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What is Faith?
Matthew 15:21 - 28
Have you noticed that we're hearing a lot about faith these days? It all
started when our faith was shaken by the events of 9/11, and then
bolstered by our national response. There was a call for everyone to
return to prayer. The media claimed that it was his faith that helped
President Bush get re-elected and when a national tragedy “like the
tsunami happens we begin the discussion of faith all over again.
Regardless of what you think of federal funding for religious social
programs or who you voted for, or how deeply you were impacted by the
events of 9-11, the war, or the tsunami, I'm glad we're talking about
faith.
If it is if anything at all, faith is an internal issue. Western culture
in general and Western Christianity in particular tends to obsess on
outward appearances rather than the things that go on inside of us. I
guarantee you if you pick up a magazine today it is very unlikely that
you will see an article dedicated to what Brittany Spears is thinking.
If anything good can come from tragedies it is that we have become a
more introspective people.
Since it's in vogue to talk about faith in something more than a whisper
these days, you and I should, well talk about it. We're beginning a new
nine-week series this morning called 3-ON-3 for three weeks we'll focus
on faith, for three, hope, and the last three weeks, we'll take a look
at love. Three weeks each on three internal issues that make a dramatic
impact on how we live out our lives.
Today I want to go back to a text we used a few weeks ago, Turn to
Matthew 15:21 - 28. We'll hear the text, and then pray.
This story still disturbs me. Jesus essentially calling a distraught
mother a dog? I think of the mother in Atlanta last September who placed
her infant in the car seat of her van at Wal-Mart then walked a few feet
away to replace her shopping cart. Someone snatched her baby and drove
off with the frantic mother clinging to the side of the getaway car. The
baby was later recovered, but think about that mother coming to Jesus,
hysterical, hopeless, pleading, and Jesus calls her a dog. This story
can really bother us when we visualize it like that.
Today I want you to notice the end of the story. The part where Jesus
says, "Woman, you have great faith." The only other time He commends
someone for having great faith is in Luke 7:9 Jesus heals the servant of
a Roman officer. He says the officer has great faith.
What is faith, anyway?
What difference does it make?
How do we know when we've got it?
And if we have it, is it like the faith of this woman in Matthew 15? Is
it great?
In the Bible, the word faith almost always means trust. Reliance.
Confidence in someone or something, usually God. But that isn't the only
way the word is used.
Knowing Faith
At it's most basic level there is what we might call knowing faith. Some
call it intellectual faith, but the word "intellectual" leaves a bad
taste for a lot of us. Sounds like you'd have to have a high IQ to
possess something called intellectual faith. So let's call it knowing
faith.
Knowing faith is simply the mental assent that something is true. It is
the intellectual acceptance that something is a fact.
When we say, "I believe Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the
United States," we are practicing knowing faith. When we say, "I believe
that gravity is the force that causes unsupported objects to fall,"
that's knowing faith. "I believe there is a God. I believe that Jesus is
his son. I believe the Holy Spirit dwells within Christians." Those are
all statements of knowing faith.
We acquire knowing faith in basically three ways;
1) We accept the word of someone who is an authority on the subject,
2) We come to believe certain things to be fact based on experience,
3) Or we use our powers of reason.
I believe that George Bush is the current president of the United
States. I believe that based on my experience of his presidency. I don't
need the testimony of an authority and I don't need to use my powers of
reason. I simply have to observe. I did not, however, experience Abraham
Lincoln's presidency. I accept the authority of experts in the field of
history and the reliability of other evidence.
But there are some things that neither experience nor the word of an
authority can prove. Think of a criminal trial, for example. A man
stands accused of murder. No one saw him commit the murder, so there are
no witnesses to say, "I saw him aim the gun, pull the trigger and murder
the victim." There are, however, fingerprints on the weapon and both
they and the weapon belong to the accused. The accused was heard to
utter threats on the life of the victim in the days prior to the murder.
