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[0:00] Okay, so my name is Seth Powers. We are preaching. Well, I think we actually have covered a couple of these topics.! We have three words that we focus on as a church every year. One of them is faith. I think somebody else may have done a round on faith.

[0:14] Did Josh do, did you do like a three, all three at the same time? Okay, well, anyway, I'm going to do one on specifically the word faith today. Before I start, I want to read a verse from Psalms. Psalm 119, verse 89. Your word, O Lord, is eternal. It stands firm in the heavens.

[0:41] So, God's word is outside of us. God's word is never going to pass away. Jesus says heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

[0:52] And that is what our faith is based on. That's basically the summary of my whole sermon. Okay? A little preview. Our faith is not based on what we see or our feelings or what we experience. It's based on a thing that's outside of all of that, that proceeded from God and will never go away. Okay?

[1:15] It'll never go away. So, Hebrews 11, verse 1. I would, I'm not going to ask people to turn to most of the passages I'm going to read, but I do ask you to turn to this one.

[1:31] This is the key passage here. Hebrews 11, verse 1. Hebrews 11, verse 1 says in the ESV, Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

[1:56] The Young Living Translation says, And faith is of things hoped for, a confidence, of matters not seen, a conviction. And the NIV, the 1984 NIV says, Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.

[2:17] So, faith is confidence. It's assurance. It is trust. It's being convinced. It's conviction. Now there's a lot of synonyms here we can use for this. It's being convinced that something that we have not seen is true.

[2:31] Okay? It's being totally convinced that a thing that you've never seen or experienced or anything is true. Okay?

[2:42] That's what faith is. That's what that's saying right here. And it says the assurance of things hoped for. Okay? So, hope and faith are different things.

[2:53] Hope is also virtue. You know, faith, hope, and love. 1 Corinthians 13. These are good things. But hope is a different thing than faith is. Hope is an expectation of good.

[3:06] Okay? You can go like an optimistic person. They're a hopeful person. They think things are generally going to go good. A pessimistic person is things are generally going to go bad. Okay?

[3:17] So, hope is you have an expectation that things are going to turn out good. Things are going to be good. It's the opposite of an expectation of fear. An anxious person has, they're hopeless.

[3:30] They have an expectation of bad, of failure. Right? So, hope is good, but hope is not faith. A lot of times people will say, I have faith for something, when really I think what they mean is I have hope for something.

[3:45] Okay? I, I, God's good. So, man, I'm just going to believe God for this thing that I hope will happen. Well, that's a different thing than faith. Okay? Faith is, faith has more concreteness to it.

[4:04] Romans 10.17 says, So, faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. And KJV puts it, the word of God.

[4:17] You get a little extra flavor there. We, the foundation of our faith isn't just, I want a thing to happen and I believe it's going to. The foundation of our faith is God said it.

[4:31] Okay? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Okay? So, faith is different from hope in that I can hope in a thing and want it to happen, but I don't know that it's going to happen.

[4:45] I just got to trust God's good. Okay? Things are going to work out good. Faith is different. God said something. And I hopefully expect with total confidence, it is true and it will happen.

[5:01] That's faith. Okay? Based on what God said. It's based on actual promise. It's concrete. Okay. Anyway, this is basically the difference between faith and hope.

[5:13] Hope is, last half full, trust in the goodness of God. Things are going to go well. Faith is a hopeful confidence in what God said is true. Even if I've never seen it yet, that's okay.

[5:27] God said it. I read it. There's a Bible that has what God said in it. And because he said it, I believe it. Okay. So, an example of what this looks like is Abraham.

[5:39] We're going to open up and read a little bit about the man who's called the father of faith. Romans 4, 3, it says, What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

[5:55] God said a thing to Abraham. He said, you know, multiple things. One of the things he said is, hey, I'm going to give you a son. I'm going to make you, I'm going to make your offspring, you know, like the stars in the sky. And he believed it.

[6:08] At that moment, God says, you are righteous because you believed this thing that I said that you have no experience of.

[6:20] You didn't have an expectation of it. And as we'll read a little bit here, you're already past the time when that could happen naturally. Okay. Okay. And so, Abraham's believing said something about how he viewed God.

