spiritual lives. Just like the frailty of our bodies and our minds, the economy, the government, everything is at the precipice. Everything is at the precipice of falling apart. It's just a second away. No matter how old we are, no matter what we do, no matter how healthy we are, I mean, you're going to fall down in the hall and tear your shoulder out. You're going to slip, throw your back out. You're going to pick up some weights, pop your knee. You're going to lay in the bed and you can't move the next morning. Our spiritual lives are no different. Our spiritual lives are no different. There's never going to be a time where we're just going to sail through life and go, Oh my goodness, my faith is so amazing. Everything is going perfectly fine for me. And I have no doubts. I have no fears. I have no frustrations because the Bible shows us all over the place, you know, rejoice. It's a command. Rejoice will have us in the Lord. It's a command. And yet we find ourselves not rejoicing. The Bible would further say in the negative, do all things without grumbling or complaining. And then we complain about the fact that we're grumbling and complaining. And so we look in the mirror and we think, well, everything's falling apart. I'm not good enough. I can't do it. And just when I thought I had the Lord to depend on, now I don't even believe that. That's been one of those weeks for me, where unbelief was more powerful than belief. Now, when you hear those words, sometimes people go, what in the world? What's going on? You don't believe that there's a God? Nah, man, we're way beyond that. Those doubts are far and few between, but they're still there. And we're way beyond, did Christ really raise from the dead? But sometimes, Sometimes in the darkest places, you might have the deepest thoughts of going, is this just a bunch of nonsense? But those are short-lived for me. They might not be short-lived for you. You may be struggling with those right now. But no matter where you are, the doubt is the doubt. And we see in the Bible where, you know, Jesus is teaching. This man comes up, said, would you heal my son? Your disciples have tried to do it and he can't do it. And Jesus answers the man and says, if you believe, it's done. He said, I do believe, but help my unbelief. The same breath, it's the same sentence, it's one sentence. This man is confessing that he rests in the knowledge that Christ can, but he still doesn't really believe that he can. It's this seesaw, this dichotomy, this very strange and real reality that we rest in. But it's not about the level, the depth, the strength, the essence of our faith. It's everything rests in the faithfulness of God. And so there's going to be times, I mean, you know, how many times have you contemplated the reality that, you know, if I could just walk with Jesus, like the disciples, you know, oh, to see the miracles. The same thing that we would say, man, if I were in Egypt to see this power, How could these people not believe? We would be the same way. And beloved, our circumstances, whether they be physical, emotional, mental, relational, financial, political, whatever, they cloud out our faith. So we're here in 1 Peter and I'm standing here to confess to you that it's one of those things where at the end of yesterday I'm going, am I trusting God in anything? You ever had that? And maybe it's different because I have to teach, I have to be here, I'm obligated to stand here and I want to be here, even when I don't want to be here, I have to be here. Not because I have to be here, but I can't do anything else. Does that make sense? Brother Mike and I had that conversation yesterday. It's just like, what is the call? It's an insane, impossible escape to serve the Lord, even at great cost. But yet, I have learned that being true about where I am spiritually is more powerful than posturing as if I'm Dr. Tippins teaching you the lecture. Because I am struggling just like you are. And that's okay. It's okay. Part of the trials that we never escape is when we try to pretend they're not happening. And God has not ordained the church to gather together as a family to pretend that we've got it all together. but to be honest that we don't. And some people say, well, what in the world, pastor, if you're doubting, what does that mean for me? That means that, yay, we're just the same. Don't put me on a pedestal as a person, much less a pastor. Though I stand on one up here just so you can see me when the room's full. Let's read the first five verses together of 1 Peter 1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles in the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who, by God's power, being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. I'm gonna continue. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Christ. Though you have not seen him, you do love him. that you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Verse 10. Concerning their salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person and at what time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Messiah and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but serving you. And the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." I have a tingle running up my head right now thinking about that and getting into that, unpacking the reality that what heaven is doing right now is rejoicing in that that it looked forward to before the days of Christ. And our hope then, as Peter would go on to say, is fully set on the grace of God. Now we've unpacked this stuff, we've talked about it as a whole, and I'll remind you that we've done this, and then we are unpacking these things bit by bit, looking at the words, looking at the terms, looking at the ideas so that we may know what we're reading. Why is that important? Because when I say the word hope, we get a thousand definitions from 50 different people. When I say the word love, we get all these different ideas. There's a science of that. There's a psychology of that. There's a theology of that. There's a philosophy of that. There's an ideology of that. There's