The accused cannot account for his whereabouts during the time the
murder was committed. The accused and the victim were seen together in a
car leaving a restaurant one hour before the victim was killed. When the
police came to question the accused, the first words out of his mouth
were, "I didn't do it."
Using your powers of reason what might you conclude? He did it. You
didn't experience him doing it. There isn't an authority that can tell
you beyond all doubt that he did it. But based on the evidence at hand,
you can reasonably conclude, "I believe that man is guilty as charged."
Knowing faith, then, is not some blind leap into the darkness, or as H.
L. Menckin put it, "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
improbable."
John Stott said, "To bring our minds under Christ's yoke is not to deny
our rationality but to submit to his revelation."
Knowing faith is based on the testimony of an authority, our own
experience, or our ability to consider all the evidence and work toward
a reasonable conclusion. And sometimes, all three.
The Bible talks about knowing faith.
Jude 3 mentions the "faith that was once and for all delivered to the
saints." Jude is talking about a body of teaching that has been passed
on. A set of statements about God, his word, his work in the world.
Then there's James 2:19. "You believe that there is one God. Good. Even
the demons believe that -- and shudder."
James is confronting people who think that knowing the facts about God
is enough to have a relationship with him. They claim to know a lot
about God and in fact probably do. But there is no change in how they
live. So he says to them, "Okay, so you have this knowing faith. You
accept as true certain statements about God. For example, there is one
God.
Great. The devil believes that." In other words, the demons are
orthodox. They believe that there is one God.
Which tells us something about the limits of knowing faith. It isn't
enough to save us. I'll put it this way; you can't be saved without a
knowing faith. There are certain statements about God and his work in
Jesus Christ that you have to accept as true in order to be saved. But
simply acknowledging their truth isn't enough to save you.
To be perfectly clear, it isn't enough to just agree that there is a
God. In fact, it isn't enough to even know and believe a ton of facts
about God. There has to be more than the delivery, reception and
acceptance of certain facts and information.
I think some of us assume that by virtue of our knowledge of the Bible
and our belief that all of that knowledge is true that we are,
therefore, people of faith.
Are we? Or are we merely people of facts.
The prince of Grenada, an heir to the Spanish crown, was sentenced to
life in solitary confinement in Madrid's ancient prison called "The
Place of the Skull." The fearful, dirty, and dreary nature of the place
earned it the name. Everyone knew that once you were in, you would never
come out alive. The prince was given one book to read the entire
time-the Bible. With only one book to read, he read it over hundreds and
hundreds of times. The book became his constant companion.
After thirty-three years of imprisonment, he died. When they came in to
clean out his cell, they found some notes he had written using nails to
mark the soft stone of the prison walls.
The notations were of this sort: Psalm 118:8 is the middle verse of the
Bible; Ezra 7:21 contains all the letters of the alphabet except the
letter j; the ninth verse of the eighth chapter of Esther is the longest
verse in the Bible; no word or name of more than six syllables can be
found in the Bible.
The Prince knew about the Bible, he probably more about it than anyone
that had come before him. But what good was his knowledge?
He was kind of like a tadpole. Have you ever seen a tadpole? A tadpole
is a potential frog. It's a little creature that is mostly head. If your
faith is all knowledge and nothing more, then your no more a Christian
than a tadpole is a frog. You may be on the right track, but you haven't
arrived at the station yet.
Knowing faith makes you a potential Christian.
Showing Faith
So is has to be another level or kind of faith? We just noticed James
2:19 where the demons believe and tremble. Back up a few verses to 2:14.
What use is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but he has no
works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without
clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in
peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is
necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no
works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, "You have
faith, and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I
will show you my faith by my works."
There is knowing faith and there is what we could call showing faith.
The kind of faith that shows up in the way we live our lives.
In 1 Thessalonians 1:3 Paul commended his readers for their work
produced by faith.
In 2 Thessalonians 1: 11 he commended them for every act prompted by
faith. They had accepted certain things as true and they were acting on
what they had believed.
