Hebrews Lesson
192 April 1, 2010
NKJ Philippians
4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in
everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be
made known to God;
We're starting this evening in Hebrew 11, moving into
the next little section. The last section that we've dealt with for several
weeks (several lessons) was on faith in the life of Moses: one example of the
faith of his parents, the other faith in the life of Moses and in the life of
the Israelites as they crossed the Red Sea.
Now we move from the Exodus event to the conquest. And
you can just use this as an opportunity to sort of think your way through the
Old Testament. If you're thinking your way through Genesis,
if you remember. This is a quiz. Take out a piece of paper and write
down 4 events and 4 people in Genesis. We studied that before. You should
remember that – just joking. The four events are what? Creation,
fall, flood, Tower of Babel. The four people are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob
and Joseph. If you can remember those 8 things you’ve worked your way through
Genesis.
Then when you come to Exodus we have the birth of
Moses. Then we have the call of Moses and the 10 plagues. Then we have the
departure (the rescue, the redemption) through the Red Sea. Then we have the
Israelites going to Mt Sinai where they are given the Law. The whole second
half of Exodus has to do with explicating the Mosaic Law in terms of the ritual
primarily. There is other civil law that’s there; but primarily it’s focused on
the laws of sacrifices and the construction of the Tabernacle. That takes us
through Exodus. The last event historically is when they are on Mount Sinai.
Moses gets the Law.
Then Moses brings it down to the people, and then we
have the explanation of what’s in the Law.
The next major event that occurs of course is
described in Numbers when they depart Sinai, go to Kadesh
Barnea, and God instructs Moses to send 12 spies into
the land that He has promised to give them to see the nature of what they will
be up against when God takes them in to destroy the Canaanites.
They misunderstand the order. It's one of the classic
examples in Scripture of the misinterpretation of Scripture. They completely
misunderstood. God didn’t say, “See if you can do it.” He said to go spy out
the land. It’s a recon trip to see what it’s like, what the layout of the land
is. The purpose isn’t to see if they can do it, the purpose is to understand
the layout of the land so that as God takes them in they will have an
understanding of what's there.
They fail to understand. Ten of the spies come back
and they're whining and crying and saying they can't do it. They can’t face
these Canaanites because they've got too many cities, fortified cities (walled
cities). The people are too numerous and there are giants in the land.
Only two (Caleb and Joshua) are exercising faith and
trust in the Word. Now that's interesting. Neither Caleb nor Joshua ends up in
Hebrews 11, which I thought was just an observation in terms of who's there. The
writer of Hebrews is hitting certain high points; but that event is not one of
the points that he focuses on.
What he does focus on is when that generation has died
off after the forty years in the wilderness and a new generation (the
generation that is born to the Exodus generation) now is on the verge of
entering the land, and God gives them orders on how to enter the land and how
to defeat the particular cities that are there. That is the next event that the
writer of Hebrews comes to in Hebrews 11:30-31. These 2 events, which are
connected, deal with the conquest of Jericho. One has to do with the obedience
(the faith) of the Israelites in their following the
orders of God, and how they were to take Jericho. Then the other has to do with
the faith of Rahab who is the Gentile the prostitute
who is inside of this city in the pagan environment there and her response to
God. So we have these two different events that come out of the first six
chapters of the book of Joshua.
So we want to take a little time to understand the
background there and to understand the focus of this particular section. Now as
we have gone through and as we have proceeded through Hebrews 11, the focus
goes back to developing the idea in the first two verses.
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
It is a conviction. Faith is a conviction. It is an
understanding of revelation. The object of faith is always in something that is
revealed - in this case promises. Faith always takes the promise and is
convinced that it's true even though there may not be any empirical evidence of
its fulfillment. That has particular bearing not only in the life of those to
whom the writer of Hebrews is speaking but also to us because often we don't see
God fulfill certain promises in our lives the way we think they ought to be
fulfilled. We don't understand how for example all things work together for
good. We don't see necessarily see that in our lives. We just know that even
when we go through difficult times; we know that God is working all things
together for good in terms of His plan. We have to trust Him even though we
don't see, don't have that empirical evidence of that fulfillment.
