Messy Spirituality
“What is Faith?”
By Pastor Mark McNees
This message was originally given at Element3 Church in Tallahassee FL. To download this message’s corresponding PowerPoint, audio, and artistic elements for free please visit www.element3.org
Hey, we are starting a new series here called Messy Spirituality. It’s a seven week series. We’ve never done a seven week series before. I don’t know if we can hang. Can you guys hang for seven weeks? Alright, cool. We’re also doing something a little bit different. We’re going to be going through Hebrews 11, which is God’s hall of fame. These are like the 15 people who God says, these are my superstars. These are the guys that have really made an impact in the world. As I was reading Hebrews 11 and looking up the stories of the people, I came to realize something really, really quickly. These people were totally screwed up. They lived out their spirituality extremely messy. And I started thinking that this was an awesome launch pad off of Pathways that we just finished up. And if you remember, Pathways is more than a series, it’s a philosophy that’s going to become part of the DNA of our church. We’ve identified these common pathways that we all need to take to become a fully devoted follower of Christ. But as we went along on that journey, we saw that these pathways were paved with God’s grace. And I think that we’re going to see that as we’re looking at Hebrews 11 and looking at the lives of these heroes of the faith. Because as we look at them we’re going to see these people as they went on this path, of who they were, that the Bible is very real and very transparent about people who are followers of God. In fact, people who made it in God’s hall of fame were prostitutes, murderers, people who had sexual sin, people who had substance abuse. There are all sorts of issues. And I think that God picked broken, messy people for a reason. He picks those of us who are honest enough to say, you know what God, I can’t do it on my own. I can’t change the world under my own power. I need you to supernaturally intervene into my life so I can fulfill the purpose that you made for me and put me on this planet. I’m really excited about tonight and the next seven weeks as we look at this, and hopefully God will release our passion so we can take our world with the reality of Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 11:1-2. What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. God gave his approval to people in the days of old because of their faith.
So different people of faith, and I was thinking about this, and a lot of names came to mind at the beginning. But then also when I started thinking about it, lots of other people started coming to mind, and maybe not the people that you would typically think of as people of faith. I started thinking of philosophers, and thinking about how they have faith, and thinking about scientists, and even atheists have faith. The truth is that we all have faith. Philosophers have faith in their ideas and their ability to reason and think, and to establish a world view that makes life bearable. Scientists have faith in the natural world that they can figure out the meaning of life or life through scientific and natural means. Atheists have faith that there is nothing else, that we are just going through life. And the truth is, no matter where we are in our spiritual journey, have an awful lot of faith. In fact, we all exercised it as we came in here today. As you sat down in your chair, you exercised extreme faith in what? In your seat. And as I sit down in this chair, you know I think about it. And I made this lovely stool. I actually made four of these stools and two of them have collapsed. So as I sit in this stool, and maybe I’m putting my faith in something that’s been proven not to fulfill. And I think as we look at that, a lot of us do those different things. And it’s interesting, in Hebrews 11:1, it really asks the question that’s going to frame the next 7 weeks, what is faith? And it’s this. It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. That’s what faith is. Philosophers, their ideas are a confident assurance of what’s going to happen. Scientists and their confidence in the natural world, of what is going to happen. All of these kinds of different things.
The question is not if you have faith, but what or who do you have faith in and how do you live it out? Faith in what/whom?
And the question really isn’t do we have faith, but who or what do we put our faith in? And as I contemplated this and really thought about it, I came up with 6 common places that I believe that most people to one degree or another put their faith in. And as we look at this I wanted to kind of go through these 6 things, these 6 kind of common things that people put their faith in, and see how that works out.
How do you live your faith out?
