Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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The Just Shall Live by Faith

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening Scripture

You can be seated. Open your Bibles to Romans 1, if you would. In Romans 1, we’re going to read, starting in verse 8, Paul says, first, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the world, the whole world. For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making requests if by some means now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established. That is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often plan to come to you, but was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also just as among the other Gentiles. I am a debtor, both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as is in me, I am ready or eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome Also, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, or as my version says, of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, theBjust shall live by faith. This quotation here is from the Old Testament, the just shall live by faith. And it just so happens that this phrase is used four times in scripture, which is unusual for a passage to be repeated four times in the Bible. So what does that tell us? It tells us that it’s important for God to reiterate, the just shall live by faith. Now we’ve been talking about faith recently, where I have been. And we’ve talked about the fact that when we talk about faith, the ultimate object of our faith is God himself. Now when I use the word God, I’m using the Christian concept. So this includes the idea of our Lord Jesus Christ, because we know that he was God in the flesh, right? In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word, the Logos dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. No man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, meaning the Word, He has expounded Him. He has revealed Him. In other words, by looking at Jesus we see what God is really like. So when we talk about God, when we are talking about God, we’re talking about also the Lord Jesus Christ, because He was fully God as well as fully man. Ultimate object of our faith is God Himself, and that includes the Lord Jesus. But the instrumental object, like these terms, the instrumental object of our faith is what?

Do you know? That’s why you came to find out. You got up on this beautiful morning and came here to find out what the instrumental object of faith is, right?

At least one person did. Thank you.

How We Know God

Let me just ask a question. How do we know who or what God is?

How do we know what God is like? I don’t know if you ever witness and show your faith, you should be, but I share my faith with people and it’s interesting how the non-Christians view of God is like.

Because very often their view is something like this, God is kind and loving and He’s going to forgive everybody. It’s all going to work out in the end. Something like that. You know, in all of my years that I’ve shared the Gospel with people, in all of the years, not one time has a non-Christian ever said to me, I think God is just. Not one time has a non-Christian said to me, I think God is going to punish people. They have always said just the opposite. They’ve always said, you know, God’s good and he loves everybody. And so the picture of God that you get is God’s kind of like an old man with a little touch of Alzheimer’s. That’s kind of what he’s like. Yeah, whatever the grandkids want to do, give them a lot of candy, you know. He wants everybody to be happy. God wants us to be happy, right? So the picture of God that we have is he’s a God without a scepter. He’s a father without a rod. He’s aslin without any claws. Unfortunately, that’s not the God of the Bible. Or let me put it to you like this. When you say God is, and you fill in the blank, whether you say God is love, or God is righteous, or God is merciful, and we sang these things today, we said God is holy, how do you know that? How do you know God is any of these things? Do you just assert it because you like the way it feels? Look it, they’re coming back to hear the… They like my preaching so good, they’re coming back in. Awesome! So, how do we know?

Everybody want to tell me? We know from the Word of God. That’s how we know. We have no authority to say anything about God if we do not have it revealed in His Word.

Come on now. No authority whatsoever. Even if someone says something that is true, if they can’t show it in the Word, they’re standing on thin air. When the unbeliever says to me, I believe God’s kind and loving, they’re saying it because they liked the way that makes them feel. They have no demonstration, they have no proof, they have no ground for asserting that, other than the fact they want to believe that about God, so they say it’s true. But the fact of the matter is, we don’t know God God, unless God chooses to reveal Himself to us. And in His mercy and in His grace, God has revealed Himself to us in His Word.

