Intro:
1. Ken Davis,
"In college I was asked to prepare a lesson to teach my speech class. We were to be graded on our creativity and ability to drive home a point in a memorable way. The title of my talk was, "The Law of the Pendulum." I spent 20 minutes carefully teaching the physical principle that governs a swinging pendulum.
The law of the pendulum is: A pendulum can never return to a point higher than the point from which it was released. Because of friction and gravity, when the pendulum returns, it will fall short of its original release point. Each time it swings it makes less and less of an arc, until finally it is at rest. This point of rest is called the state of equilibrium, where all forces acting on the pendulum are equal.
I attached a 3-foot string to a child’s toy top and secured it to the top of the blackboard with a thumbtack. I pulled the top to one side and made a mark on the blackboard where I let it go. Each time it swung back I made a new mark. It took less than a minute for the top to complete its swinging and come to rest. When I finished the demonstration, the markings on the blackboard proved my thesis.
I then asked how many people in the room BELIEVED the law of the pendulum was true. All of my classmates raised their hands, so did the teacher. He started to walk to the front of the room thinking the class was over. In reality it had just begun.
Hanging from the steel ceiling beams in the middle of the room was a large, crude but functional pendulum (250 pounds of metal weights tied to four strands of 500-pound test parachute cord.).
I invited the instructor to climb up on a table and sit in a chair with the back of his head against a cement wall. Then I brought the 250 pounds of metal up to his nose. Holding the huge pendulum just a fraction of an inch from his face, I once again explained the law of the pendulum he had applauded only moments before, "If the law of the pendulum is true, then when I release this mass of metal, it will swing across the room and return short of the release point. Your nose will be in no danger."
After that final restatement of this law, I looked him in the eye and asked, "Sir, do you believe this law is true?"
There was a long pause. Huge beads of sweat formed on his upper lip and then weakly he nodded and whispered, "Yes."
I released the pendulum. It made a swishing sound as it arced across the room. At the far end of its swing, it paused momentarily and started back. I never saw a man move so fast in my life. He literally dived from the table.
Deftly stepping around the still-swinging pendulum, I asked the class, "Does he believe in the law of the pendulum?"
The students unanimously answered, "NO!"
2. Often you hear the complaint that salvation by faith in Christ alone, plus nothing is easy believism. But truth faith is not easy - it involves our mind, emotion, and will.
Not just saying we believer; nor wanting to believe; but by an act of the will actually depending totally upon the object of our faith to save us.
Last week we looked at Adam's faith, now we want to see that Eve had faith in the coming Messiah as well.
3. Eve's Expression of Faith.
Gen. 4:1
I. FIRST, HER FAITH IS SEEN IN OBEDIENCE TO GOD'S WORD.
A. There had been a Command given.
"Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it..." Genesis 1:28 (NKJV)
B. The Compliance.
Now Adam knew his wife - knew is Yaw-dah, and is used for the closest relationships - like knowing God in a personal, intimate way. 4:17, 25
It is used for sexual relationship within marriage.
Trans:This is the source of faith - obeying Gods Word. Rom.10:17/Lu. 5:5
D.L. Moody, "I prayed for faith and thought it would strike me like a bolt of lightning, but faith did not come. One day I read, "Now faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. I had, closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now began to study my Bible, and faith has been growing ever since."
Spurgeon, "Faith and obedience are bound up in the same bundle; he that obeys God, trusts God; and he that trusts God, obeys God. He that is without faith, is without works, and he that is without works, is without faith."
Have you ever flown in an airplane and wondered why a full cup of coffee doesn't spill when the plane turns? That's right, no matter how steep is the banked turn—coffee won't spill, a magazine will drop straight to the floor, and stewardesses will walk upright down the aisle as if the plane were level. And unless you are looking out the window, you cannot tell which way the plane is turning. All because of in-er-tia.
Pilots, too, are subject to in-er-tia. When flying through clouds or fog, which prevent them from seeing the horizon, pilots cannot feel the plane's wings beginning to bank to the left or right.
