The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 1: Legacy of Faith

Episode Date: September 6, 2020

The object of our faith is more important than the size of our faith.

Hey, church, how you doing? All right. Some of you over here are okay. That's all right. It's okay. You'll catch up. It's all right. Hey, we are starting tonight a new series, and it's called These Three Remain.

And it comes out of 1st Corinthians chapter 13 verse 13. So if you've ever been to a wedding, you've probably heard 1 Corinthians 13 read. It's the love chapter. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love keeps no record of wrongs, all of that. And then it gets to the very end. and then at the end of that it says, faith, hope, and love.

These three abide, and then it says, but the greatest of these is love. And so we're going to talk about faith, hope, and love for the next three weeks in this series. And why I think this is such a great series to talk about is because I think faith, hope, and love better defines what Christianity is than to say it's a world religion. because Christianity is more of a relationship than it is a religion. A religion's about what man does to get to God. A relationship in Christianity is about what God has done to get to us. And our response is faith and it's hope and it's love. And so today we're going to talk about faith.

And if you go and you look through the Bible, the Bible cover to cover, if you kind of put a red thread through the Bible, one of those red threads could be the word. word faith. I mean, the Bible talks cover to cover about God's faithfulness. It says things like in Mark 1122, have faith in God. Jesus says that. It'll talk about walk by faith or live by faith or have obedience of faith or faith without works is dead or without faith it's impossible to please God or be encouraged by each other's faith, be justified by faith, stand fast through faith or whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. And so faith is this thing that is core to Christianity. It's

core to what it means to be a Jesus follower. But I also think there's a lot of assumptions, and there are a lot of confusion around what faith is and what faith isn't. And think, if you're a Jesus follower and somebody came up to you and said, hey, what is faith? What would you say? How would you answer that question to them. Where would you go in scripture to say this is what faith is? Or if you're here tonight and you're kind of kicking the tires of this whole thing, checking it out, seeing what Christianity is all about, then I think it's a great night to be here because you're going to get kind of us to peel back the curtain and you're going to see what Christianity really is. We want you to know what you're getting yourself into in all

of this. Now, there's lots of places that we could go to talk about what faith is, but there's really too big, there's two whole chapters in the Bible that are devoted to faith. One of them is Romans Chapter 4, and the other is Hebrews Chapter 11. And so we're going to spend the majority of our time in Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews is in the New Testament, even though it sounds like it should be in the Old Testament, but it's a New Testament at the Book of the Bible. So grab that, pull up your phone, grab a Bible out of the back, go to Hebrews chapter 11. and we're going to get there and we're going to hang in there. In Hebrews chapter 11 actually has 23, at least 23 examples of faith.

And all of those examples are going to come from the Old Testament. And I know sometimes we can think, wow, you know, like the God of the Old Testament, the God of New Testament are two different gods and God was all about works before and now he's about grace and faith. But what the author of Hebrews 11 wants to say is, no, no, no, it's always been about faith for God. And so we're going to jump in to this thing, this hall of faith. And the big question I want to keep in front of us tonight is what is faith? What is faith?

And so in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, it starts like this. Now faith. Now there's a whole bunch that he's been arguing about that we don't have time to kind of get into and talk about. But the idea that we want to grab on right from the very beginning is that faith is it's a now faith. It's not a once upon a time thing. It's not a happen to me once upon a time. It's not I just raised my hand. Faith is a now. It's a living. It's an active thing in our lives. And the word faith comes from the word pistus. That's the Greek word. And that's the noun. So it's faith. And then there's a verb, Pistuo, which means to believe. And to have faith always translates into the

noun of faith, having this faith thing always translates into the verb. It always becomes action. And so it's always a now, it's always a now faith. So now faith. Now faith is the assurance, literally the substance or the reality, the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction or the evidence or proof of things not seen. The faith is an assurance. and it's a conviction. That faith is not detached. It's not blind. It's not this sort of wishing and wanting

and just sort of a blind leap of faith. It's not detached from reality. It is actually, it has an assurance. It has a substance to it. It has a reality to it. And it is a conviction that it's not anti-evident. it's not anti-intellectual.