In His Word. So notice here in Romans, Paul goes on after he says, the just shall live by faith. He says, for the wrath of God, oh my gosh. No, no, no, no. God couldn’t have wrath. He’s kind and loving. No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want to believe that. I don’t like the way that makes me feel. Well, Paul says, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because what may be known of God is manifested in them or among them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, his eternal power in Godhead so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. So Paul is saying nature should have revealed, because if we saw nature as it truly is, in other words, if we could see it for what it is, it would manifest the glory and the majesty and the power of God. Men could know God through nature. The problem b is the lens is dirty. The lens is dirty. I took a video the other day of a squirrel in my backyard. I know, it’s weird, I did it. But I did it through the window. When I was taking it, I didn’t realize the window was smudged. And then later I looked at the video and there was a big smudge on the window. Oh, crud, it messed up my video. Well that’s how we are with God. They’re looking through a lens as our soul. So if I put a picture of a beautiful rose up here and I said, what do you see? You might say, well, I see God’s beautiful handiwork and the evolution, evolutions would say, I see the laws of nature. Why? Because they’re looking through a different lens. When the unregenerate man looks at nature, he ought to see the perfections of God. He ought to. But he, and because he ought to, Paul says he’s without excuse. But he doesn’t. He changes the glory of God. Paul says he transforms the glory of God.

He creates an idol in the place of the true God. Because he’s suppressing the truth. That’s what the natural man does. That’s what the unregenerate heart does. It suppresses the truth. So we ought to know God that way, but we don’t. if we saw as we ought to see, nature would be sufficient.

But we don’t see as we ought. So God in his mercy has given us another word, another witness, another testimony to himself, and that is the scripture. So look, we’re gonna come back to Romans in a minute, but go to Psalm 19 for a minute. So, the Psalmist says here pretty much what Paul says, although he said it first, so Paul’s really alluding to this. Psalm 19.1, For the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork, day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There’s no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line or their chord, that is a word that can be used for a musical chord. So the music of God’s creation has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run its race. It’s rising as from one end of heaven and its circuit to the other end and there’s nothing hidden from its heat. So the psalmist is looking at nature, he looks at the stars and the heavens and the sun and the moon and he says, this is glorious, it’s speaking silently, if you will. It is preaching, it is declaring, it is proclaiming the glory of God.

And if we could see, as we ought to see, that would be sufficient, but it’s not sufficient because we don’t see. So immediately after saying God is revealed in the book of nature, then the Psalmist turns immediately to the book of Scripture. Verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.“ So the Psalmist turns from the book of nature to the book of scripture and then he begins to laud and praise the Word of God, because the Word of God does things, if you will, that nature does not do. Because nature does not convert the soul. Nature does not make wise the simple. Nature does not rejoice the heart. All of these things the Word of God does in the life of those who truly believe. So when we talk about faith and we say that God and- Christ, God in Christ, is the object of our faith, we have to understand that we’re talking about the God of the Bible.

The God of the Bible. Not a God that we make up. Not a God that we craft and design because we like this God. We believe in God because we believe in the Word of God. They are inseparable. This is the thing we must understand. Believing in God and believing in God’s Word are inseparable.

You can’t believe in God apart from His Word. You can’t do it. You can believe in an idea about God. you can believe in notions. But to really believe in God, you must believe in the revelation He has given us of Himself.

You see, knowledge of God is not something that we…

If you read books on, you know, history and religion and stuff, secular scholars talk as if people develop religions and their quest for knowledge and certainty and all of these things. And I think that’s true of the unregenerate man. I think the unregenerate man builds his own religion. The unregenerate man shapes his own idols. That’s what the human heart does. But for the Christian, our knowledge, knowledge of God is not the result of this quest Where we we get little Information about God over here and a little bit there and a little bit there and a little bit there And then we kind of piece it all together and frame our own God Our knowledge of God is a result of God’s self revelation God has chosen to reveal himself to us and he’s done it in his word this book So when we believe in God, we’re believing in the God of the Bible, which also means we believe that the Bible is from God. It’s a circle. You can’t believe in God apart from the Bible, and you can’t really believe in the Bible if you don’t believe in God. If you believe in the one, then you believe in the other. Are you hearing me? And the word, the scripture is the means, that’s why it’s called the instrumental, okay?

