FABULOUS FAITH
Titus 1:1
It was a while back that I had mentioned to you that while I was trying on pants in Wal-Mart that I got excited because the pants I was trying on seemed to fit me so well. Only to have my bubble burst when I noticed that I had grabbed the next size up from what I though I had.
I make mention of this because it seems as though we as a nation our always in some sort of health craze. There is always some sort of new diet on the market. We see many testimonies from famous people on how to get fit and stay that way. Tommy Lasorda, Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons and more.
We have people pushing health food, exercise equipment, health club membership. It seem that we spent an awful lot of time, energy, and money on our bodies, never stopping to think that someday we they are going to wear out and we will die.
Yet people spent so little time on that which will last through eternity, and that is there souls. This is the view taken in the Bible in 1 Tim. 4:8, "For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come."
Contrary to popular opinion having a faith that is healthy is far more important then having a body that is healthy, one lasts for put a few years, the other will last an eternity.
Just as all bodies are not the same neither are all faiths. There is a living faith, and there are living faiths, and as James 2:20 tells us as faith which is dead.
There are strong faiths, there are also weak faiths. There are as 1 Tim 1:5 tells us sincere faiths, as well as counterfeit faiths.
I want to talk about faith today, please turn with me to Titus chapter 1 verse 1, that is page 1032 in your pew Bible this morning. Once again we will be looking at the salutation of Paul in his letter to the young man Titus.
"Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness,"
As I stated last week Paul begins by making note that he is a slave to God, a bondservant. We saw last week that that is how we all should look at our relationship with God, not free to do anything we please, but free to be servants of God in Christ.
Paul goes on to state that he is "an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect". The word apostle means "messenger" or "one sent forth" Paul is one sent forth, a messenger of the Jesus Christ and His gospel.
Paul states that he is an apostle according to the faith of God’s elect! We will speak next week concerning God’s’ elect but this week I want to focus on the faith that they are to have.
Further along in this letter in Titus 1:12 & 2:2 Paul speaks of a sound faith. I believe that is the faith that Paul is making mention of here in his opening to this letter. God’s elect are to have a "sound faith."
That word "Sound" means to be "whole", or "healthy."
The faith of God’s elect is to be whole or healthy!
So how is it that we go about getting a sound faith, a whole faith, a healthy faith. First we must realize that man is a complex being, we are not one dimensional. We have a intellectual side to us, we have an emotional side to us and a physical part of us as well. If we are to have a sound faith, then our faith (or our spiritual dimension) must affect the other three.
Before we look at how faith need to effect these area we need to understand something regarding faith.
First of all faith is a gift of God. Eph. 2:8 tells us, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,"
The very faith we have is given to us by God, it has it’s origin in heaven. In this passage grace describes the gift of faith. It is something given to us which we do not deserve. Scripture states that it is implanted in us through the reading and hearing of the Word of God.
Now as with anything which we are given to us by God we can either nurture it, care for it, be good stewards of it, or we can ignore it and let it wither.
Faith as this verse points out is that thing by which are saved. When you place your trust in Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour, when you place faith in the fact that he shed His blood to cleanse us of our sins, Scripture tell us that we are saved, that we have eternal life. Without that faith there is no hope, without faith in Christ, there can be no salvation.
With that said let now look at how our faith interacts with the our intellectual aspect, our emotional aspect and our physical aspect.
First of all faith and intellect. We must believe God with our heads, with our intelligence. Faith has it roots in our thinking process, it is not something that we do instinctively.
If we are to have a "sound" faith, a healthy faith it needs to based on the examination of facts. God gave us all minds, and He expects us to use them. To look at the facts and evidenced that He does exist to strengthen our faith.
Rom. 1;20 tells us; "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,"
All we need it look at creation to see that God does exist. The simple truth of cause and effect of design shows us that there is a God. All this had to come from somewhere.
Evolutionist tell us it was the big bang. Well were did the matter that made us the big bang come from. Something had to start all this, it could not have come just out of no where.
So many people fail to realize that there is a reasonable and rational basis for our faith in God. In college I took a course in archeology. What amazed me was that there as never been anything found which conclusively contradicts the Biblical record, nothing.
For years it was debated whether there was every a man by the name of Pontius Pilate. Unbeliever’s scoffed at the notion that he even existed. In 1961 an inscription on a rock was found that contained the name Pontius Pilate, putting to rest questions of whether he really lived or not.
Listen to Jesus word’s in John 20:30-31; "And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name."
Jesus did signs so that men could use there minds to determined whether He was who He claimed to be. He did many so that the disciple faith would grow, and that faith did grow as they examined and used the minds that God had given them.
Many unbelievers thing faith is nothing more then a blind leap into the dark. Such is not the case. The faith we have in Christ need come from our intellect, come to us examining the claims of Christ, the claims of the Scripture.