[6:37] He said, if God said it, it has to be true. It has to be true. He believed God. Because God said it, I believe it.

[6:50] And God credited it to him as righteousness. I want to read a little bit more about this story in Romans 4, starting in verse 16. Therefore, the promise comes by faith.

[7:04] This is speaking of salvation here. Okay. This is speaking of the promise of the free gift of righteousness through faith in Jesus. And it's using Abraham as an example, but it's a little of the context.

[7:17] Therefore, the promise comes by faith so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham.

[7:28] He is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. He is our father in the sight of God in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are and calls things that are not as though they were.

[7:49] Awesome little turn of phrase there. It's a God who brings life from the dead and says something that is not as if it is.

[8:01] God can do that. He's God. Okay. No one else can do that, but God can do that. Continuing. Continuing. Against all hope, Abraham and hope believed and so became the father of many nations.

[8:14] Just as it had been said to him, so shall your offspring be. Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old and that Sarah's womb is also dead.

[8:30] Now pause here. Sometimes we can think of faith as sort of just ignoring reality. Okay. That's not what it is. He faced it. It's like my body's good as dead.

[8:41] I can't have a kid. And my wife's womb's dead. She can't have a kid. These are just the facts. There's nothing that we can do to help this thing along.

[8:53] God said we're going to have a kid, but we have no agency to fulfill that promise. There's no work in front of us to do to move like a little bit towards it. Nothing.

[9:03] I got to face the facts. There's nothing I can do about this at all. That's what you do. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

[9:27] That is why it was credited to him as righteousness. He was fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised.

[9:37] He was persuaded of two things. I can't do it. God can do it. And it will happen. That's faith.

[9:50] That's faith. I want to continue here. What does this have to do for us? What does this have to do with us? It has a lot to do with us.

[10:03] Verse 23. The words it was credited to him were written not for him alone, but also for us. To whom God will credit righteousness. For us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.

[10:19] He was delivered over to death for our sins. And was raised to life for our justification. This is how God can say a sinful person can be righteous.

[10:34] It's by faith. God said, When Jesus died, you died. And he poured out his blood for your sins. And God put our sin on him.

[10:48] Okay? And forever believes in Jesus. God puts our sin on him and his righteousness on us. He calls the things that are not as though they were.

[11:03] He brings forth life from the dead. On what basis? Because God said it. It has this much to do with our experience up until that point.

[11:14] Okay? You might have had zero experience of what it means to be free from the burden of sin and the guilt that weighs on you. Zero. No power to say no to sin.

[11:27] Okay? Well, the best thing to do is just face the facts. I've tried everything already and it ain't working out. Okay? My body's as good as dead.

[11:38] You know, Sarah's woman's dead. That's facing the facts. And it's good to face the facts. It's good to face the facts that you are a sinner. And that there's nothing you can do to make yourself right with God.

[11:49] But he didn't stop there. There's another man who is righteous. And for all who believe, God will take that righteousness and count it to you. He will call the thing that's not as if it were.

[12:04] And it's amazing. Okay? That's righteousness by faith. This is why Abraham is the father of our faith. Anyway. I'm going to move on here. Why is faith essential?

[12:15] I think we're already hitting on it here. Salvation. Okay? Faith is essential for salvation. Hebrews 11 verse 6 says, And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists, and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

[12:31] Without faith it's impossible to please God. People try to please God naturally by their own efforts. God says, Live righteous and you will do well with me. And so they try.

[12:43] And they try to live righteously. And the more they try to live righteously, the more they find that they can't. And so they try harder. It's because it's not according to faith. It's impossible to please God except by faith.

[12:56] Through this other way that God has made to please him, which is through his son. We just talked about this here. Without faith it's impossible to please God. Hebrews 4 verse 2 says, We also have had the gospel preached to us just as they did, but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.

[13:20] So faith is essential. We can hear the gospel. We can know the right answers. These are like the know the right answer person. They can say the words. They can articulate to you what it means to be saved.

[13:34] They can articulate maybe even what the gospel is. But they're not combining that message with faith, like actual trust. Not putting my trust in that to make me right with God.