It's not, you don't have to check your mind at the door in order to be a person of faith. The word it uses is conviction that there's an evidence and there is a proof to this thing that we call faith. And even though you don't have to check your mind at the door to be a person of faith and it's not detached from reality,

there is something really supernatural about faith. There is something bigger, than just what our minds can get around or even we can sort of touch and feel and see. And it says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. And do you know what the things we hope for are? Do you what the thing not seen is?

More than all the miracles we could get, more than even getting to go to heaven, and do you know what the thing we ultimately really hope for? It's Jesus. Jesus is the substance. He's the object of our faith. And the object of our faith matters more than the amount of faith that you and I would have.

And so don't, don't have faith in your faith. Have faith in Jesus. You can turn, you can actually take faith and turn it into a works by trusting in your faith, by having faith in your own faith. The faith is such a gift from God because it's not what we drum up and it's not what we do. The faith has an object and the object matters. And the object of our faith, the thing that we hope for, the thing that is not seen, the thing that all of it rests on is Jesus.

Now, classically, if you were to say, how do you define faith? If I had a three-legged stool, it kind of would be like that, how it's been classically defined. And it has three parts to it. But I think this is my office chair. This is actually my favorite chair. I love this chair. I love it so much. There's three of them in my office.

That's how much I love it. And I think this chair better describes faith than a three-legged stool. And here's why. There's four legs to it. and so one of the legs that you would say to faith is that there has to be knowledge for faith that you actually have to know something you have to know some correct things in order to have faith about god you need to know some things about god some correct things about god you can't believe in god and then truly in god and have wrong things believed about

God. And so there's some knowledge. And then there's what's classfully been called ascent, which would basically mean, like, I trust it. I actually sit down. So it's one thing to know some things about God. It's another thing to actually trust those, like to put the weight of your life on those things. Right? That you actually have to sit down in it. And then there's this idea that you would believe that it would be true. That there are facts and that they are believed to be true. And then you put your weight, your life on it. But I think there's something more to it than that.

And I would think, I think this fourth leg is like a joy. It's like a love. There are chairs in my house that I sit on, but I don't like them at all. Like we have these chairs in our kitchen and they look cool. They're like white and had these holes drilled in them. They have these metal legs and they're awesome. But you sit on it and you're like, oh, this is terrible. Kristen's like, why do you get up from the dinner table so fast?

I'm like, I'm sitting on a hunk of plastic. That's why. But this chair, I love this chair. Laugh if you want. Come by my office sometime. You'll sit in the chair with them like, I love this. I want to read in this chair. I want to sit in this chair. I study in this chair. I have cried with people in this chair. I've prayed with people in this chair. We have laughed.

I have fallen laughing out of this chair. I've fallen asleep in this chair. And I think that's faith. Yeah, you can know some things about God. And you can believe those things are true about God. And you can say, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll trust that those things will hold up the weight of my eternity. But then do you just, do you love God? Like, do you find a lot of joy in God? And that's what, that's what faith is. That faith is this, it's this Holy Spirit enabled gift of God. Of trust and clinging, of pushing all the chips across the table, of bank and everything. And and then on top of that of finding incredible joy, an incredible love, an incredible happiness in doing it.

And so he goes on and he says in verse two, for by it, now he's going to say faith. And you're going to see, you may even want to circle this, 21 times in this chapter, you're going to see the little phrase, by faith. And so he says, for by it, by faith, the people of old received their condemnation or their approval, that the people of old, these are, he's going to now, he's going to introduce us to all the people of old, but they're all

Old Testament characters, that the people of old were approved by God because of their faith. Through faith, they found approval with God, which means God has always related to his people through faith. People may have tried to relate to God through their works, but God has always related to His people through faith. And God has and is and will forever be a God that relates to us through faith. So verse 3 says, by faith, we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. Again, he's, he's, he's, He's going to rewind all the way back to Genesis for his faith argument. And he's going to say, this is the way God meant it to be from the beginning,

that there would be this love and this trust with him, this enjoyment in who God is. And he says, by faith, Abel. Now, Abel, Kane and Abel are kind of the second generation. They're Adam and Eve's sons. So by faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice. than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous. God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

