Filling our City with the Gospel: Faith
Acts 16:30-31
Imagine that you bought a Porsche Carrera. You read the manual and know that its top speed is 180 mph. So you buy this Porsche Carrera and are pumped. But then you take it on the road, and you can’t get it up over 50 mph. You look again at the manual, and sure enough: “top speed 180 miles per hour.” But yours is only going 50 mph. What would you do? Would you settle for 50 mph, or find out what’s wrong?
That’s the question I posed to our home group leaders this summer. We took three evenings this summer to study what the church was like in the New Testament. And what we saw was a church zooming along at 180 mph – in the sense that every believer is full of love for Jesus, joyfully obeying Him, passionately loving each other, enthusiastically telling everyone about Him. As a result people are constantly coming to know Jesus, teams are constantly sent out to plant new churches, and the gospel spread throughout the Roman Empire. 180 mph.
But our church, and most churches I hear about in this country, big or small, aren’t zooming along at 180 mph. I don’t want to overstate this. God is at work in other churches, and God is powerfully at work here. I love what God is doing here. I’m bragging about you all the time.
But at the same time, it would be wrong for us to think this is all God has for us. This book says there’s more. So we are not going to settle for 50 mph. We’re going to take the next four weeks and look at the manual to see what we can do to increase our speed. Here’s the picture I see as I read the book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament:
It all starts with faith, where we each trust Jesus’ promises, resulting in joy and peace, love for others, and heartfelt obedience to Jesus. Then this faith produces community, where we each encourage each other to trust Jesus’ promises, resulting in more trust, joy and peace, love, and obedience. Then this experience of community produces mission, where we all passionately befriend lost people and share Jesus and His promises with lost people. And as God works, all of this produces multiplication, where we each have the joy of reproducing ourselves in the lives of others, seeing others come to know Jesus, seeing home groups multiply and churches planted.
Now don’t misunderstand. The aim of all this isn’t to get more people to Mercy Hill so we can look good and maybe have a building or whatever. The aim of all of this is that we would bring salvation to hundreds of people, multiply home groups, and plant churches. If 10 years from now I’m still here at Allen school with 130 of us – but we’ve seen so many saved and trained that we’ve sent out teams to plant a dozen new churches in the South Bay area – I’ll be thrilled.
This morning I want to start with faith. And the first question I want to tackle is – why is faith so important? Why is this the foundation? Let me give you seven reasons.
First, faith brings salvation. We all need to be saved from sin’s guilt and sin’s power. And Jesus died on the Cross to save us from sin’s guilt and power. But there’s only one way we can be connected to Jesus’ work of salvation – by putting our faith in Him. You can see that in Acts 16:30-31 –
30 Then he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
31 And they said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household."
Faith brings salvation.
Second, faith brings the Holy Spirit. Deep down inside we are all thirsty to come to know God. And we can know God first-hand, experientially, by the Holy Spirit. So what do we do to receive the Spirit? Look at what Jesus says in John 7:37-39 –
37 … Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"
39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive …
So what we do to receive the Holy Spirit is believe in Jesus. Faith. When we have faith in Jesus – Jesus gives us the Spirit; rivers of the living water of the Spirit.
Third, faith brings joy and peace. Not a plastic, paste-on-a-smile joy and peace. But real, heart-felt, authentic joy and peace. You can see that in Romans 15:13 –
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
Faith in Jesus brings heart-felt joy and peace.
Fourth, faith produces love. That’s what Paul says in Galatians 5:6 –
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
Where does love come from? From faith. When faith in Jesus fills me with joy and peace, my heart overflows with love for others. Faith produces love.
Fifth, faith produces obedience. You can see this in Hebrews 11:8 –
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
Abraham obeyed by faith, which means that faith produces obedience. Obedience doesn’t come from gritting our teeth, or exercising more will-power; it comes from faith. Faith in Jesus produces obedience.
Sixth, faith extinguishes all Satan’s flaming darts. Satan is regularly seeking to destroy us with flaming darts – of fear, guilt, lust, discouragement. But God has given us a shield which will extinguish every flaming dart. What’s that shield? Look at Ephesians 6:16 --
In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.
That is so encouraging! You have a shield which, if you use it, will extinguish every flaming dart. That sheid is faith – faith in Jesus.
Seventh, faith results in people being saved. You can see that in Acts 16:5 –
So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.
The manual says that churches can increase in numbers daily – they can experience daily conversions. That’s 180 mph! But notice where daily conversions come from: strong faith. Faith in Jesus results in people being saved.
So can you see why we must start with faith?
But now you might look at your life and say, well, I think I’ve got salvation – but I don’t have regular experience of the Spirit, and I’m not full of joy and peace. I don’t have much love for others, and I’m not all that obedient. I’m frequently pierced by Satan’s flaming darts, and no one’s getting saved through me. So what’s the problem?
Well, if all these things come from faith, and we’re not experiencing them, then the problem is probably with our faith. And part of that problem might be that we don’t understand what faith is. So let’s look at that next. What is faith - really? What does it mean to have faith in Jesus?
First of all, faith is not just believing facts about Jesus. To see this, turn to James 2:19 –
You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder!
This might shock you – but the demons believe in God, in the sense that they agree to facts about God. But the demons aren’t saved; so they don’t have true faith.