It is the means by which we believe in God. If we do not have a word from God, then we know not what to believe. That’s why when Paul was in the book of Acts, when he went to Athens and they’re worshiping, the shrine said the unknown God, at least they were honest. They didn’t give this God a name because they didn’t know what his name was. And he says, you know what, I’m going to tell you who this unknown God is and his name is Jesus. Jesus said to the woman at the well, what did he say? He said, you worship, you know not what? Worshiping, but you don’t even know what you’re worshiping. We can’t know what we’re worshiping if we do not have a sure word from heaven. Because otherwise, we can be worshiping our own fancies, which is what many people do. Even many Christians do, unfortunately. They frame to God after their own fancies because there’s things in the Bible they don’t like. So the answer to the question is, how do we know what God is like or who God is? We know it from the revelation that God has given of himself in the Scriptures. That is how we know. Now the Spirit has a very big role in that, and we’ll talk about the Spirit at a later time. But the point I’m making here is that faith in God and faith in His Word go hand in hand.

Opponents of Faith: Our Feelings

And this has important implications for the Christian. Now there are certain obstacles or opponents to this faith.

And I’ve already alluded to one, but I want to allude to a couple more. But the first one that I’ve already alluded to is our feelings or the flesh. I had a conversation with someone a while back, and they said they were reading a book, and the author was saying such and such, and they said, you know, it just didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel right that such and such could be true. And now, this is a tricky thing that we need to talk about just for a moment.

Because if you’re a Christian and you have the Holy Spirit, sometimes things don’t set right with you and you don’t know why. Ever had that feeling? Of course then you find out later. Well that’s the Holy Spirit giving you like a check in your spirit. You’re just like, you know, something isn’t right about this person, or something isn’t right about this sermon, or something isn’t right about whatever, something you’re reading, or whatever. And so that can be the Holy Spirit. And He’s giving you guidance and He’s giving you instruction and He’s cautioning you that you don’t maybe fall into something false. And so in that sense, feeling, if you want to call that a feeling, has a role in our understanding what is true. But the danger here on this point is that we must guard against the fact that guard against subjectivism. Subjectivism simply means rooting our faith or values or our truth in our subjective feelings and not in an objective declaration by God in His Bible.

Let me just be honest with you. There are certain things in the Bible that don’t make me feel good. If you feel good about everything in the Bible, I don’t think we’re reading the same Bible.

There are things in the Bible that trouble me. The wrath of God troubles me. But do you know that it’s mentioned over 400 times in the Bible? The idea of eternal punishment troubles me. But Jesus talked more about it than any other person in Scripture There are numerous things in the Bible that the trouble me it troubles me that God tells me to lay down my life for you That troubles me I can I can give a long list of things that trouble me in the sense that my flesh doesn’t like them and And so, when we read the scripture, if we think every time we read, the Bible, we’re going to get a warm fuzzy and it’s going to be ou ooey gooey, then we’re not, we’re not understanding what we’re dealing with here. The scripture is a revelation of who God is. It’s a revelation of what his purposes are. The scripture is not about you, and it’s not about me. Now it’s true. It declares my salvation. It declares how I can know God. It declares how I can be blessed in knowing God. This is all true because redemption is one of the overarching themes in the Scripture. But you know what the main theme of the Bible is? The main theme of the Bible isn’t salvation. The main theme of the Bible is Jesus Christ. The main theme of the Bible is the glory of God through and in His Son, Jesus Christ.

That’s the main theme of the Bible. That’s why when Jesus, after he was resurrected and he was talking to the disciples, it says that he gave them a little Bible study. It says that he showed them in the law and the prophets and the Psalms all the things concerning himself. himself because he is the central theme of the Bible. That’s really what it’s about. It is an unveiling of who God is in and through his Son and what he has done. And we approach the Bible very often in the wrong spirit. And we come to the Bible to get something ourselves rather than to to learn who God is and what his ways are. You see, our feelings can be if those are spirit-led promptings, our feelings can be valuable, but our feelings can be deceitful because there are things in the Word of God which our feelings may not like.