So the question is, why was Abel's sacrifice more acceptable to God than Cain's? And it's because Abel's was made by faith. Abel brought his sacrifice to God out of the firstborn, it says. He would raise these animals and he would go over and he'd find the very first one and he'd bring it to God. Kane, on the other hand, he was farming and what Kane would do is he wouldn't bring the first of it to God. He would wait till the very end, see how the crop worked out, see if he covered all his bills, see if he got enough food and everything. And then he would bring God some of his leftovers. And it's not necessarily that it was first and last.

It's what that signified. That for Abel, he would say, no, God, I trust you. Here, take this. I trust you. And what Cain said was, no, I trust me. And I trust my work. And I trust my efforts.

And the deal is it's not a matter of if we have faith. It's a matter of where we place our faith. Do we place our faith in God or do we place our faith in ourselves? And right now, today, where's your faith? If you're really honest, where's your faith? Verse 5, it says, by faith, Enoch, so fast forward seven generations. This is the seventh generation after Adam. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.

And he was not found because God had taken him. Now before, before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. And listen to this statement in verse 6. And without faith, it is impossible to please him. That's a huge statement. Think about what the author just said right here. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. the why behind our what's matter.

Why we do what we do matters to God. It's not just our behaviors that matter to God. And if you're a parent, you know this, don't you? You ask your child to go and do something, and they may go do it, but they just like, they pout, fine, you know, take the garbage out. That doesn't please you, does it? That didn't what you really wanted.

you're not just after the garbage getting out to the curb as opposed to a child where you say hey would you take the garbage out and they're like sure no problem and they grab it and they go and they joyfully do it why the difference is what's going on inside their heart and you're pleased as a parent aren't you with one and you're displeased with the other it's not just the behavior you can be the most morally upstanding person in the world and not please God. Because apart from faith, it is impossible to please God. But with faith, God is pleased. And so he says, without faith, it's impossible to please him. For whoever. So do this. Get your hand.

Take your hand. This is an all-skate. Don't stare at me like I'm not doing this. Get your hand. Take your hand. Go like this. Put it in front of your face and go, breathe on your hand.

You feel that? All right. You're in this. whoever category. All right? You are drawing breath. You are alive. This counts for you.

For whoever, meaning faith is not limited to a certain type of person. If you are drawing breath, you are the type of person that will have, can have. God is calling to a faith. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Drawing near to God rests on faith. The God is pleased in faith, and we draw near to God based on faith.

The believing and drawing near to God are integrally connected. You cannot separate the two of those. It's why we do saturated. This whole week, that's coming up is a week for us to lean in in faith that God might draw near to us, that we would take steps of faith, that God might draw close. Verse 7, by faith, Noah, now here's somebody we recognize, right?

Finally. By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen. They're talking about the flood. In reverent fear constructed an ark for the safety. of his household. And by this, he condemned the world and became an air of the righteousness that comes by faith. Do you see what? Noah was counted an heir to God. Do you know what an air is? An heir is a child who receives everything from the father, from the parent. That he's an heir by faith. You are made a child of God. You are included in the family. And he is a family.

of faith by faith it's not your works that you become a child of god by faith faith is such a big deal to god because what god is after for you and for me is a relationship and at the root of every relationship is trust and that's what faith is and because god fundamentally wants a relationship with us trust becomes the currency by which that happens and so faith becomes center to what God is doing in and between us and so do you see yourself as a child of God faith changes our identity it gives us a new identity do you see yourself as an air a co-er with Christ that's what the Bible says we are through faith? Or do you see yourself in terms of your rebellion to God? Or your religion to God? Or do you see yourself as a child of God, an heir, a member of the faith family?

