True faith continues on. I leave this morning with a saying that I picked up about 30 years ago that sums all of this up very well. This is the statement. I don't remember who said it, but here's the statement. Those who have a problem with faith have a closed Bible. Those that have a problem with faith have a closed Bible. I hope that your Bible is not closed during the week. I trust that your Bible is being opened every day of the week, that you are spending some legitimate, solid, private time with your great God who wants to fellowship with you, who wants to show you more faith, who wants to lead you, who wants to give you more confidence. Why do we need to get into the Bible every day? because we are so good at forgetting. We are so good at that. We could be so strong today in our faith and tomorrow morning we wake up and we are as weak as we can be. Been there? I would think so, we've all been there. We need the constant reminders. We need the constant review of the Word of God, which lives and abides forever. It gives us confidence. We can only be confident as we continue on in our faith. Let us pray. Father, we thank you this morning for your Word. It is powerful. No other book like it on the face of the planet. We thank you today for these who have come to the house of the Lord to open the Bible, to look into its truth. We ask today for all of us who have gathered here and those that may be watching or will watch in the future, we ask that you would help us to grab a hold of your truth, your word every day. Give us that trust, that confidence, that dependence that we need. And indeed, we need your help for that too. And help us to endure in the faith that you have given to each one of us. We give you praise, we give you thanksgiving. You have everything down. You are our great God, our great creator. We give you praise in Jesus' name, amen.