Today we will be looking at the topic of “favor.” Why have we chosen to include a message on the topic of favor in a series on outreach and evangelism? The answer to this question can be found in the Book of Acts where God connects favor with the addition of people to the early church.
Acts 2:46 And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart,
Acts 2:47 praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.
The early church had “favor with all the people.” These were not insiders but outsiders. The church was on good terms with outsiders. Today we are going to learn what favor is and how the favor of God can be restored to the individual Christian and to the local assembly of God’s people.
Key Thought: I will tell you even before we get into the meat of this message that having “favor with people” is not positioning ourselves in the community so that people in the community will like us; it is positioning ourselves in our walk with Christ so that God will both show and give us favor to reach people with the Gospel and to do His will.
Definition of “Favor”
Gen 4:4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering,
Gen 4:5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
The word translated ‘favor’ in this passage is, sha'ah, shaw-aw' and means, “to gaze at or about; to inspect, consider; to regard or to have respect.”
When God grants favor to someone, He has regard for that person; He lovingly sets His gaze and compassionate consideration on that person. God’s favor has nothing to do with the value of the object of His favor; in fact, Scripture shows that God can and will extend His favor even to murderers as He leads them to repentance (Ephesians 2; Titus 3).
Each year when spring arrives we have problems with little, tiny ants invading our home. When God bestows favor it is like he looks at the billions of people on this planet and then takes the time to gaze and to focus on, and place His finger of lovingkindness on the person to whom He desires to show favor.
In the Bible there are examples of when God both:
Shows favor to people and
Gives people favor with others.
Examples of God showing favor:
Sometimes the Bible translates the word “favor” as “grace” and “lovingkindness.”
Remember that trickster Jacob, who tricked his brother Esau into giving away his birthright and schemed with his mother to steal the blessing of his older brother? Well in Genesis 32, after several years, he has to face his brother who has threatened to kill him.
In verse 10 he cries out to the Lord the day before this encounter. In praying for the Lord’s deliverance he says to the Lord, “I am unworthy of all the lovingkindness and of all the faithfulness which Thou hast shown to Thy servant…” In other words, he is saying to the Lord, “I am unworthy of your favor…”
So the word “favor” is translated in the Bible as “grace” and “lovingkindness.”
Examples of God giving His servants favor with men.
When God gives His people favor with men, He changes circumstances and moves people to accommodate His children and to bless His children. Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes.”
Israel - When God used Moses to deliver His people from Egyptian bondage, He told them to ask the Egyptians for articles of silver and articles of gold, and clothing. The Egyptians were glad to give them this stuff just as long as Israel got out of Egypt.
Exodus 12:36 says, “…and the LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have their request. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.”
Nehemiah - After the overthrow of Babylonia by the Persian Empire, in 537 BC the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great gave the Jews permission to return to their native land. This was a little over a hundred years after the death of Daniel. At this time, a man named Nehemiah was a cupbearer to the King of Persia.
In chapter one of the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah got a bad report from one of his brethren. The report said, "The remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire."
A sad face reflected on the king. Nehemiah was not to have a sad face because he was the king’s cup bearer. The cupbearer tasted the king's wine to be certain it was not poisoned and a sad countenance was not tolerated in the royal presence, so Nehemiah was fearful of the king. (Neh. 2:1-2)
Jerusalem’s broken walls reflected on the Lord. So Nehemiah cries out to the Lord (1:11) for success and compassion when he comes before the king. Listen to the following account in verse 5 – 8 of chapter two:
Neh 2:7 And I said to the king, "If it please the king, let letters be given me for the governors of the provinces beyond the River, that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah,
Neh 2:8 and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city, and for the house to which I will go." And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me. Favor!!!
Have you ever prayed for God’s favor?
* Nehemiah was concerned about God’s reputation before the nations of the world—a people in distress, broken down walls and gates and burned with fire reflected poorly on a God who promised never to leave or forsake His people. So God grants Nehemiah favor with the king to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
This lets us know that when the Christian prays for favor, we do not do so with selfish motives. We do not pray for God’s favor so that we can get our hands hold of “stuff” or things.
