Foundation for Living
#3
Spiritual
Skills, Faith Rest Drill
2
Corinthians 5:7
And this is the record that God has given to us eternal
life, and this life is in his Son. He that has the Son has life; and he
that has not the Son of God has not life. 18He that believeth on him
is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he
has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. For there is no
other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. 8 For by grace you
have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the
gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 38
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities
nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor
depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love
of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 36 For of Him
and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory
forever. Amen.
Father we are indeed grateful that we have
such a tremendous salvation and that is based exclusively on the work of Jesus
Christ on the cross and at the moment a
person puts their faith alone in Christ
alone, You give to us an infinite number of blessings and assets. Spiritual blessings that are the foundation
for the new life that we have in Jesus Christ, and among these assets are the
indwelling of God the Holy Spirit and His filling ministry teaching us.
And His ministry whereby he takes the truth we are taught enters it into
our soul and uses that to produce spiritual growth … Father, now as we continue
our study on the foundations for living, we might learn to approach that
abundant life that our Lord spoke of. We pray that God the Holy Spirit who
indwells us and teaches us will make these things real to us, that we may have
a greater understanding and insight into how we go forward in our spiritual
growth. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen
We
had started two weeks ago with a 2nd basic series, as it were. The first was basics related to salvation,
ultimately. We started with God and the essence of God, and ended up going through salvation and eternal security.
After that, a person is saved. So what
do we do after we are saved? I have begun by looking at basic spiritual skills. Basic spiritual skills are techniques that we
are to develop in our Christian life that enable us to apply doctrine. They are basically a synthesis of many different
things that the Bible teaches, but by looking at them in this way we summarize
a lot of Biblical teaching under these basic categories. We began by looking at the first one a few weeks
ago, and that was confession of sin. And
we focused on that subject in terms of the Biblical teaching on cleansing. In order for the believer to come into the
presence of God, to enjoy the fellowship that we have with God and for God the
Holy Spirit to work in our life, we must be cleansed of sin. I pointed out that when we are saved, at that
instant of faith alone in Christ alone, we are cleansed from all pre salvation
sin and positionally cleansed from all sin, because of our unity with Jesus
Christ at the instant of our salvation.
However, as we go through life, we continue to commit sin, and so we are
instructed to confess, that is to admit or acknowledge, our sins to God the
Father, and at that instant, we recover fellowship, the sanctifying, or
spiritual life producing or growth producing, growth developing ministry of God
the Holy Spirit comes back on line. And
we can then continue our spiritual advance, or spiritual growth. Confession
moves us from operating according to the sin nature, which produces dead works,
to operating according to the Holy Spirit who produces divine good or that
which has eternal value. The next skill
that we develop is learning how to walk by means of God the Holy Spirit. We covered that last time, finishing up with
the fact that this is related to the ministry of His filling. Ephesians
7 For we walk by means of faith, not by
sight.
We walk by means of faith – that is, faith is
directed toward something. If you walk
by sight, it is not the seeing that you are depending on, it is what you see,
right? There is an object to sight. It is what you are looking at. It is a phrase that relates to
empiricism. The first phrase, ‘we walk
by means of faith’, the works along side
walking by means of the Holy Spirit over in Galatians 5:16, where walking in dependence or by means of
faith, which is the intermediate means by which we advance in the Christian
life. Faith, in and of itself, is never
isolated. So what we learn from this is
that faith is the primary basis for that advance of walking by means of God the
Holy Spirit. It is not a mystical faith
in faith. How many times do you hear
folks say, just believe, just have faith, it’s all going to be okay. If you just survive, it’s okay, just have
faith. Faith in what? Do you just have faith apart from anything
else? Just sort of hanging there in a
vacuum - that I enter into this sphere of faith? And I just hang here? No, of course not. In fact, the term itself does not lend itself
to that. The term faith, or if you make
it a verb, to believe, is a transitive verb. That is grammatical speak for the
fact that it always has an object. That
means you don’t just believe, you believe something. There is always a something there to believe,
you don’t just say I believe. You’re
always saying I believe X, and X is what has the power. X is what has the benefit. X is what has the ability. Think about salvation a minute. When you were saved, you put your faith alone
in Christ alone. You trusted in Jesus Christ as your savior. You did not just believe and stop there;
there was an object to your belief. That
object to your belief is Jesus Christ.