a practice of that. And we can all be standing in the same place, but literally be on a different planet when it comes to understanding what God's word is saying. And it's not that difficult, but we've made it difficult. And so last week, we talked about hope. We talked about hope as, I can't remember exactly how I put it, but this is the sentiment that I feel that the scripture teaches, and I unpacked it this way to prove it to you, is that hope is an underlying current that touches and intersects with everything that we are and do in life. And we see this hope, and we might say, well, I don't have hope today, and that's okay. Hope will come and go. Peace will come and go. Joy will come and go. But beloved, we live in hopelessness when we take our eyes off our hope. And then the argument comes then, it says, look here, God in His great mercy, His great love, verse 3, has caused us to be born again. Therefore, be blessed, God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We've been adopted as children to share in the brotherhood of Jesus, who is the Son. As siblings, to share the glory of Christ. Not to join the angels, but to stand with Christ. To be like Him in righteousness. The very thing that Lucifer wanted has been granted to us by grace. Think about that. No creature has the power to say, I will stand with God, but God has the power to say, you will stand with me. We're born into this living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the power and the purpose and the promises of God we talked about last week, unto an inheritance that cannot fail, cannot be taken away. And we have this inheritance and this hope today in this life and the life ever after. The problem is we are often clouded by the life we live. It's very easy. This is not easy to live. in this life sometimes. But this promise is kept in heaven for us and then we see in verse 5 who, you, who are being guarded by God's power. And here's the phrase that we're going to deal with today, through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And so what it does there is it, depending on how you define faith, and you define hope, and you define the love of God, and you define the promises of God, you may misunderstand and think that this is saying, if you have enough faith, you'll be guarded. And it's not saying that. Because we've got to understand that faith is not what we exercise. Faith is something God does in us and grants us. And then there is an implication with faith in every aspect of our lives that flows from this gift. And so what I want to do today is I want to unpack the foundations of faith from the Old New Testament, and then I want to synthesize this in a way that shows us what Peter is saying. And I want to show you where it can apply. 10 or 11 places in our lives. You know, 22 sentences. It's not going to take another two hours. And I want to talk about the implications of that. Then I want to revisit the point of Peter at its core is salvation. Eternally. but it does have implications today. So what does it mean to have faith? Well, I simplify faith according to the Bible in its context as this, a disposition of rest and that which we cannot see because it has been promised by the one who sees all things. Well, how do we know we can trust God? Because the narrative of history shows us we can, that he's never failed, he's never lied, He's never forsaken. We see that in the Old Testament. Four examples in the Old Testament. Four examples in the New Testament, just to keep it simple. The foundations of faith in the Old Testament, we see them, of course, in the Garden in Genesis. But in Genesis 12, 15, 17, we see God promising something to Abram, a covenant, a promise, a contract, that Abram is not on the hook to keep his end of the deal. because he doesn't keep his end of the deal. But he trusts and he rests in the promises of God, no matter what he can see, even when he can't see it and he doubts God and he takes matters into his own hands, and Sarah takes matters into her own hands, and the two of them do their best, but they're not faithful, but yet they're called faithful because he who promised is faithful. The inception of faith in the Bible is closely tied to Abraham and his belief in God's promises despite what he could see, despite what was true according to biology. With his age and Sarah's barrenness, he rested in the promise that was impossible. And the Bible says that resting was counted to him as righteousness. And so we could say then, oh, okay, so if I'm resting, I'm righteous. If I'm not resting, I'm not righteous. No, it's not the essence of our faith. That's not the point. Because we see, and thank God we have the stories, we see that Abram was not faithful in faith. He did not believe. He lied. He deceived. He did all sorts of things. He committed adultery. He was a very bad person. He was a very human person. And we need to understand that this is foundational for realizing that faith is in the sufficiency of God's promises, not necessarily in the sufficiency of our hoping. And that may be tongue-in-cheek to you. It may seem like I'm just sort of playing with words and I'm sort of maneuvering the ideas around a little bit. But beloved, I'm telling you right now, it's deeper than that. Resting in the promises of God is not a perfect thing. But the promises of God are perfect, whether we believe in them or not. And some people will hear me say that and go, oh, Pastor Tipton said that you don't have to believe. Okay, whatever. You don't have to believe all the time because you can't. You don't have to have it right every single breath because that's impossible. And if you're anything like me, there are times where you've literally stuck your finger in the face of God and told him you've had enough. When circumstances seem impossible, God is faithful. See, Paul tells Timothy that, right? When we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. So we see the Abrahamic covenant. We see the faith of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, where they rest in the promises of God through their actions