1. People: Psalm 118:8
2. Government: Psalm 118:9
3. Money: Job 31:23-27
4. Science: Hebrews 11:3
5. Yourself: Proverbs 3:5
6. God 2 Corinthians 5:7
• Trust: Proverbs 3:5
• Yada: Proverbs 3:6
• Submitting: Proverbs 3:7
• First Fruits: Proverbs 3:9
People
I wanted to look at what happens if you have faith in other people. What if you put your faith in people? I started thinking about it and my relationships, and people that I’ve put my faith into. Seeing other relationships and when people put their faith in people, it usually ends up in disaster, just to be honest with you. Why does it end up in disaster? Because when we put our faith in people we’re putting our faith in something that is flawed. Every single person, no matter how good they look on the external, they’re broken. They’re going to be selfish sometimes. They’re going to respond in a way that is hurtful or territorial. But we look at movies and we think about all these things. We think that these relationships, or this next person, are going to be the person that fulfills me. The great philosopher Tom Cruise and his character Jerry Maguire, “You complete me”, and everybody goes oh it’s so nice. But the reality is, when someone says you complete me, it’s totally bogus. Because 50% of the “you complete me’s" or “I do’s”, end in divorce. It doesn’t have to be that way, but when you put all your faith in a person or people, and that is what your world view and everything is based on, you’re heading for destruction. In fact, God talks about this in Psalm 118:8. It says “It is better to trust the LORD than to put confidence in people.” And again, none of these things are necessarily bad. It’s just, where are you going to put your faith? What is going to sustain you?
Government
What about government? You know we talked a little bit about this last week. What if we put our faith in government, or we put our faith in a party? Are they going to finally fix all of the problems? Or maybe a candidate is standing up and saying vote for me and I’ll set you free and all this kind of stuff, and we want this person, this candidate. They’re going to fix what the last candidate that I supported messed up. What about legislation? You think about that and go let’s get this legislation passed, and then it’s going to fix the thing that the past legislation didn’t pass. And so on, and so on, and so on. Going back hundreds of years, and thousands of years, governments have been faced with the same problem. There are the haves and the have-nots. There are the people who have money and don’t have money, people that have homes and don’t have homes. There are people that steal from others, there’s hunger. There are all these different kinds of things. And again, government is a good thing. I’m not an anarchist. But the reality is that government is not going to be able to solve issues of the heart. Jesus Christ does that. In Psalm 118:9 it says “It is better to trust the Lord than to put confidence in princes.” Why? Why can’t we put our confidence or our faith in the government? It’s because the government, stepping back, is filled with people. And not necessarily bad people, but human people who are flawed, that put their own needs ahead of others. And when we put our faith in these kinds of things we will be sorely disappointed time and time again.
Money
So we may be thinking, alright let’s put aside the people, let’s put our confidence in money. You know, we are bombarded by images and messages on a daily basis, of money. How money is going to suffice, and money is going to change us and make things different. You know, if we can make enough money we can tell our boss to shove it. You can have enough money that you don’t even care what people think, and all these kinds of different things. As good followers of Christ, we probably wouldn’t say, oh ya I’d buy into that philosophy. But the reality is, I think inside of us, inside of me even, I think oh man if I just had a little bit more money it would be so much easier. It’s a prevailing thought. It’s a thought that we’re taught again and again and again. But it’s not true. The pursuit of money and having money does not fix all of your problems. In the mid 70’s a report came out about a meeting that happened in 1928. I wanted to read you guys a little excerpt about what happened in 1928 and then what resulted in the 70’s. Check this out. “In 1928 a group of the world’s most successful financiers met at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. The following were present: the president of the largest utility company; the greatest wheat speculator; the president of the New York stock exchange; a member of the President’s cabinet; the greatest bear in Wallstreet; the president of the Bank of International Settlements; and the head of the world’s greatest monopoly. Collectively, these tycoons controlled more wealth than was in the U.S. Treasury. And for years newspapers and magazines have been printing their success stories and urging the youth of the nation to follow their examples. 25 years later this is what happened to these men. The president of the largest independent steel company, Charles Swab, lived on borrowed money the last 5 years of his life and died broke. The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cuttin, died abroad insolvent. The president of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Whitely, served a prison sentence in Sing Sing Prison. The member of the President’s cabinet, Albert Fall, was pardoned from prison so he could go and die at home. The greatest bear in Wallstreet, Jessie Livermore, committed suicide. The president of the Bank of International Settlement, Leon Frazier, committed suicide. The head of the world’s greatest monopoly, Ivan Druger, committed suicide.” If you put your faith in money it will result in emptiness and despair. Because it doesn’t fill that God-shaped void. I can’t say it any clearer than that. I know people with money. I know some of them in my family who have lots of money and they’re absolutely miserable. I know lots of people who have money, but have it in the proper place in their life, and they have joy. They’ve learned the secret, that the source of their joy is not their paycheck. It’s Jesus Christ. One of the greatest stories in the bible about adversity and somebody just going through it, is found in Job 31:23-28. And Job says this when he’s going through a great amount of adversity, "Have I put my trust in money or felt secure because of my gold? Does my happiness depend on my wealth and all that I own? Have I looked at the sun shining in the skies or the moon walking down its silvery pathway, and been secretly enticed in my heart to worship them? If so, I should be punished by the judges, for this would mean I denied the God of heaven.” This kind of thing just sneaks into our lives. It sneaks into our lives and it’s so subtle. God gets moved out, and this pursuit of the next paycheck, the pursuit of the next promotion, the pursuit of the next thing takes center place. And because of it our worship and our joy suffers.