[13:46] I'm putting trust in what I can do to make myself right with God. It's impossible to please God that way. And it makes the gospel of no value to us. Okay?

[13:56] Romans 3 verse 21 through 25 says, That's everybody.

[14:19] Everybody has fallen short of the glory of God. There's not a single person who isn't in this category other than one man. His name is Jesus Christ. All have fallen short of the glory of God. And are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation, or in other words, a payment by his blood to be received by faith.

[14:47] It's a free gift, but it's not an automatic gift. We have to receive it by faith. This is key.

[14:59] The gospel, it says, The gospel is preached to this other group of people, but it didn't help them. It didn't profit them. Why? Because they did not combine it with faith.

[15:12] You have to actually believe it for it to do it. So faith receives the promises of God, and it starts with the promise of salvation through Jesus.

[15:25] Without faith, all these promises in the Bible, they have no value to us. Okay? Because you can't work towards a promise. A promise is not some, it's not wages. Wages are what you get when you do a job.

[15:36] You know, I go to work, I work my job, and I get a paycheck. Okay? Even Stephen. I did a thing, and I got paid for it. Promises aren't like that. Promises are, they're free.

[15:49] And you don't merit them. God gives them to you. But you have to receive it by faith. You can't say, well, I worked for a half of that. You know?

[16:00] I mean, I didn't do it for perfect, but I worked for part of it. I did as much as I could to try to fulfill the requirements of that promise. Surely you're going to give it to me. No. No.

[16:10] No. That's not how you get a promise. All the promises are through faith. God is glorified to give gifts. Who's glorified when they get what's due them?

[16:26] We are. Okay? God is jealous for his glory. That's why all the promises of God are according to faith, beginning of salvation. So what's the opposite of faith?

[16:37] 2 Corinthians 5, verse 7 says, For we walk by faith, not by sight. I think this is a really helpful way of phrasing or kind of give a different perspective on what unbelief is.

[16:52] So the opposite of faith, opposite of belief, is unbelief. But Paul says, we walk by faith, not by sight.

[17:03] Okay? So unbelief is basically, it's walking by sight. It's not just the absence of faith. Like, I don't believe in anything. You know, I'm just a nihilist. It's not like that. You actually believe in things.

[17:14] You actually believe in a lot of things. But you believe in things that you can see. You believe in things that you can do. You believe in things that you've experienced.

[17:25] Things that seem reasonable. Okay? You walk by sight. The Bible also calls this confidence in the flesh. Okay? And it's, it is the true biblical opposite of what this saving faith is.

[17:41] You're putting your faith in a lot of stuff. But it's not in what God has said. And that is, like the phrase, believe in yourself. Okay?

[17:52] Really popular phrase. Believe in yourself. I mean, you might as well just say unbelief. Okay? Believing in yourself is confidence in the flesh. Yeah. And if there's anything that God calls me to do that I can't do, well, it's just like, well, sure, you didn't mean that.

[18:06] You know? So maybe I'll try to adjust what the Bible has said about that thing to make it something that's a little bit more achievable. Because I'm looking at myself and I say, well, I can't do that.

[18:17] You know, Jesus says, if you look at a woman to lust after her, you've already committed adultery in your heart. I've heard so many guys just start immediately trying to do gymnastics with that. It's just like, you know what?

[18:28] Just, you know, that's impossible. You know? What is he saying? Like, no. Like, who could? Well, it's because you can't.

[18:40] Just because you can't doesn't mean that God can't say it. Why? Because it's by grace. It's God doing something.

[18:51] He's not setting the requirement that's according to something you can do. He set a requirement that's according to something he can do. Okay? So, I mean, that's just an example, but it's essentially believing in yourself.

[19:05] You know, we say this thing a lot of different ways. You know, trusting in yourself, trusting in your own effort. You know, it's all the same thing. It's just unbelief.

[19:16] Your confidence isn't a thing because otherwise, you know, you wouldn't be able to function as a human being. You have to have faith in something. That's just not faith in the one thing that matters. Okay, Romans 9, verse 30, through 32, and then the first part of chapter 10 talks about this.

