Without faith, it is impossible to please God. And God must grant us this faith. Work out your salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God in you, both willing and doing of His good pleasure. You see, people live as if that verse is not in the Bible. It's about faith, Hebrews 11, 6. We've talked about Enoch and Enoch walked with God. And he did this with faith, but without faith it is impossible to please him, that is, to please God. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And that's the element, that's the substance of faith, this idea of believing that God is, and also believing that God is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Now, there are two great conditions to our salvation. The Bible teaches us that these two great conditions are faith and repentance. In fact, it has been said by some theologians that faith and repentance are really two sides of the same coin. And no matter how thinly you slice a corn, a coin, it still has two sides. So, faith and repentance. You see, it is faithful repentance and it is repenting faith. They go together. Faith, indeed, is what God brings you to. God brings you to an understanding of some things. So, faith is what He brings you to. Repentance is what He brings you from. You see, it's always to and from. It's always from sin to Christ. It is always this idea of faith that continues on, you see, in our heart and in our life. And God saves us from sin. to Christ, you see. So there's always a from and a to, and that's what this faith is about. Now, faith is this condition, and so is repentance. Repentance and faith, these two conditions, must be met by the sinner. But what the Bible teaches us about faith and repentance is that these are gifts from God. Faith and repentance are both gifts from God. And we must understand that, you see. Because if we don't understand that faith and repentance are gifts from God, if we think they're simply responses of man, that is, that man works these responses up in his being, that there's some kind of spark in man that would give him the ability to do that, or some kind of relic of what Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden when they had this free will, this perfect ability to live righteously before the Lord, that somehow that is still within us. But the Bible teaches us that when Adam fell, we died, that none of that is in us anymore, that we don't have this spark, that we don't have this innate ability to come to God or to even desire to come to God. But salvation, based upon these two conditions, cannot come from us if it is of grace. If salvation is of grace, then, of course, these two conditions cannot be met by us because then faith would be a work and repentance would be a work. But it is not a work. In fact, the Bible is very clear to contrast these things through the writings of the Apostle Paul that it is not faith, I'm sorry, it is not work if it's faith and it is not faith if it's work. And this classic passage is in Ephesians chapter 2 where he says, verse 9 says, not of works lest any man should boast. And verse 8 says, for by grace are you saved through faith. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." And then verse 9, "...not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Wherefore, remember that ye, being in times past Gentiles, In the flesh, you were Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcised by that which is called the circumcised. In other words, by the Jews, you were called non-Jews. And so those who were circumcised in the flesh, that was made by hand. So those Jews, those who were circumcised in the flesh, that is by the act of man. You are called uncircumcised, that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, a stranger from the covenants of promise, having no hope without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were for all are made nigh by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace who hath broken, or who hath made one and hath broken down the middle wall of petition. between us and on and on and on. So he comes in and he teaches us here, going back to verse 8, that grace comes to us through faith. You're saved by grace or you're saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It's a gift of God. Now, of course, there's some debate over the syntax and over the grammar of this verse. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that, that is, that faith is not of yourself." Well, there's some argumentation against that. They say, well, faith is not in the same gender as that, the demonstrative pronoun that, not of yourself. The demonstrative pronoun's in the neuter, and faith is not in the neuter, so it can't be that. But it surely has to mean something. And so, you're saved by grace, or by grace, or you're saved through faith, and that, and that, ekanos in the Greek. Well, the demonstrative pronoun demonstrates something, points to something, so what is it pointing to? Well, it's either pointing to the faith, or it is pointing to the whole process that the faith is a part of. So, either way, the Bible teaches us that this faith is a gift from God. Now, of course, if we don't want to believe that, if we surely want to see something, you know, if we want to see some other evidence of that, there is other passages of Scripture that teaches us this very clearly. And one of the passages is in Philippians chapter 1. Philippians chapter 1 and verse 29 says this, For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake. Now, here is here's two things that the Bible says has been given to us, and they've been given to us in relationship to Christ on behalf of Christ, on behalf of the fact of what Christ has done for us, you see, for we had a savior long before we knew we were a sinner. So he said, and unto you, it is given in the behalf of Christ, two things. To believe and to