My wife shared an email with me. She got an email from someone that had an article attached to it, and the article was written by a woman who, since we had Mother’s Day recently, was protesting. was protesting. She said, she was relating being at a church service, and she said, a pastor asked all mothers to stand. On my immediate right my mother stood, and on my immediate left a dear friend stood. I, a woman in her late 30s sat. I don’t know how others saw me, but I felt dehumanized. Gutted as a woman. Real women stood, real women stood empty shelves sat. I do not normally feel this way. I do not like feeling this way. I want no woman to ever feel this way in church again.” So she’s protesting the fact that a mother should be honored in public. And you notice in this little blurb and the whole article is filled with this idea that she didn’t like the way it made feel. Over and over, I didn’t like the way I felt. I don’t want anybody to feel. Feel, feel, feel. You know what? You know what I’d say to this lady? I’m sorry you feel that way, but you know what the Bible says? Honor your mother and your father. That’s what the Bible says. And if that makes you feel uncomfortable, take it up with your maker.

But–but what happens is this sort of pandemic in our society, why don’t I like the way that makes me feel?

Okay, well, maybe your feelings need to change. We don’t–I mean, we don’t–we don’t ask that question, right? So, you know, speakers invited to a college and, you know, ten students protest, well, we can’t do it now because of the way they feel. And so, we are so immersed in subjectivism that one of the great sins of our society is making somebody feel uncomfortable. The Bible says to honor your father and your mother. It doesn’t say feel good about them, it says honor them. And they’re not the same thing. It reveals something very dark about the human heart. She was comparing herself to other people, which the Bible tells us not to do. And there’s a spirit of envy behind it all. And it’s terrible. It’s wicked. It’s a wicked thing. But we celebrate this sort of thing now. And the fact of the matter, the word of God says to honor your mother and your father. And this woman ought to have been rejoicing in the fact that her mother was being honored.

But she wasn’t. She was immersed in her own dark little emotional world. And I know women like this. I know a woman who never goes to church on Mother’s Day because she doesn’t have children. And I think it’s a sin. You can say, I mean, okay, fine, I mean, I think what you want about me. The Scripture commands us to honor things, and we don’t honor them because by exalting them we have to debase ourselves. By lifting them up, we have to come down. And in our culture, self is king. Self is queen. And emotions rule in our society because we are immersed in subjectivism. We need to understand if we are going to believe the God of the Bible, then that means we’re going to have to crucify how we feel. Because there are things in the Word of God that go counter to your feelings. They will make you uncomfortable. There

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right now those two things like because those things happen because they’re too crazy.

There’s just no way that there’s no way I got and he stayed alive. Uh-uh. That just is insane. So, you know, you sit in a Starbucks and the guy walks up and you read your Bible, and you read your Bible, and you read your Bible, oh, you read your Bible, oh, you really believe that? Yeah, I believe the Bible. No, do you really believe that? Yeah, I read, I believe the Bible. No, no, no, no, no. No, I mean, do you like really believe like Noah’s Ark? I mean, do you really believe in Jo and the Whale? Right? People have laughed in my face because I’m reading my Bible. And they always bring up Noah, they bring up Joe. You really believe that? Indeed I do. Indeed I do. And why do you not believe it? You believe in aliens. I mean it’s true.

I forget who it was, a Dawkins or one of these, the big atheist guys. There’s only a handful in the whole world, by the way. He’s being interviewed. And there’s no God, there’s no God, but what about creation, what about this, what about you? Eventually, when he got pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed, he said, he thinks aliens seeded our planet. Well, you know what? I believe in aliens too. The father, son, and holy ghost. Because they’re alien to this planet. They’re of a totally different race. It’s called the Godhead. So, people can believe in all kinds of wacky, crazy things, but if it’s in the Bible, oh, you don’t believe in Jonah, you don’t believe in the Ark, ha ha, that could never happen, okay, argh. The Bible is a miraculous book. And I don’t mean by that, it’s miraculous that it was all put together the way it was, but I mean, that’s true, it’s miraculous that way. But it’s full of miracles from beginning to end. You know what C.S. Lewis said? He said the greatest miracle of all is that there was even creation. Creation is a miracle. Every day is miraculous. God is doing miracles all the time. God is governing. God is moving. God is breathing life into everything, including us. And it’s all miraculous if we only had eyes to see it. Right? If we only had eyes to see it. I’m way off point, but the point is this. The point is I don’t mean to beat up this girl. She’s probably a lovely girl. But the point is that our feelings about things in the Bible are not the touchstone.