Then the writer begins to give examples starting with
creation going through the period before the Noahic
Flood focusing then on Noah, then on Abraham, and then Abraham, Isaac, and
Joseph (the patriarchs), and then on Moses, showing that they in many cases did
not see the evidence of the fulfillment of those promises that God had given to
them. We focus on what faith is and the role of faith in the conquest of the
land and by application the role of faith in the spiritual life of the
believer.
Several things I want to cover just by way of
introduction here. First of all we have to be reminded that for the last series
of examples that we've looked at in Hebrews 11 – the faith of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, the faith of Moses – all ultimately went back to
specific promises that God had made to Abraham with reference to the Abrahamic Covenant.
He had promised that He would give him a land and that this was first
laid out in Genesis 12:7 when God promised that “to your descendants I will
give this land.”
Then Abraham responded in faith and built an altar to
the Lord and worshipped Him there at Bethel.
Then in Genesis 15:18-21 this is incorporated within
the Abrahamic Covenant. God makes a covenant with him
and says in verse 18:
NKJ Genesis
15:18 On the same day the LORD made a
covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land,
from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates --
This is just a broad sweeping description of the
boundaries. The Euphrates actually is to the northeast of Israel, and then the
River of Egypt is to the southwest. So it covers this broad sweep. It's not as
detailed as it is in some subsequent passages. But all of that land (which
would today incorporate Lebanon) – would incorporate what is both the
West Bank as well as Israel, the Sinai Peninsula, much of the Hashemite Kingdom
of Jordan on up into Syria. All of that area would be part of the land that God
promised to Abraham.
The second point that we should be reminded of is that
the land promised was reiterated to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Several more
times God restated this promise to Abraham that He was giving this land to Abraham
and to his seed forever. This is a permanent promise from God. It's not based
on any condition. The giving of the land is not based on any condition. What
we’ll learn is that the enjoyment of the land, the enjoyment of the blessing of
the land, the benefits of the land, the actual possession and ownership of the
land will be dependent upon their obedience. If they're not obedient they’ll be
kicked out of the land; but the title deed for the land is still theirs. That's
the permanence of it.
God doesn't say, “Okay. Finally you've been
disobedience so much that I'm taking this land away from you; and it's not
yours anymore.”
It is still theirs. The land promise is reiterated to
Abraham, again to Isaac two or three times, to Jacob two or three times, but
none of them ever saw that promise fulfilled.
Hebrews 11:9-10 makes that point.
NKJ Hebrews 11:9
By faith he dwelt
That is Abraham.
in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the
heirs with him of the same promise;
NKJ Hebrews
11:10 for he waited for the city which has
foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
He’s looking forward to that promise; but the point
that (the application really) that the writer of Hebrews is making to these
Jewish believers in Jesus the Messiah is that as they're tempted to give up and
to go back into the Judaism of that time (1st century Judaism) and
to just give up on everything; he is saying that they're going to be difficult
times. We can’t grow weary. We can't give up no matter what the obstacles may
be, no matter what the temptations or testing may be. We have to learn to hang
in there, to endure in obedience just as these examples of the Old Testament
patriarchs did. They never saw the fulfillment of the promise; but they kept
their focus. It was more real to them than if it had a physical empirical
presence.
Third, in the book of Joshua, the promise begins to be
fulfilled. The nation is now on the border of the land that God has promised
them. They're beginning to get specific direction from God as to how they are
to cross the Jordan River, how they are to go into the land, what the order of
march should be among the tribes. God is not just giving them general instructions
(go into the land) but He is telling them generally what they are to do and
specifically the methods that they are to use in getting there.
That I think is it is important. God does not always
go into that much detail but at times and in particular cases and situations we
not only have broad general promises, but we have specific statements in
Scripture as to how we are to do certain things. In other situations and in
other areas of application we might just have broad general promises. You see
both of those take place in the book of Joshua.
In the book of Joshua, the promise begins to be
fulfilled. Now think with me before we go any further, think with me in terms
of the history of Israel, how the nation as a corporate entity is to depict the
Christian life. Remember they are in slavery in Egypt. Then God redeems them at
the Passover. There is the sacrificial lamb that covers the house so that when
the blood is applied when God comes to bring death to the firstborn; there's no
death to the house of those who have the blood applied. That is a picture of
our individual salvation, that when we put our faith in Christ and the death of
Christ on the cross is applied to us in that sense then spiritual death is reversed
and we’re regenerate.