suffer, not only to believe, so it means it has been given to us to believe. So, so this faith, the word believe here is the word, the Greek word for faith. And so this has been given to us. So that would make clear the passage of Scripture there in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that, that is, that faith is not of yourself, it is a gift from God. Because here it says it has been given to you on behalf of Christ to believe. Not only to believe, but also to suffer. But it has been given to you to believe. And then if you would look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3, 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 5, Again, gives us this understanding. Here's what he says. And of course, you you realize that that chapter three of First Corinthians talking about this problem that is in Corinth where they are, you know, that they are there selecting their party that some of them say, well, you know, I'm a Peter and. Some of them said, well, I'm of Paul and I'm of Apollos. Well, the first verse in chapter three says, so this first Corinthians 3, 1, And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat. For hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you envy, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul? Or who is Apollos? But ministers, diakonos, or diakonoi here is the plural of this, who is Paul and Apollos? and Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as God, or as the Lord, gave to every man." I mean, we came and preached the gospel, and you believed. But who are we? We're just people that brought this to you, and you believed even as God gave to every man to believe. Now, just to, you know, to keep an understanding of this, that not only is faith given, but also repentance, the two conditions of salvation. Not only is faith a gift from God, but also repentance is a gift from God. In other words, repentance, metanoia, means to have a meta, which means to transform, metamorphosis, a change of body, metanoia, nous, the word is the word for mind, metanoia, to have a change of mind. And that is the most used word in the New Testament for repentance, that is, to change your mind. To confess means to say the same thing, homo, which means identical or the same, and logos or lego, which means to speak. So, to confess means to speak the same thing as God speaks. In other words, to say, you are right, God, to say what you say about me as a sinner. You're right. I confess my sin. I agree with you concerning this. But faith is the embracing of Christ, but repentance is a transformation. It's leaving something. It's a change of mind. And that is also a gift from God. Second Timothy chapter two teaches us this in verse twenty five. It's talking about a servant. Verse twenty four says the servant of the Lord must not strive. But be gentle unto all. Able or apt to teach means able to teach and patient, so a servant of the Lord must not be bellicose, he must not be one who is pugnacious, one who is always trying to fight and always trying to to be in conflict with people, but he must be a gentle person. And so a person that, the servant of the Lord, one of the things that must be spoken about him is that this guy has a gentle spirit. He's not a guy that's interested in conflict and striving. He also has to be one that can teach, but he also has to be patient because the idea, you know, if you're going to teach people, you're surely going to have to be patient with them or forbearing of them because often You think you've taught someone something, and you haven't taught them at all? Sometimes you think that you've made some progress, or the Lord has used you to make progress in their knowledge, and then only to find out that when the first time they're tested, they blow it. So you can't be angry with them. You can't want to wring their neck, though sometimes you might want to wring their neck, but you must be patient with them. And then here's verse 25, in meekness, So here's this patience, and then here is meekness. In meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves. What a terrible thing. What a horrible condition to be in. To be in a condition of opposing yourselves. Of opposing your very interest in life. And that's where we find sinners. We can't be angry with sinners. Kind of like what I said this morning. These poor people don't understand. They have no understanding of the things of God, no understanding of the spiritual things. And so we must instruct them, because they're prophetic. I mean, I don't mean that in any negative sense, but they're prophetic in the sense that we should pity them. Those of us who know the truth should surely pity those that don't. We shouldn't be angry with them. We shouldn't want to consign them to hell. It's like Christ said about them. Christ said, you know, He wept over them and He said that they were sheep without a shepherd, just wandering along in life and not within their understanding. So when we meet these, especially a man of God, when he meets these people, he must be meek with them because they're opposing themselves. So we must instruct those who oppose themselves, if God, per adventure or perhaps, that through us, God will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. And that's what true repentance always does. True repentance is not simply saying, I'm sick of sin and I don't want to do that anymore. Now, surely there's an element of that, to be sorry for sin, to hate and forsake it because it's displeasing to the Lord is what we teach our young people to say in the children's catechism, which I think in some respects is really a better answer than in the shorter catechism. That, you know, to be sorry for sin, to hate and forsake it because it's displeasing to the Lord, surely there's a sense that we hate it, it didn't quite work out. But it's more than just leaving something. It's