Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is essential for pleasing God and experiencing His blessings, and biblical faith operates through several key dynamics. The sermon emphasizes the importance of resting faith in the person of Christ, not in mere human effort or other objects, citing Jeremiah 17:5-7 to contrast trusting in man with trusting in the Lord. It also highlights the necessity of claiming God's promises, as demonstrated by Abraham and Paul, and trusting in God's ability to fulfill them, as seen in Ephesians 3:20 and Hebrews 7:25. Finally, the message asserts that increased faith leads to increased blessing, with trials serving as catalysts for faith development, ultimately urging listeners to trust Christ alone as the sure foundation.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.41 → restored 4.55
to linger and the sweetness of his presence be manifest from our lives. There's another way that we're to respond to the Lord and it's of course a response of faith. Without faith it is impossible to please him. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he's a rewarder of them who diligently seek him. This morning I would like to speak to you concerning the dynamics of faith. And these are brought out in Matthew chapter nine, verses twenty-seven through twenty-nine, the dynamics of faith, beginning at Matthew chapter nine and verse twenty-seven. It's difficult to believe the Lord as we ought and to get maximum blessing from faith unless we understand the dynamics of faith.
We really need to understand how biblical faith operates. And you see, this applies to any activity of life. If a person went to play a soccer game and knew nothing of the rules, they would be ridiculous. If one of us got into a spaceship, most of us wouldn't even know the first button to push, much less the hundreds of other knobs and buttons that we would have to push, pull, or manipulate. And so we wouldn't be quite ready to fly that spaceship to the moon because we simply would not understand how it operates. Now, fortunately, the dynamics of faith are not as complicated as flying a spaceship to the moon. As a matter of fact, they're very, very simple.
But it's amazing how often they're overlooked. And I really believe the first and most important dynamic of faith is taught by the Bible is this. We need to have faith in the Lord's person. Scripture always directs our faith to rest, to repose in the person of the Lord. You see, it's not only important that we believe, it's important who and what we believe. There are people who are not Christians who in time of crisis will simply suggest to you, have faith. And we have the right to answer back, faith in who, faith in what? You can have a very strong mountain climbing rope, but if you pitch it up and hook it on a twig or a pebble, I sure don't want to swing out over the golf bike.
You see, it's important what it's attached to. And it's supremely important in whom, in what, our faith rests or repose. And any other resting place for our faith other than the rock of our salvation, Jesus Christ, will ultimately fail. In terms of salvation, someone has said, when you read First Corinthians three eleven, other foundation can no man lay than that that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. We don't build a foundation. We believe on the foundation that the Father has laid. And all other rocks is shamrock. When all other rocks have washed away and been demolished, there will be the one rock of salvation still standing. And we who have faith in the rock of our salvation, Jesus Christ, have a sure salvation.
But you see, this principle also carries across in terms of living the Christian life. It's easy to be a reversionist. That is to begin our faith in the person of Jesus Christ, but begin to gather a few props to kind of hold us up along the way. And sometimes God has to simply knock all these props out from under us, and all we have left is naked faith in the living Lord, but we find it absolutely sufficient, faith in His person. And we might take a moment or two. I'd like for us to turn back to Jeremiah and verses five and seven.
Jeremiah seventeen verses five and seven. At the close of our meeting, our brother reminded us from Jeremiah nine verse twenty three, twenty four, along in there that we should not boast except in the Lord. And that's precisely true. Our boast should not be except in the Lord and our faith should be only in him. In Jeremiah, we get this very pointed statement, Thus says the Lord, Cursed be the man that trustseth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. That's the negative. For the positive, just let your eyes drop down to verse seven.
What a difference, the difference between cursing and blessing. Verse seven, Blessed is the man who trustseth in the Lord. And whose hope the Lord is? Now, there are many things that we can trust in besides the Lord. There are some people who will trust in a little plastic figurine on the dashboard of a car and hope that somehow that will get them through the freeway traffic carefully. Other folk, very intelligent folk, will carry a rabbit's foot with them or some other superstitious object. And you see, Satan doesn't care who or what we trust in. Satan doesn't care whether the person's knocking on wood, trusting in a rabbit's foot.
Satan doesn't care if you're trusting in a little green man sitting on Mars eating a toasted cheese sandwich. He doesn't care a bit if that's what you're trusting in. Just so you're not trusting in the Lord. And when we look at the Bible, we indeed find people of God trusting the Lord Himself. It's not even faith in faith that saves us. We're not trusting in faith. The Philippian jailer was not told, believe on faith, and thou shalt be saved. He wasn't told, believe in thou shalt be saved. He wasn't told, chin up, and thou shalt be saved. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Abraham didn't believe in belief. Abraham believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness.
And in my own experience, what I've seen the Lord do, and maybe you have in your experience, is what I call the reduction process, where He will simply, once again, remove all of these false objects of faith from us, knock all the props out from under us, until all we have, like Job, is naked faith in the living God, and find its submission. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. I have a son who is almost twenty-one, and we're Delighted with him. He's interested in the Lord and gave his testimony in our chapel this previous Sunday. And he prepared about two hours Saturday night. And then he got up about seven thirty and he was there about two hours before the remembrance meeting, going over what he was going to say.