The Passover meal itself depicts salvation.
The nation is redeemed at that point. What happens
after that redemption is not a picture of redemption anymore because that is
over with. That is accomplished. That was that singular event. What happens
from that point on is in the history of Israel is to depict sanctification in
the life of the believer. It depicts the life now of obedience. They’re saved
as it were at the Exodus. They're identified at the Red Sea as I pointed out last
time with the faith of Moses so that that's comparable to our position in
Christ. They in a sense have their
position through their identification with Moses.
Then now that they are a redeemed people the issue at
Mount Sinai is - how does a redeemed sanctified people adopted as God’s
firstborn son supposed to live?
How do they live? So from
that point on the doctrine (the application) is in the direction of
sanctification. When we look at Joshua, the promise begins to get fulfilled and
the examples that we see in all the events after Sinai really relate to
sanctification.
Under point 4 we will look at some background to the
book of Joshua just to get a little bit of the fly over. The book of Joshua is
about conquest. That is the single one word you can use to remember what is
going on in Joshua. It is about a battle. It is a tremendous picture of the
believer’s battle (the fight we all are engaged in) in terms of spiritual
warfare. The physical warfare of Israel against the Canaanites is analogous to
the fight that every believer has against the paganism that is in his own
soul.
So first of all, the background to
the book. The title of the book Joshua comes from the central
character in the book who is Joshua. His name is the
same name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Yeshua, which is
related to salvation. He is the one who will bring the people into the
land.
The first point was title named for the central person
in the book. The second point has to do with authorship. We don't know who
wrote Joshua. We know that sections of it were probably
written by Joshua; other sections were not written by Joshua. For example, the parts written after his death. It is very
likely that he wrote large sections of it due to the use of the first person
singular pronoun at places. It is clear that an eyewitness wrote it because of
the first person plural that’s used in places: “we” and “us” along with
detailed descriptions that would only be known to somebody who was present at
the time of these events.
Furthermore in 6:25 there is the comment related to Rahab: that “she lives even to this day.” Rahab is still alive at the writing of Joshua and the Jebusites are still in control of Jerusalem. This means
that written before David defeated the Jebusites and
conquered Jerusalem as part of his kingdom. Several times the writer notes
something and then says “to this day.” We don't know who the human author was
but it is clearly authored by God the Holy Spirit who writes through someone
who has the gift of prophet, I’m sure.
Then we have the date of the book or the dates and the
time period covered in the book. It was probably written (concluded, finished)
by 1380 BC. The events covered the period from 1406 BC when they entered the
land to 1380 BC.
The purpose is to demonstrate God's faithfulness to
His promises in fulfilling the promise He made to the patriarchs and Moses to
give the land to Israel by holy war. So God has made that promise. So when we
take that and we plug it into what we're reading in Hebrews 11, once again both
of these examples of faith that we looked at (faith in conquering Jericho, the
faith of Rehab) ultimately go back to the promise that God has given them the
land.
One of the things is quite striking in the dialogue
that the two spies have when they first meet Rahab is
that she already knows that God has given the land to the Israelites. She has
heard all of the stories about how God delivered them from Israel and so have
all the Canaanites. And they've been scared to death for forty years. They were
more afraid of the Israelite's forty years earlier when the spies came in to
the land than the spies were afraid of the Canaanites. But they didn't know it.
When the Canaanites had heard all of these stories (and they probably had been
exaggerated and developed about how all of the plagues of how God had defeated
the armies of - the great magnificent armies and chariots of pharaoh) so the
Canaanites were already operating in tremendous fear expecting to be completely
defeated. So the purpose of this book is to demonstrate the faithfulness of God
to His promise as well as to demonstrate the people's faith in God in
fulfilling the promise, which fits right in with the theme of Hebrews 11.
Fifth point by way of introduction to Joshua is that
in the Hebrew Bible it’s the first of the former prophets. The Hebrew Bible is
divided into three sections: the Torah
(which means instruction. That is, the first five books – what we call
the Pentateuch. Torah means law. In one sense it also means instruction. So you
have the first five books of the Torah.) The second division is the Prophets.