and decisions, often in the face of great adversity. their lives underscore faith is what I like to say is a generational legacy. Not a stoicism, not a perfect spiritual example, but as a spiritual picture of the faithfulness of God. Because were those people faithful? Was Isaac faithful? Was Jacob faithful? Was Joseph faithful? Out of the three, I mean, Joseph was absolutely probably one of the most faithful. But he was also one of the most arrogant until God humbled him by the hand of his own brothers who hated him. And then when that time comes, because he is faithful to trust that God has his good, he does not partake in becoming powerful and partaking in the ways of Egypt to move in a political state to become something. God makes him something out of nothing because God is showing his faithfulness. So in times when we are weak and we can rest, that's the faithfulness of God being shown. And then when the place of Joseph comes to the head of this famine and his family who thinks he's dead comes to Egypt to get food and to survive, Joseph is the co-regent. He's literally the hand of the king. He is ruling Egypt. A Jewish man. And he gets the room cleared and he confesses that he is who he is to his brothers and they are horrified. And Joseph praises God for what they did to him. He praises God that they hated him and they were jealous. He praises God that they abused him. He praises God that they sold him into slavery and took his coat back to his father and grieved his father and told him that he was dead. He thanked God and he said, this is what God has willed. And you need to understand that these things that are recorded in the Bible are not just for us to see God working, but for us to see Christ in them. Joseph is a type of Christ. Isaac is a type of Christ. So therefore, Abram's and Sarah's life is to show us Christ. Just like the Proverbs 31 woman, that's Jesus. Above all things, understand the pictures and the narratives of the Old Testament. All of them are pictures of Christ. Every single, and you don't have to make a stretch to see it. It will be hated. It will be unjustly accused, Isaiah says. And Joseph was hated and unjustly accused, given unto death, that he may give life. to those who hated him. And Joseph, with love and joy, fed his family. And we see Moses. We see the Pentateuch. We see the first five books of the Bible, but specifically the life of Moses and the faith of Moses in the Exodus. Was Moses faithful? No, he didn't even get to enter into the temporary promise of the promised land because of his hard attitude of disobedience and frustration with the people that deserve to be flogged. And he cried out, these knuckleheads are killing me, God, just, oh! God's like, okay, I'll smite them all. No, no, no, no, don't kill them, I love them. I don't know why, but I love these people. Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do. Moses is the type of Christ. And you don't have to take my word for it. Just read the letter of the Hebrews. Just read Romans. Just read Galatians. You'll see that I'm right because the Bible teaches these things. It's not counting pages and turning things upside down and holding them into the mirror to find the mysterious numbers that add us up to the right alphabet so we can say who's what in the Bible. It's just literally narratives and narrations and poems and teachings that are very clear and explain it all. Remember, Old Testament theology is trumped by apostolic authority. It explains it. Moses demonstrates his faith by leading people out of Egypt. And he didn't believe, did he? He even told God he couldn't do it. And then God shows that the unbelief, that the human condition of the Israelites and the Exodus is deserving of death, and they grumbled against God, and the serpent comes to bite the Israelites, and they are dying. And the very thing that God gave Moses as a guide and a comfort in this impossible task was a stick. That's comedy, y'all. That is the funniest thing that's ever been printed. I want you to go tell the king whose kingdom that you're wanted for murder to let all the people that establish his economy and rule go. Sayeth I, I am. I can't do that. Well, take your brother. He's not going to help me. Here's a stick. You just take this stick down. It'll get you where you need to go. The stick turns to a snake and the stick Turns the river into blood, and the stick is sort of like, it's a pacifier, it's a security blanket. That's why the head of it was stuck in the Ark of the Covenant. No, that's the wrong one, isn't it? That's Aaron's staff. Either way, there's probably somebody trying to keep that stick. But Jesus uses that stick. Because when the Israelites were dying, God told Moses, you take this bronze serpent, and you put it on the end of the staff that I gave you, and you hold it up, and you declare that all who look upon the snake will live. And he held it up. The very thing that caused them to die, they had to look at for hope. The snake. It's just a picture of that. Righteousness caused them to die. Justice caused them to die. The law has no mercy, but the lawgiver is the mercy seat. And put himself as the serpent to be hated and despised, but yet bit no one, killed no one, hurt no one. They grumbled against him and he died. And he died for them. And Jesus in John chapter 3, as we'll get to, it'll be my first example of the New Testament foundation of faith. He says, as Moses lifts up the serpent in the wilderness, so must I, the Son of Man, be lifted up, that all who look upon me and believe will live. See, Moses wasn't about him. It wasn't about Israel as a nation. It was about Christ. It was about knowing we could trust in the absolute promise of Christ and that faith is this really strange thing that sometimes is unworkable. Faith is not the solid foundation upon which we stand. Christ is the foundation. Christ is the rock. It's not obedience. It's not belief. It's Christ. And Moses not only believed God and did all this silly stuff, he saw great power. And Moses believed and was put over the care of God's people. And they hated him for