See, true, biblical faith is not just believing facts about Jesus; it’s trusting your life to Jesus. That’s what the demons don’t do. There’s a world of difference between believing facts about Jesus and trusting Jesus. If your faith is nothing more than believing facts about Jesus – then you don’t have true, biblical faith in Jesus.
Picture it like this. Here’s a chair. Do I believe the fact that this chair could hold me up? Yes. But as long as I am here and the chair is there – am I trusting myself to this chair? No. As long as I am standing over here – I am not trusting my life to that chair. It’s only when I actually sit in the chair, that I am trusting myself to the chair.
So ask yourself – do you just believe facts about Jesus? Or do you trust yourself to Jesus’ promises?
Let’s take an example – Matthew 11:28 –
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
This is a powerful promise. Jesus promises that if you are heavy laden, and you will come to Him, he will give you rest. If you will come to Him, talk with Him, behold Him, He will give you rest.
So what do you do when you are heavy laden? What do you do? If you are trusting your life to Jesus’ promises, what will you do? You will come to Jesus. And if you don’t come to Jesus, what does that show? You are not trusting Jesus. You don’t have faith in Jesus.
See, this book is full of what Jesus promises. He promises to forgive our sins (Mark 2:5), free us from the power of sin (John 8:31f), satisfy us with His presence (John 6:35), guide us (James 1:5), provide for us (Mat 6:33), strengthen us (Phil 4:13), enable us to encourage our brothers and sisters in the faith (Luke 22:32), work through us to bring others to faith (Matt 28:18-20), raise us from the dead to be with Him forever (John 11:25) – and the list goes on and on.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who has all power, all authority; who loves you; who died on the Cross and rose from the dead – Jesus has promised to do all this for you. And faith is not just believing these facts about Jesus – faith means trusting yourself to Jesus’ promises. So ask yourself – do you agree to facts about Jesus – or do you trust your life to Jesus?
So what keeps me from trusting my life to Jesus? This is crucial to understand. Some of us don’t trust Jesus at all, and none of us trust Jesus fully. So what keeps us from trusting our lives fully to Jesus?
I found the answer to that in Isaiah 31. Israel is facing an invading army, but she isn’t trusting herself to God. Why not? Look at what we read in Isaiah 31:1 –
Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the LORD!
So what kept Israel from trusting God was her trust in Egypt’s horses and chariots. She didn’t trust God because she trusted something else.
The same is true with us. We human beings are always trusting something for our well-being, our security, our fulfillment. God alone can give us well-being, security, and fulfillment. But in our sin we’ve all turned from God, and instead trust career, or money, or friends, or sex for our fulfillment. Now there’s nothing wrong with career and money and friends and sex. They all can be gifts from Jesus. But it’s wrong to trust them for my ultimate well-being and fulfillment.
So what keeps me from trusting Jesus is the other things I’ve been trusting instead of Him. How can I tell what those are? Ask yourself: what do you desire the most when you are free to day-dream? What do you think about when you take a mental vacation? What are you the most fearful of losing? What lack in your life is bothering you the most?
Whatever that is – is what you are trusting instead of Jesus. This last week I’ve turned from Jesus and trusted solving a problem in the church – as if solving that problem would fulfill me more than Jesus. I’ve trusted having a healthy knee more than Jesus – as if having a healthy knee would fulfill me more than Jesus.
I would guess that some of you trust a successful career more than Jesus. Again. Nothing wrong with a successful career. But it’s wrong to trust a successful career for your fulfillment or satisfaction. Others might trust sexual pleasure more than Jesus. Or money more than Jesus. Or a comfortable stress-free life more than Jesus.
So what do you trust more than Jesus? That’s what’s keeping you from trusting Jesus.
Now with that in mind, let’s raise one last question – How can I grow in trusting Jesus? Let me give you three suggestions that are taught in God’s Word:
First, pray and ask Jesus to help you. True, biblical faith is a gift from God. We cannot come up with it on our own; he has to give it to us. And he will give it to us if we earnestly ask him. I love Mark 9:24 – where the man with the demonized boy prays: “I believe; help my unbelief.”
This is crucial. Pray and ask Jesus to give you faith and to strengthen your faith. He will.
Second, repent over what you’ve been trusting instead of Jesus. Acts 20:21 talks about how we need to repent and believe. We repent – turn from what we used to trust, and believe – turn to trust Jesus.
This is crucial. I think maybe some of you try to grow in faith, but you don’t really turn from whatever else you’ve been trusting. If you trust in money for your security, but then try to trust Jesus as your security, you won’t be able to until you first repent of trusting in money. To follow Jesus you must turn from everything else you’ve trusted – and trust Him alone.
Third, pray over promises in God’s Word until your heart is full of trust in Jesus. Ephesians 6:17 says that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. Find promises that are relevant for your need, set your heart on them, and pray over them until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with faith. Do this at the beginning of every day – and throughout the day as necessary and as you can.
Questions?
Mercy Hill, faith is the foundation of everything. We need to have each other be strong in faith. We need you to take responsibility for your own faith. We will help you. But we can’t do it for you. What we can do is direct you to Jesus – and He will give you all you need to be strong in faith. But you need to ask Jesus for help, repent of what you’ve been trusting instead of Jesus, and pray over the promises in God’s Word. As you do that, Jesus will strengthen you faith – and the result will be salvation, more of the Spirit, joy and peace, love, obedience, people being saved – 150 mph -- church life as described in the book of Acts.