There are two subdivisions. You have the early prophets (or the former prophets)
and the latter prophets. The former prophets are Joshua, Judges (and Ruth is
considered part of Judges in the Hebrew canon), Samuel, Kings.
These are part of the prophets. We think of those in the English Bible as
historical books, but it's not just history. It is a prophetically edited
history showing what God is doing in light of the promises in Deuteronomy, the
blessings and the curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28-30 so that they are
written by prophets and those early books are showing the outworking of God’s
promises for blessing and promises of judgment in those historical books.
Joshua is the first one. That tells us something about
Joshua. It's not simply a historical narrative on how God gave the land to
Israel. It is to be interpreted within the framework of theology that we get
coming out of Deuteronomy. Of course we just talked about this on Tuesday night
when we were in Revelation. We were talking about how the Jews will finally
turn back to God at the end of the tribulation period and when they are corporately
saved as a nation. I went back all the way to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy
28-30 to locate the basis for that event in the future in what God promised and
predicted in those blessing and cursing passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Joshua, then, if we think of it not as history but as God showing the
outworking of what He stated in Deuteronomy and in the promises in the Torah, then
we have an understanding of why this is important and how then we can take
these events and put them within a grid that overlays the spiritual life of the
Church Age believer, giving us a framework for application.
That’s why the Old Testament is important. It gives us
a pattern, an analogy. Often we call that typology. It’s translated “example”,
for example in 1 Corinthians 10:1-3. These things happened to them as an
example for us.
Now we all know that none of us learn anything from
example! Not one person here! We always see the examples. People tell us about
all the wonderful things they learned about how they made mistakes.
And we go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that won’t apply to me.”
We really don't learn very much from example. But
that's what it’s there for – to teach us. It helps us structure that
understanding which I’ll talk about in the next point.
The 6th point deals for the structure (the
outline) of the book. The first five chapters deal with God bringing the nation
to enter the land of Canaan, crossing into Jordan. When they first enter the land, the priests carrying the Ark
of the Covenant lead them across the Jordan, which is just a raging torrent at
that time.
That took a tremendous act of faith. Now that's an
example of what I'm going to focus on tonight: how faith works. We often think
of faith as being opposed to works; but that's because this word “work” (and we
also use the word “doing”) are words that have broader meanings. We often think
of works and we talk about works of faith as opposed to works. And it is, if we’re understanding works to be something we do that’s
supposed to impress God, or bring merit to us because of what we do. But faith
always involves doing something related to faith. Sometimes it's something
that's more intellectual; sometimes it's something that’s more overt. But when
God told the Israelites that this is how you’re going to cross into the land. The
priests are going to go first carrying the Ark of the Covenant. They're going
to carry it on the poles by which it should be carried because “if you don't
trust Me then you are going to carry it and touch the
Ark and you’re going to die instantly.” So trust involves doing the
instructions (following the instructions.)
They are to step off. They come to this steep bank
there of the Jordan. I don’t know if you've ever been around a river that is
flowing very rapidly or is at flood stage; but you realize the danger that is
there as this water is rushing passed you recognizing that if you fall into
that then the current is such that you can easily be swept away and easily be
drowned. The water isn’t going to stop.
It wasn’t like the situation at the Red Sea where
Moses held up his staff and the Red Sea parted and then they went forward. At
this event, God told them that the priests are to step into the river and when
their feet actually hit ground the water will have stopped. So as their feet
hit the ground, the water is splitting just under their feet so that when their
feet hit something solid it’s dry ground. They're trusting God and doing
something than ran completely contrary to what their eyes and their brain was
telling them they should do. That's when faith in the Word of God is more real
- what God says is more real to us than what are our experience (what our
senses) tell us. That must have been quite a challenge for them to take that
step into the Jordan. But that is a picture of the kind of faith rest action
that's part of the spiritual life.
God led him to enter the land of Canaan, the first
five chapters. Then starting in verse 13 to 12:24 we have the beginnings of the
conquest of the land. In 5:13 the Angel of the Lord as the commander of the
armies of the Lord (the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ) begins to address
Joshua giving him instructions on how they are to take Jericho, which just has
some of the most unusual military tactics that we've ever seen. That covers the
period to 12:24.