it. They hated him for it. But he relied on God for provision. And we see all the prophets. All of them, the men and the women of the Old Testament that God sent into the nations to proclaim the good news. To proclaim the law, to proclaim grace. We see all of them, what they did is they proclaimed that promise that was given to Eve, the mother of life. That inside of her was a seed that only God could grow. And that from that son shall the head of the serpent be crushed. And Adam and Eve believed God. They wore the clothes that He made, not their own. The message of the prophets highlight faith as resting in the future and the promise of restoration, of justice, of rightness. And then we see the New Testament, as I've already mentioned, in John. Of course, everything's going to be somewhere in John's writing for me. But we see this restoration. We see the life and teachings of Jesus present faith as belief in Him for salvation, a theme that is succinctly captured in John 3, 16. And then the miracles of Christ, the teaching, the parables of Christ, the interactions, they emphasize this faith as a requisite for spiritual insight. as a requisite for miracles and as a requisite for hope. But it's a failing faith. I mean, it's always good to go through the conversation with Nicodemus, right? He understood it. He understood Messiah. He understood that Jesus was Messiah. He didn't rest in Christ. He had all the night understanding. He couldn't understand this idea of being born of God, of just having a transformation of your inner thoughts, or even when the thoughts weren't there, a disposition of going, it's okay, Christ has me. Christ is the fulfillment of faith. We see the healing narratives. And everywhere we go, I mean, even the cripple at the pull of Bethesda. And Jesus says, do you want to be healed? And he gives an excuse as to why he's never been healed. It's always an excuse, right? It's always something. Well, I can't do that. We try to find fault with other people trying to help us. Because it's certainly not, we want to be healed. But there's always something, there's a circumstance or someone or something that's always in the way. But nothing's in the way of Christ's salvation. Nothing can stop it. You can't stop it. We can't stop it. We can't be separated from the love of God. The letters of Paul. exclusively discusses faith, specifically in Romans and Galatians, framing it as a means in the context of a necessary reality, but not necessarily the power of justification. And sometimes we parse those words and we even say them wrong or we mix them up or whatever and some people say, wait a minute, so when I believe then God, no, when you believe, you know that you've been saved by the faithfulness of Christ. It wasn't all of a sudden magically applied to us because we got it right, as we'll see. But that's how it's written. That's how it's preached. But that's not how it's parsed. And the letters of Paul begins to make a shift toward understanding faith is believing in the death and resurrection of Christ and what it meant. You'd be surprised the number of people every day that I talk to about the gospel and they come back with some type of thing that would make them responsible for their salvation. Well, I just need to have more faith or I need to get my life right. No, you don't. You need to be still and know that He is God and know that He has saved you. Because that's what He said He did. Jesus says it is finished. Not, I hope y'all get this right. But that's how we live, isn't it? I hope I get this right. And then we give up because we can't get it right, and especially when times are difficult, we throw our hands in the air, we leave the faith, we leave hope, and we just go, well, I can never come back to my father because, oh, what a fool that I am. But yet the very teachings of Jesus say that the son who ran away and mocked the father and wanted him more than dead, that the father was waiting and watching, and they restored this boy. Luke 15. The general letters, Hebrews 11 has the hall of fame of faith, right? Summarizing Old Testament examples to define faith as confidence in what we hope for and assurance in what we do not see. Confident assurance is a really good place to rest. But then James juxtaposes, juxtaposes, James juxtaposes this idea of faith and works. And I remember some of my first days in seminary going through letter studies and people, professors saying, hey, now we've got a dichotomy here, we've got a contradiction here. James and Paul are not on the same page about justification, salvation. So therefore James' letter may not even be authentic. And I'm like, so I read both Romans and then James, and I read them again, and I'm like, what? They're saying the exact same thing. One is teaching people that because they have faith, they need to work that faith out in obedience. And moreover, love and stop showing favoritism for people. And if all we're doing is sitting on our hands and we're not loving one another, then the faith that we have is dead. It has no effect in the world around us, like a dead cow. But even a dead cow, before it rots, we can store it and eat it. but a dead faith is absolutely worthless. Just like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, if we don't have love and we're seeking after our own well-being at the cost of others, then we are worthless, like a clanging cymbal, or like we put it in today's perspective that I often teach that, it's like a child with a wooden spoon in a pot. Yeah, it's funny the first three minutes. And you don't think you're a murderer, just leave that on repeat for a little while. I thought you had kids. No, never have. Don't know what you're talking about. James says that true faith manifests something in actions. But I would say that it's not just true faith, it's living faith. That's a better way of putting it. And then we see John's apocalypse, which means revealed things. Apocalypse does not mean the end of all things and terror. It literally means revealed. That's why we call that revelation. That's the English equivalent. And that's