coming to something. So you repent. In other words, you leave your sin. And here's what Paul is saying to us. God's saying to the preachers that we must be meek in instructing them that perhaps through our instruction, the Lord might give them, might grant them, might give them the gift of repentance. And when they get this gift of repentance, what will they do? They will acknowledge the truth. You see how repentance feeds into faith. You see how faith and repentance cannot be separated. And there are those, I remember one of the most popular evangelistic tools when I was a young person coming into adulthood, when I was awakening to the fact that I was going to be a pastor and that my life would be spent in winning people to Christ and in instructing those that God saved. in the faith of Christianity. One of these tools of evangelism was the four spiritual laws. It was written by a man named Bill Bright, who was the head of Campus Crusade for Christ. And so he had written these four spiritual laws. It was supposed to be a presentation of the gospel. And he had repentance in there, but the stories said that Bill Bright, when he, his wife and his daughter read that, they said, well, the repentance, having repentance, and that's a little too negative. And so he they talked him out of or they're talking into maybe I should say, taking the idea of repentance out of the four spiritual laws. But there is no salvation without repentance. I don't know how many people. You know, how many people were affected by that thing where they could say, well, I'm just going to believe in Christ. But you see, you're saved not in your sin, but from your sin. You see, sin has this power. And sin has a power not only over the heart and not only over the will, but it also has a power over the mind. And we must be released from that. And nothing short of a supernatural act of God will release you from that. And so those of us who truly know the nature of the gospel, those of us that truly know the nature of sin, those of us that understand what we are against, you see. Luther understood it. You know, he, a mighty fortress is our God, is what he wrote. that Luther wrote, a mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. And then he wrote, if we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing. If not the right man on our side, the man of God's, I'm choosing Lord Sabias' name from age to age the same, He must win the battle. Now, we know that He must win the battle in general. But see, here's the God of glory. The God of glory is the God of the universe, but He's also the God of every specific element of the universe. See, God knows every one of us intimately. He doesn't know us as a mass. He doesn't look out over us as just a sea of people. He's infinite. I was talking to my class tonight. He's infinite, which means He can deal with each one of us on an individual basis and He can deal with a trillion people or a trillion to the exponential value of a trillion people. He can deal with those and all the details of that as if He's dealing with just one in all of this mass. So, God deals with us individually. So, when Luther is talking about he must win the battle, he was talking, he had an idea of a grand thing in mind, but he also understood it had to be this one thing, you see. If Luther understood anything, he understood that he had a direct dealing with God. Not only did he understand that he had a direct dealing with God, but Luther also understood that he had a direct dealing with Satan. Now, you know the great story of Luther, that there he was in Augsburg Castle there, or Wartburg Castle there, and that he was translating the Bible into German, so the people of Germany would have the Bible. And the story was that Satan came into the room with him. that he was so real that Luther picked up the inkwell. Remember, they used to write with a quill, and he'd dip the quill in the ink and then write. But Satan was so real to Luther, he picked up this inkwell and threw it at him. And to this very day, there's a spot of ink on that wall where he threw that inkwell at the devil. You see, some people believe Luther was crazy. I remember one time I was reading, when I used to get the magazine, Christianity Today, and someone, I think it was R.C. Sproul, it was R.C. Sproul, before I knew who R.C. Sproul was, wrote an article in there that the Bible, or about Luther, he said that God saved Luther sanity too. So I thought it was very interesting that he would write such an article, so I responded and I got my letter to the editor published in I was just a young man. I was in my twenties and got a letter to the editor published in Christianity Today. And here's what I said. If Luther was insane, may God rain insanity on us all. I don't know. I've never actually had the devil come into my office. I mean, not the real devil. I've had some people that were devils come into my office, but I've never actually had the real devil to come into my office. And these devil people that came into my office, I never one time threw an ink pen at them. I wanted to know. But see, Luther understood that that was a dealing with man on an individual level. And when he talks about, see, he understood that there's no way we can contend for the soul of a man and win that if we do that in our power. That's the great danger of the church of Jesus Christ today, the so-called church of Jesus Christ. And these methods, these Arminian methods of evangelism, it is as if man only has, that men can only need, what they need is persuasive lying. What they need is some kind of ability to to talk people into some action, and then we can declare them safe. But no true preacher of the Word of God, no person who's ever been in the trenches doing warfare for the souls of people, none of those people would ever believe that all they have to do is to talk someone into