You cannot hold still, you’ve got to grow.  It’s like a fish that’s dead.  It’s going to just flow downstream.  But if it’s alive, it will fight to keep from drowning. 

Ephesians 1:17.  I want us to go to 1:17 1 and 18.  And I want to read you something out of Clarke’s commentary which is very, very good.  Starting at verse 17 Chapter 1.  It says “That the God our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:”  …. And listen to what is says in verse 18…. “The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” 

Now this is what happened to Abraham… Listen to this.  The eyes of your understanding being enlightened.  The understanding is that power of faculty in the soul by which knowledge or information is received.  The recipient, power, is here termed the eyes of the understanding. And we learn from this what the eye is to the body the understanding is to the soul.  And that as the eye is not light in itself, in other words, this eye without light cannot see.  Unless there were light, I couldn’t see.  In the darkness I couldn’t see, although I have this same eye.   Without light I can’t see anything.  The soul is the same way.  But the soul is an eye.  It’s the eye of your spirit. Listen here.  And that as the eye is not the light in itself and can discern nothing but by the means of light shining, it will be able to discern, not only on the objects to be viewed but into the eye itself, so the understanding of man can discern no sacred thing by of or by itself, but seen by the influence of the spirit of Wisdom. Wisdom is insight and revelation.  But seized by the influence or the light of the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation.  For without the influence of Gods Holy Spirit, no man can ever become wise unto salvation.  Or ever became wise enough to receive Salvation without the Spirit.  No more than a man can discern an object, no matter how perfect his eye is without the instrument of a light when he can see.  The hope of this column that you may clearly discern the glorious and the important objects of your hope to the enjoyment which God has called or invited you to see the riches of his glory of his inheritance that you may understand what is the glorious abundance of the spiritual things to which you are entitled in consequence of being made children of God.   For if you are a child then you are an heir - an heir of that glorious inheritance which God has provided for the saints.  Ones who have been called, set apart unto God.  For all genuine Christians, whether formerly Jews or Gentiles - you have the ability to see with the light of the Holy Spirit.  Isn’t that beautiful?  I love it. 

Now I want you to go to Ephesians 2 and verse 8.  “For by grace are ye saved through faith;” …. Now remember that word Faith… “and that not of yourselves - it’s gift of God.”  Faith is not of you, it’s a gift of God.  I love that. I love it.  "Not of works.   Least any man should boast."  In other words, if you by your own works and your own doing earned your salvation you could say, "Look what I’ve done, God.  I can work out my own salvation.  I can do all this myself."  No you can't!  You don’t even have the light to see it until God gives you the light!  People, we have to realize and know that God has done it all.  And all we do is we respond to His light.  And when we respond to His light it becomes ours.  He says “For by grace are ye saved through faith"; as you are now brought into a state of salvation your sins being all blotted out. You’ve been made partakers of the Holy Spirit having a hope full of immortality -  you must not attribute this to any works or merits of your own.   For when this gospel reached you, you were dead.  A dead man can’t do anything about himself. He’s going to lay in that grave the rest of his life.   It’s only when the wisdom of God speaks to that dead body and raises it from the dead that it’s going to rise. 

 Therefore it was Gods free mercy to you, manifested through Christ in you were commanded to believe, and having believed through the power of the Holy Spirit you received and were sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.  So that this Salvation is in no sense of yourselves but it’s a free gift of God.  Not in any kind of works so that no man can boast as having wrought out his own salvation.  Or even contributed anything towards it.  But by grace are you saved through faith in Jesus Christ.  Now, there’s one thing I want us to realize, that if a man truly belongs to the Lord he will have works.  He will have works.   But, you didn’t have the works until God did the salvation and by the salvation the works come.  Now there’s a lot of  people saying that they’re saved, and that they’ve come to Christ but they still live like the devil.  They, I do not believe are born again.  Because I’m going to tell you something people, (or that they’ve backslid, they’ve gone away from God.)  But I going to tell you something that if you're truly made a new creation, you're going to have the works in your life.   It’s going to automatically come through you because you’re going to want to please God, you’re going to want to please God because your heart is changed.  And because you can see light.

 This little thing here.  David’s greatest battle. David was a warrior for the Lord.  During his life he fought many battles from youth to the old age.  Of all his battles, which was the greatest? Was it Goliath?   The Philistines? Or when his Army took Jerusalem?  I don’t think so.  It was the battle he fought after having fallen into sin with Bathsheba.  David wept and wept and here his battle began. 

It was his battle to acknowledge his sin, to confess it, to repent it and to be able to accept the grace of God.  It was the battle to believe that God was still faithful to him even though there was no reason for God to be so.  Your greatest battle will have nothing to do with guns, a career, or people.   People are not your battle.  It will have to do with you and God.  The battle is within.  It will have to do with you and God and staying close to His heart.  It will be about His grace and His love.  How much you truly accept it and how much you never did.  It was written that David was a man after God’s own heart. 