Then from the 13th chapter through the end
of the book is basically real-estate deeds where God
is dividing the land and giving the borders for all the different tribes and
how that will be apportioned.
The 7th point we need to understand in
relation to Joshua has to do with what the book is teaching us: how we should
read Joshua so that we understand it is more than just describing what God did some
3,500 years ago. It has a teaching emphasis in relationship to experiential
sanctification. We have to understand a little bit about what that term means. I’ve
got about five or six points on the experiential sanctification in
understanding that meaning.
The word sanctification is a word that’s used to
describe the believer’s position in relationship to God. The word sanctification
comes from two word groups, one in Hebrew and one in Greek. The Hebrew word is qadash – qdsh. The sh
is one consonant (one symbol) in the Hebrew alphabet – qadash. The root meaning there is to be set apart
to the service of a deity. It isn't the idea of holy with the sense of purity as
we’ve seen in some passages. The masculine participle of that word is the term
used for the male prostitutes that functioned in Baal worship. That's certainly
not a morally pure endeavor. The root meaning of qadash or holy means set apart or
consecrated to the service of God. So sanctification describes the believer as
one who is set part of the service of God.
But it has two senses. The first sense has to do with
positional sanctification and the second is experiential sanctification. If we
think of the history of Israel as being a pattern for the individual spiritual
life of the believer, then the covenant with Abraham is a picture of positional
sanctification.
God called out Abraham and He said, “ In your seed all
nations shall be blessed.”
They have a new position. In Abraham they are set
apart from all the other nations on the earth to serve God in a special way. That
is going to be through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all
nations will be blessed first and foremost through salvation that will come
through the Messiah that will come through that line. Secondly,
because it is through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that the
Scriptures (the Word of God) are going to be revealed to man. They are
the custodians of the Word of God.
They are positionally set
apart in Abraham based on an unconditional or permanent covenant that can’t
ever be changed. That is a picture of eternal security for us. That same kind
of agreement that God made with Abraham which is the
foundation for our relationship with God. Positionally
we can’t ever lose that identification with Christ where we are set apart to
the service of God.
However as we go through day-to-day life, we are often
disobedient. We are often self-absorbed. We are always or often operating on
our sin nature. At those times we are not living as one who is set apart to
God. We are living on the basis of our own lusts and our own sin nature and we
have to learn to say “no” to the sin nature and “yes” to the Word of God. That
is a process of spiritual growth that we refer to as experiential
sanctification where we’re learning to live in the service of God
experientially through the application of the Word of God.
Positional sanctification describes the believer’s
position before God which can’t be lost (can’t be changed) and that Old
Testament type relates to Abraham.
Then experiential sanctification is going to relate to the application of
specific commands and promises that God has made in relationship to how we’re
to serve Him.
In terms of Israel they are positionally
set apart when they crossed the Red Sea. At Sinai they learn how they are to
serve God in terms of day-to-day obedience. The Mosaic Law then becomes a
pattern for sanctification, and it is the basis for the experiential
sanctification for the Old Testament believer in Israel.
In the whole doctrine of sanctification from the Old
Testament, we see that the land is promised to Abraham. It is given to Israel
on a permanent basis, but the actual benefit and enjoyment and blessing of the
land is theirs only if they are obedient to God, only if they are applying the
law.
God said, “If you disobey the law; then I will remove
you from the land and you won't enjoy its blessings.”
In the same way by analogy the believer is given a
certain number of blessings and privileges in Christ. We have all the spiritual
assets we have in Christ. We are
blessed with an infinite number of blessings. God has given us everything related to life and godliness. We
have the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. We’re empowered by the Holy Spirit.
We have the completed the canon of Scripture. All these things are ours positionally in Christ but they only become ours
experientially as we learn the Word and then as we apply it on a day-to-day
basis.
One of the metaphors that the Scripture uses to teach
how we grow spiritually is the metaphor of warfare. We see this in passages
such as 2 Corinthians 10:4-5.
NKJ 2
Corinthians 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for
pulling down strongholds,
These are strongholds of thought that are deeply
entrenched in our mind (in our thinking). These
weapons of warfare are for the purpose of casting down arguments.