We are praying for God’s, sha'ah, shaw-aw'; we are praying for God “to lovingly set His gaze and compassionate consideration on us” so that He might get the glory through us as we set out to fulfill His will. Requests for favor should not be self-centered, requests for favor should be focused, like a laser beam, on God’s glory!
Israel and Nehemiah were Old Testament examples of where God moved people to show His children favor. In the New Testament, we find that God bestows to the early church the “favor of men” for the purpose of bringing men, women, boys and girls into the kingdom of God:
Acts 2:46 And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart,
Acts 2:47 praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Our Testimony - Let me share with you an example of God’s favor seen vividly in the life of this ministry. If you already heard this story, please bear with me as I share it with those who have not.
In March of 1994 my wife and I surrendered to God's calling on our lives to plant a church in northwest Baltimore County. I placed a notice about “a new church” on the ad board in the Milford Mill Road Giant Supermarket and a family responded. The evening I visited this family I learned that the wife already had made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ but the husband did not. I shared the Gospel with the husband who gave his life to the Lord Jesus. This brother became our first church treasurer.
More people expressed interest in our church but we didn’t have a place to meet. We decided that our church family would join our sponsor church in Sunday worship but found that several of the people we invited would respond to the invitation to join that church. To make a long story short, we found some space to lease on the campus of UMBC in Arbutus and had our first meeting in September of 1994.
In 1995 we fostered a relationship with a sister church on West Route 40 where we occasionally baptized our members. This church was a predominately white congregation and for the most part had an elderly membership of less than thirty people. The neighborhood of this church had changed over the years and was now mostly African-American. The pastor of this church had on one occasion joked with me about how they made sure they were out of the neighborhood “before the sun went down.”
The pastor and I became friends and began to pray that God would move on his congregation’s heart to give the building to our church family. I kept this vision before the church and strongly believed that God had given this location to us.
While we waited for God to move we wandered in the wilderness moving from one location to another: an office building on W. Route 40, two vacant churches, a hotel, the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) headquarters right down the street at the corner of Dogwood and Rolling Roads and finally, a retail shopping strip on Woodlawn Drive.
In 1998 a CEF worker gave me the name of a man named Edgar Kalb. Mr. Kalb was an elderly white man who was about 95 years old. With some hesitation I called and talked to Mr. Kalb who had a field next to the CEF building. When he told me the price I knew that it wasn’t for our small church. He casually mentioned a property up the road at the corner near Security Blvd but I dismissed it because the price was more than the field.
In January of 2000 we had another baptism service at the sister church on Route 40. Afterwards the pastor asked me to step into his office where he proceeded to give me the sad news that they had sold the church property.
Needless to say my heart was broken. We were discouraged. For five years I believed that God would give us that property. But it was now sold. Some have called this “the death of a vision.”
The very week I was given the news the church was sold, I was on my way home from work and was driving down Rolling Road and saw a “For Sale” sign on Mr. Kalb’s property at 2001 N. Rolling Road.
I didn’t call the real estate agent who was listing the property; I called Mr. Kalb, the elderly man who also owned the field on Dogwood Road. I told him that I was the pastor he talked to about two years earlier in 1998. I remember him saying, "Oh yes, you’re the pastor of the church that doesn't have any money."
On a snowy day in January 2000 the real estate agent and I parked our cars across the street and walked over more than a foot of snow to get to the house. My heart was beating rapidly as I imagined the great things that God could do through our congregation if He granted us the favor to purchase this property.
The property was listed at $300,000 and Mr. Kalb was right; we were still the church that didn’t have any money—in fact, we had about $1000 in the bank and our rent was due. By the way, at this time we were leasing property on Woodlawn Drive behind the 7-11.
Our church met together to discuss the purchase. I shared with the congregation the amount that I believed God wanted us to offer the owner. We would make an offer to purchase the property for $200K and ask for a private loan “on the side” from the owner to finance the 20% down payment required by the bank. Our $1000 would serve as a deposit.