[19:33] It says, What then shall we say that the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith? So interesting. They weren't even trying.

[19:45] They weren't even pursuing righteousness. And they got it. Wow, that's crazy. By faith. But Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not obtained it.

[19:56] Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith, but as if it were by works. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

[20:12] For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. So unbelief, it manifests. It manifests. It's got to tell.

[20:24] Okay? How do you know someone's in unbelief? You don't know my heart. How can you tell? Well, there actually is a tell. Unbelief manifests as pursuing righteousness by your own efforts.

[20:39] You'll never arrive. Okay? We were talking about this a little bit last night about like the image of like a carrot dangling in front of a horse.

[20:49] You know, the horse is pulling a carriage and you can, you know, dangle the carrot in front of them and they're always trying to chase the carrot and they never get there. It's like that. Okay? Unbelief manifests as pursuing righteousness by your own efforts.

[21:04] God commands a certain standard in his word and you're going after it as hard as you can with everything in you and it's actually a sign that you don't believe in God.

[21:16] It just seems, it seems counterintuitive. But remember what we just talked about here. There are two groups of people. One attained to righteousness and they weren't even pursuing it.

[21:28] And another missed it and they were. Why? Because they were pursuing it as if it were by their own works and not according to faith.

[21:39] They felt they could do it. It just kind of shows the arrogance, you know, the inflated confidence they had in their own ability to do what God is calling them to do.

[21:52] So, unbelief, believe in yourself, walking by sight, trying to attain your righteousness by your own effort. These are all the opposite of faith.

[22:03] Okay? You know, you get the two extremes. Faith is on one end. It's trusting what God has said. It's not just blind faith where you just are sort of hoping things are going to turn out.

[22:14] Like, that's not what it is. It's God has said something, therefore I believe it. On the other end, it's God has said something, so I'm going to try as hard as I can to do it by my own effort.

[22:26] And those are, they're opposite of each other. So, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

[22:40] It's being convinced that God said it is true. Okay? And I want to read, I want to read some promises. 22.

[22:52] 22 promises to believe. I want to encourage all of us just to believe these things. Number one, all the promises of God are yes in Jesus Christ. I love that you sing that song this morning.

[23:04] This is very timely. 2 Corinthians 1, 20 says, for no matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ. You want to get the promises of God?

[23:16] They come through a person. One person. If you try to get those promises outside of that person, you can't get it. How does God give us his promises?

[23:29] Through one man, Jesus Christ. He's the mediator. A mediator is someone who goes between us and God. As many as the promises that God has made, they are yes in Christ.

[23:43] Okay? And if we have Jesus by faith, we have access to all the promises of God. Number two, salvation. This is the number one promise.

[23:54] We've got to get straight on this one first. Number two, salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ, not by works. Back to the Abraham passage. How did he finish that whole thing up? What was the point of this illustration of Abraham believing God and facing the facts about how dead his body was and it's not able to actually produce any of the promises that God's saying, but he still believed God and he grew strong in faith.

[24:17] And because of that, God fulfilled it. What was the point? That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness, but the words that was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.

[24:27] It will be counted to us who believe in him to raise from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. The point is, we can have salvation through faith, not by works.

[24:42] And God did it for Abraham. He'll do it for us. Number two, sin will not be pastoral view. This comes from Romans 6.14. It says, for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace.

[24:57] Not only does he save us from the penalty of sin, the blood of Jesus washes us clean, he also gives us grace to say no to sin. And there's a promise. Remember, this is not a command. He didn't say, make sure sin doesn't reign over you, which there are other commands, but you start with a promise.

[25:12] It's not going to happen. It's an amazing promise. It won't be master over you. That's how I approach saying no to sin is not do better, try harder, but God said something.

[25:24] And even if I haven't really experienced it yet, he said it. I've never experienced saying no to sin, but he said it. I'm going to believe it.

[25:36] You know, I couldn't do anything to pay for any of my sins. When that debt stood between me and God, there wasn't a single thing I could do to take that debt away. So God had to do it through Jesus.