The message of the gospel, that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your
sins, and if you put your faith alone in Christ alone, you will be saved. There is a proposition, there is a statement
there in the Scriptures that you believe.
You don’t just believe and stop there.
The same thing is true after you are saved and you have new life in
Christ. The faith that moves you forward
in the Christian life also focuses on certain statements, on certain
propositions, on certain realities of Scripture. And when we believe those principals, or
promises or procedures that are specifically stated in Scripture, then that is
the means of moving forward. It is not
just faith in faith. It is not just some
sort of mystical belief, that if I just believe, that the power is in the
faith. That means that faith itself, a familiar term for everyone here, faith
itself is non meritorious. The merit is
not in the faith. It is not faith itself
that gives you some sort of spiritual quality.
It is the object of the faith. When
you believe that Christ died on the cross for your sins, it is the work of
Jesus Christ on the cross that saves, not your faith that saves. Christ saves you because He is the object of
your faith. So there is always an object
to the faith, and it is the object of the faith that has value, significance
and meaning, not the faith itself. The faith
is simply the conduit, the pipeline through which the work of the object, or the
significance of the object, or the principle of the object, the truth of the object
is applied. So how do we go through this?
It is very simple; I just love the faith
rest drill. This, to me, is the
foundation for everything else. We have
to be in fellowship, walking by the Spirit, but the key dynamic is that walking
by faith, trusting in what God has revealed.
The first step is to grab on to some portion of Scripture, a promise,
principle or procedure that is defined in Scripture. There are specific promises, we often recite them:
Fear not, for I am
with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you,
Yea, I will help you, I will uphold you with the right hand of My
righteousness.
We claim that as a promise, God you have
promised that if we trust You, then we don’t have any cause for fear and You will
strengthen us, support us and sustain us.
But sometimes it is a principle, we’ll see an example of that principle
before we finish this evening. Sometimes
it is a procedure that Scripture has outlined.
For example, in the Old Testament you had a lot of ritual procedures
that were outlined in terms of the practices in the Tabernacle and in the
2 Peter 1:3 and 4: 3 seeing that His divine power (omnipotence)
has granted to us (on the basis of grace) everything pertaining to life and
godliness,
Those two terms relate to life,
meaning our physical biological life, and
godliness, is the Greek term eusebeia, which means your spiritual life. The English word godliness goes back to a
form that meant god like ness. As we are
growing spiritually, we are being transformed into the character of Jesus
Christ. We become Christ like, or
godlike. So that was called godliness. The term eusebeia relates to our
spiritual life and spiritual growth. He
did not give us some things, most things, a lot of things, He gave us
everything pertaining to life and godliness. through the true
knowledge of Him who called us by means of His own glory and excellence.
That
term ‘glory and excellence’ relates to His character. It summarizes the
integrity of God. It summarizes the
essence of God, everything that God is.
The next verse,
For by
these (these what? These two things, glory and excellence, the sum total of His
character),
by these He has
granted to us, (once again it is grace) His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them (by means of those promises) you may become partakers of the
divine nature.
That is that concept of eusebeia, of being
godlike, where your character is being transformed into the character of Jesus
Christ. For God the Holy Spirit is
producing that in your life. It comes by
means of those promises,
so that by them you may become
partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world, by lust.”
Notice how the writer contrasts what God is
doing on the one side, with the negative in terms of what occurs in the walk by
the flesh, on the other side. The
Scripture constantly juxtaposes truth with error, so that we can more clearly
understand the truth. It brings it into
sharper, tighter focus. What we are simply
looking at this evening in this verse, is that it is the promises of God,
stated here, as a means to spiritual growth. That is what we are saying the
faith rest drill. Very simple, we have to understand the promises, principles
and procedures in the word of God, and by claiming them, we advance in our
spiritual life. Now, what does it mean
to claim a promise? What exactly does
that term mean? Well, I ran into this a
couple of years ago when I was teaching on the faith rest drill in Ukraine, and
the concept of claiming a promise did not translate real well into a foreign
language. Now, we know what that means,
it has the idea in the English of grabbing hold of a promise and holding on to
it. But that really did not come across
too well, so we had to sit and really think about this concept of claiming a
promise for awhile, to figure out just exactly what it meant. What is means is to grab hold of a promise,
latch on to a promise and say, this is a promise that God made to me. Of course you have made sure this is not a promise He made
to Abraham,
Psalm
18: 2
And as
I think about this verse, I frequently think about
Psalm 62:7 “In God is my salvation and my
glory, the rock of my strength and my refuge is in God.” Ps 91:2: “I will say of the Lord he is my refuge and my
fortress. My God, in Him will I trust.”
