The Nature of Faith

Our subject tonight is the Nature of Faith.

The issue for the modern world is not "faith". It is "what is the nature of true faith?" Go into Waterstone's and you will find shelf upon shelf of books on faith. But many are on the most bizarre faiths that you can imagine - quite irrational and sometimes dangerous. "Spirituality" is now "in".

Cosmopolitan, for example, has decided that its readers are getting bored with a diet of fashion and recreational sex. So they have appointed a woman as a Spirituality Editor. According to her CV she "managed a psychic shop" during her days at the University, and has written articles on psychic phonelines and "soulless sex among young women". Her new column will include an exploration of Buddhism, the existence of guardian angels, and the reliability of mediums. No wonder G.K.Chesterton said that when people cease to believe in the God of the bible, they don't believe in nothing: they believe in anything!

But the bible suggests if you want a guide to what faith should be like, "look at Abraham." Over these Sunday evenings this session we are studying the life of Abraham. And I want to talk about first, THE NATURE OF FAITH; secondly, THE SOURCE OF FAITH; and, thirdly, THE LIFE OF FAITH. And I want to spend most of my time on this first point - our subject for tonight.

First, THE NATURE OF FAITH

But before we turn to Genesis chapters 15 and 16 (our section for tonight), will you turn to the New Testament book of Hebrews and chapter 11. (We'll come back to Genesis in a minute.) Hebrews 11 is a great chapter on faith. And it says three important things by way of background. First, in verse 1, it says:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

So faith is to do with the future and the unseen. It assumes that this world of space and time is not all there is. There is an existence beyond time, and an unseen reality behind this visible world.

Secondly, in verse 3 it says:

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

So this visible world of space and time is not "self-existent" and ultimate. God is ultimate. He created space and time. This world is the result of intelligent design, not random chance. Edwin Carlstin, a Professor of biology at Princeton University in the US, says:

The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory.

But if meaninglessness is so improbable or against reason, why do people not believe? It is seldom for truly rational reasons. Aldous Huxley said that he wanted the world to be meaningless so that he could do what he liked. He wrote:

for myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.

The created order is not absolute proof of God's existence, but it is a clear enough pointer for those whose spiritual eyes are open. Sadly many people are spiritually blind and often wilfully so. If you want stronger proof, you have that in Jesus Christ, who not only lived and died.
On the third day after he died, he rose again. You cannot get away from the fact that the bones of Mohammed are in Medina; the bones of the Buddha are in India; and the bones of Alistair Crowley, the decadent father of modern paganism, are in Europe. But in Jerusalem lies the Empty Tomb of Jesus. We are not comparing like with like.

But Christ did not only come to reveal and prove the truth of God. He came to "save" - to deal with this problem of wilful human rebellion. We all rebel against God in some way or other. Christ dealt with that by dying, in our place, on the Cross to bear the judgment you, I and everyone else deserve. That brings us to Hebrews' third statement about faith in verse 6:

... anyone who comes to him [God] must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

You not only need to believe that God exists and that nature is not ultimate. You also need to believe that God is good. He is not only there, but wanting to reward" you. He is not someone who wants to make you miserable by simply saying, "don't do this" and "don't do that". He is not there to frustrate you but to see you truly fulfilled as the human being he intended you to be. Well, so much for the theory. Now for the practice and Abraham. Please will you now turn back to Genesis 15.

Let me say something about the story so far. Abraham was a man's man, if ever. He first had to leave his family and friends and move to a new part of the world - the land of Canaan. Abraham's journey from Ur to Canaan didn't happen over night. It took some time. And it may take some of you time on your spiritual journey before you finally commit yourself to Christ. C.S.Lewis tells us about his conversion as a tutor at Oxford. He says that "night after night" he felt "the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet." Let me read you what he then says:

That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in England.

But it took a year before the final step was reached:

I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.

There is no one way of coming to hrist. Some of you tonight may be ready to take a first step and sign up for a Christianity Explored course. Some may be ready for a final step. Well, wherever you are spiritually, learn from Abraham. So back to the story.