faith in the context of suffering, not just eschatology or end times or last days. We are in last days. Since the day Christ left, we're in last days. and this encouraging perseverance and believing that in persecution and trials, we look forward to God's ultimate triumph and hope. That's faith. So these are sort of the foundations. What have I done? I've just shown you eight different ways in the Old and New Testament that faith is described. Now back to 1 Peter. Here we see Peter saying we have a living hope and inheritance that is imperishable and kept in heaven for us. And we who see the pronoun there who are being guarded by faith or through faith. By God's power. We talked about that a little bit last week, segueing into today's sermon, that this suggests not just a belief or rest in what God has promised, but that there is a protective promise. So it's not just that God has said, you have eternal life, but God has said, I will keep you in this life. I read out of 1 Thessalonians chapter four to start the service this morning. And I did so because it's on my heart, I wanted it fresh in my head when I got here. Because we see that there is a grand promise. Chapter 4 and 5, yeah, chapter 4 and 5, I read all of chapter 4 and then partial of chapter 5. But Paul, writing this letter with Silvanus and Timothy, talks and tells the brothers and the sisters to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. He rephrases it in a certain way, he says, so that you may please God just as you are doing. Isn't that funny sometimes when we get to, when somebody reminds us of something or encourages us of something? And then we take offense at it because we know we're already trying or doing it, but we feel like we're getting in trouble rather than being encouraged. I saw one of the kids last night talking with them for an hour or two about just all sorts of things, and they said, in parting, going to bed, Dad, just don't forget, you have to give it to the Lord. And that doesn't bite. That's a blessing. It's a blessing. And then Paul goes on to say, now concerning brotherly love, nobody needs to write to you about how to love one another. You're doing it, but I want you to do more of it. It's also in the introduction of the letter. And I don't want you to be ignorant about what's happened to those people who have died. God's promises are yea and amen. You don't have to worry about who's died or whether or not you're going to die or whatever, because we're going to live. No one really dies in Christ. We just live in a different place. And that's where that entire 7,000 volumes of eschatological nonsense about raptures and third comings and fourth comings and all these other types of things come from because it's a multi-million dollar racket from the time of Darby to the time of the 1920s and 30s on through some of the other nonsense all the way up to some of the other guys that are still living today that I won't call their names so you don't go look them up. It's a marketing ploy, it's not a theological instruction, it's a nuanced way of expressing it. And we know this because he goes on to talk about the helmets that cover our chest and our salvation and our minds and guard our hearts. And we're not gonna be issued armor either. Do you have your armor? Oh, when I was a boy, I really wanted a set of armor. Too bad that's not true. But in chapter 5 of Thessalonians, verse 9, no, verse 8, but since we belong to the day, let us be sober-minded, sober-spirited, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation. It's our mind, the renewal of our mind, Romans 12, 1 and 2. God has not destined us for wrath, but he has destined us that we will obtain salvation Through our Lord Jesus Christ who died in the place of us and for us so that whether we're alive or dead right now We are alive with him. So see I don't make this stuff up. I just say it Therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing that's the point But when our faith wanes, we can't do that. And we shouldn't be guilty on it. We're being guarded no matter what our faith looks like. By what? God's power. This guarding helps us believe every now and then and rest every now and then that God is holding us. It's like my daughter saying last night, you gotta give it to the Lord. Absolutely. And you might say, what? Everything. My mental plate is so full, it's ridiculous. And I know many of you probably have more to deal with. The Petrine Epistles. The Johannine epistles, the Pauline epistles, in other words, the letters that Peter wrote, the letters that John wrote, the letters that Paul wrote. Peter specifically, he highlights faith as something that is refined and proven genuine through pain. And so we see the foundations of the Old Testament narratives where these people, even though they were failing, even though they didn't always believe, even though they didn't make the right decisions, they persevered. We see it illustrated in Hebrews 11, that though they did not receive what they were hoping for, they did receive it in Christ. And now they're awaiting for us to be with Christ. So let's synthesize all this before we get into some application. These nuances. Faith is, it's not one of them, but faith is multifaceted. That's the first thing you need to understand. I mean, that's what I've just taught you, but you need to understand that faith is multifaceted. It's not just believing the gospel. It's not just resting in the power of God. It's not just acting out and living out. I mean, it's not just theological things. It's many things. A trust in God's character and promise. A belief in the redemptive work of Christ. It's a foundational principle for understanding how God relates to us as human beings. It's also a dynamic process. I want you to listen to this. Faith is a dynamic process that grows and it is refined as we grow and age in the faith. Faith is not a stagnant, one-off thing. It includes doubts, it includes pain, it includes unbelief. So now let's think about where faith applies. This will be fast, so pay close attention. Faith applies in our personal lives