They’re not the compass. The word is the touchstone. The word is the compass. And Paul said this, and we need to remember this constantly, let God be true but every man a liar. No matter what people say, no matter what my own heart says, if my heart says something, contrary the word of God. God is true and my heart is a liar. And you know what? My heart does lie to me. It lies to me. Because that’s the nature of the flesh.

The flesh is not subject to the law of God, the word. Neither can it be. It never will be. And so when we’re… Here’s the thing, the Christian life, as we grow in the Christian life, you know what should be a gradual transformation and a conforming, a conformation of our mind, heart, and will to the word of God. We do not come and sit in judgment on it. We come to the word of God, and if we approach it properly, the word of God transforms us and changes us, and eventually we begin to see things the way God sees them. And so less and less as we grow in grace do we do the things in the word offend us because the word has changed our mind it has changed our heart and we’re conformed to the word just because you’re saved doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean that you are conformed to scripture it doesn’t mean that you will understand scripture properly. It doesn’t mean you will see things as you ought to see them just because you’re saved. You have to be transformed. And it’s a process.

You have to grow in grace and knowledge. And that is a process. And we must continually be conformed to scripture. But people get stuck. And what happens is Christians start objecting to what’s in the Bible. They don’t like things in the Bible because the Bible calls them to maybe be ridiculed as Starbucks because of Jonah. And they don’t want to be ridiculed. They want to be liked. It calls them to certain modes of behavior like self-sacrifice that the flesh doesn’t like. And so we can stumble at the Word of God if we’re not growing and walking. And we are all living in grace. And our feelings can be a great obstacle to belief. Now, they can be an aid, but they can be an obstacle, and that’s where we need discernment. The point I’m making is just because something in the Scripture troubles you doesn’t mean it’s not true. And I think if we really read our Bibles, alertly, there would be things that do trouble us because they are true. they ought to trouble us. We ought to be troubled. We ought to be warned. We ought to be admonished. We ought to be motivated by things in Scripture.

The World

Another obstacle is the world. The world. One author, Harry Blamires, who was actually student of C.S. Lewis years ago. This is a great quote. It’s a little long, but bear with me. He says this. He says, The Gospels are shot through with the sheen of the supernatural. Isn’t that a great line? The sheen of the supernatural. No one who is unable to take the supernatural seriously can make the supernatural seriously, because the Bible is full of it. It’s miraculous. It’s supernatural. All kinds of crazy stuff, as I said. He’s more of an intellectual. She didn’t say crazy stuff. He said sheen of the supernatural. Same idea. Yet our present age, our present age, is supremely hostile to the supernatural.

Our intellectual life is dominated by naturalistic philosophies which accord a quite unwarranted significance and universality to the techniques and conclusions of natural science. Our social life is perverted at all points by the attitudes and devices of a technology devoted to the mechanical exploitation of matter and mankind. Our moral life is colored by the materialistic presuppositions of an ethos pledged to the propagation of physical well-being and prosperity. Naturalism, mechanism, materialism permeate our thinking. If we are Christians, we find it appallingly difficult to maintain in awareness the reality of the supernatural.

The presuppositions of the society in which we dwell offer defiance after defiance to the idea of the supernatural.