NKJ 2 Corinthians
10:5 casting down arguments and every
high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every
thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,
These participles that we have there (pulling down
stronghold, casting down arguments and bringing every thought into captivity)
deal with the progress of our spiritual growth. It is a process where we learn
the Word and we apply the Word. As we apply the Word, we’re doing certain
things.
There's that terrible word. All of a sudden it’s
legalism! No, that’s not what legalism is. Legalism is when you say you have to
do something in order to get God’s merit; that He blesses you because you do
certain things whereas obedience to the Word is not done from that motive. It
is the application of faith.
That’s what James talks about when he talks about, “don't be hearer only, but also to doer.” That phraseology
is often lost on us because of the familiarity with the terms. But James is
saying, don't be a listener – don’t just take notes. Don’t’ just fill up
your doctrinal notebook with all these doctrines, but apply them so that when
the Scripture says that you are to speak the truth in love, that you speak the
truth in love. You don't speak the truth in a way that is intended to be
harmful or destructive or vindictive towards somebody else where you’re just
trying to lash out at them.
When the Scriptures talk about how we are to be honest
and how we are to be continuously in prayer - all of these things are things we
are to do.
When the Scripture says to pray without ceasing then
what that means is I don't just write that down in my Bible, but it means that
I need to discipline my life and arrange my time schedule so that I have
consistent patterns of prayer in my life. So we're not just listeners; we are
doing.
Then in James 2, James changed the terminology from
“hearing and doing” to “faith and works.” Faith is comparable to hearing. When
we hear God's Word, we say, “Okay, I believe that’s true.” Well, if we believe
it's true; then we're going to do what it says to do
or in other words we're going to perform whatever it is that we are commanded
to perform. We're going to do the works in that sense, not in a meritorious
sense, which is the problem that the Pharisees had. The problem that the Judiazers had is that they thought that their works (what
they did) was what gave them meritorious standing before God rather than that
it was a result of a meritorious standing before God.
Let me give you a couple of examples to try to help us
think our way through this.
Colossians says:
NKJ Colossians
2:6 As you
have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
How did you receive Christ? We receive Christ by
faith. But that faith was in a particular promise of God. Now how are we to
walk? In the same way Colossians says we are to walk in the same way that we
first became a believer – trusting in Him. Some people have taken that
and abused it by going into a quasi-mysticism where there's really no object to
the faith, it is just faith. You just somehow have faith. It becomes a faith in
faith. Then that gets real fuzzy because it picks up a lot of ideas that come
out of paganism. For example, you have various mind control cults that came out
of the New Age movement and then if I just think it then I can make it happen. And
I need to get involved in things such as creative visualization where I can
control my reality by the things that I think. This
is all part of Norman Vincent Peale’s Power
of Positive Thinking and Robert Schuler’s Power of Possibility Thinking and all of that lead into what became
known as a positive confession of the health and wealth name-it-and-claim-it
movement that was part of the Charismatic movement. It is an abuse of faith
because the faith in Scripture is not a faith in faith. It is not faith in and
of itself that is significant; it’s the object of faith.
The first example I have is in relationship to
justification, in relationship to phase one salvation. When Paul and Silas were
arrested in Philippi and put into the jail there, which wasn’t very large, they
were singing hymns to God. An angel came and the shackles came off. They didn't
leave. When the jailor discovered this he came running in to see what happened.
They were still sitting there, but he was scared to death because the penalty
in the Roman Empire for someone if the prisoner escaped (if anything happened).
They would lose their life. So he is panicky, but he has also been hearing
their testimony and their hymn singing.
He says to them. “What must I do to be saved?”
Their answer is given as believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and you’ll be saved, you and your household.
Another verse that connects to that
is the verse that we have in Romans 4:3, which relates to justification. As
Paul is explaining the great doctrine of justification by Faith in Romans 4 he
goes to the example of Abraham from Abraham in Genesis 15:7.
NKJ Genesis 15:7
Then He said to him, "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur
of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it."
Abraham believes some promise from God. It's not just
he believed in God; but he believed God. God told him something, and he
believed it. There was content (a promise) to what he had believed. In Acts
16:31 the key word that we want to hone in on is that word believe. It is an
aorist active imperative which indicates that it is a
priority statement that they are calling upon the Philippian
jailer at that moment to trust in Jesus Christ.