as we are transformed by the gospel. It's not an intellectual assent. I used to buy into that. It's not an intellectual assent. Faith is not an intellectual assent. The scripture disavows that. Faith involves the transformation of the whole person. It's something that happens to us. It starts with a resting disposition called repentance. That's what repentance is. Repentance is not about putting away sin at all, ever, anywhere. Repentance is a change of disposition, a change of mind. Something's happened in my mind where I used to not even think about this, I used to not even want this, I used to not even love this, or I used to not even understand this, and all of a sudden I'm good with it and I want it. A transformation. It's like singing a box with flies all over it on the side of the road and someone says, hey, go back and pick up that box. I don't want that box. Why would I want that box? And then somebody tells you what's inside of it. I put two gold bars in the middle of some ice cream and it fell off my truck and it melted. If you could pick it up, you could have the gold. I'm going to get that thing. Your perception's changed. Well, our perception can't change when it comes to faith except the spirit of God does something. And faith transforms and impacts how we approach our personal struggles, how we approach our sin, how we approach our growing. It drives us to pursue life in Christ, to want to walk in a manner worthy, to rely on God's strength rather than our personal efforts. We also can apply faith in our community, in our relationships. Beloved, faith extends beyond the individual. It influences how we form and function in the life around us with human beings. You know what? This world, our existence, is for the sake of being with other people. That's a picture of Christ, the God of heaven, sufficiently, securely, perfect, with no want or need, created the world and people that He may have intimacy with them. This is a better display of His glory. Does it make His glory any better? Does it make Him more glorious? But now, wow, to behold, to see our faith, just like the prophets and others, we are called to interact with the world and to act justly and to have mercy. So I believe that faith helps us to engage in society, in societal issues, from poverty to inequality to overarching injustices. In what way? In the foundational way that our faith and knowing the love of God pushes us to love our neighbors as ourself, even and especially the unlovable ones. Faith gives us endurance through suffering and persecution. Faith gives us the power to go out and serve others, like the Great Commission tells us to. How do we do that? We teach them what I'm saying today. We take the New Testament letters, and we take the gospels, and we take the gospels out to the world or to the conversations we have as much as we can. And when people ask, we invite them to hear the story of this person named Jesus, who is the God of creation, who came to be like us and took our sin on himself, and now we are free. We are empowered by this faith to go out and proclaim. Not the way evangelicalism has done it. It's over. I'm just gonna say that. Evangelicalism as a movement has been over for a long, long time, and I'm not so sure that it ever had a place in a biblically pure way, but it had a place in God's purposes. There's nothing else to show us that the patriarchal nonsense of all of this stuff has done nothing but drive people further from love. We ought to live missionally. Remember the first time you ever heard that? On mission. Being on mission is where we are right now, present and available. It also applies to our intellectual engagement and our apologetics. You know, you've heard me talk about my hobby theology. Oh, wow. See, faith engages the mind as well as the heart. Christians are called to love God with all of their heart and their mind, which includes understanding what they believe and why they believe and why it matters, but not to the level and to the precision, and to the exposition that some of us enjoy, but we also enjoy quantum physics, and chess strategies, and history, and archeology, and law, and debate, and sometimes just downright getting in a ring and punching people. Yes, there's a science to fighting, and I can promise you I can show it to you. But it's not about our salvation. even the parts that are biblical. Our salvation is in Christ alone, not in the knowledge, but our faith drives that, doesn't it? Our intellectual engagement strengthens our faith and equips believers to address questions and challenges from outside the community of faith, the church, in a way that the scripture teaches us, which is founded in love, not nonsense and knuckle-headed hatred. What do you mean? The Bible has never called anybody in the faith to tell the world they need to change the way they live. Because anybody can change their lifestyle. And they can look the part and stand before God, and the Lord will say, I never knew you, depart from me, you worker of iniquity. John 3 is very important to that understanding. Nicodemus was a very good man with good theology, but he couldn't rest until he was born of the Spirit. Faith applies to our personal vocation. Do you know the word vocation? Look it up if you're into words. It means divine call. That's the literal definition of vocation. Divine call. So whether you're working as a pastor, or whether you're working as a doctor, or whether you're working at the coffee shop, if that's your vocation, God has called you to it. Do it as unto the Lord. See? The faith informs understanding of work. Viewing our jobs and our service as a place to serve God and contribute to the common good. I mean, in my mind, I see all work as sacred, as done under the Lord, Colossians 3, 23 and 24. So this challenges this secular-sacred divide in my mind. So that when we work, we pursue excellence, we pursue integrity, and we pursue service in everything we do as an expression of our faith that's under the Lord. Work is not a means to an end, but part of God's purpose of showing His self. But, all of those things