Science
What about science? Science is a great thing, right? I mean, science is a wonderful thing where we get to learn lots of things. All the medicines, all the technical improvements, and all these kinds of things are absolutely fantastic. But is it something that we would put our faith in? This utopian idea that science is going to cure cancer and cure HIV or AIDS and all these kinds of things. And someday science is going to be able to feed the world and figure all this kind of stuff out. Is that what we need to put our faith in, thinking that the next discovery is going to be the one that revolutionizes the world? Well, if you think that science is the answer, and I have many good friends who are scientists, then I have a little homework assignment for you. Call up your local librarian and ask him if he would please compile a list of scientific revisions or retractions of previously accepted scientific information. You’ll hear a click. You just will. Because if you think about it, if I whipped out my science book from high school or even college, and wanted you to use that. Brought it into your science teacher, they would say are you kidding me. Goodnight, Pluto just got knocked off the planet list. It changes constantly. You had your faith in Pluto, I’m sorry. It’s done, it’s not a planet, it is something else now. Who knows, maybe someday it’ll become a planet again. But it changes. Often scientists are demonized by people of faith, and it wasn’t always that way. And it shouldn’t be that way because I think that science brings a better understanding of a God of order. There’s a book by Dan Graves called “Scientists of Faith.” And he does a biography of 48 great scientists of faith who changed the world, people who were followers of Christ. And there’s an excerpt in the book here that I wanted to read. “Secular thought often portrays religion as the enemy of science. But the truth is that many of the world’s greatest scientific discoveries were made by persons of faith seeking to honor God and his creation.” That the reason that many of the discoveries that we enjoy today are because somebody understood that God was a God of order. There was more to this world than just meets the eye. In fact, if we continue on in Hebrews 11:3 there’s a very telling verse here, “By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.” Weigh that against Hebrews 11:1, it says “Faith is evidence of things we cannot yet see.” And if you think about this verse, verse 3 in the first century would have sounded like total nonsense. Think about it, you’re talking about this in the first century and you say the world is made up of things we cannot see. What are you talking about? You’re an idiot. That’s what you would think. Writer of Hebrews, you’re a moron, what are you talking about things that we see you couldn’t see? But we know now because of high powered microscopes and the magnetic lab right here in the FSU campus, our whole world is made up of organisms and cells and atoms, and things that we could never see. The Bible allows us to pursue these sciences, but also keep God in His rightful place. Science is a friend of the follower of Christ, because it establishes who God is and shows us the complexity of what life is really made up of.
Yourself
How about yourself, putting faith in yourself? Ya, enough said about that, right. In Proverbs 3:5 it says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.”
God
Trust
So that leaves us with the final one, God. Is God worthy of our faith? Well, in Hebrews 11:2 it says, “God gave his approval to people in days of old because of their faith. Eric referred to Paul’s writing in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “We live by faith, not by sight.” And we’re looking at this and we’re like okay faith. It’s not good enough that we just have faith, but what is the object of our faith and how do we live that out. And as I was reading the bible and just asking God to give me something to communicate he brought me to Proverbs 3. And in Proverbs 3 there’s kind of just like an outline, a really nice snapshot of what a living faith, an active faith looks like. In verse 5, we just read it, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.” And as we look at that, we look at this word trust. We need to have an active faith, a living faith, we need to trust God. We need to trust that He is going to sustain us. We need to trust that His word is true. We need to trust that He’s going to take care of us. That in order for us to go forward and go down these pathways and to be moved toward being fully devoted followers of Christ, to maybe someday be a part of God’s hall of fame, that first what we need to do is trust that what He says is true.