In fact in the early days of flight, pilots followed the myth of instinct: They believed they could feel the turn, and when their planes were accidently engulfed in fog or clouds, many banked unknowingly into a spiral dive that ended in a crash.
That's why pilot William Lange-wies-che writes, "Instinct is worse than useless in the clouds."
To fly through clouds, pilots must rely on instruments like the ar-ti-fic-ial ho-riz-on. The artificial horizon is a steadied line that stays level with the earth's surface and un-er-ringly indicates when the wings are banking left or right.
The ar-ti-fic-ial ho-riz-on revolutionized flying, but when it was first invented, pilots resisted using it. The biggest problem flyers had was trusting their feelings instead of their instruments.
To walk by faith means obedience to God's Word, our instrument, instead of our feelings or reasonings.
II. FURTHERMORE, HER FAITH WAS OBLIGATED TO DO IT GOD'S WAY.
Knew his wife Eve - we must obey God in God's way. His way is that sex must be in the context of marriage. Adam knew his wife...
"But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband." 1 Corinthians 7:2 (ESV)
"1 Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you excel still more. 2 For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. 7 For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. 8 So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you. 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 (NASB)
"Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Hebrews 13:4 (NKJV)
Trans:Whatever the subject, we need to do things God's way.
"8 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. 9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9 (NKJV)
"There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death." Proverbs 14:12 (NKJV)
We cannot walk by faith and live by what is right in our own eyes. There are people who see nothing wrong with having more then one wife; Many today in our Nation think living together with someone is acceptable - I remember my mother writting me about her living with someone. She wrote, "I doubt if you would approve."
Whether I approve or not is not the issue - God alone knows what is right.
—Reuters, had a rather strange story - the article had - Heat wave Claims a Frostbite Victim.
While the rest of Europe suffers under a record heat wave, back in August 2003, 46 year-old Mike Ball literally froze his foot, driving 250 miles with his toes too close to the air conditioning vent in his car.
Ball says, "It was incredibly hot. I slipped off my shoe and sock because my car is an automatic and I don’t need to use my left foot." He adds, "I didn’t realize anything was wrong until the next day when my foot was extremely painful."
One of Ball’s toes started to turn black and another was blue. He went to his doctor who diagnosed mild frostbite.
Mike did what he thought was reasonable, what was right, but it was the wrong thing to do.
III. NEXT, HER FAITH OBSERVED GOD'S WORK.
A. The Pregnancy.
It was a gift from God!
"4 But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. 5 And he lifted his eyes and saw the women and children, and said, "Who are these with you?" So he said, "The children whom God has graciously given your servant." Genesis 33:4-5 (NKJV)
"Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward." Psalm 127:3 (NKJV)
Her faith in obeying God, allowed her to see God perform the miracle of life!
Faith releases the power of God - read Heb. 11...
B. The Delivery - of a sinner!
Why? Because of her previous unbelief! If she had believed God about partaking of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, her son would not have been born a sinner.
Trans:Faith allows God to work in a positive way - life; Unbelief provokes God to work in a negative way - death.
A. B. Simpson, gives a wonderful example of the power of faith. In the city of Ran-goon, Bur-ma, resided the largest and finest bell in the East. It was the pride of the great Buddhist Temple.
During one war the bell sank in a river. Over the years, various people tried but failed to raise it. At last, a clever priest asked permission to try, but only if the bell was given to his temple.
The priest had his assistants gather an immense number of bamboo rods. One by one the rods were fastened to the bell at the bottom of the river. After thousands of them had been fastened, the bell began to move. When the last bamboo rod was attached, the buoyancy of the accumulated rods lifted the bronze bell from the mire of the river bottom to the stream's surface.
A. B. Simpson writes:
"Faith can lift the heaviest of burdens and the highest of mountains, because it releases the very power of God. Our faith my be like one of the little bamboo rods.
For a time it seems that trusting God is in vain, but at last, there comes the breath of God, and lo, the walls of Jericho fall, the mountain becomes a plain, and the host of Amalek is defeated.