[25:49] Well, why do you think it's any different for the powers in your life? You think there's a single thing you can do to break the power of sin in your life? No. It's a promise.

[26:02] God said it. In Christ, sin will have no dominion over you any longer. You're not under the law anymore, you're under grace. Number four, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

[26:13] That comes from Romans 8, verse 1, which says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Okay? Very straightforward. You're not condemned anymore. You have the same relationship with God that Jesus has.

[26:25] If you're in Christ, do you think Jesus is insecure about his relationship with God the Father? He has no reason to be. He's perfect. He's God. Guess what?

[26:36] Through Jesus, you get the same relationship. Therefore, there's no condemnation. You have the same relationship with God that Jesus has. It's amazing. Number five, Christ freed us from the law that condemns us and motivates self-righteousness.

[26:50] It says this in, you get this from Romans 7, verse 4 and 6. It says, likewise, my brothers, you have also died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

[27:06] But now we are released from the law having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, not in the old way but the written code. There could be a whole sermon on that.

[27:18] But suffice it to say, we're not married to the law anymore. We're married to Jesus. And he's a totally different husband. The law has very high demands and doesn't help you with any of it.

[27:33] Jesus came to fulfill it. He's the one who does it in us. It's by the Spirit. Number six, Christ does a better job living the Christian life than we do.

[27:44] This comes from Galatians 2.20. It says, This is Paul speaking, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

[28:01] There's another part in Galatians here where Paul talks about his conversion is the revelation that Christ was in him. It pleased God to reveal his Son inside of him.

[28:11] That was his conversion. He discovered something. Jesus came to live inside of his heart. And that is really the secret of the Christian life is we're trusting Jesus to be himself.

[28:22] Okay? I can cease from trying to do this on my own because Jesus Christ came into my heart and he lives inside me and I can trust that he's going to be himself.

[28:34] And he's a lot better job. He does a lot better job being himself than we do trying to imitate him. Okay? Number seven, in a similar way, Christ removes our religious masks.

[28:48] This comes from 2 Corinthians 3 verses 12 through 13 and 16 to 18. And I'm going to paraphrase this because it's probably a little bit too long of a passage, but it talks about this veil that Moses wore over his face when he came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments.

[29:04] His face is all glowing. And he would wear this veil so that people wouldn't see that the glow started to go away over time. He liked to keep that first impression.

[29:15] Okay? But Paul says for those who are in Christ, he says the veil is actually done away in Christ.

[29:28] It says when one turns to the Lord, this veil is removed. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. And we all with unveiled face beholding in a glass the glory of the Lord are being transformed into his image.

[29:41] This is the secret of being vulnerable. This is the secret of not putting up like a religious show to other people about how good you are. You know, how are you doing? Great, brother? And you've had a horrible week.

[29:54] You know, you're struggling with some serious sin. But you can't say that because then the glory will come down. They'll think less of you. We all struggle with this stuff. But in Christ, he takes away.

[30:06] It's amazing. And you can actually know if someone's turning to the Lord by whether or not they're still wearing their mask. And it's very liberating. When the mask comes off, it's super liberating.

[30:17] One of the most loving things you can do to somebody is just stand on this promise and just be open with people about your sin. Okay. I'm going to read these faster. We're only seven in.

[30:29] Okay. Number eight. Christ will preserve his sheep. This comes from John 10, 27-28. He says that they will never perish and no one will ever snatch them out of his hand. This is a promise. Again, those are promises.

[30:42] Number nine. Christ will be with us in making disciples. The Great Commission, the end of Matthew 28, verse 19-20, says, Go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

[30:57] And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. One of the biggest holdups in people getting the courage to share the gospel is because they feel that they're doing it alone.

[31:10] You're not. Jesus Christ is right there. Do you feel insecure sharing the gospel if you got to do it with the Lord Jesus Christ bodily, there in presence?

[31:21] I mean, talk about like a confidence booster. I mean, that's the way he's saying it. That's the point. He's with you. Number ten. His power is made perfect in your weakness. Second Corinthians 12, 9 says this.