being true, it's not the centrality of faith, is it? The centrality of faith is our eternal salvation. In Paul's writing to the church of Ephesus, he says in Ephesians chapter 2, 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing, but it is the gift of God so that no one can boast. So you might say, well how do I muster this faith? You can't, it must be granted to you. Salvation is entirely a work of grace. Received through faith. What does it mean received? Understood. Accepted. Grasped. Not applied. We don't apply salvation to ourselves in any way. God has done that in Christ. Faith understands these things. We are justified before the Lord because he said that we are in Romans chapter 3. But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known to which the law and the prophets bear witness. This righteousness is giving through faith in Christ to those believing ones. And I paraphrase there for emphasis. So we're declared righteous before God and we know it. Why? Because of the faithfulness of Christ, because of what He accomplished. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without trusting in His faithfulness, without resting in His promises, we can't please Him. We can't stand righteous before Him, because if we are trying to establish righteousness, even in our believing, I've got to believe more, I've got to serve more, I've got to do more, I've got to be more, then we are not resting in that moment and in that breath in His righteousness. So faith pleases God because faith is God pleasing Himself in justice. Let's see that for a second. What do you mean? God put forth Christ to be propitiation, to satisfy His wrath. Romans 3. So we rest. We rest. So the promise of entering, chapter 4 of Hebrews, the promise of entering into this rest still stands. Let us be careful that we don't fall short, that we don't have a heart of unbelief. So even the Exodus was a picture of God's faithfulness. We don't believe, we don't believe, we don't believe, we don't believe, and there's a picture there. Why did they walk around four decades? Because as they continued to grumble in God's purpose, He showed that even amongst the chosen people, there will be a chosen people. What does that mean? That God's love is the ultimate decider. God's love is the ultimate power. God's love is the ultimate mercy. God's will, and He's promised it to us, beloved, that we would rest. We rest. We're in the desert. Just rest. Okay, just rest. Just relax. God's got it. I don't like what God's providing. This manna is not good. Well, you want to go back to Egypt, be a slave? Yes, because the food was better. Can you imagine? That's the picture, though, isn't it? We'll go back to doing our way. We'll go back to the law. We'll go back to the obedience. We'll go back to church life. We'll go back to cultural Christianity. We'll go back to this. We'll go back to the Ten Commandments. We'll go back to whatever it is. We'll go back to covering our heads. We'll go back to reciting rote prayers. And look at the world. We'd rather go back to doing the things that we can control and that we know that we have there for us, even when they are leading to death and bondage, rather than trust in the freedom that comes in the unknown of what God has promised, because it's a scary place out here in this world that we don't belong to, in the darkness that we can't see into, but we are light, so peer into it and see the light that sits there. Who is Jesus Christ the righteous? We rest, and we rest in the righteousness of Christ. In Philippians chapter 3 verse 9, Paul says, and being found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ Jesus, the righteousness that comes from God through faith. Faith doesn't give us this righteousness. Faith sees this righteousness. Faith rests in this righteousness. Faith believes in this righteousness. Faith stands up and walks in this righteousness. Faith in Christ is trusting His promises. And we can rest in the work of God. In John chapter 6, oh, what a full, full narrative. Specifically when he has fed the 5,000 and they follow him to Capernaum and they find him there the next day. Remember when he teleports the boat three and a half miles across the sea. And the disciples are just like a bag of potato chips. They're just dumb. And we would be too. They're just dumb. I love it. I love that God used all these dumb people to show his patience. All these posturing mansplainers. Peter, the king of them all. Thomas. I tell you what, I ain't gonna die, I ain't gonna believe unless I, and then the man shows up. I almost sometimes feel like Thomas double bolted the door so Jesus couldn't get in there to prove him wrong. So he walked through the wall. Jesus didn't get on to him. What's wrong with you, you idiot? You're so stupid. No, Thomas was so human. He didn't get on to Peter when Peter denied him three times. What's wrong with you? I thought you were my guy, man. I thought you had my back, man. You're not looking after me. I'm alone. I'm dying. I'm pleading with the Father not to kill me. And I'm sweating blood in there, and you go to sleep, John? No, that's not what Jesus did. Jesus didn't do that. Jesus did not curse these people for their humanity. That was already done by the law. He freed them from it in His humanity. Let that sink in for a minute. That's a good story, y'all. That's the gospel. So he says to Peter, just feed my little sheep. Feed my lambs. Love me in the best way you can. It's not going to be perfect, but my love for you is absolute perfection. And perfect love will cast away your fear. Just feed my sheep. Peter wrote this letter that we may be fed the love of God today. And when Thomas He just says, hey, Thomas, look at my hands. Look at my side. Thomas falls down, he says, you are the God of me. The Lord of me. And he walked with him. In the cool of the day in the garden where they walked in the intimacy with God. And then when sin came into the garden their eyes were opened and they were like God and they could see good and evil. And they saw that their motivations, that their power, that their