Psalm 91:4:
“He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings you may seek
refuge: His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.”
So God
is the God who watches over us, protects us and we can claim these promises. So
whenever we feel threatened by the adversities of life, whatever the circumstances
may be, God is the one who protects us.
Now one particular promise that is familiar to many of is in 1 Peter 5:7
“Casting all your care
upon Him because He cares for you.”
If we
look at the context we can think through the promise a little bit. 1 Peter 5:5, Peter writes,
“Likewise, you younger
people, submit yourselves to your elders (that
is, the mature believers in the congregation) all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility.
For God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
In
other words we are mandated to be properly oriented to authority. That is the essence
of humility, to be properly oriented to authority,
because God is strongly opposed to the arrogant, but He provides grace to the humble. Then, in verse
6, “Therefore humble
yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, because He cares for you.”
Now this is the promise that we have here,
that if we cast our care upon Him, He cares for us. It is frequently used by us in times of
stress, anxiety, worry and concern. Now
the passage goes on to say in the next couple of verses,
be sober, be vigilant,
because your adversary the devil walks about
like the roaring lion seeking whom he may
devour.
Now what devil’s prime sin? It was arrogance. What is the subject we are talking about in 1
Peter 5? It is being under the authority
of God, not being arrogant. So we are
told to cast our cares on Him because He cares for us as a means of avoiding
arrogance. In verse 8 we see the devil
goes about seeking whom he may devour and in verse 9, again a command, “resist him, steadfast in the faith,” that is
steadfast in doctrine, which is what we will study next time, doctrinal
orientation, because
you know that the same sufferings are
experienced by your brotherhood in the world.
That gives us the context, and when we look
at the context of a promise, that takes us to the next stage. The first step is we mix faith with a promise. We say, God, this is what You said in Your
word, and I’m going to hold You to it, cast my care on You, because You care
for me. That is Your promise, so I will
rely on that. The next stage, so we can
understand it a little more precisely and make it more real in our soul, is to
think through the underlying logic, rationale, or reasoning behind the passage. We do that simply by reading the passage and
thinking about what it says, and perceiving the embedded logic in the
text. What is the embedded reasoning
that we see within the text? What I suggest at times, it’s a great thing for
you to do on your own is to take out a pen and paper and write down your
thoughts as you think through a passage.
You don’t have time to do this in the heat of the battle, but you do
have time to do it other times, as you go through our promise book, as you go
through Scripture, you underline promises and you stop and think about them and
write down some thoughts. Let me give
you some guidance here, if you can, and you have the tools to do so, use
something like Vines’s
Expository Dictionary of New Testament and Old Testament Words, or a few other
tools that are available, you can perhaps look up some of the Greek and Hebrew
words. Or you can go to notes where you
have Scripture passages and you can look at the Greek and Hebrew words there which
give you a little fuller understanding of what the passage means. But a lot of times, to do this, you do not really
need to have an advanced knowledge of the Greek or Hebrew; you just need to think
through context. As we look at this in
the English, we see we are commanded to be humble, and this idea of humility in
verse 5 is the main idea of the text.
The main command is to humble yourselves, and then you have a participle
at the beginning of verse 7, casting your care upon Him. Now this word for casting in the Greek is the
word epiripto. It is an aorist active participle. That means that the action of the participle
must precede the action of the main verb.
So you have to be casting your care before you can be humble. Casting all your care upon Him. The word for casting is a picturesque
image. It means to propel something from
one place to another, to heave it, throw it, and cast it. It has the idea of transferring something
from one place to another. The idea here
is to transfer our worries, concerns, fears onto God’s back, just heave them
onto God’s back so that God is the one carrying the burden, not us. He becomes the one responsible for taking
care of the situation, not us. He is the
one in control. The other thing that we
learn here, which you would not pick up in the English, as an adverbial participle
in the Greek; it describes the means by which the main command is being
fulfilled. So it should be translated, “therefore,
humble yourselves by casting all your care upon Him. So the casting is your volitional decision to
turn something over to God, to transfer it to His shoulders instead of your
shoulders and by doing that you are putting yourself under the authority of God
in the situation or circumstance. So the
first thing we note as we think through the rationale of 5:7 is that we are to
humble ourselves by casting something upon Him.