I called Mr. Kalb back, again bypassing the real estate agent. I shared with him our proposition. He didn’t say much but suggested that we go the proper route of making the offer through his agent. We submitted our offer in writing with our $1000 check and then fasted and prayed. A couple days later we learned that it was turned down but the owner had counter offered.
The counteroffer specified we purchase the property for the owner’s original price of $300K and Mr. Kalb would give our church a donation of $100K to serve as our down payment! This was the FAVOR of God!!! Needless to say we accepted his counter-offer!
Of course when you experience a victory it is not long before our enemy, Satan, launches a counter attack. We could not find a bank to grant us a loan. The problem was that we didn’t have any credit. Though we were a little over five years old as a church, we had rented and leased up through that time and even though we made our payments on-time, they were not reported to the credit bureaus like a mortgage payment is.
About three weeks went by since we accepted the counter-offer. We had applied for loans with about eight banks. One bank manager told us that no one would lend money to a church in our situation because if we defaulted on the loan, they did not want to be seen as an institution that “sued God” or “foreclosed on God” to get their money.
I remember explaining all of this to a friend of mine. He told me to meet him at the property and we were going to pray. Little did I know what he had in mind to do. When we met at the property, he suggested that we do what God had the children of Israel to do when they were at the city of Jericho. On this very hot day, we walked around the property several times beseeching God to give it to us!
God came through again! It turned out that Mr. Kalb, the owner of the property, used to be a bank manager some forty years earlier and still had contacts. He called a friend, we got the loan, and the rest is history! God’s FAVOR!!!
Remember I said earlier that when we encounter a problem doing God’s work, it is an opportunity for us to plead to God for His favor. We moved into our new location and removed the walls in the basement, put up lights and installed a beautiful red carpet and began having services. The upstairs (bedrooms, living room, dining room and kitchen) of this building was used for Sunday school and other ministry.
One day me and a brother were praying in my office and heard a knock on the door. It was the Baltimore County fire marshal who asked how many people we had on roll. I told him “around 51 or 52.” He said at that time, if you would have said, “49” I would have said “Have a good day” but since you have more than 50 people using this building I’m going to have to shut down your Sunday services because of a fire code violation. If you continue to use the building to meet on Sundays you will incur a fine of $1000 for each violation.
This caused us to cry out to God again for His favor and in 2001 God helped us to raise around $53,000 to renovate our building as you see it today.
On March 3rd 2002 Mr. Kalb died. I was contacted by his family to preach his funeral and held it in our new sanctuary. God’s favor! Mr. Kalb’s family requested that in lieu of flowers, contributions can be given to our church. Again, God’s favor!
Since our purchase of this property for $200K, we have been approached several times about selling it—one offer a few years ago exceeded 1.3 million dollars. God’s favor!
Was it just the property that God was interested in favoring us with? No.
* When God moved on Mr. Kalb's heart to sell us the property, He stretched our faith—some of us didn't believe it could happen.
* When God moved and allowed us to "possess the land," our faith grew some more—some of us didn’t believe it would happen.
* Our church's giving increased as God blessed us with the property on Rolling Road. Our income in 2000 exceeded our 1999 giving by 20,000 dollars. God’s favor!
* The space we were leasing before we purchased our property was over $2300 a month. Our mortgage is less than what we were paying in rent. God’s favor!
That was our church’s testimony. Let me share with you may testimony of God’s favor (Yes God grants favor to individual Christians as well as the congregation of believers).
Sometime around the spring of 2001, my wife and I put our house on the market to sell it, having outgrown our two-bedroom cape cod, our family was looking to move. Our seven daughters were now young women and needed more space. Our home didn’t sell—it probably had something to do with the large wooden wheelchair ramp that took up most of the space in the front yard.
Having given up on the idea of moving, Deb and I were on our way home from a dentist appointment when we took a different route home. We drove through a development of new homes that we had never seen before and decided to stop at the model. We were told that all of the homes were sold except for one and they were trying desperately to sell it so that could move on to their next project.