When Abraham - he was called Abram at this time - when he reached Canaan, he soon faced famine and had to migrate to Egypt where he made a complete mess of things. Then on his return to Canaan he had to sort out problems between his nephew Lot's herdsmen and his own herdsmen. And he generously let Lot choose the (economically) better territory. He then fought a coalition of neighbouring
war-lords who had attacked the region where Lot lived and captured Lot. But Abram managed to rescue Lot. So this is the man the bible holds up as a model for faith. He is not a recluse. He is very much a man seeking to live out his faith in the rough and tumble, day to day world of the second millennium before Christ. Well, this brings us to verse 1 of chapter 15:

the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: 'Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.

Abram may have been frightened that the four war-lords would come back with a strengthened coalition and surprise him. But God, somehow, reassured him of his personal safety and, more importantly for Abram, he reassured him that he would keep to his earlier promise that Abram would have a son and heir. And this son would be the start of a great nation or people. For Abram and Sarah were childless at this time. We then read in verse 6:

Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

That is one of the most important verses in the whole bible. That verse was at the heart of the 16th century Reformation. There is a fundamental principle here as Paul, the Apostle, explains in his famous epistles to the Romans and Galatians. So you need to pay careful attention to what I now say. It is not too difficult. But you need to concentrate. First, two questions.

Question one: what does it mean to say, "he credited it to him as righteousness"? Answer: it means being in a right and secure relationship with God your maker as though you were righteous, even when you are not. Question two: so how was Abram in such a relationship, and how, therefore, is anyone in such a relationship, including you and me? How was he, and how are we, to use another biblical word
for the same thing, "justified"? Well, we know how Abram was not "justified" or not right with God.

First, he was not right with God because of his good deeds or his morality. Yes, Abram has done a lot of good things - leaving his family, separating from Lot and rescuing Lot. But none of those are mentioned in this verse as the cause of Abram being right with God. The verse simply says, "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness."

Secondly, Abram was not justified or right with God because of his religious observances. For a start there was now, as yet, no religious law to observe. That only came several hundred years later with Moses. And even the key observance God commanded Abram to observe - the ritual of male circumcision - was inaugurated later than this episode. We are going to look at that next week in chapter 17. All this is also the teaching of the New Testament. Morality will not get you right with God nor will religious ceremonies like baptism and Holy Communion - good as all these are. Faith alone is needed. True, Abram's faith led to him doing good things. And in every case of genuine faith in God, good deeds and morality (eventually) will result. But here, in this chapter, this instance of faith is not linked with any good works. Look at verse 5:

He [God] took him outside and said, 'Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.

Then follows verse 6:

Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Abram simply believed the promise of God.

Thirdly, and listen carefully, very carefully. Abram was not right with God because God was rewarding his faith. For Abram's faith was not really worth rewarding. These chapters show that Abram's faith, in one sense, was far from perfect. He had acted disgracefully in Egypt. Then in chapter 16, after this great statement in verse 6, you can read of the sordid incident when Abram sleeps with Hagar, Sarah's maid. You see, faith has a number of meanings. But the faith that is so important - and that we are talking about here - is not a positive virtue - if I may put it that way. It is just an act of receiving or accepting what God has said or done. It is a simple act of trust. Paul says in Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from ourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.

Faith is not something positive you put into the equation. You are not saved or accepted by God because of your faith. Faith is more like an open hand. The real cause of your acceptance is the death of Christ for you on the cross where he bore your guilt, mine, and Abram's and the guilt of all those who trust in him. Listen to Romans 3.25:

God presented him [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood [his death on the cross] ... (and verse 26) he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

A holy God can't just overlook sin. He can't say, "Hitler's sins don't matter"; "The Moors' murders don't matter"; "Saddham Hussein's gassing of the Kurds doesn't matter." Sin has to be judged, including your sin and mine.