What we cast is merimna, in the Greek, it is our anxieties, our worries,
our fears, the thing you wake up in the middle of the night, your mind starts
racing, and wraps itself around this or that or the other thing, you need to go
back to 1 Peter 5:7 casting all my cares upon Him because He cares for me. You
might have to repeat that 375 time
before you settle down, but that is the key, that is the word, it is not just a
one shot thing. Sometimes we get involved
in very tense situations and it takes awhile before our mind can wrap itself
around the promise of God. So we cast
our anxiety, our worry, we heave them upon God, because, and that word
translated ‘for’ in the Greek, is the word hoti, which means because. That’s the clue to the rationale. Why do we cast our care upon Him? Why do we heave our anxieties on Him? Because He cares for us. Because He is concerned about the minutiae of
our lives. I have heard some people say,
I’m not going to pray about that, it’s too small. I’m not going to bother God about that. What an anthropocentric view of God. There is no detail too small that God cannot
be as completely concerned about as He is about the big things in life. That is the hidden text in that statement. I’m not going to bother God with that. God wants to be bothered with everything,
because He is omniscient, and He has an infinite hard drive, He can handle
every piece of minutiae that ever comes through in human history. It is never going to overload the
system. He is always going to be able to
handle it, and He wants us to bring every care to Him. When you say, well, I am not going to bother
God with that, that is arrogance and
is counter to this whole process and context.
We are to cast our care upon Him because He cares for each one of
us. That is the word mello. The two words ‘care’ that we see in the
English are actually different Greek words.
The first has to do with worries, anxieties or fears, the second, He
cares for you, is concern, deeply interested.
He is deeply interested in what goes on in our lives. And He cares about every single
believer. So that is how we think
through the rationale. We write that
down and we say, okay, now I understand the reasoning here. So that I can not only take the promise and
claim it, I can understand that the under girding rationale or principle here
is that God cares for me. As a believer,
every detail of my life is important to Him, so I need to go to Him constantly
and put these things on His back, and let Him take care of them instead of me,
because He is the Sovereign and not me.
That is where we come to the third stage where we reach conclusions. We reach doctrinal conclusions about what the
passage says. What has it said? It has said that we are to take these cares, and
anxieties, and concerns and completely put them on God’s back. Why?
Because God cares for me, He cares about my life, He cares about all the
little things that wander around in my squirrelly little brain and keep me
awake at night. God is concerned about
everything. It is also related to
humility, that if I am going to humble myself under God’s authority, that means
I have to put these cares on Him, and if I don’t, I am being arrogant, and I am
walking down the path Satan established in eternity past, the path of
arrogance, the creature trying to live his life independent from the Creator. So the conclusion is that I am going to
humble myself by constantly casting my cares and concerns upon Him. So we
conclude, in this situation that I am arrogant if I don’t give it over to God. I
am arrogant if I fret over this; I need to place it in God’s hands and trust in
His power, provision, omniscience and plan.
That is the process. We recognize
that God has an eternal plan, and as part of that plan, He deals with every
detail. So Isaiah 26:4 states,
“Trust ye in the Lord
forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.”
You can start daisy chaining the promises. Because God cares for me, I can trust in Him,
and when I trust in Him, He is going to give me strength in the midst of the situation.
Psalm
56:3, 4: What time I
am afraid, I will trust in thee, in God I will praise His word, in God I have
put my trust and I will not fear what flesh can do to me.
So we need an arsenal of these promises to
put things together. Now, we have talked
about faith, how to mix faith with a promise, thinking through a promise so we
understand the basic reasoning or rational that under girds a promise. We have talked about bringing this to a conclusion
so it stabilizes our thinking, focuses our mentality on God and His immutable
power and not the changing details of life.
But now we have to come back to this second term, faith
rest. What does that mean? Faith is trusting in God’s word. That is always the object of faith. It is not trusting in feelings, not trusting
in some sort of internal sense of God’s truth, it is focusing on the propositions
and principles that are given in God’s word.
