What does it mean to believe in God? V (9/29/19 Standalone Message)

ATTN: Have you thought of Sunday worship this way? What you and I do every Sunday is either the most irrelevant, snake-oil-like, complete waste of time or it is the most relevant, helpful, and life-enriching thing. It all depends on whether you believe in God or not. If you don’t believe in God, then why waste a good day at church hearing about a fictious figure that doesn’t exist? Might as well stay home and watch fictional movies on Netflix. They are a lot more fun than listening to an old guy for 30 minutes. But if God exists and you believe in Him, then everything else becomes subservient to what we are doing here. God is in control over every fiber of our being and everything we do – school, dating, work, raising a family – are experiences we go through to know this God better.

The most miserable are the ones sitting on the fence – not sure of either. They want their bases covered in case the afterlife exists, so that they don’t go to hell, but they don’t want to miss out all the “fun” in the world in case God and the afterlife don’t exist. So, they have one foot in the world and one foot in the spiritual world. It’s not that they are in both places – best of both worlds – but they are in neither place and that’s why they are miserable – feeling like church might be a waste when at church but not able to enjoy the world when at the world because of the guilty conscience.

I don’t want you to be miserable. I want you to commit to believing. I want to spare you of sitting on the fence. But before that, I need to tell you what believing in God is. “Believing in God? Everyone knows what that is. It’s believing that God exists and He sent His Son to die in our place. So, if we believe that, we shall be saved! Isn’t that what belief is?” One problem. Even Satan believes that. “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe -and shudder.” James 2:19. In other words, knowing the right things about God does not equate to believing in Him because Satan has a more accurate knowledge of God than we do and yet he’s not saved. So, then we know believing is more than just knowing right facts about God. Then, what is it?

What does it mean to believe? 1) Truth. 2) Trust. 3) Treasure 4) To the end

1) truth –

Although believing in God is more than knowing the truths about God, it is not less than that. To believe in God, we have to start at knowing the truths about God. For example, we must believe in the right God. That’s what the 1st Commandment was all about – “You shall have no other gods before me.” Now, this against: “It doesn’t matter what you believe in as long as you do the right things. ” That would be true if God is not a personal God. If He is just an idea or a way of life, then what matters is not what we believe in, but how we behave. But if He is a person, as the Bible describes Him to be, then we better get the right person. You wouldn’t dare say your wife, “well, it doesn’t matter who my wife is as long as I do the right things to all women.”

Truth matters. We have to get the right God. Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the father but through me.” “Well, that’s very narrow,” most Americans will say. But have you considered that that’s the nature of a personal relationship? Isn’t that what makes a marriage relationship so special – it’s exclusive? I’ve never seen a marriage relationship workout when it’s an open relationship, as in we don’t have to give ourselves exclusively to each other but we should share each other with other people. That just does not work out.

So, believing in God starts with believing the truth about God. Not only that He exists, but that He is the God of the Bible.

2) Trust –

But if that is all there – the right knowledge about God – we are no better than Satan. Satan knows the truth about God better than we do. So, knowing the truths about God does not save us. The saving faith must go further and that is trusting. We must trust this God we profess.

Listen to this amazing indictment by God against the Israelites.

11. 11. [11] And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? (Numbers 14:11 ESV)

This after God has been with the Israelites for more than a year in the desert and He had performed miracle after miracle of feeding them with manna and quail and leading them with fire and clouds. The Israelites had heard the voice of God. They had seen Him destroy Egyptian gods through 10 plagues. They had seen Him part the Red Sea so that they could walk on the ocean bed to escape the Egyptians. There was no doubt in their minds about the existence of God. But God looks at them and says, “They don’t believe in me!!!” God is not saying, “They don’t believe I exist!” He knew that they knew He existed. But what they lacked was trust!

You see, to believe in God has as implication the element of trust. The original Greek word for believe is: Pisteo, ” to believe to the extent of complete trust and reliance—‘to believe in, to have confidence in, to have faith in, to trust, faith, trust.’ They didn’t have that trust in God.

[2] And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! [3] Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” [4] And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” (Numbers 14:2-4 ESV)

            In other words, God can’t be trusted. Our way is better than His way. Let’s now do it our way! And God calls that unbelief!