Now remember they've been singing hymns, and they've
been talking for some time. This isn’t all that he knew. There’s not really
enough content in that verse to give you the gospel, but there is enough
content in the context for them to have understood what that meant. This is the
conclusion of what Paul and Silas had communicated to him in terms of what Jesus
Christ had done for him. There's a command to believe. What is the response?
The response is that the individual has an option whether to accept what has
been said as true and trust and rely on it as true or not.
Now there's nothing to do in terms of any other action
or any other overt behavior in relationship to justification. It is simply
affirming (assenting to) a truth that Jesus Christ died for me and I am
trusting exclusively upon Him for salvation so that the object is the work of
Christ on the cross. So faith always has an object and that object is expressed
as a promise or as a description of what Christ did on the cross. In this case
there's not an external action that must be taken. It's not that he has to
believe and go be baptized, or believe and go joint the church or believe and
give half his money to God. He simply believes or trusts in what Christ did on
the cross and the result is that he's saved; he’s justified.
Now the second example that I want to use is related
not to the gospel (justification issue) but is related to understanding faith
as it operates in the believer’s life after salvation in terms of what we’re
studying in Hebrews 11 as well as what was happening in Joshua. This takes us
to one of the great illustrations of faith in the Gospels, which is when Peter
was walking on the water. This is covered in Matthew 14:29-31.
Jesus had already walked out to the disciples on the
Sea of Galilee, so they could see that it could be done and they knew the Sea of
Galilee better than anyone. They knew that He was not walking on stones.
There's not a sandbar there. That's the view that liberals will come up with
because their presupposition is miracles really can’t happen. So we have to
explain how this really took place in a naturalistic manner.”
Jesus walked out there. Now Peter wants to do it. Peter
is so enthusiastic.
“Lord that’s great. I want to do it.”
NKJ Matthew
14:29 So He said, "Come." And
when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to
Jesus.
Then he saw the wind. He heard the wind. He saw the
wind picking up and the waves. The wind became boisterous and he became afraid.
He began to sink.
NKJ Matthew
14:30 But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and
beginning to sink he cried out, saying, "Lord, save me!"
NKJ Matthew
14:31 And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him,
This indicates Peter had walked some distance from the
boat out to where Jesus was. It wasn't just one or two steps and then he took
his eyes off the Lord,
but he had gone some distance. Now he’s 20-30 feet from the boat.
He's getting close to Jesus and he's seeing the waves come up. So Jesus stuck
out his hand, caught him and said to him (and this is where we understand what
the lesson is.
and said to him, "O you of little faith, why did you
doubt?"
That is the focal point of this episode. That is the
teaching point. It is on faith.
Peter is not having some sort of a close encounter with
his navel on the boat. He's not going through some sort of altered state of
consciousness like a Hindu or Buddhist in terms of generating some sort of
mystical faith power that is faith in faith. It has been an object, and the
object is the Lord Jesus Christ and His command. The command is expressed in
verse 29 – come. Interestingly, it is the same grammatical structure that
we have in Acts 16:31. It’s an aorist active imperative. He says, “Come.”
Peter gets out of the boat and he begins to walk. He's
trusting in Christ but the trust is coupled with doing something specific. That
is, he can't just sit there in the boat with his doctrinal notebook and
understand that “Okay, this is how I'm supposed to use the faith rest drill. I
just finished reading the book. There are a lot of great promises there. Isn't
that wonderful! Let’s close in prayer and go home.”
He's got to get out of the boat and start walking on
the water. He's got to put what he believed, what he says he believed (what he
learned) and he has to now apply it and implement it. That’s another good word
for doing it; not in a meritorious sense. He has to
get out of the boat and start walking on the water and initially things are
smooth; but then things start to get a little tough.
The water gets rough and the wind comes up and the
waves come up. All of a sudden Peter becomes distracted by what's happening
around him. He gets his eyes off of the promise and on to the problems which is
what happens to us from a regular basis where we get our eyes off of our
relationship with the Lord and onto the details of life and what can go wrong
and how this can’t work and why Jesus really doesn't take care of me in times
of testing and difficulty. We get our focus completely off the Lord. Jesus uses
this to illustrate the whole principle that faith in certain instances related
to certain mandates involves a specific action that is directly related to the
mandate.