We were told that they would give us many incentives to encourage us to purchase it, including $9000 to assist us with closing. The representative took us around the corner to look at the house but it was only around 40% complete and we could only view it from the street. We prayed about it and took them up on their offer.
We didn’t have much money and pulled together the money we needed to have for settlement. My wife was wondering how we were going to get blinds and curtains and other things we needed once we moved into our new home. When that day came they told us to keep our check. In fact, they give us a check for a couple thousand dollars that was left over after the closing costs were paid. God’s favor!
We still needed to get appliances like a stove, refrigerator, washer and dryer for our home. We applied for a loan at one of the electronic stores to get these things. We didn’t think we would qualify since my wife didn’t work outside the home but God approved! The clerk said “both you and your wife’s income was more than enough.” I asked Him, “What wife’s income?” It turned out that he had keyed in my income for both Debbie and me. I told him that he made a mistake but his manager told him to let it go. God’s favor!
All this happened in August of 2002. In September of 2002 I got laid off from my job of more than 22 years.
Now back to our church’s testimony:
I told our church what happened in a business meeting and someone suggested that it was time for our church to have a full-time pastor since I was working full-time for the church anyway. It was clear that our church finances would not support a full time salary but we would trust the Lord and walk by faith, not by sight.
Within two weeks the offering increased 30-40% with little increase in membership. Again, God’s favor! I was able to be full time at the church by God’s favor.
We learned later that God began to bless His people with new jobs, better paying jobs and promotions because they had pleaded with God for favor.
The Conditions of God’s Favor
How does one get into the receiving end of God’s favor? Scripture teaches that God gives favor in response to obedience, godly character and faithfulness.
Noah - Genesis 6:8-7 – “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. …Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.”
Solomon – In 1 Kings chapter 3 the Bible says that Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of His father David. God then appears to Solomon in a dream and said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you." Rather than asking for riches, Solomon asks for wisdom and a discerning heart to govern God’s people. Because of Solomon’s unselfish prayer, God extends His favor to Solomon and gives him both the wisdom and the riches.
God gives favor in response to obedience, godly character and faithfulness. He gives favor so that the results would bring Him glory.
More often than not, those needing God’s favor are poor, bankrupt, destitute, helpless, in trouble and in danger; they are humble, gentle in spirit, dependent on and desperate for the Lord to take action. Psalms 145:19 says, “God shows favor to those who honor him, listening to their cries for help and saving them.” (CEB)
Here are some of the ways by which we obtain the favor of the Lord. By the way, God's favor most likely will be given in spiritual blessings more than in material blessings.
By praying unto the Lord - He shall pray unto God, and he will be favorable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will render unto man his righteousness. (Job 33:26)
By keeping the commandments of the Lord - My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. (Proverbs 3:1-4)
By seeking and finding God's wisdom - For whoso finds me finds life, and shall obtain favor of the LORD. (Proverbs 8:35)
By diligently seeking good - He that diligently seeks good procures favor: but he that seeks mischief, it shall come unto him. (Proverbs 11:27)
By living righteously - Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is favor. (Proverbs 14:9)
There are many benefits of being in the favor of the Lord. Here are some of them:
Our petitions are more likely to be granted - Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. (Esther 7:3)
God will surround us with a shield - For thou, LORD, will bless the righteous; with favor will thou compass him as with a shield. (Psalm 5:12)
Our enemies will not triumph over us - By this I know that thou favors me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me. (Psalm 41:11)
God will show mercy - I entreated thy favor with my whole heart: be merciful unto me according to thy word. (Psalm 119:58)
God has shown this congregation of believers favor over the years. You may not have been a part of this church family when we started this journey but you are
The Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 9:11 that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the learned, nor favor to the skillful…”
Jesus tells us in Matthew 24:13 that “enduring to the end” is what counts. James tells us that we must “let endurance have its perfect work;” in other words, resist the temptation bolt from your ministry or the church at the slightest hint of trouble.