some decision. No, my friend, the Bible says that they are dead and trespasses. The Bible says that they are locked into the course of this world. The Bible says that there's a prince, the prince of the power of the air works in them, you see, and he has them blinded to the things of God and blinded to their own need. And beyond that, they're in love with themselves, that they are led along by the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life. And that's what we contend with. And how are you going to talk people out of that with words? It has to be the power of God. It has to be something invading them that's quite apart from the preacher speaking and quite apart from the witness or witnessing. I'm telling you that every time we go to witness, we do not pray this prayer, oh, how we pray that you would give me the ability to talk some people into faith. It's not the prayer we pray. If it is the prayer you pray, you might as well stay home. That is not the prayer you pray. I remember one time I was going before a Senate committee in the legislature of Louisiana, and there was a man, there was another pastor there with me, and we were going to go in there. I'll never forget, his name was Goodman. A good man. And he was. I mean, relative, so. But there we were. And so I said to him, I said, what verses of Scripture are you going to use in the Senate hearing? Because I don't want to use the same argument that you're using. I'll use another argument. You know, I was giving him the choice. And he says, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. When I talk to secular groups. I never quote the Bible. I said, but then you need to go home, because we don't need you, because we're in a spiritual struggle here. Well, he didn't go home. I'm not really sure he ever spoke to me again. But the foolishness of such a thing, what do we have? We have two weapons. Preaching and prayer, that's all we have. The Word of God and prayer, that's all we have. And we've been called to do it in impossible times. We've been called to do the work of Ezekiel. The Lord said to Ezekiel, Can these bones live? Can dead men come to life? I'm not talking about just the little dead. I mean, we're talking about more than graveyard dead. You know what that means, right? That means they're so dead, somebody's buried them already. But you know how dead these things were? These things were so dead that all the flesh had already rotten. that which was not eaten by buzzards, already rotted. All the sinew, all the muscle, all the organs, all the skin, the ligaments, they were gone. And these bones dried, and all the marrow is out of them. And now they're bleached in the sun, the valley of dry bones. Can these bones live? Well, if Ezekiel had more faith than I would have, I would have said, no way. But he had a little bit more faith than that. He said, you know, I tell you, if we were If we had been brought there with the methodology of the modern church, we would have organized a committee. We would have got packed a pew night. We would have gotten, we would have ordered from some, probably from the Baptist bookstore, rolls of tape. We would have organized people together bones would organize bone rakers. And then we'd have to organize, then we'd have people, we'd bring in people that had, that understood anatomy. And we'd let them put these bones where they need to be and we'd tape them together and then we'd set them up in some kind of little area and we'd buy a fan and we'd plug the fan in and we'd blow a fan over them and when the battle When the bones rattled a little bit, we would say, hallelujah, there's light. But there'd still be dead bones rattling because of the ingenuity of man. But Ezekiel was instructed of the Lord prophesy to the bones, preach to the bones, and then to prophesy to the wind, pray to the wind, preach to the bones, pray to the Spirit." That's what he was saying. It seems useless. People would mock People would laugh at us. People with good intentions would say, stop that. People with good intentions would say, I don't know what's wrong with our pastor. He's gone crazy. But Ezekiel just was naive enough to believe the Lord. And all of a sudden, by the power of God, these bones came together, the sinew, the flesh, and the spirit breathed into them life. See, that's what it's about. So when we go and we preach, we instruct And poor adventure, you see, no guaranteed results here. Paul didn't say to Timothy, and it will always work every time. He didn't say that. He said, you do it. And then, of course, just like I said this morning, we cannot be wearied and well-doing. We cannot allow the lack of results to stop us. We must continue to do what the Lord has called us to do. We need to be stubborn and hard nose about doing it. We must not be allowed for or allow anything. Maybe I should say we shouldn't allow anything to get us all this task, this one task of bringing men to Christ and building the church of Jesus Christ to the glory of God. That's the way we live. Everything we do, whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, we do to the glory of God. We preach and we pray. witness, and we do the work of the church for the glory of God. So God would bring Him glory, and we must contend earnestly for the glory of God. And in our prayers, our prayers must be filled with the glory of God. God, bring glory to Yourself. Bring honor and glory to Your name. Bring glory to Your power. Bring glory to this Gospel that is Yours. Bring glory to this Christ who bled and died. Bring glory to the Spirit that must come and breathe life in the nostrils of sinners if they are going to live in faith. Then you must come to your glory, O God, not to the glory of men, not to the glory of evangelistic associations, not to the glory of any particular preacher or any particular body of believers, but to the glory of Christ. You