It’s like the story of the man who was walking close to a steep cliff
when he lost his footing and plunged over the side. As he was falling he
was caught on a tree that was sticking out about half way down the
cliff. He managed to get untangled and found himself hanging from a
weak limb with both hands. He looked up and he saw that the cliff was
almost perfectly straight and he was a long way from the top. He looked
down and it was a long, long way down to the rocky bottom.
At this point the man decided that it was time to pray.
He didn't pray a long, wordy prayer, he simply yelled out, "God, if
you're there, help me!"
About that time he heard a voice coming from high up above that said,
"I'm here my son, have no fear."
The man was a little startled at first by God's voice, but he pleaded,
"Can You help me? Can you help me?"
God replied, "Yes, I can my son, but you have to have faith. Do you
trust Me?"
The man answered, "Yes lord, I trust You." God said, "Do you really
trust Me?"
The man, straining to hold on replied, "Yes Lord, I really trust You."
Then God said, "This is what I want you to do, let go of the limb, trust
me and everything will be all right."
The man looked down at the rocks below, then he looked up at the steep
cliff above him and yelled, "Is there anybody else up there?"
That's the difference between knowing faith and showing faith. It is one
thing to say you believe certain facts to be true. It is another, to
demonstrate your belief with your behavior.
Many of us in the room would sign a piece of paper that had a long list
of statements about God, his word, his work in the world. But we aren't
asked to sign a document. We are asked to live a life. Does the way you
live show your faith? Or is your faith just all in your head?
There's one more type of faith we need to talk about.
Saving faith
Remember the woman in Matthew 15? The one Jesus called a dog? The one of
whom he said, "Woman, you have great faith." Let’s look again at the
story.
Jesus and his disciples are making their way through the region of Tyre
and Sidon; Gentile country. They are Jews. Jews and Gentiles in those
days got along' about as well as Jews and Palestinians do now. A Gentile
woman is following them, pleading with Jesus to do something to help her
demon-possessed daughter.
If you remember we talked about the test that was going on between Jesus
and His disciples. Jesus was using this to test the disciple’s
prejudices and to show His love.
The woman speaks directly to Jesus. "Lord, help me."
And He speaks to her and what he says is what the disciples were
feeling. "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to
their dogs." They are the children. She is the dog. Jesus is the master.
That's their view of what's happening.
She says, "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from
their master's table."
Then what does Jesus do? He commends her. He heals her daughter. Two
things are going on in this story.
First, Jesus is confronting the prejudice and arrogance of his
disciples. He is going to heal her daughter, but he wants also to heal
them. They need to see that this woman is as much a child of God as they
are. Just because she's from a different part of the world with
different traditions and culture, makes her no less a candidate for
God's blessings than they. Some of us need that healing, too.
If I were to write the sentence, "God loves everyone regardless of the
color of their skin, the slant of their eyes, their country of origin,"
we'd all sign it. We believe that to be true about God. But do we live
it? We have a knowing faith, but do we have a showing faith when it
comes to breaking down the sinful racial, ethnic barriers that stand
between others and us?
But something else is going on here. Jesus is drawing something out of
this woman. She has a knowing faith. She believes that Jesus can heal
her daughter.
She has a showing faith. She has followed him along the way and is
asking him to do what she knows he can.
But there is an even deeper faith in her. She has a saving faith. She is
willing to say to him, "I can't save my daughter. Only you can. You and
you alone can heal her. And I am casting aside all my pride in the
confidant hope that not only can you heal her, but that you will heal
her. Just a crumb of your power, Master. Just a crumb is all it will
take."
That's the goal of scripture. That's the goal of the Spirit. To take us
from mere intellectual acknowledgement to total surrender. From knowing
faith, through showing faith, to saving faith. When you can say to
Jesus, "Lord, I totally trust you with my life. I will do whatever you
say. I surrender all,".
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