The world is at war with the faith to which we are pledged. And the thing we must understand about the world that we live in is that it is What’s the work it is It’s like a bad rash you can’t get rid of It’s like superglue once you get on your fingers it takes weeks and weeks to get off We think we’re immune to the world But in reality, the world presses on us constantly. It’s the air we breathe. It’s in the TV. It’s in the movies. It’s in the books. It’s in the magazines. It’s on the billboards. It’s on our apps. It’s everywhere. A view of life, which is at war with a biblical view of life. And it’s at war with the supernatural. You know, you say to people, do you believe God can heal? Sure. You believe God’s still those miracles? Sure. Their kid gets sick, they call the doctor. They don’t even pray. I said recently, I’m shocked at how many times I’ve not been called to pray over people for healing. They just call the doctor. Even though the Bible says call the elders and have them pray. We don’t do it. Because we don’t believe! We believe the doctor. Why? Because the mechanistic, materialistic, scientific world we live in permeates our thinking so much we have more faith in the doctor than in God. Don’t shout me down now. Now, are doctors bad? No. Is medicine bad? No. I believe in them. I go to the doctor for things. To me, it’s a blessing. That’s not the problem. The problem is our default reflex reaction, our fundamental presuppositions.

I think that we often turn to man when we should be turning to God.

People say to me, especially after I read the book of Acts, how come we don’t see miracles like that? And I say, because we don’t believe. There’s no mystery here. This is not a mysterious thing. Jesus said, according to your faith, so be it. And when in most cases, not all, but in a many cases when he healed somebody, he commented on their faith. So you know, if we’re shaped by a worldview, which says the supernatural is way out there, then we live accordingly. What did Paul say? Are you listening? The just shall live by faith. Not the just. Shall profess faith. Or the just shall have faith. The just shall live by faith. If you believe, if you’re a Christian and you say, I believe the Bible is God’s Word, then you are saying you believe in the miraculous. You believe in the supernatural. You believe in the crazy. Thanks Jake. Jake got it. You believe in the craziness, because it’s everywhere in the scripture. I mean, I was thinking about Elisha, God fed him with ravens. How cool is that? How cool is that? Because a raven is really pretty much like a vulture. It preys on others. It doesn’t nurture others. And God takes this thing and uses it for the very opposite purpose. That’s opposite natural purpose. That’s just God. You know what I mean? Nurtured by ravens. What that’s a cool miracle. Well that’s in the Bible and we believe that. Well do you believe that happened? I believe it happened. Well that means God can send you ravens too. God can do all kinds of things. The problem is not God. Didn’t we sing some song today about God doesn’t fail? Did we say you never fail? I think we said it about 100 times in one song. Are we listening? Are we listening to what we’re saying? relenting to what we’re saying? Well, I think sometimes we’re afraid that God is going to fail, so we don’t even ask. We don’t even ask, because we don’t want to be disappointed. So we’ll choose some other way of dealing with the situation, rather than really, really trusting God, really believing, really putting it out there, if you will, putting it out there to see if the God of the Bible is really who he says he is and who the Word says that he is. been rambling, but let me ramble a little bit longer. Here’s what I find in my experience and I think is true of others also. The scripture, as I said. Repeatedly already. The scripture tells us who God is. The Scriptures tell us who we can believe and who we can trust. It tells us what we can believe and what we can trust. So in order to believe, we must know the Scriptures. This is an obvious truism. But the point that I want to make here is

The Devil

Oh wait, let me make, can I backtrack one minute? I forgot to mention the third opponent of your faith. I mentioned the flesh, I mentioned the world. What’s the third one? The devil. I gotta mention the devil. There’s two places in scripture where the devil shows up. One’s in Genesis. The original fall of man. And the one is in Matthew. The temptation of the new man. We see two battles. The first man failed. The second man succeeded. But the striking thing about these two battles, and they’re set in contrast in Scripture, is that they’re both center on the same thing. The Word of God. the Word of God. The devil said to Eve, Has God spoken?