And he prepared for about five to ten minutes. And that's about how long it was. It's quite different from my message. My first one I prepared for forty-five minutes' message and got it done in about four and a half minutes' flat. They've lengthened a bit since then. But we were just fellowshiping together and sharing how sometimes it seems like you're on a big block of ice in the Christian life. And it just starts melting and melting and melting. And you wonder how far it's going to go before there's nothing left and you just sink in the water. But it seems like it stops so there's enough room for you and the Lord. And if we could look at that block of ice and a figure under us, we would find that it won't melt, that it's supported by titanium steel. that we're perfectly safe, one-on-one with the Lord.
Do you ever get reduced that way? So it just seems that even your friends and family can't understand you. And you find yourself left in a one-on-one relationship with the Lord. That's what Job was reduced to. But faith in the Lord is sufficient. So he slay me, yet will I trust in him. It's not only important who we trust, but it's also important to realize that when we trust the Lord's promises, We're also trusting in Him. He is worthy. He alone is the proper object for our faith. And that does lead us to our second dynamic principle. The first is, have faith in the Lord's person. And this is brought out as we read verses twenty-seven and twenty-eight of Matthew nine.
And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out and saying, Have mercy on us, Son of David. And after he had come into the house, the blind men came up to him, and Jesus said to them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said to him, Yes, Lord. Do you believe that I am able to do this? He directs their faith to his person. Have faith in the Lord's person, but also, secondly, by faith, claim the Lord's promises. I really believe that when the Lord said, Do you believe that I am able to do this?
He was implying, I will give sight to your blind eyes if you are able to believe it. In other words, he was throwing out a promise to these men. Believing the promise of God is really having confidence in the person of the Lord. Think with me once again to the case of Abraham where Abraham believed the Lord and it was counted to him for righteousness. In the preceding verses, what has the Lord done? He given him a wonderful promise. Abraham, Eleazar, this steward is not going to be your heir, but a son that shall come forth from your loins. And Abraham said, I believe it, Lord. I believe your promise. And the Bible says he believed in the Lord.
Same thing with the great apostle of the New Testament, the apostle Paul. They were on a ship, and it looked like everybody was going to be lost, two hundred and seventy-six passengers. And Paul had a word from the Lord. And Paul said, sir, if you stay aboard, not one is going to be lost. Now, if you had some Las Vegas gamblers there, they would have been saying that the odds are a billion to one that anyone would ever be saved from that ship. Paul said not one is going to be lost. God does not go by human averages. God is the God whom we see who is invisible, and we can claim his promises for the impossible.
And Paul said in Acts, twenty-seven, twenty-five, Wherefore, sirs, I believe God that it shall be, even if it was told me. And every one of those two hundred and seventy-six men made it to shore. Abraham believed the Lord. He believed the promises of God. Paul believed the Lord. He believed the promises of God. For you see, his reputation stands behind his word. A skeptic asked an elderly Christian lady. He said, my dear lady, suppose you were to claim a promise of God and God did not fulfill it. What would you do? He said, well, I would lose my request, but the Lord would lose his reputation.
And that's never going to happen. His reputation stands behind his word. Now let's be practical here and recognize that in this book, there are literally hundreds of exceeding great and precious promises, Second Peter one, three and four. And God's attitude towards his promises are one hundred percent positive. He says in Second Corinthians one twenty, all the promises of God in him are yes and in him amen. Now if that's God's attitude towards the promises, what should our attitude be when we see a promise? We should say yes. Amen. We're repeating what the Lord has already said about his promises.
Let's take it further. Let me just give you three examples from just one small book in the New Testament of promises. Go to the book of James. Now in James one, five and six, it tells us if we lack wisdom, we can ask the Lord. He won't call us on the carpet, but he will liberally give us wisdom. And that passage is in a context of trials. When trial comes our way, we usually respond by saying, which way now? Where did I go from here? How do we handle this one, Lord? And we ask for wisdom in faith, and God gives it. Let me ask you, have within the past few weeks you had a decision that has come up?
Maybe you can use a little wisdom from the Lord. Well, I've just had bushels of them, if you know what I mean. I used to live under deception that... Once I got older, out of college, and had a job, I wouldn't have any more decisions. They'd all be set. They'd all be made. But see, there's some decisions that never have been made that if the Lord carries, I'll have to make when to retire. Where will I live? As a matter of fact, the older I get, the more decisions I have to make. How about you? And the less wisdom I find I have and the more needs for the Lord's wisdom, here's a promise. God says, I've got plenty. The storehouse is not empty. Ask, you shall receive. Now, suppose there are some of you, and this is very likely, as you grow in your Christian life, the Lord tends to give you more responsibilities, and often they're heavier responsibilities.