ILL: Say my child is afraid is getting on the ice at an ice skate rink and I held out my hands to her and said, “child, I will hold you up. Do you believe in me?” I’m not asking my child, “do you believe that I exist and that I am your father?” No. I’m asking her if she trusts in me. If she will put her body into my care so that no harm will come to her. So, believing in God or trusting God is believing that…

1. A) God’s way is better than our way. (He knows better than us what is good for us.)
2. B) God has the power to bring about the good!
3. C) Taking action based on that belief.

The Israelites did not trust in God. It’s so easy to listen to a Bible story and judge people for their lack of faith, but are we really any different? Are we really more trusting of God than the Israelites were?

Have you ever thought of this life as the 40 year wilderness experience? We are not in the promised land yet, we are making our journey there and God is watching to see whether we would trust Him or trust ourselves at those critical moments of our lives? What do we complain about? What do we grumble about? Are we trusting God?

APP: What have you done with some of the critical decisions in your life? Did you make them trusting God or trusting your own senses? Are you trusting God or are you trusting yourself? How are you trusting God now? What decisions are you making that only make sense if you believed God is real and trustworthy? How are you trusting God with your money? How are you trusting God with your family? How are you trusting God with your future spouse?

 

3) Treasure

What trusting in God must inevitably lead us to is to treasure God. Believing in God means to believe that He is the greatest good there is and He is the source of all happiness and joy. In other words, He is the greatest Treasure we can have. Matthew 13:44  44“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

            And Jesus says “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26 (“hate” here is a comparable term. Compare to our love for Jesus, our love for our family should be “hate.” In other words, we must prefer Jesus even to our family.

 

So, Christianity in ultimate sense is not using God to enhance our earthly treasures such as family, health, and job security, but through those things, we get at God, our ultimate treasure. In other words, God is not a means to an end, but He becomes the ultimate end we want because He is the greatest good there is.

Perhaps finding pleasure in God is a foreign concept to many of you – even those of you who grew up in church. But I think it’s essential for all Christians to strive for – to find pleasure in God. I say that because I know that eventually our will will follow what our heart delights in. We will end up doing what we delight to do. We can only last so long doing things out of obligation or a sense of duty. And if trusting in God and walking with God does not give you pleasure, then you are not going to continue on with Him. Our hearts will follow whatever else we delight in more.

ILL:  Unless our spiritual appetite changes and it becomes pleasurable to read the Bible, we won’t keep it up very long. Our will power can carry us only so far. As a testimony, I can’t think of anything more pleasureable than having coffee and sitting on my favorite chair and getting into the word of god before anyone else wakes up in the morning. But it started off with a trust – a trust that god’s word is more precious than anything else but I didn’t feel it but trusting that it will come for me if I kept on. And it did.

Continue trusting God and seeking Him until joy come. Until you feel the pleasure of God, keep trusting. Don’t stop short of finding joy in God, b/c if you do, you might just fall away. And that leads me to the last component of what it means to believe.

4) To the end.

The genuine faith believes to the end. It believes the truth about God. Trusts Him. Treasures Him. To the end. Many Christians think, wrongly, once they have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, they are locked in, they have gotten their tickets to heaven, have their mansion being built in heaven. Now, that is true but only if we continue on in our faith. Only if we trust, treasure Christ to the end. However, If we abandon our faith, if our trusting and treasure Christ does not last until the end, that means not that we have lost our salvation, but that our salvation was never real in the first place.

The Apostle John clearly described such people in 1 John 2:19. Speaking of some who had renounced the Christian religion and had become anti-Christ, he said, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.” It is clear from this passage that those who profess faith in Christ and appear to be true believers, and yet later fall away, were never really a part of God’s people in the first place.

Col 1:22-23 “yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach— if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.”

What makes our faith genuine is not some experience in the past or a decision in the past, but what and who we are living for now – day to day. A genuine, saving faith is the faith that grows, that trusts, treasures Christ more and more and will do so until the end. No. God is not expecting perfection. We will sin as genuine Christians, yes. But we will never abandon faith. We will keep holding on till the end, if indeed we are genuinely saved. And that’s why the church is essential to Christians. That’s why we need one another. We need to encourage, rebuke and correct one another so that we will spur one another toward keeping our faith to the end. And at our weak moments, there will be others to hold us up and walk with us. Local church is not optional for believers.

 

CONC: My primary calling in life is to keep you believing either until Jesus comes back until your or my death. My job is to deliver you to Jesus believing, trusting, treasuring to the end – that you will prove to be a good soil and not the beaten path, rocky, or thorny soil that bears no fruit. If at this point you are lacking conviction, would you pray this simple prayer – “Lord, Help my unbelief! Help me believe!”