So verse 8 it says, by faith, Abraham obeyed. Now, the order really, really matters here. Abraham, by faith, Abraham obeyed. Abraham didn't obey in a lot. Abraham didn't obey in a order to become faithful. He had faith and faith led to obedience. That really, really matters. The faith that we have should always lead us into obedience to God. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And when he went out, not knowing where he was going, by faith he went to live in the land of the promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations,

whose designer and builder is God. Now, Abraham is a critically important person in the discussion of faith, namely because he's an Old Testament giant. but there's a phrase that gets used all over scripture around Abraham, and it comes from Genesis 15, verse 6, and it says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. You see it in Galatians chapter 3, you see it in Romans chapter 4, verse 9, verse 33. You see it again in James chapter 2. This phrase, Abraham believed God and it was counted or credited to him.

as righteousness, as in a right relationship with God. That point blank, he says, God says, the way you get to be in a right relationship with me is not by your works. It's not by the things you do. It's by faith. It's by a trust that joyfully, lovingly rests on me. And so here's what it says in Romans chapter 4.

I want to just read a couple of these verses. In Romans, Paul flushes this whole. idea out. It says in Romans chapter 4 verse 1, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? So he's going to say, what good were all of Abraham's works that he did? For if Abraham was justified, made right, by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? And here it is. Abraham believed God, and it was capital. And it was counted to him as righteousness. Now the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as is due. He's saying if you work, you just, you get what you earn. You get what you deserve.

And here's the thing, you and I don't want to get what we deserve. We don't want what is coming to us. The wages of our sin is death. If we get what's fair, if we get what's due, if we get what we've earned, what we put in, what we get back is the wrath of God. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly. His faith is counted as righteousness. God doesn't give us what we deserve. He gives us what Jesus deserves. He gives us, he counts or credits to us. a perfection, a perfect relationship with him, not based on our works, but based on Jesus's works. And he accomplishes that and credits that, and the way that credit kind of comes into our account is through the pipeline of faith. And he says this, but the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.

it will be counted to us who believe in him who is raised from the dead Jesus our Lord who is delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification now Martin Luther was a monk living in the early 1500s and he was alone one night and he was reading the book of Romans and as he read the book of Romans he came to this argument of Paul's not this exact spot but this idea that we're not saved or justified or made right by our works, but by grace through faith. And it wrecked his life. It wrecked his world. In fact, it sent shockwaves across the globe.

And you and I are sitting here today because of this idea that radically changes everything, that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus alone, told in scripture alone to the glory of God alone. And this thing, salvation, justification, it's accomplished by Jesus in his perfect life, in his perfect death, and his perfect resurrection. And then by the spirit, the spirit begins to work inside our dead, cold hearts of stone. And it breathes life into us and wakens us up the way Jesus would say it. John chapter three is that that we begin to be born again.

The spirit kind of regenerates a dead heart inside of us. And when that happens, we're all of a sudden born new again. And the cry of a newborn believer is faith. What does a baby do when they're born? They scream and they cry. A baby doesn't scream in the womb in order to be born. Baby cries as a sign they've been born. and a believer cries out in faith is a sign that the spirit has worked and breathed new life into them again.

In justification, our relationship with God is by faith alone. And I hope, like, I hope that just gives peace to your soul. I hope you're able to just exhale out a load of stress about your relationship with God. that you are in a right relationship with God by grace through faith alone. And then in verse 11 it says this. By faith, Sarah, this is Abraham's wife, she's probably 90 years old, about what he's about to write about. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive.

Do you need power, the power of God in your life? Have faith in God. Verse 20, by faith, Isaac invoked future blessings upon Jacob and Esau. Do you want to be a generational blessing to your children? Have faith in God. By faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of his sons, each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. Do you want to leave an eternal legacy for your family?

Have faith in God. By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, may mention of the Exodus, of the Israelites, and gave directions concerning his bones. Do you want to speak? Do you want to have mentions prophetic? Do you want to live prophetically? Have faith in God.