[31:32] He said to me, this is after Paul's praying that God's going to take away this thorn in his flesh, this whatever it was. I don't know. He didn't like it. Whatever it was. He felt like it was holding him up from doing what God had called him to do.

[31:43] He said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

[31:55] It's a lie that the weaknesses in your life are preventing you from doing what God has called you to do. It's actually good. You can trust in God and his power made perfect in your weakness.

[32:11] So these promises are awesome just to shut down the lies of the devil, by the way. Number 11, the Holy Spirit will give us power to be Christ's witnesses. This comes from Acts 1.8. He says, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses.

[32:26] We can get baptized by the Holy Spirit and God will give us power to be his witnesses, both in life and in words. And we need it. You know, that deep sense of insecurity and just like, you know, maybe like, maybe some of you struggle with this, maybe some don't as much, but the thought of going and being a witness to somebody, sharing the gospel like a stranger is just like, ugh!

[32:47] You need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The disciples went from being these super insecure, fearful guys to just being filled with boldness after the day of Pentecost because they got baptized in the Holy Spirit.

[32:59] You will receive power. We need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and he'll do it. Number 12, the Holy Spirit leads us into all the truth. John 16, verse 13 says, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

[33:13] You're worried about not understanding the full counsel of God, not understanding like everything the Bible teaches, everything I need to know. There's a promise here. The Holy Spirit will lead you into all the truth. Be entrusted.

[33:25] Do you believe it? Number 13, Christ will build his church. This comes from Matthew 16, 18. Number 14, Christ gives the gifts to build his church. So he's going to do it.

[33:36] He says, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I'm going to do it, not people. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it through people, but it's me. I'm the boss. I'm the one actually doing it. And to do that, it says, he will give gifts.

[33:49] That comes from Ephesians 4, verse 7 through 8. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

[34:01] He's going to build his church and then he's going to set each member in the body as he sees fit with the diversity that gets the manifold grace of God in order to do it.

[34:16] He's going to do it. He promised it. Verse 15, or number 15, Christ gives leaders for the church. So much of the gifts continuing in Ephesians 4, starting in verse 11 and 12, it says, he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ.

[34:40] He promised he's going to do it. And he's going to give the right ones. He's going to give the right kinds of ones, not all the same. Evangelists, pastors, teachers, apostles, the whole deal.

[34:52] He's going to do it. Number 16, the Father will discipline us for our good. This comes from Hebrews 12, verse 6. It says, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

[35:07] Jesus says in another place in Revelation, he says, those whom I love, I rebuke. How do you know you're a child of God? He gets bankers. Okay, they look a lot different when you're an adult, but still, he keeps you in his love, he disciplines you, he will not let you get away with your own selfish stuff.

[35:29] That's awesome. You know what that is? I love you. You're my kid. If you weren't my kid, you can do whatever you want. It's a lot different when we're God's kid.

[35:40] When we're God's kid, no. I love you. I'm going to discipline you for your good. Number 17. Discipline produces peaceful fruit.

[35:51] This comes from Hebrews 12, verse 11. This is a related note here. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

[36:04] That's good for us. It's also good for parents with kids. Okay? It's not fun for anybody. The Bible commands us to spank our children. Okay? To discipline them. Kids don't like it.

[36:15] Parents don't like it. It's not pleasant. It's painful. But what happens afterwards? It yields peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

[36:28] And we just got to trust this is God's word. These are his promises. This is the same for us, too. No one likes getting disciplined by the Lord when they're going through it. It's painful. But you know what?

[36:39] On the other side, there's peace. There's peace. Just kind of as an aside, you see kids who have been raised in kind of like a gentle parenting kind of mindset.

[36:52] No peace. I mean, they're just on hints because they've never been, this has never happened to them. And when we, that's a picture of when God just leaves us to our own devices, you know, interest-led parenting.

[37:03] You just do whatever you want. There's no consequences. There's no peace on the inside. That anxiety just builds and builds and builds because God has baked something into our heart code that says, if you love me, you won't let me get away with doing wicked things.

[37:19] And every time you let your kid get away with something wicked, you know what? You're telling them, I don't love you. And it brings tremendous peace when the Father comes into our life, he washes us clean from sin, and he leads us to repentance by the Holy Spirit, and he starts disciplining us.

