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Sermons On Faith

Inspirational Messages - Sermon preached at House of Praise Home Church

Kuils River

Sermons on Faith

Title: Abraham, faith, trust, obedience

Repeating Theme

We have as a repeating theme over the last couple of weeks had the topics of faith, hope, trust and obedience in various forms. In my own life I am often confronted with this question:

Why does the kind of life that the Bible seems to promise me always seem to allude me?

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Where has the abundant life gone?
What has happened to the promised land?
Where’s the resurrection life?
Why can I not seem to cross the Jordan river. Why do I travel up and down in figurative sense. I can see across and I hear things about it, yet the river won’t give way for me to make an entry into the land. I think many of us can identify with that sentiment.
Why can’t we enter into the rest of God? That the Bible talks about in Heb 4

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Then right at the start you will look to me and say where have you been the last few weeks, we have heard the answer over and over we must believe God, have faith, be obedient, and trust God. That sounds about right.

Why is it that when we read these words… from Gal 5 – I could have chosen a host of other examples …

Walking in the Spirit

16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery,[c] fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,
20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies,
21 envy, murders,[d] drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
24 And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

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To be blatantly honest with you I don’t even really want to reads this, when I get to jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, I would rather just stop… you get the picture.

Emmaus goers

So let us pretend to be those two Emmaus goers that were confused by what they had witnessed in Jerusalem over the previous few days. Let us hope that Jesus comes and illuminates our hearts as he did theirs.

Remember now that we are reasoning why we can’t seem to enter the promised land, or live the resurrection life etc.

It’s not that we don’t have faith. We are convinced that we are saved. We have the testimony of the Spirit to that effect.
It’s not that we don’t have testimonies of the goodness of God or the provision or the healing. All these things are indeed present in our lives. If I were to just give each an opportunity this morning we all would have something to say –

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Examples:

Leon could tell us how God warned him last week not to enter a tent that collapsed seconds later,
Ilse told us how God spoilt her last week,
Lowell told us the week before of how God protected his children,
Aunty Gail has many testimonies of God touching her body, providing work,
if Mike was here this morning he could tell us how God led him to promotion against great odds,
I could ask Andre here to tell you how he got his lost job,
brother Charles could remind us of a miracle God did for someone he prayed with, etc

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On and on we could go. WE have learnt over the years to trust God when we are in trouble, when we have need, when we are sick etc.

And God has provided, protected and healed.

All of these things we claimed based on the promises we find in the word of God

From here on I am generalizing

It’s not that we are not praying or reading the Bible like good Christians would
It’s just that we don’t have the intimacy with God that we desire
The fruit of the Spirit is lacking
We are still battling with sin in our life

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It just does not add up.

We are like Israel in the dessert.

They left Egypt, passed through the Red sea
They were eating manna in the desert, we are experiencing the provision of God,
but the entry to the promised eluded an entire generation
The entry into the promised land was the very reason they left Egypt

So it is in our lives too,

we are saved, we are baptised,
we experience favour from God
BUT - We don’t seem to come to the life that God has planned for us.

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SO EVERYONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY WITH THE PROBLEM ON SOME LEVEL OR OTHER

ABRAHAM

At this point we need to go back to the Father of our Faith - Abraham. Now the Bible teaches us that Abraham believed God and that was accounted righteousness to him.

We start at faith but grow to obedience and Trust.

FAITH

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We don’t have the time to make a full study of exactly what God promised to but we all know that promises were made and one of those promised involved the receiving of a son from God.
We know that Abraham was not a perfect man, that he made some mistakes. But God called Abraham righteous because Abraham believed what God had said.
So when Izak was born Abraham simply received from God what Abraham believed God would give him.
In conclusion then we all agree that Abraham had faith and that God was happy with that.

TRUST

But then things became a little stickier … You can go and read Genesis 22 for the full account.

Later God told Abraham that he needed to sacrifice Izak to him, by way of a burnt offering.
Now God had promised Abraham to make him a great nation. By telling Abraham to kill Izak, God was testing to Abraham.
But Abraham held God in such high esteem that He did not question him openly or even resist God.
It’s not Abraham was not human. In Gen 21 where we read about the departure of Hagar and Ismael we can clearly see how difficult it was for him to part from his son.
So how much more difficult to part with Izak the promised one. The one in whom all the promises are meant to be fulfilled. The long awaited son. The son that was received through the direct intervention of God.

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It does not make any sense !!!