By faith, when Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ. Listen to this statement. This is remarkable. Moses considered the reproach of Christ,

greater wealth than the treasure of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. Do you want to live in purity and power over the fleeting temptations of sin and the trinkets of this world? Have faith in God. By faith, he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured seeing him who is invisible. Do you need the conviction to persevere in something in your life? Have faith in God. By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood.

so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them. Do you need a way in your life? Are you facing something in your life where you need a way in your life where there looks like there is no other way? Have faith in God. By faith, the people cross the Red Sea on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. Do you need to live in freedom from your enemies?

And I'm not talking about somebody. I'm talking about these enemies, like deep inside your soul, enemies. Do you need freedom? Have faith in God. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. Do you want to see the strongholds in your life fall?

Have faith in God. By faith, Rahab, the prostitute, did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spot. Do you want to see God radically save people that you and I think are beyond saving? Do you have that family member? Do you have that friend? Do you have that neighbor that you have been praying for and praying for and praying for?

Do you want to see God do a radical thing in somebody's life? Have faith in God. And what more shall we say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barack and Samson and Jepha, of David and Samuel and the prophets. who through faith, conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stop the mouths of lions, quench the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness,

became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were killed with the sword. They went about in the skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated of whom the world was not worthy. Wandering about in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth. Do you want to live like the afflictions of this world are light and momentary compared to the eternal. weight of glory, have faith in God. Church, have faith in God. And he says in verse 39, all these things, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better. You know what the something better is? Jesus. Jesus is better than all these

things you could get from God. The something better of faith is Jesus. He provided something better for us that apart from us, they should not be made perfect. Therefore, so now he's going to say, here's where all that faith goes. Here's where it's all leading. Faith without works is dead, James said. So here's where the activity's coming. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay

lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder I learned it, the pioneer and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Do you know where faith will always lead you? faith will always lead us to lay aside the sin that clings. Faith will always lead us to repentance. All of a Christian's life is one of repentance. Repentance is not a one-time thing.

Repentance is a daily, hourly, momentary thing that we would repent, that we would lay aside, we'd turn away from the sin. And I love that the Bible admits that sin can cling closely to us. so don't be surprised. When every day you need to turn away from it, every day by faith you need to lay it down. And then it says, run with endurance.

Faith always will lead you in the direction of perseverance. Some of you are going through some things right now. You're in the fire right now. Some of you are on the edge of giving up on it. Taping out. I can't do it anymore. I can't do this relationship anymore. can't do this job anymore, I can't do this thing with my family anymore, I can't keep going back

to this friend again and again and again, I can't keep pursuing this thing anymore. And I would say, have faith in God. Run with endurance. And the way you do that is you fix your eyes on Jesus. Fix your eyes on Jesus. He's the pioneer. He started all of this. He started this whole faith thing. It all begins with Jesus. And in Jesus, when you fix your eyes, it's all going to find its completion in him. He's going to pioneer it and he's going to perfect it. He will bring it to completion.

He promises to do that. And so keep your eyes fixed on Jesus because the object of your faith matters more than the size of your faith. It's why Jesus will say, hey, you know what? You need to have faith like a child. It's why he says, you can have faith like a mustard seed. Do you know what a mustard seed looks like? It's this teeny little grain of sand. Jesus is saying it's not the size of your faith.

You don't need to ask God for bigger faith. You just need to ask God for Jesus to loom larger in your eyesight. You need to fix your eyes on Jesus. The object of your faith matters more. than the size of your faith. And in the end, I mean, we said so much about faith. In the end, what matters is Jesus. He is the pioneer and the perfector of our faith.

And so I've got two questions tonight for you, for me. Am I living by faith in Jesus? Honestly, ask yourself this. am I living by faith in Jesus? Do I have a now faith? Do I have a faith that doesn't just like mentally acknowledge there's some facts about God? And I don't just have a kind of faith that says, yeah, I believe those things are true or or even a faith that says, yeah, I mean, I walked the aisle one time and I raised my hand and I kind of put my weight on Jesus. But do you have a faith that love, like that loves resting in Jesus.