IV. FOURTHLY, THE OBJECT OF HER FAITH, WAS THE PROMISED, SEED OF THE WOMAN.
I have acquired a man from the Lord - the word Cain and acquired sounds the same in the Hebrew.
Most believe that she thought that this "child" was the fulfillment of the promised seed. Why not?
Philips, "When Cain was born his mother thought he was Christ. She thought that already the promised Seed had come, the promised one who would crush the serpent's head. "I have gotten a man, even Jehovah!"
As Alexander Whyte so forcefully puts it, she would have been a coldblooded atheist had she believed anything else. Her exclamation demonstrates her saving faith in the promise of a coming redeemer.
But she was wrong. She was right in believing that the Messiah would come and that He would be of her seed. She was wrong in thinking that Cain was the one, and before long she had cause to change her mind.
That first babe born into a sin-cursed world soon manifested his temper tantrums, his inborn ability to deceive and lie, his selfwill and pride. Likely enough, before long, she thought that firstborn son of hers more likely to be "the seed of the serpent."
By the time her second son was born she knew her mistake well, for she called the second boy Abel, "Vanity!" It was all vanity and vexation of spirit after all. The promise might indeed "be yea and amen in Christ" but it certainly was not yea and amen in Cain."
While Eve was wrong about Cain being the promised deliverer; it also shows she believed that the promised deliverer would - Christ.
The object of our faith is always Jesus Christ.
"looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:2 (NKJV)
On Day Six of the ill-fated mission of Apollo 13, the astronauts needed to make a critical course correction. If they failed, they might never return to Earth.
To conserve power, they shut down the onboard computer that steered the craft. Yet the astronauts needed to conduct a thirty-nine-second burn of the main engines. How to steer?
Astronaut Jim Lovell determined that if they could keep a fixed point in space in view through their tiny window, they could steer the craft manually. That focal point turned out to be their destination—Earth.
As shown in 1995's hit movie Apollo 13, for thirty-nine agonizing seconds, Lovell focused on keeping the earth in view. By not losing sight of that reference point, the three astronauts avoided disaster.
V. FINALLY, HER FAITH WAS OBLIGED TO WAIT ON GOD.
The messiah would not come in Eve's life time...
"And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise," Hebrews 11:39 (NKJV)
Charles Stanley, "We grow in obedience [and faith] by waiting for God's timing. God is very time conscious - not in terms of minutes and seconds, but in regard to our acting in obedience according to His schedule...When God begins to move in power on our behalf, sometimes our situation can actually grow worse before it gets better. Yet adversity is a setback from which we tak our greatest leaps forward. Sometimes we obey God, expecting a certain result - the oposite happens. Then we wonder if God made has made a mistake. But He never does; we simple have to wait until He finishes the story."
Con:
1. Faith in Christ alone requires (1) Obedience to His Word; (2) an Obligation to do things His Way; (3) it will brings an Observation of Gods Work; (4) the Object will be Christ; and (5) we are Obliged to Wait upon God's time-table.
2. Faith in Christ alone is anything but easy believeism, it is a stubborn Biblical truth! Requiring mind, emotion, and act of the will.
2. In 1893, engineer George Ferris built a machine that bears his name—the Ferris wheel. When it was finished, he invited a newspaper reporter to accompany him and his wife for the inaugural ride.
It was a windy July day, so a stiff breeze struck the wheel with great force as it slowly began its rotation.
Ferris, his wife, and several news reporters were invited to take the first ride on the machine.
They all believed in the Ferris wheel, but when it came time to actually get into this hugh machine, several reporters declined. But Ferris and his wife and a reporter by faith got into the machine.
Mrs. Ferris and the reporter believed the machine would work on the basis of what the inventor had promised. But only after the ride could it be said of all three that they had personal, experiential faith.
God has promised, trust in substitutionary death, bural, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and you will be saved. It requires not only you mind and emotions but an act of your will as well.
Johnny Palmer Jr
StrugglingThruScriptues.ning.com