I know that when I first became a Christian I had many doubts, concerning the Bible, where it came from, some of it’s claims. But after using my mind to examine the evidence that God has given I became a firm believer in the infallibility of the Bible. I know firmly believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and there is no errors contained in it.
And God used my mind to do that, He used the evidence that is plainly there to strengthen my faith.
We must also realize that faith is not a mental process only. It our faith only exists in our minds then it is worthless. If it does not seep into our emotional lives and our physical lives it is pointless. It is a faith that does not have it’s origin in God. Much more is involved in have a sound faith than mere simple mental conviction.
Faith must also be found in the emotional aspect of our lives. In other words we must also believe with our hearts. Sound faith must involve our emotion.
Listen to Paul’s words in Rom 10:9-10 "that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."
The word in heart in the Bible is used in different ways. In this sense it refers to our emotion, our reason, our will. I have used the phrase that my wife is my hearts desire. In other words I desire her not only from a mental aspect but from an emotional one as well.
A sound faith touches our intellect and our emotion. Faith that permeates into our emotion is that faith that gives us that desire to praise God. It make us zealous to bring him glory.
It should make us zealous to be a witness. When our faith is growing in the emotional aspect of our lives we have more contentment in Christ, we our full of the joy of the Lord. It is a faith that is wanting to get out.
A believe a sound faith in our emotional lives is lacking in so many believers today. So few people are excited about the Lord, excited about the gospel, excited about sharing the gospel, all this because they lack sound faith in their hearts.
Listen to the words of Christ the disciples who walked with Christ on the road to Emmaus, "And they said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"
Has your heart ever burned within you at hearing the Word of God preached, our at worshipping God, or reading His Bible? Faith as far as I see in the Scripture is not something that is intended to be cold and emotionless.
Listen to Psa 47
Praise to God, the Ruler of the Earth
Oh, clap your hands, all you peoples! Shout to God with the voice of triumph!
For the LORD Most High is awesome; He is a great King over all the earth.
He will subdue the peoples under us, And the nations under our feet.
He will choose our inheritance for us, The excellence of Jacob whom He loves. Selah
God has gone up with a shout, The LORD with the sound of a trumpet.
Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises!
For God is the King of all the earth; Sing praises with understanding.
God reigns over the nations; God sits on His holy throne.
The princes of the people have gathered together, The people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; He is greatly exalted.
Can you imagine the author of that Psalm as being emotionless. (READ IN MONOTONE). Is that how that should be read, I do not believe so. Our faith must grow into our emotions and well as our intellect.
But our faith must not strop there, it must grow into the physical aspect of our lives, in other words we must believe with our hands.
As important as our intellect and emotion are to our faith without the third ingredient our faith cannot be sound, it cannot be healthy. Just as our intellect and emotion are put to use in our physical bodies, and healthy faith must be demonstrated through works and obedience.
For our faith to be sound, for it to be alive, we must have works to back it up.
If you read the Scripture we can see over and over that the works which the people did was and outgrowth of their faith.
Paul in 1 Thess 1:3 praises the Thessalonians for their works, "remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father,"
These were works of faith, their faith being seen in what they did.
Paul also speaks of the "obedience of faith" in Romans 16:26. It is our faith that drives us to obedience in God. That faith we know in minds, that faith we feel in our emotions manifests itself in our obedience to God, in our works.
I cannot to you the importance which works play in telling whether we have a sound faith, a living faith. I want to read to you a few passages from James chapter 2;
"But someone will say, "You have faith, and I have works." Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe; and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."
The key phrase in that passage is "faith without works is dead". You cannot have a sound faith of mind, you cannot have a sound faith of emotion, if you do not have faith which displays itself in works. James is quite clear here, if you do have works that bring glory to God, you do have faith! Plan and simple.
I challenge you to read Hebrews 11 which is called the faith chapter. It is full of example of working faith, sound faith, healthy faith, faith that the elect of God should have.
So we have see that healthy faith involves our intellect, our emotions and our actions. If you are weak in any of those areas then your faith will be weak.
As I stated while God may give us the gift of faith, we are responsible to see that grows, to nourish it. We need to make sure that it invades every aspect of our lives.
You see this sound faith will in turn cause us to have a sound church, a healthy church. Which as we saw in the outline of Titus will lead to a Godly Home, which it turn will allow us to have a impact on our society, impacting it with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In closing I want to ask you what kind of faith do have? Is it s sound faith? Does it enter into the areas of your life we mentioned today? It should.
You may ask well where do I begin? Rom. 10:17 has the answer: "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Faith grows by us reading the word of God, by us hearing it preached, by us approaching the throne of God in pray regularly. Do those things and your faith will grow.
Let us each one know bow our heads as we go to prayer together. Pray for the unsaved to be given the faith they need to trust in you. Pray for those who know you as Saviour to nurture their faith.