There are two ways in which we do this.
One is a passive sense, which I will call resting in God’s promise. Resting in God’s promise may or may not mean
doing nothing. Resting in God’s promise
may mean doing a lot, but we are not gong to worry or fret or be concerned or
anxious in the consequence. So the
passive has the idea that we relax in the situation. We can have a relaxed mental attitude in the
midst of the circumstance because we know God is in control. But then there is an active sense, where, in
terms of obeying what is going on in the promise, we have to do something. For example, there is a promise and a
procedure outlined in 1 John 1: 9 If we confess our sins,
that is the procedure. But we have to do
something. When we trust the reality of
that promise, that God is faithful and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us
from all unrighteousness that is a promise.
That if we do X and acknowledge our sin, God will do Y, that is the
promise, but we have to do something we don’t just trust God to forgive
us. That gets into mysticism. That was
the problem with ******theology. I’m going to trust God to just forgive me. No, we have to do something, we have to
confess our sin, there is an active instruction that we have to follow, and it
is not works, it is just doing what God said to do. We are resting upon Him to
provide the solution. So we have these
two circumstances in faith rest. There
is a passive sense in which we relax and rest in His power, and we have a
relaxed mental attitude. And an active
sense in which we do whatever is implied in the promise. Now let’s look at an example from the Old
Testament to see how this is accomplished.
1
Samuel 17: This is a story that is
familiar to many people, young and old.
I guess today, as we live in an era of biblical illiteracy, it may not
be as familiar, but it should be. And
that is the episode of
you can come to me with a sword, a
spear and a javelin (not to mention the
fact you are armored from head to toe,) but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts. Yahweh Sabaoth,
the Lord of the Armies. The God of the armies of
Now
what is the rationale of that last verse?
If you are sharp you caught it.
Watch for the words ‘for’ and ‘because’.
The battle is the Lord’s, there is the principle. The battle is the Lord’s comes after the word
‘for’. I am going to do this, this, and
this, I am confident in victory because the battle is the Lord’s. And that is the fundamental principle
“Then
There
are two key words to that that tell us how
and whenever a lion or a bear, came and took a lamb out of
the flock, I went out after it and struck it, and delivered the lamb from its
mouth, and when it rose against me, I caught it by it’s beard and struck it and
killed it. Now he
does not have a 30 caliber rifle, he does not have a broad sword; he has a shepherd’s
staff and a sling. In order to do what he did here, it is not like Samson through
some supernatural power, it is through his own physical capabilities, obviously
protected by the Lord. But obviously he
has some tremendous musculature and agility in order to do that. That is why he has to be at least 16, 17, 18
years of age in order to pull this thing off.
But he has learned the principle that, I am supposed to do my job as
unto the Lord, my job is to protect the sheep; that means I have to protect the
sheep even when an aggressive animal, such as a lion or bear comes into the
flock, I have to chase it down. And he
does hand to hand combat. I’m going to grab the lion by the beard and beat him
to death with a rock. Now how many of
you are willing to trust God to that extent? But this was basic training for
With our heads bowed and our
eyes closed.
Father, thank you for Your
word, that we can rely upon it. That even
if it costs us our life, we know we can trust You. That was the statement of the three young men
who were thrown into the fiery furnace as they confronted Nebuchadnezzar. Even though God takes our life, we will
continue to trust in Him. So we trust in
You because Your word is true, Your word is right.
Father we pray if there is
any one here this evening who is unsure of their salvation, or uncertain of their
eternal destiny, that they might recognize from the things that we have said
tonight, that Jesus Christ provides a perfect salvation. Because it is based upon Your character,
Your power and Your grace. Our salvation
is not based on who we are, or what we do, it is based on Your promise, Your
power and Your provision of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ when He
died on the cross for our sins.
Salvation is not based on doing certain things, following certain
ritual, but it is based simply believing that Jesus Christ died for us. If you have never trusted Christ as your
savior, this is your opportunity to do so.
And at that instant, God in His omniscience knows that you have trusted
Christ as your savior. And you are
regenerate, you are saved and it can never be taken away from you. Father we thank you for the things we have
studied this evening, and we pray that you will challenge us with them. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen