We don’t know what this new year will bring. Four years ago, it brought a drastic change in the world with COVID-19 and the summer riots–yes, I still call them riots. Yesterday was the second anniversary of the crazy thing that went on at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Things seemed to quiet down in 2022, except for Russia and Ukraine, and what our involvement might entail. 2023 seemed to quiet down also, then some things hit me personally, and then another war in Israel.
What will 2024 bring? Well, hopefully, hope. If not in the world, then in us through Christ. I mentioned how faith and hope go hand in hand–they’re circular, meaning, the more faith you have, the more hope you have, and the more hope you have then the more faith you have.
So today, I thought I’d connect the end of last year with the beginning of this year, and tie in the idea of hope with faith.
If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 1. We’ll be reading the whole chapter, but this is a short chapter, only 10 verses. And then, if you have a bookmark, in a few minutes we’ll also read out of James Chapter 2. So 1 Thessalonians 1 and James 2.
I thought I’d read to you this story from the life of missionaries Robert and Mary Moffat.
For ten years this couple labored faithfully in Bechuanaland (now called Botswana) without one ray of encouragement to brighten their way. They could not report a single convert.
Finally the directors of their mission board began to question the wisdom of continuing the work. The thought of leaving their post, however, brought great grief to this devoted couple, for they felt sure that God was in their labors, and that they would see people turn to Christ in due season. They stayed, and for a year or two longer, darkness reigned.
One day a friend in England sent word to the Moffats that she wanted to mail them a gift and asked what they would like. Trusting that in time the Lord would bless their work, Mrs. Moffat replied, “Send us a communion set; I am sure it will soon be needed.” God honored that dear woman’s faith. The Holy Spirit moved upon the hearts of the villagers, and soon a little group of six converts was united to form the first Christian church in that land. The communion set from England was delayed in the mail, but on the very day before the first commemoration of the Lord’s Supper in Bechuanaland, the set arrived.
Now, I’ll bet you, you were probably anticipating a bigger bang at the end of that story, weren’t you? You were probably expecting–100 people showed up, or the entire village showed up and there weren’t enough, or there were just the exact amount of communion cups to go around.
That’s usually how these stories go, but let me emphasize that this couple who have been working for the Lord for a decade, and only six converts. That’s not only faith for 10 years, it’s faith for the next 10 years. Six converts would have discouraged a lot of people. But look around, faith holds onto the fact that God is doing something even when we don’t see it. And if there are even six people–we had seven here last Sunday including myself–maybe God is still working on the present and on the future. Even just six souls were worth it to Jesus to have died on that cross.
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 1 New International Version (NIV)
1 Paul, Silas and Timothy,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:
Grace and peace to you.
2 We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. 3 We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
4 For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. 6 You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. 7 And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 8 The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, 9 for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
So what does this say? The three of them––Paul, Silas, and Timothy––are praising and encouraging the church in Thessalonica, but how are we to apply this to us in Watkins Glen or Candor or Corning?
Simply by taking their example.
Paul starts by commending them on something that he encouraged the Corinthian church to do. The Corinthian church had a lot of problems, they were new to living as Christians, there was a lot of in-fighting and bickering, they had a lot to learn and there was a lot that Paul had to sort through. In doing so, he encouraged them to live in love and he gave them a detailed description of what love looks like. Then, to conclude that statement, he said to them in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.”
In contrast, you can sense Paul’s delight when he praises the Thessalonian church because they’ve practiced these three things.
He said: “3 We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Last week I talked about how hope can brighten someone’s day. How this cyclical motor of faith and hope–and I’ll include love as well since you can’t successfully have faith and hope without love–can not only encourage us, but it can encourage us to be encouragers. These are among the reasons why the Thessalonian church was so successful in shining the light to its region. And yet Paul mentions these things very briefly. Today, for however long we have left before Christ returns––whether it’s 1 year, 10 years, or 100 years, the worldwide body of Christ needs to become what the church in Thessalonica became: a shining light to the community in which it is in so that collectively faith in God will become known everywhere.
“To become known everywhere” is not to become a famous church, it’s to become an impactful church. A church that will draw people inside not because it’s a showy or entertaining church, but because it is a powerful church. To become a church that will draw people because it has what people need. And one way to become that kind of a church is to be a church that practices faith.
How do we do that? How do we follow their example of being a church of faith? Well, let’s first take a look at what the word, ‘faith’ means.
What are some Biblical examples of faith?
We accept the free gift of salvation by faith. For example:
- As Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. It is not from yourself or anything you’ve done, but the gift of God.” Salvation, therefore, is a free gift of grace from God.
- “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16:31)
- “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (Romans 3:22)
- “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.” (Romans 3:28)
- “To the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.” (Romans 4:5)
But there’s more to faith than salvation. To give you more on that, I’m going to read a rather lengthy set of verses from James Chapter 2. So if you have your Bibles and you want to follow along, go over to James, Chapter 2 and we’ll read from there. While you’re turning there do you remember those “books for dummies?” They had sort of a yellow and black generic-looking cover, and you could buy just about any book ‘for dummies.’ They had “Cooking for Dummies,” “Computers for Dummies,” and they had “History for Dummies.” I remember when I worked at the bookstore, they had absolutely everything you could imagine, ‘for dummies.’ Well, here’s what Christianity for Dummies had to say.
The Book of James makes it abundantly clear that a declaration of faith by itself doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if it isn’t backed up by action (James 2:14–26). In other words, if you’re gonna talk the talk, you’ve gotta walk the walk. Therefore, if someone is truly a Christian, his or her life is going to be characterized by a growing faith and, over the long haul, will live in accordance with that faith. However, recognize that this is a consequence of faith, not a condition.
Let’s take a look at 2 James now, verses 14-26:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Do you remember the story of when Jesus cursed the fig tree? Basically, it represents what James is saying here. What good is it if you call yourself a Christian and do not bear fruit?
Gotquestions says: The lesson of the fig tree is that we should bear spiritual fruit (Galatians 5:22-23), not just give an appearance of religiosity. God judges fruitlessness, and expects that those who have a relationship with Him will “bear much fruit” (John 15:5-8).In the same way, faith isn’t faith if we don’t do something with our faith.
Believing in Jesus is one thing, doing the commands of Jesus and living as a Christian is another.
So how do we use our faith, how do we put it into action? There’s holiness, of course, but I would like to touch on something else today. Something more in regards to an uncertain new year, and that is putting our faith into action. There’s a ministry called “Faith in Action,” there aren’t very many in New York, the closest one I could find was in Hornell.
What a great name for a ministry. That’s probably the best name for a ministry I have ever heard. And what do they do? The simple things. They don’t have a huge ministry with a big tent and a big sound system and lights and high-tech equipment. Do you know what they have? Love. See how faith and love go hand in hand with hope? They use their faith and love to spread hope.
This is from their Facebook page.
It says Faith in Action is an interfaith organization of over 150 dedicated volunteers that offers nine resourceful programs to help local senior citizens continue to live independently. Do you know of someone who needs a ride to the store? A little help with their home’s upkeep? A friend to stop by and say hello? There is no cost for our services, ever. For inquiries in Hornell, Arkport, Wayland, Corning, Painted Post, Coopers Plains, and neighboring communities, we’d be pleased to answer your call.
We think that ministry has to be with a capital “M.” But it doesn’t. This is the kind of faith we can put into action. We don’t know what work the Thessalonian church did exactly. Paul, Timothy, and Silas don’t specifically mention it, but I can only imagine it was a work similar to Faith in Action. It might have been a ministry to the sick, the elderly, or the poor and needy, or maybe it might have been evangelism. We don’t know what kind of work they did, but it doesn’t matter what they did. It matters how they did it. And again, without going into the sermon on Love for the umpteenth time, they had to have had Love in the verb form in order for it to truly work.
But regarding Faith, there are a myriad of good works that God can call us to do based on who we are and what talents we have. The Thessalonian church was a church reaching out, doing the work of God and they had to work by faith in order to do it.
So, going back to 1 Corinthians 13, we can check off the list as to what it means to work by love, but what does it mean to work by faith? Does it mean when we get an idea in our head that we just take a leap of faith without rhyme or reason and trust God for it to all work out? I mean, after all, it is for God, right? He’ll be pleased that we want to do this work for Him, so he’ll make it all work out, right?
Well…..
I remember when I first met Diana, and the church she was going to at the time had bought two or three TV cameras and all the video equipment to develop a TV program, but they had no one who knew how to run all that. Mind you, this was in Dansville, nowhere near a TV station that could produce, sponsor, or broadcast the church service. So they spent tens of thousands of dollars in faith that God would provide someone to run it. Guess what? It just sat there. They also had a Christian bookstore in the church. They spent tens of thousands of dollars on merchandise. Guess what? It just sat there.
I don’t know whatever happened to all of it–it probably got sold or donated or thrown out. But why did it all just sit there? Because that’s not exactly what faith is.
Working by faith isn’t just working for God, it’s working from God. I’ve mentioned this before, I think it was quite a while ago, so I’ll say it again. There’s a difference between working for God and working from God.
Christian Truth Center puts it this way:
Work for God is working to earn favor or score points with God. Doing a certain task to show or prove to God how good or close you are to Him and looking forward to favors and blessings.
This is what many Christians are busy doing; tithing to earn blessings, attending church to be blessed, just doing everything expecting a reward from God.
In contrast, the work of God is done by the Holy Spirit through us as a vessel and a dwelling place of the spirit. This is done only when the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you or upon you, directing, instructing and showing you what to do. This is what all Christians should strive for.
Jesus knew that if He allowed His disciples to go without the Holy Spirit they will be doing a work for Him not His work. What the disciples did after being empowered by the Holy Spirit was not them doing it but the Holy Spirit through them.
All this to say, our work for God should be the work of God and therefore can only be done by faith. There’s an old saying, “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called.” In other words, when we have confidence, we should be worried. Because the Call probably didn’t come from God. And when we’re worried, we should have confidence. Because the Call probably did come from God.
Or, as God said to Zechariah, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.”
So faith is something inside of us that gives us the ability to believe in God and to accept salvation. Faith is what keeps us going and gives us the ability to do good works. James said that faith without works is dead. Faith isn’t faith if it doesn’t produce fruit.
So faith should require action, and that action should be done in conjunction with the Holy Spirit. But again, what does faith in action look like? Last week, I quoted from Hebrews 11:1, which says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Then, the very next verse says, “2 This is what the ancients were commended for.” Then he goes on to give examples of faith in action from the Old Testament prophets like Moses and Abraham and Isaac and Noah and others. I could do a whole sermon series based on just this chapter alone, which someday I may do.
But he goes on about the Old Testament heroes and what united them in their great deeds like Moses parting the Red Sea, Sarah bearing children at an old age, and the walls of Jericho falling down. It wasn’t just because they were on God’s side, but these things happened because they had faith. When God told them something, they believed and obeyed–like the song we closed with last week–“Trust and Obey.”
Remember when Jesus did not heal people or perform miracles in his hometown because of their lack of faith?
God works through us and because of our faith. The faith that we place in Him to accomplish the work that He called us to do. It’s not all on us. It’s a partnership between us and God. Just like the Bible itself. When Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church––or any other church for that matter, he was divinely inspired with truth, even though it was written physically either by his hand or dictated to a scribe. But what he wrote incorporated his personality just like our hymns, which were divinely inspired but the songwriter had his or her own personality when they wrote the hymn. I think anyone who has a special call or anointing on their life has a partnership with God in that way. God uses their personality to accomplish His task through them.
Billy Graham is a great example. No one can argue that God did not work through Billy Graham. But when you watch or listen to Billy Graham, you’ll notice that it’s his words in his personality. Then you compare him to another anointed preacher–Dr. David Jeremiah comes to mind–and you’ll see that God works through his words and his personality. Two different types of preachers, but the same God at work within them.
Our work has to be done by our faith in God who can be our ever-present help, to inspire us, to guide us, to bless the work that He called us to in order to make our work with Him work out. And we have to lean in on His promises as we go out in faith to accomplish that which he has called us to do. And that’s why so much of what we do has to be done in prayer and obedience–sometimes fasting, merged with faith. That faith is assurance that God is there as our ever-present help (as the psalmist says).
Our obedience alone is an act of faith. Think about those Old Testament and New Testament prophets. They had to have had a lot of faith in order to be obedient. They had to have a lot of faith to do the works that God told them to do. Do you want to read about the merging of faith and obedience? Read Ezekiel. Or look again at the story of Abraham putting Isaac on the altar. They all had to merge obedience with faith.
Here’s something I found on the Truth Saddlery Facebook Page. It’s a saddle shop or a horse equipment shop in New Mexico, and I came across this looking for quotes and it had a great quote that says:
God’s vision for your life is such that when you see it, your first thought will be, how can I possibly do this? The truth is you can’t. God will call you to do something you can’t do on your own, so you will have to take a step of faith into the unknown. The only way you’ll accomplish it is to trust God. That way, when God accomplishes His purpose through you, God will get all the credit.
Let me read that last part again, “when God accomplishes His purpose through you, God will get all the credit.”
How can we be certain in times of uncertainty? By faith. By choosing to believe. We must have faith to press on no matter how bad things get. We don’t know what things will look like even by the first day of Spring. We have to have faith that no matter what, God is in control, and that we, The Church, the Body of Christ is under God’s provision no matter what.
First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen is one part of a worldwide body of Christ. What is it that this church can do regardless of not knowing what the next few weeks have in store? What is it that God is calling you to do to be the church? It requires faith in God and putting our faith into action. How do you need to put your faith in God so that you can put your faith into action?
Maybe it’s showing people that you do not have the fear that the rest of the world does because of your faith in God’s provision. We could lead people to the Lord with that kind of faith in this day and age.
Maybe God has been calling you to do that very thing and maybe you’ve been leery of doing it because you’ve thought, “I can’t do this.” Well, usually you can’t without God’s help. Let’s invite God into what it is he has called us to accomplish.
Prayer: Dear Lord, we are living in an uncertain time. It’s scary. And we don’t fully know what to do. We can only do what we can do where we are with what we have. But Lord, we have you. And we invite you into that which you have called us to do and to be.
You have called us to be the light of the world. You have called us to faith, hope, and love. What is it that you would have us do in this time? We don’t know how much longer we have, we don’t know how much darker the days are going to be. But you would have us shine brighter these days. We pray that you would call this church in a unified manner to accomplish being the church even though we are in our homes.
It’s really not different than before. We were in our homes before. We came into the church as a huddle, and then out into the world we went. And it’s still the same.
I pray that you will be with us. Increase our faith. And help us to be Christians with faith. Operating through faith. For your glory and for a darkened world.
In Jesus name, amen.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Al mahmudur Rahman fahim on Unsplash
[…] Open the full article on the kingdomwinds.com site […]