You be the same. 

Fight the good fight of faith, believe in Gods grace, hold on to His love and you too will triumph.  But remember when you think a person is your enemy: the person is not the enemy, it’s what you believe inside. The time you see God in yourself and your relationship.  Now the person might have caused terrible things to happen to you, but you know what, that’s still not the battle.  The battle is how you handle it.  The battle is how you handle this with God, what do you do with God and yourself and you will come through it in a triumphant way.  You do have battles with people and people hurt you and things go on.  But what you need to realize is: don’t lose out with God for it.  Keep your heart right. Keep yourself right within yourself.   Don’t let yourself enter in to what the other person’s done. 

All right, now I want you to turn to Acts 6:7.

 The word Faith.  What does the Bible really say about faith?  What is it?  Is it necessary?  How do I get it?   What does it do for us?  And what do we do with it once we have it?  And it says in Acts 6:7 … I want you to listen to this … “And the word of God increased and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.”   … How can you be obedient to the faith?    What can he possibly be saying here?  

 OK.  Let’s go to Romans Chapter 1, verses 16 and 17.    Be obedient to the faith.  Listen to what Paul says here:  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation” … in other words, it is the power of God to bring you to salvation … “to every one that believeth: to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.  For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written; The just shall live by faith.”

… What is it talking about?  OK.   Acts 6:7 again. 

And it says “And the word of God increased: and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.”  You know what it’s talking about? Are you obedient to your own faith?  They’re obedient to the faith.  Faith is the gospel.  Listen to me.   Faith is the synonym for the entire gospel.   Faith is the channel through which God's grace is imparted and all spiritual blessings flow. 

That statement is accurate and paramount and therefore must not be lightly glossed over.  It should not be strange then that the New Testament writers began to use the word 'Faith' as a technical term depicting the whole body of truth known as the gospel.

 Now let’s go to II Corinthians 13:5.  To the Corinthians God’s faithful servant Paul wrote “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith” … what does it mean?  It means are you obedient to the gospel… Now another one.  In II Timothy 4:7 “I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.”  What does that mean?  I have been obedient to the gospel.  The truth about Jesus Christ.  So faith is a synonym for the entire gospel.  It says here in each of these verses that the designation of faith was used to encapsulate the whole body of truth related to the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ - that such should be the case served to underscore the early Church’s awareness of the critical and central part faith played in the regeneration of a sinner through the Holy Spirit.

What caused you to be born again?   The gospel.  What caused you to come to Christ?  The gospel.  The fact that Jesus died, rose again, this is the gospel, this is the truth, the entire truth that Paul wrote about, that the gospels that Timothy wrote about that Hebrews wrote about is talking about the truth, the entire gospel or the Word.  Faith is taking God at his word.  You take God at His word.  Jesus said Will I find faith when I return.  What is he talking about? Do people believe in the Word anymore?  Do they believe in the gospel anymore?  They’re beginning to take it apart and tear it apart and tear apart and some say it’s truth and some say it isn’t true. And you know, we’re going to lose some people that way.  Because their faith is not founded and they’re going to turn aside, they’re going to start listening to that.  And they’re going to drop away from the Lord.  And as the time of the Lord grows near and it gets closer and closer to His return people we’re going to struggle.  We’re going to have struggles on this earth.

Don’t turn away from the truth.   Don’t turn away from the gospel of Jesus Christ. The fact that He died for you, that He rose again and that He is in Heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for you as the Great High Priest.    Don’t turn away from that. Don’t turn away from the writings of Paul.  Actually, if it hadn’t been for Paul we wouldn’t understand the gospel as well as we do because Jesus Christ himself taught Paul the gospel.  So, what do you think of that?  Isn’t God good? Is there anything worth turning aside for in comparison to God.  In comparison to what Jesus has done for us?  I look at that time and time again I think Lord, you know I don’t really have a complaint.  I don’t have a complaint.  When I measure it up to what God went through for His people, I don't have any complaints.  And I think what we do is, we narrow our vision down so small so that all we see is what's right around us, and we lose our vision of how big this is; how beautiful this is, and how great His salvation is. That's what I think happens to us and I think that's how we fall away.  And if we get just one little root in our heart, it begins to widen the gap.  You know what, I don't know what that story's called, but you remember that little guy who put his finger in the dyke?  And he held the dyke so Holland wouldn't wash away.   You remember that? Well, a little crack had formed and he had to put his finger in there or it would have washed the town away.  And we have to fill the cracks.   We have to not let cracks form in us to where we're going to be flooded away of bitterness, of anything that comes against us.  The devil knows our weakness and he knows what will pull us away.  But yet God knows that, too. And God wants you to be strong in that area because He allows us to go through trials in the areas of our weaknesses.

It's what He does.

Faith part I ~ Nuggets From God's Word ~ Our Hebrew Heritage