Now you need to give me your full attention please …

If he reasoned using his logic he would have said no way, how am I going to be a Father of a great multitude if I kill Izak?
However Abraham did what God told him to do and was about to kill Izak when God stopped him.
Abraham was willing to take Izak his son and put him in a place where only God could save him from. Death.
From the New Testament we know that Abraham trusted that God would fulfil his promises to him even if it meant that God had to raise Izak from the dead and that is exactly what happened.
From Abrahams perpective Izak was dead. I put it to you that he had already killed Izak in his heart long before he raised his hand to slay him. So in that sense he did receive Izak back from the death.
Can we say that in Abrahams life, he moved from having faith in God, to absolute trust and absolute obedience.
When he was still waiting for Izak to arrive he tried having a child with Hagar, he was trying to help God out of a predicament so to speak. Now he knew better.
His faith was enough as far as righteousness was concerned, but to receive his son back from the dead he had to have complete trust in God.
Faith says I believe in the resurrection, while trust raises his hand to slay a beloved child.
Can you also see that Abrahams obedience was a by product of his Trust in God?

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Now I want us to move from one promised son to the other.

Jesus

Now Jesus was in a very similar position the night the in the Garden of Gethsemane. The night before his crucifixion.
Jesus had received a tough assignment and was wrestling with the will of God.
He was about to place himself in a position that only God could save him from.
He was about to enter death and remain their, unless God himself would raise him.
He came forth from that struggle with complete trust in God. He proved that by allowing sinners to put him to death.
Jesus’ faith was also tested and He too had to show his complete trust in and obedience to God, by believing what God had said.

It does not make any sense !!!

Jesus too could have reasoned, look at all the miracles I am performing,

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-look at the love I am giving,
-look at the compassion I am showing,
-look at the hungry I am feeding,
-I am teaching people about the Kingdom of God etc.

But at the call of God he offered that perfect life to him. He did what God required.

YOU AND ME

Now what is the point of all this?

Is there any application in our lives … Is there some light here, something perhaps that will help us experience resurrection life or abundant life?
Is there something here that can help us close the gap?
Is there anything here that can really help us cross that Jordan.
I’m not talking nice spiritual theories now.
Is there anything real here?

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When one has been experiencing failure for many years then one is often tempted to start thinking that the Gospel is not true. You might even start accusing God that He is not doing all he promised. Why is holding these things away from you.

You know your mind starts suggesting other interpretations to you things. You go over the facts over and over.

Fact one you are saved
Fact two God loves you
Fact three God has often showed you favour
Fact four you have many testimonies of His goodness
Fact five you absolutely want to live a life pleasing unto Him
Fact six you try very hard
Fact seven you try even harder
Fact eight you fail every time to produce lasting results
And the cycle repeats, you pray more, read more Bible, fast more on and on and on we go

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In the mean time you are making progress in the church, you might even be in leadership, people like the way you minister (some don’t), some people are looking up to you, but on the inside you feel like a big fraud…
-And then we finally you get to the point where we do give up and say to God,
-I can’t do it, I absolutely believe that I cannot do it.
-If YOU don’t do it, it will not happen at all.
-I am convinced that I cannot, but YOU can.

You get to the point where you are willing to accept the destruction of your spiritual image, if it means that you can have the real thing.
If only you can have the life that God promised.

DRAMATIC STEP

It does not make any sense !!!

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You can be tormented by questions like ?

I mean, you are so aware of your failures, surely the answer is to try harder.

It makes no sense to stop trying and to put your complete trust in God.
Yet my friend that is exactly what God requires!!!
He wants you to move from faith to TRUST
Here we need to show the kind of trust Abraham showed – just like Abraham put his complete trust in God with regard to the slaying of Izak,
so we should put our complete trust in God and slay or self efforts and slay our little spiritual images that we have built up of ourselves.
Let HIM give us the resurrection life!!!
You might say, but my efforts are not all bad. I’am a better person today than I was 10 years ago, surely I must have achieved something. I have prayed through many nights, I have fasted, I have done good works,
My word to you is kill it all, put no trust in any of your good works, put your trust in God alone.
Slay it all. Put it to death and see if God won’t give you the resurrection life that you so long for.
God is not asking you to concern yourself with the details of how he does it, He is simply asking you to TRUST him completely.
Yes you will pray again through the night, yes you will again fast, yes you will again do good deeds, but this time in obedience to God, not to improve your spiritual image in your own eyes or the eyes of others.
I can’t tell you what will happen next, but I can tell you that I might be the most pleasing thing you ever do for God.

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Psalm 116:15 (New King James Version)

"15 Precious in the sight of the LORD Is the death of His saints."

I can’t bring you to that point where you are ready to let go, that God alone can work.

But I can encourage you, that when you get there just let go! I dare you to TRUST GOD!!!

Some good viewing material to match this sermon:

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