[37:36] Security. Peace. I don't enjoy discipline, but man, I have peace with God. This is amazing. The same is true with our kids.

[37:48] Okay. Wrap it up here just a few more. 19, he puts the lonely in families. This is a promise. This comes from Psalm 68, verse 6. God sets the lonely in families.

[38:00] He leads out the prisoners with singing, but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land. So if you're lonely, come to the Lord Jesus. You know, get right with him.

[38:11] But no, this is true. God puts the lonely in families. And if you have pervasive, consistent loneliness, and like, just consider.

[38:22] Just consider something. There's a reverse side of this coin. The rebellious live in a sun-scorched land. Like, some of the most lonely people I've met, I've been surrounded by people just trying to reach out to them, trying to help them, trying to hang out.

[38:40] But wherever they go, they still just feel lonely. Misunderstood. Well, it's actually saying something about what's going on in their vertical relationship more than something about what's going on in the horizontal relationship.

[38:55] And God won't let them feel lonely until that gets right. Okay? So, you know, I kind of say that as an aside. If that's your experience, I just encourage you, come to the Lord.

[39:06] Okay? Come to the Lord. Get a restored relationship with him. And trust him. This promise is true. He's going to put you, he's going to remove that loneliness, he's going to put you around other believers in a familial environment where you feel that closeness.

[39:21] Okay? Number 20, he works all things together for good for believers. This comes from Romans 8, 28. It says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

[39:32] How many things? All of them. Bad things? Yes. Good things? Yes. Things that you expected were going to happen? Yes.

[39:43] Things you did not expect were going to happen? Yes. All of them. For those who are called according to his purpose. So there is a clarifier here.

[39:55] This is not just God works everything together for good for everybody. This is God works everything together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. Remember, his purpose comes a little bit earlier in this chapter that we would be conformed to the image of his son Jesus.

[40:12] Is that your purpose? Or you got another kind of purpose? Your purpose is the same as God's purpose. Guess what? It's impossible for anything in your life to not work together for good.

[40:26] Nothing. It all has to work together for good because you're called according to God's purpose. It's an amazing promise. 21, faith results in rest from our own efforts to please God.

[40:39] We've already talked about this, but I want to share a specific promise in Hebrews 4 that speaks to this. It says, for we who have believed enter that rest. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works that God did from his.

[40:54] It's a real thing. Christians work really hard by the grace of God, but the true, a believer who has entered God's rest, they're free. Okay?

[41:05] I don't have to do anything to please God anymore, so I'm not going to try it. That sounds really scandalous, but it's true because I've realized something through God's work that there's only one man who pleases God.

[41:17] His name is Jesus. There's only one man whose works were sufficiently righteous to please God. Jesus. When I believe that truth and I enter into his rest and his righteousness, there's a result.

[41:35] I stop my attempts to try to please God. And it's very free. It's a very liberating life. We obey not because we want to be saved, but because we have been saved.

[41:47] It's just a different motive. Last one, it's good to consider with all these things, that faith is the gift of God. This comes from Ephesians 2, verse 8. It says, for as by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.

[42:06] So, God gives it. So I just want to encourage you, if you're lacking faith, if you want more faith, or you don't even know if you have it at all, there's a promise in Matthew 7 that says, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.

[42:27] Ask God. Okay? Just give it up to the Lord. Say, you know what, I resonate a lot more with walking by sight and trusting in what I can do and what seems reasonable to me and believe in yourself type of thing than I do with the whole God said it and I'm absolutely convinced and it's going to happen.

[42:47] So, if you're in that first category, just repent and ask the Lord. Say, Lord, I want this real deal. I want the real thing. And if you have the real thing and you've been walking in more of that category of walking by sight, we can repent.

[43:05] The Holy Spirit leads us to repentance and we can remember the promises of God. There's another promise in Colossians, or it's a command that says in Colossians, as you receive Jesus Christ the Lord, so walk in Him.

[43:15]  The same way you came to Jesus on day one, walk in Him like that today. How'd you do it? By faith.