ability, that their intelligence, that their seeking of wisdom did nothing but bring death. Because the law has no mercy, but the one who is the law giver became sin that we might be his righteousness and he has declared us that. And so now when we are knowing Christ and we rest that He knows us, we get to walk with Him without shame, without guilt, without oppression, without favoritism. Faith is a work of God. Back to John 6. Finding and he says they said where'd you go? How'd you get here? Tell us how we can never lose you again. We want to follow you And he says you're seeking me not because of who I am and what I do And what I came to do, but you seek me because you want what I will give to you for your stomachs Times is hard a happy meal is expensive. I give it up free bread and fish unlimited And they travel over here for these mandated meals, temple things, and all these pompous guys stand around blowing smoke, blowing fire, cooking meat, taking up offerings, selling doves at an elevated price. Gotta have it. Jesus says, they asked Jesus, so what must we be doing then to do the work of God? What must we do then? Okay, Jesus, we're doing all this stuff, so you tell us, what brings that question? He says, do not labor for the bread that perishes. Do not labor for this world, but understand this world through the bread that doesn't perish. Work for that. See how that application of how our faith applies to all these areas? It's just succinct, and if you don't see it, it's probably my fault, because maybe it's just not clear enough in my exposition today. I'm tired. Then they ask, what must we be doing to do the work of God? Tell us what to do. And Jesus says it. It's such a wonderful way. I mean, it's just it's not impressive. It's amazing. It's how I feel about people that I love. They don't impress me. They amaze me. An impression can be just an outward appearance, but an amazement is to the core of the soul. And Jesus says, this is the work of God. that you believe in me. I thought we were. We followed you over here. All those boats that just somehow got blown over here for that storm so we could all come over here. That happenstance, you know, all that. Now we're over here and we do believe in you. We believe you're going to give us some more food, man. That's why we're here. You said it yourself. But what food do you have? that you're talking about, I don't get it. I am the food that comes down from heaven and then everybody's like, I'm out, I'm out. This guy's nuts. Believe in the one he has sent, Jesus says. Faith is not a human decision. Faithfulness is not a human effort. When we are weak, and we can't, and we don't, He does. And then He does in us and through us, and we go, wow, He's faithful. And then we're better equipped for the next time, when the holes of life, and the pits of life, and the trials of life, and the strife of life hit, and we go, oh, I gotta be faithful, and then we're not faithful. We're faithless and he's faithful. And then we're brought through it again and then we're prepared. Wow, next time it's gonna be better. I'm gonna be stronger. No, next time he's gonna be as strong as he was the first. It's not about us being strong, beloved. The greatest power that we have as human beings is to recognize our inability to have strength. God, I wish I'd learned that a long time ago. but in His purpose, it's a very novel idea for me. It's not novel information, but it's definitely a novel wisdom. It's very new. So these scriptures that we've talked about today affirm that faith is a supernatural work of God and it involves a restful assurance in God's promises characterized by a change of disposition and self-reliance. So if you want to see an active reality of what repentance should be understood as in the context of trusting Christ, it's a turning away from, if you want to use it that way, self-reliance. And it allows us hope in the face of all things. The Holy Spirit sent from heaven taught us these things about Christ, taught the prophets these things, now teaches us these things through these writings. And the one who is sent from heaven is the faithful one into which all of the angels look. All the angels look. Now do you see this sandwich? Do you see what's in the middle of it? What comes out of it? Christ is in the middle of it. He's the whole morsel. He's the entirety of it. And what comes from eating this bread, from eating this hope, from focusing in this way, is joy. Even when it's inexpressible. And that's where we'll be next week. to see that the joy of the Lord, even when it's inexpressible, is powerful to affect us in a positive way. So let's pray. Lord, I thank you for humility. Lord, I pray. There's so much stuff in this letter as we go get to it that I tremble to discuss. I tremble to discuss it because I am not faithful to trust in it sometimes, all the time. But when I do, I praise you for it. Lord, I'm also learning just how wrong I've been in some things. And Father, I'm learning just how blind I've been about some things. And so, Lord, by Your grace and Your perfect timing, I pray that You would teach us as a family to understand and to apply Your Word in a way that we've never done before, by faith, not by works, not by structure, not by system, not by framework, but by faith. And in doing so, we trust in you. When we make the wrong choice, we can trust that you are not mad with us, you are not angry, you will not condemn us, but you'll carry us through, you will teach us, and you will put us on the right path. And Father, we also know that it is okay to struggle. It is okay to suffer. It is okay to be in need. For in those moments, you are strongest. And then we can be part of that strength with those around us, Lord. As Jesus has shown to us in Scripture, He is the creator of all things, yet He became nothing and died on a cross as the weakest of all things. That in Him we may live and that in His weakness we have strength. So as we take the table today, Father, help us to remember the body of Christ broken, and the blood of Christ shed, so that we may stand with You. In Christ's name.