You see, the Old Testament, and particularly this verse 6 of Genesis 15, gives us the human side of justification or the top layer, so to speak. It is by faith. It tells us (in a matter of fact way) that a man or woman, who trusts God and his word, is put right with God. But the underlying truth that the Old Testament doesn't tell you so clearly, but the New Testament does and crystal clearly, is that we are justified and right with God because of Christ's obedience on the Cross. So do you see what this means? It means you come to God relying not on what you do - not even the fact that you've got faith - but on what Christ has done and because he has died for you. You may have a pretty murky past, like some of these Old Testament characters. They would easily have made the pages of the News of the World. But like King David in the Old Testament, who committed both murder and adultery, you don't try to say that what you have done is good. No! You trust God. You believe what he promises you in Christ - that your sins have been born by Christ at Calvary. And so you can be forgiven. And you pray for forgiveness. Listen to what David wrote after he had committed both murder and adultery:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin" (Psalm 51.1-2).

So, secondly,THE SOURCE OF FAITH and more briefly.

In the first place the source of Abram's faith was God and his promise. And as Paul says in Galatians 3.16:

The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

The Scripture does not say 'and to seeds,' meaning many people, but 'and to your seed,' meaning one person, who is Christ."

The source of Abram's faith, therefore, was God's initiative planned before Abram was born - to save the world though Jesus Christ. And that is the source of any true faith. But in the second place - a source of the strengthening of Abram's faith was the incident that comes in verses 9 and following of chapter 15. We haven't time to go into details. But what you have got there is what is called "sacramental" action. To confirm his promises to Abram, God anchored them in a ritual. In verse 7 we read that God promised again to Abram the land of Canaan as his possession. Then Abram says in verse 8:

O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?

Abram wanted his faith to be strengthened. God didn't answer directly. Rather he made Abram prepare a special sort of sacrifice. You can read about it when you get home. And this must have helped Abram.

There is a story told of a farmer; and in the middle of the night (and God was speaking to Abram in the night) he knew he had to surrender himself to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. He admitted he was a sinner and he accepted Christ's forgiveness and his Holy Spirit. But he then knew he had to do something, to make sure that in the morning he wouldn't think he had been dreaming and stupid. So he went out into his farm yard and drove a stake into the ground, to remind him of what happened that night. And, yes, in the morning (and regularly for a time after that) the stake reminded him that Jesus Christ was his Saviour and Lord. I am not suggesting you ever do that in the middle of the garden where you live, particularly if it belongs to someone else. But you see the point.

And God sees the point. He made use of such an action with Abram. And Christ saw the point. He instituted two special ritual, or sacramental actions, to encourage our faith and make things easier for us. They are Baptism and Holy Communion. They are sources today not for creating faith but for strengthening faith.

Thirdly, and finally, THE LIFE OF FAITH

I must be very brief and say just two things. First, in this ritual God told Abram that the life of faith for his people would be hard. They would suffer in Egypt. There weren't going to be any quick fixes. But they would win in the end. Abram needed to know that God's time scale is not ours - and so do we. The people of Israel would have to wait. The ancient world would have to wait for the coming of Christ. We are having to wait for Christ's second coming and for heaven. And there can be suffering for God's people in the meantime. It is not easy being a Christian today. It wasn't easy being a believer in Old Testament times. But it was, and is, infinitely worth it.

Secondly, the life of faith doesn't mean you don't make mistakes. You do. In chapter 16 you read how Abram forgot the need for patience and waiting for God's timetable. Sarah is still not pregnant. So he allows her to persuade him to get a son quickly by sleeping with her maid, Hagar. Oh, Sarah may have said that other people were doing that in those days - using other women as surrogate mothers. And Abram didn't say no. What followed - as with all sin eventually - was a disaster as chapter 16 shows. And believers still sin, even as they are seeking to grow in holiness. But there is still forgiveness if we confess our sins.

As the apostle John says, and as we often repeat at the beginning services in this church, God

is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness"(1 John 1.9)