see? And how could God not hear such a prayer? How could God not hear and be moved in such a prayer? Because we're contending for the wonder of His glory. We're not even per se contending for the souls of men in the sense for their good, though that surely does work into it because the Bible teaches us. And even as Paul said, so is our heart, the heart of every true preacher. You know, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. Christ wept over men. He was moved by men. He wept and prayed for their souls. And so we will, as the Spirit spreads or sheds the love of God abroad in our heart, we'll do the same thing. But not so much for them as much as for Him, for His glory and His honor. And so here it's impossible. Without faith, it is impossible to please God, you see. And God must grant us this faith. You see, work out your salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God in you both willing and doing of His good pleasure. You see, people live as if that verse is not in the Bible. It is God that must breathe in us. It is God that must will through us, you see. It is this gift from God. And so, He teaches us here when the illustration of the life of Enoch In Hebrews 11, the Word of God teaches us, the Spirit of God shows us that without faith, it is absolutely impossible to please God. Now, why would that be so? Why would it be impossible to please God without this faith? I have a few reasons, and I have four minutes, and I have 19 reasons. Now, you divide that up. I'll just give you a couple of them. I'll tell you what, why is it impossible to please God without faith? Because the just live without faith. Now, if you want to start, we'll just start this. Just turn to Romans 1. And then I'll give you a few of these. And you know, the good thing about this, either we'll have next week, because we won't have next week, but the week after that, because we're not going to be here next week, after Brother Gerald preaches to 3 o'clock, we'll have enough, we'll eat and go home. So if He stops anywhere before three, everybody will be happy. But we'll come back. Either we'll be back here hearing this or we'll be in heaven. So either way. So here's Romans 1-7. To all that be in Rome, beloved, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace be to you, peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank God. I thank God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. And he goes down, he says in verse 14, I am a debtor both to the Greek and to the barbarian, both to the wise and to the unwise. For as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe it, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." And then verse 17, "'For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, The just shall live by faith.'" Why is it impossible to please God without faith? Because we are justified by our faith. Just flip over to Romans 3 and look at verse 28. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. You see, if we're going to be justified, do you know what justified means? Justified means to be declared righteous. Justified does not mean that you are righteous. Justified means that you have been declared to be righteous before the Lord. And see, and unless you have a declaration concerning you about this righteousness of God, this justified, in fact, the word justified is the same word for righteousness. We just don't have a word in English that can translate this word. We see we don't have a right to fight. We don't have the word right to fight. We've got the word justified. I know it's a lesser and you must be careful with that. But you must understand that this is the word for righteousness in the Greek. You are justified by faith. So why is it impossible to please God without faith? Because it is the very faith that brings us to the point that God will accept anything we do because he will look at it as if Christ has done it or it has been declared accredited. to our account, and the word there, imputed in the Greek, just simply means that it has been spoken. It has been spoken. It is not something that has actually made its fruition, but it is something that has been declared by God. So it's impossible to please God because it is without faith, because it is this faith that justifies it. You see, again, in Romans four, if you look at Romans four, verse five, because of our it is impossible to please God without faith because our faith is counted as a righteousness. So you look at Romans four or five to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Listen to this whole idea about Abraham. Verse 1 says, What shall we say then that Abraham, our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof the glory, but not before God. For what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward, not reckoned of grace, but of death. But to him that worketh not, but believeth, or has faith on him, the faith on the one that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. This faith is counted as if you had lived perfectly in this world. Well, you see, you begin to get the flavor of this. It's impossible to please God. without faith. Why? Because we must walk in this faith. It's impossible to please God because here is our justification. As if we had never sinned. As someone had said one time, it's surely not unique to me, but justified means just as if I'd never sinned. Justified. And this faith is looked upon. We believe in Christ. So now this faith is looked upon as God. or by God, as if we were perfectly righteous, which we're not. Now, if you got to go to God in your flesh, you got to go to God in your work. Well, it's like we used to say in Louisiana, you're blowed up. You're messed up. It ain't gonna happen. So we walk in there in faith. He looks at us, and He sees Christ. As the hymn said, He looked on Him and pardoned me. Hallelujah, what a Savior. you