ä, éÈãÇò (Yada)
The next verse goes along with this, Proverbs 3:6, it says “Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths.” It’s kind of interesting, this word seek. When I study I have about 7 different bible translations that I read, and every so often you’ll get a verse where the words vary a lot. They’re all kind of the same, but they vary a lot. And I saw that with the word seek. In different translations there was acknowledge, and know, and all these kind of things. So I started drilling down more on these words and trying to figure out what God is trying to communicate to us. And as I drilled down, and I went down into the Hebrew, I came up with this word, and that word is yada. Yada. This is an extremely powerful word, this word yada. The full meaning is to know by experience. Not only are we to trust God, but we are to know him by experience. It’s not good enough to have faith in Him because someone told you about it. It’s not enough because you read it in a book. That God says yada, you need to know me by experience. And as I was kind of letting the word yada marinate in my brain, it hit the Seinfeld part of my brain. And I remembered an old episode where Jerry was dating this girl. He was sitting there and this girl says ya I went out to a club last night and yada yada yada, and I’m really tired this morning. And it set this whole thing in motion, and they started using yada yada yada yada. What are they saying? They’re saying, you know what, when I say yada you know the rest of the story by experience. This principle of talking about things of life, and I went into this yada yada yada, and you know the rest because you experienced it. That is our pursuit. That is our passion, that we need to yada yada yada with God. We need to know Him by experience, and there’s only one way to do that and that is to trust Him and put yourself in places that you will experience Him.
Submitting
As we continue on in Proverbs 3:7- 8, “Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the LORD and turn your back on evil. Then you will gain renewed health and vitality.” There’s a command and a promise there. And as I looked at that and it says “Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom,” I really thought that what God is trying to communicate to us is that we are to submit to Him. Submit our own understanding to His wisdom. When it becomes a question between what we think and what God is communicating, we default to what God is communicating. We submit that to Him, because we know that we can trust God. That we yada, that we know Him by experience, that He’s been faithful to us in the past. And because of that we are able to submit our will, our understanding, our knowledge under His, and follow Him.
First Fruits
And then finally, in verse 9 it says this, “Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the best part of everything your land produces.” That’s the command, and then verse 10 is the promise, “Then he will fill your barns with grain, and your vats will overflow with the finest wine.” God is saying you know what honor me, give me the best of your treasures, give me the best of your time, give me the best of your mind. I want all these different things. Why does he want to do that? So we can have a faith that works, a faith that is living, a faith that is active.
Trust + Yada + Submitting + First Fruits = Faith in Action
And as we look at this, we look at our trust, and with the yada, to know him by experience, submitting, and first fruits, and what comes up. If we put all those things into practice we have a faith that is vibrant and living and changing the world. As we continue in Hebrews, in verse 4 it next goes to the first person, the first hall of farmer, and that is Abel. In Genesis 4:3-5 it tells Abel’s story. It says “At harvesttime Cain brought to the LORD a gift of his farm produce, while Abel brought several choice lambs from the best of his flock. The LORD accepted Abel and his offering, but he did not accept Cain and his offering.” So, for some reason God accepted Abel and his offering, but he did not accept Cain and his offering. And when we flip over to Hebrews 11:4 it unpacks it a little bit more, “It was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did. God accepted Abel’s offering to show that he was a righteous man. And although Abel is long dead, he still speaks to us because of his faith.” Why was Abel’s offering more acceptable? Why was it? It’s because he had an active faith. As he gave his offering, he was giving of his best. And when you give of your best you have to trust. He was trusting God. Abel went through the same emotions that all of us go through when we give something away, especially when we come to God. You think, how am I going to make it? It was not easier for Abel to give his best than it is for us to give our best. But nonetheless, God says trust me. And why was Abel able to do this? Because of the yada, because he knew that God was faithful by experience. He also submitted himself to God. He knew that God wanted his best. It wasn’t easy. So he submitted to Him, and he gave his first fruits. And because of that his offering was an acceptable offering.