The Lord’s statement at the end there tells us that
this whole episode it is all about faith. This is again what James is talking
about when he says that we are not to just listen to the Word but that we are
to do it. It is faith plus works. It is all related to what is occurring in the
believers’ growth process after salvation.
Now the same thing is true in the spiritual combat
that the believer enters into in the Church Age. We're in a battle and the Lord
has described how we are to fight the battle, what the tools are in the battle,
what our weapons are and how we are to achieve victory not in our own power but
in the power of what God has given us utilizing the promises and principles
that God has described in the Scripture.
We do need to take that whole model of spiritual
combat and lay that over what is happening in Joshua to understand how this
faith principle operates in terms of combat.
In Joshua you have the Israelites who are on the edge
of the land. They are now in a position to go into the area of blessing that
God has promised them (the land) and to enjoy what God has given them. But in
order to live in the land they have to apply what God revealed to them on Mount
Sinai. They have to implement the law because God told them at the end of the
law that if they didn’t implement it right then God would eventually kick them
out of the land. There would be a
whole series of various disciplinary procedures and eventually if they were
rebellious (if they were disobedient) God would remove them from the land
completely. The physical holy war that they are engaged when they enter the land
is analogous to the spiritual warfare that we're engaged in.
When you first became a believer you had a territory
to conquer. That territory you need to conquer was between your ears. It's in
our thinking. We are to learn to think as Christ thinks. We are to take every
thought captive for Christ and we are not to be conformed to the thinking of
the world but to be transformed by the renewing our mind. So your mind was
under the control of the Canaanites. Your mind was thinking according to pagan
human viewpoint thinking; and there were certain strongholds of thought
processes and habits of thinking (bad habits in life whatever they were) sinful
procedures (we all have these things). Now we have to start engaging the enemy
at these different strongholds on the basis of the promises and the procedures
that the Scriptures proscribe for us.
Sometimes we just have broad general promises related
to faith and trust. In other areas we not only have broad general promises, but
there are specific commands and prohibitions in the Scripture as to what we are
supposed to do in order to evict that pagan thought from our head.
Holy war depicts the battle. The holy physical holy
war of the Old Testament depicts the spiritual battle in the soul and the basic
method of operation is on the basis of faith. But it's not faith as an
autonomous or independent mystical power, it is faith or belief in the promise
of God, the procedures He outlines, and in the power of God the Holy Spirit. Those
three things go together: the promises, the procedures and the power of God the
Holy Spirit. They work together. You
can’t have one of those without the other. It is the Holy Spirit who reveals
the Word of God. It is the Holy Spirit that takes the Word of God and puts it
into our life. It is through the Word of God the Holy Spirit leads, guides and
directs us.
So when we entered into this focal point on these two
events that the writer of Hebrews brings to our attention here – the
defeat of Jericho, the conquest of Jericho and the behavior of Rahab who is inside the fortress – then we come to
understand that this has great application for us and the spiritual life, as
part of the faith-rest drill.
We'll begin with that next time when we look at how
God commissions Joshua because in that commissioning God gives him again it
reiterates one more time for him the promise of the land. Now He is promised us
all kinds of blessings in the spiritual life. God reiterates the general
promise of the land in the first chapter. But then the first place they come to
is going to be Jericho.
He says, “This is how you take care of Jericho. You're
going to walk around the city one time a day for 6 days and nobody is going to
make a sound. Then on the 7th days you are going to walk around
seven times and then blow the ram’s horn and the walls are going to come down. But
then the next city they have to attach is Ai. They do it a different way. Each
problem we face in the spiritual life demands a different solution, different
procedures.
So we have broad promises and we have specific
promises and each area involves different areas of application and different
doctrines. That's why we have the problem solving devices. We have personal
love for God and we have impersonal love for all mankind or unconditional love.
We have occupation with Christ. We have doctrinal orientation, grace orientation.
All these different things are different ways (strategies, tactics) that God
has given us for dealing with the enemy that lies
between our ears. So if you want to have victory in the spiritual life we have
to understand faith because that is foundational. The faith rest drill is
foundational to everything else.
So we’ll come back and get into that in specifics next
Thursday night.