When he shows up and tempts Jesus, he says, If you are the Son of God, well how’s that an attack on God’s Word? Because God at the baptism of Jesus had just spoken out of heaven, You are my beloved Son, in You I am well pleased. God had spoken the Word to Jesus, that He was the Son. And so the devil says, if you are the Son, if that Word is true. And so the devil’s most important strategy is to come against the Word of God. It is the most important strategy. It is to discredit the Word. It is to pervert the Word. It is to keep the Word out of the human heart. Jesus talks about this in the parable of the sower and the seeds, right? The guy sowing seed and it falls on the hard ground. Then Jesus interprets it and he says, you know, when the birds come and take it, that’s the devil coming and taking the word out of people’s hearts. And he does it not just to the non-Christian, he does it to the Christian. And some of you won’t remember when you go to bed tonight what the sermon was today. Some of you won’t be able to remember the opening text. Well, you should try really hard. Because the devil wants to take the word out of your heart. When Jesus was attacked by the devil, three times he’s attacked, and each time he responds with the word of God. He quotes the Bible in his battle with the devil. And then Jesus says, man shall not live by bread alone. Man shall not live by science alone. Man shall not live by medicine alone. Man shall not live by mechanistic theories and naturalistic theories alone. Man will live by the word of God. Every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, on those words, man shall live. That’s what Jesus said. That’s how we live. We feed on the words of God. And when we feed on the words of God, then we can defeat the enemy. Amen.

Then we can conquer the flesh, then we can overcome the world.

Read Your Bible

So my conclusion for now about the word is this. If the word is the instrumental means of our faith in God, if it reveals who He is, ways, his character, his purposes, then therefore we must know the Word of God.

And in order to know the Word of God, we must read the Bible. Read your Bible! Oh, you didn’t hear me? Read your Bible! Let me say it one more time for those of you in the back row. I was reading a book the other day on ministry and the author was talking about the importance of the Word. He says knowledge of the Bible begins with and is fed by reading God’s Word.

Now that’s kind of a no brainer. If you’re going to know God’s Word, you’ve got to read God’s Word. It’s kind of like if you’re going to believe the Bible, you’ve got to read the Bible. What a novel thought. Every servant must be reading the Scriptures once a year, reading through the Bible at least once a year. Many of God’s most used servants have made such a reading and meditation a part of their lives. We have known some who have read the Bible through a hundred times, one man 150 times. It is said that George Mueller read the Bible 200 times. Shame on you. David Livingstone read the whole Bible through four times in succession while he was detained in a jungle town. William Evans, who was in a previous time, pastored college church in Wheaton, memorized the entire Bible in the King James Version and the New Testament in the American Standard version. Billy Graham tells the story of his father-in-law. He was a missionary, Nelson Bell. You may have heard of him. He would get up every morning at 4.30 and he read the Bible for three hours a day. Luther did the same. Wesley did the same. You can’t believe in a God revealed in the Bible if you don’t read your Bible. Do I need to say read your Bible one more time? No. Someone’s like, man, tone it down. Some of you aren’t reading your Bibles. That’s just the truth. I mean really reading your Bible. And reading is the only part of it. Then you should study it. You should really meditate on it. Here’s what I find. The more I read the Word, the more faith I have. Because it’s a crazy book. The more you read the Word, the more you’re going to believe. That’s why the devil doesn’t want you reading your Bible. He doesn’t want us to believe. He doesn’t want to see God move in response to our faith. He doesn’t want to see the miraculous happen because then people might turn to Christ. Oh my gosh. He would lose his control over lost souls. I love the

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story of John Brown of Haddington who was a shepherd boy. He walked into a, he walked miles to get to a used bookstore and he walked in the bookstore and he grabbed a Greek New Testament and he walked up to the counter and there was this seminary professor there and looked at this little shepherd boy in his rag. So what are you doing by the Greek New Testament? Can you read that? He said, if you can read that, I’ll buy it for you. Well, John Brown, six-year-old boy opened up the Greek New Testament, started reading it to the professor. Paid for it. The amazing thing about the story, John Brown read the Greek New Testament, but then he taught himself a Greek New Testament and an English New Testament. And he taught himself Greek. Then he memorized it, New Testament and Greek. I ended up being a seminar professor, writing books on theology and commentaries that are still read today. We can do that. You can do that. We should be immersed in the scriptures, immersed, renewing the mind, washing your mind, cleaning your mind. And the more you do that through the word of God, as you meditate, as you read the word of God, as God shows you who he is, As God shows you his ways, as God shows you what he has done throughout history, it builds your faith. And you start saying to yourself, God could do that for me. God could do that now. But you’ve gotta be in the word, in the word. Can I read one more verse? I know I went too long, I apologize.