Are you living by faith right now? And then what is the next faith step that you need to take? About a week ago, I was out in Nebraska. Pastor Ben and I were in Nebraska with some folks from the church and we were taking this boat ride down the Missouri River.

We were in the middle of nowhere. It was just corn everywhere. And we're riding down in this boat and we get to this sort of little island in the river. It's not even really an island. It's just a sandbar. And we pull out there and we're sitting around in these beach chairs. We had been fishing for the afternoon.

We're sitting there. And the guy that was leading us, his name was Jeff Moore. Some of you might know that name, Jeff. Jeff gets out his guitar and he starts playing and he starts singing this song that he had written almost 20 years ago. And the song is called The Next Thing. I want to read you the lyrics of Jeff's song. The first verse says this, I know I'd be the richest man if I could see around the bend.

I'd have myself one heck of a plan, but I don't. So do I take a left or right, pack my gloves, or stay and fight, leave at dawn or in the middle of the night? I don't know. And then listen to the chorus. Because the next thing might be easy, the next thing might be hard, might take you a thousand miles, keep you where you are. I used to think the wisest man, listen to this, knew what this life would bring, but now I see the wisdom in trusting God and doing the next thing. The wisdom in trusting God. The wisdom in trusting God is just taking the next step of faith. What is that next step of faith for you?

is it attending saturated next week drawing near to God in faith maybe it's being baptized maybe you've held out because there's this pride thing and you're trusting in yourself and you're kind of propping yourself up with your image and you need to just trust God and step into the waters

and let that old thing die and this new creation come out in you I mean, maybe for you it's going to look like going on a mission trip. And I know in this day right now that you can't even fathom going anywhere. But I'm telling you, maybe the next step is you to step that way in faith. Maybe it's to share your faith with a friend. Maybe that's the next thing. Maybe it's not even so much about what you're going to share,

but just the fact that you would take the step of faith to share, to share your faith. Maybe it would be stop the self-promoting on social media to just lay it down for a minute. Maybe it would be picking this thing up and reading a little bit of it in the morning. Maybe that's your next step of faith. Maybe it's to forgive somebody

and you've been holding a grudge. Maybe your next step of faith, maybe the next thing for you to do is forgiveness. them. Maybe the next thing for you is to repent to them. And maybe for you, the next step of faith is for you to place your faith in Jesus. Maybe you've had faith in faith. Maybe you've acknowledged some facts about God. Maybe you've even believed those facts are true. Maybe you said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I acknowledge that, but maybe you would for the first time say, no, I find all my joy and all my satisfaction, all my love in clinging to Jesus. And maybe the next step of faith for you

is to say, no, I'm taking the step of faith. I'm going to move from death to life. I'm going to trust not in my flesh and not in my works, but like Abraham, I would be counted righteous before God because I believed in Jesus. What's your next step? of faith. Maybe your next step of faith is to come down here and wrestle it out with God about whether you have a next step of faith or not. So we're going to pray and then we're going to worship and if you need to come down here and have a little wrestle of faith with God, you do that. But let's take a next step of faith together. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of faith. thank you for your son Jesus, for his life, his death, his resurrection, that you accomplished

all the work for us to be counted righteousness, and that you breathed life into us by the power of your spirit. And Lord, would you be honored and would you be pleased and would you be glorified in our cry of faith? And if for the first time tonight, you would sort of, you would surrender to the Lordship of Jesus, that you would step across the line of faith and you would say, I'm going to quit having faith in myself, I'm going to quit having faith in my works, I'm going to quit having faith in my rebellion. Quit having faith in my faith, but I'm going to have faith in Jesus. Would you raise your hand right now? Do you say, God, I want to have faith in you. I want to have faith in Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. May you be honored and glorified.

draw us near to you as we draw near to you in faith. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Do you stand and we're going to worship together in faith? That we respond to the gospel. We respond by bringing to God our first and our best because he gave us his first and his best and his son, Jesus. And that we would come and we would respond by praying. Maybe you need to come down here and you need to pray.

an act of faith, and then we're going to respond by singing. And we're going to sing in faith to God. So let's worship God together.