An acceptable offering is an acid test of our faith. It’s scary. It’s scary because it costs you something. It’s scary because when you’re giving your first fruits you go through the emotions, how can I give Him my first fruits? How am I going to give the first part of my income? How am I going to give the first and best part of my mind time? How am I going to give the first of my energy and my time? I’m so busy as it is that I don’t have time to think about anything else. I don’t have enough money to make the end of the month as it is. God says, I know all that, I know it’s scary, but if you want to be a fully devoted follower of me, if you want to experience the blessings that I have planned for you, if you want to go on the pathway of being a fully devoted follower of me and experience it you’re going to have to conquer your fears and understand that I am a faithful God. You need to trust me.
It’s hard because it costs you something. It cost Abel choice lambs from the best part of his flock. It costs us to make decisions sometimes with our time. Are we going to serve at E3 Kids, are we going to serve at the Red Eye, or are we going to go and do something for ourselves?. In 1 Chronicles 21:24, King David wanted to give God an offering. He was going along and came across a guy that owned a field and a bunch of cows, and a whole bunch of stuff, a rich guy. He said, dude, David you can use my field; you can take my cows or my lambs or whatever I have. It’s doesn’t matter dude, it’s all good, and you can give that to God. And this is what David said, “No, I insist on paying what it is worth. I cannot take what is yours and give it to the LORD. I will not offer a burnt offering that has cost me nothing!.” It’s not about the cows, it’s not about the land, it’s not about the time, it’s not about the money…it’s about the worship. It’s about trusting God, it’s about the yada, to know Him by experience; it’s about submitting your will and trusting God with your first of everything that you are.
It’s the acid test of our faith because Jesus said this in Matthew 6:21, “Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be.” Absolutely true. Any one of us could pull out our bank statements and know where our hearts and thoughts lie.” But if we want to be part of a revolution, if we want to be part of the only organization Christ ordained, the church that is going to bring hope to the hopeless, that is going to revolutionize people’s hearts and change the way that they feel, we’re going to see marriages be brought together, we’re going to see people brought into whole relationships with the one true God; that means that we have to have an active and living faith. And anything less we’re just fooling ourselves. James puts it this way, in chapter 2:14, “Dear brothers and sisters, what’s the use of saying you have faith if you don’t prove it by your actions? That kind of faith can’t save anyone.” In another version it says, “Faith without works is dead.” What is James trying to communicate to us? He’s saying look it’s great that you have received eternal life and that you are going to have a relationship with God and others for eternity. But you are still on this planet for a reason. There’s a reason that God didn’t whiff you up as soon as you said I repent of my sins and I want to have a relationship with you. It’s because all of us have been called to live out an active faith to let no corner in this globe be left untouched by the reality of Jesus Christ. That nothing less is going to satisfy. We all need to live up to our calling in life. And infiltrate with love and respect and understanding, and grace that was shown us, to a hurt and lost world. And each and every one of us has been given the opportunity to join the revolution of love that Christ has called us to. And we cannot let another day pass without joining and being part of what we all know we’ve been called to. Let’s pray.
Dear God, I know faith is hard. Living out an act of faith and trust, and yada, and submitting and giving our first fruits of our time and our energies and our talents and our mind and our money so we can save the world is hard. That we can go out in your name and bring hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless, community to the lonely, love to the loveless, healing to the sick, and most importantly a relationship with you. God I just pray for an uprising. I pray for a revolution of the heart. I pray that we will not leave our campuses the way we found them when we entered. I pray that we will not leave our workplaces the same that it was the first day we were there. I pray that we take seriously the responsibility of the people that you have surrounded us with. That we will be examples of what it is to have an active and living faith. That we will show the grace and love that we have been shown. And we will be part of your story. We want nothing less, to see your kingdom come and be actively part of it. In Jesus’ name, amen.