Closing Scripture

Go to Hebrews, we’ll close with this.

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Over the past few months, the author says in chapter 3, verse 7, therefore as the Holy Spirit says, today if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. Talks about the wilderness experience, right? We talked about this. But what’s true, and then it goes on and he says, they didn’t enter into the Promised Land and believe. They didn’t believe. They didn’t believe what? They didn’t believe the voice. They didn’t believe what God spoke. In other words,o they didn’t believe the word. They didn’t believe the word that God gave them. And that explains what happens here in Hebrews as you go on in chapter four, after he says, let us therefore, 4.11, Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience, whereas I’ve taught you, can also be translated unbelief.“ And then he says in verse 12, for the word of God. Well, it’s like people like that just seems like such a radical break, such a radical juxtaposition to what he’s talking about. He’s talking about entering into rest, but it’s not a leap. The point is, is the voice that he’s talking about, in chapter 3 verse

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of the soul and spirit of joints and marrow is a discerner the thoughts and intents of the heart.” That’s why he mentions the word here. Our faith in God really means faith in his word. So we must and know it, we must meditate, we must study it, we must wrestle with it, we must grapple with it, and we must believe the word of God. It’s not enough to generically believe. It’s to believe God’s word to you. If I said to you, do you believe this is God’s word, most of you would say yes. But do you believe it’s God’s word to you? You’d probably say, sure. Okay. Then when you’re confronted with a challenge this week, Is this then God’s word to you? You know, a few weeks ago, I talked about Matthew 6 in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talked about faith, right? He really talked about anxiety because that’s the opposite of faith. Which is why I picked that text. Three times in that text, Jesus says, Do not be anxious. He said it three times. I preached it three times, he said it. And I made a point saying, he said it three times. Must be important. Three times. In one brief passage he said, three times. You know, the week after sermon, I had four different conversations with people and in four different conversations, the people I was talking to were expressing anxiety and fear. They just heard a sermon on not being anxious and they were anxious.

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to stand on the Word, you’re not standing on the Word. Not in that moment. And that’s what the Word is for. It is for that moment. And if we are not to be walking in fear, we are not to be walking in anxiety, it is the opposite of faith and it’s a sin. It’s wrong, And some of you do this and it’s habitual for you and you think it’s okay. It’s not okay. Jesus said it’s not okay. It’s not my authority. He said it’s not okay. So we need to believe where it matters, which means in our life the just shall live by faith.

You need to start putting feet to your faith, feet to your profession. You believe the Bible’s God’s word, then begin to believe it in your daily life. And as you believe the word of God, truly believe it, when it matters, when you you need it, then you will see God work. Because according to your faith, so be it. Let’s stand and pray. Lord, I thank you that your word is true. Whether we understand it or not, it’s true. Whether it’s crazy, Lord, it’s true. And we confess that, we assent to that. But I pray, Lord, for all of us, myself included, that we would live that. That we would truly walk in faith. that we would live by faith and not just talk about faith and assent to faith. I thank You, Lord, that You had mercy on us. Even though You’d reveal Yourself through nature and its beauty and its glory, You gave us another revelation of Yourself through Your, Your Scripture.

Closing Prayer

We thank you for the precious gift that we have of your Bible. I pray, Lord, that each one of us would cherish it. As the psalmist says, Lord, above honey, above the pleasures of this world, above sensuous pleasures, that we would treasure it more than gold. And Lord, if we don’t love your word as we ought, I ask that you forgive us. I pray that we would return to your word and we would hear your voice and believe.

Amen.