In other words, He expands the responsibilities and the gravity of those responsibilities. And the problem is, you already feel like you're a bucket full of water. that's got that rim that one more drop than it's going to run over. And you say, Lord, it's enough. I can't take any more, and yet this seems to be your will. The Bible says he giveth more grace. God resists at the proud, but he giveth grace to the humble. An obvious solution here is to submit ourselves to the Lord. Let humility be the vow that turns on the grace of God. And at the end of the day, you know what you'll say? Well, Lord, you grace me through another day. And he'll grace you through another day.
And another day. For John one sixteenth as he gives grace in exchange for grace. He replaces one measure of grace with a greater measure of grace. You say, well, Lord, we just made it through today, but tomorrow I think it's going to crush us. And God will give a greater measure of grace. My grace is sufficient for it. A third promise in James is James four, eight. Now the one about grace was James four, six. God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. In James four eight he says, draw an eye to God and he will draw an eye to you. I've actually heard Christian people on occasion say, the Lord seems like he's a million miles away.
Now they weren't denying the omniscience of God or the presence of God. He knows all and he's present everywhere. But what they were saying is, he just doesn't seem that close and real and experiential to me. But if you take this promise, if you move an inch toward the Lord in true worship and faith, he'll move many miles toward you. And he'll be so real to you that when you sit down for a meal, you just feel like pulling up an extra chair for the Lord Jesus. His presence will be so real and manifest to you. And his glow will seem to be upon your face, like Moses, who came down from the presence of the Lord from Mount Sinai. All we've done here is looked at three promises from one tiny book in the New Testament, the Book of James.
And be sure, we haven't exhausted the promises in the Book of James at all. We've just picked out three of the many that are there. We're not exaggerating when we say there are hundreds of exceeding great and precious promises. But they won't do us one ounce of good unless we come to face appropriation. Any one of us here could own a grocery store, stand right in the middle of it, starve to death. Just never takes the grocers off the shelf. And see, God has put these promises on the shelf for His people. But we have to reach out by faith and protect them. As one person says, you know, when I come to the Word of God, I want to feed on the promises. I want to come and take some deep faith swallows.
And that's what we need to do. When we come to this book filled with precious promises, if you started underlining these with a pencil, the thing would wear out before you got through them. Your ink pen would run out of ink. It is just full of them, bristling over, very nourishing. I recommend that diet. Take a deep faith swallow when you come to this book. It won't put the Lord in a corner. He's well able to fulfill His promises. Abraham said he was persuaded that what God had promised he was able also to do. But believing God sets up a tremendous battle in the Christian life. And I guess in studying this passage, one of the things that impressed me the most is this.
Whenever you go to believe the Lord for something, you have a first-class battle on your hand. Satan simply does not want us to get the plug of faith into the socket of God's promise because he knows we're going to get blessed. And he does not want that to happen to you or to me. So here we have these two blind men. And in verse twenty-seven, once again, it says that they were following him, crying out and saying, Have mercy on us, son of David. After he'd come into the house, the blind men came up to him, and Jesus said to them, Do you believe that I'm able to do this? I can't imagine a more ridiculous situation than two blind men saying, Follow the leader, can you?
That's what was happening here. And I'm sure Satan came up alongside them and said, Look, you can't get two in. You'll fail in following him, and even if you catch him, he won't do a thing for you. But these fellows kept believing. They kept pumping. They kept running. And I don't know how they could do this. I don't know whether because of loss of sight, their ears were so akin that they could tell the direction he was moving in or follow the crowd. I don't know whether they had some special radar or what. But they got to him. But there was a tremendous obstacle there. There were probably people in the crowd saying, give it up, quit. You can never get to Him.
But boy, these guys didn't know they couldn't. And they did. They kept following by faith. And the Lord honored that faith. Sometimes the obstacle to our faith may indeed be physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. I think about the woman with the hemorrhage of blood. People, the passage says that People were crowding in upon the Lord Jesus. Now, you tell me how she got close enough to touch the hem of his garment. When the evidence would almost imply there that a big strapping man would have trouble getting to him, the crowd was just that dense. And, of course, she would be anemic having this hemorrhage of blood. Did she fall on her knees and just swim through the legs?
Maybe so. Did she just trust the Lord so that providentially passed that way? I don't know. But one thing for sure, she did not let the obstacle of anemia nor the crowd keep her from Christ. And that's precisely what Satan wants us to do, is to keep our faith from getting in touch with the person of Jesus Christ. We'll cite case after case here. We want to exhaust the cases where people went to put the plug of faith into the socket of God's promise, and Satan dropped a shield. He dropped an obstacle. He dropped a hurdle. But the same faith that brought the blessing was the faith that overcame the obstacle. You remember when the Four Men of Faith went to bring the paralytic to the Lord Jesus?
Again, who was in the way? The crowd, the influence of the crowd, you see. So they just go topside and come right down through the roof. Now, if that had happened in some of our situations, we've said, Oh, no, now you've done it. You've interrupted our home Bible study. Or maybe the hostess would have said, we'll sue you for a roof. The scripture says, the Lord Jesus saw their what? Saw their faith. Ah, that's what he was looking for. He was looking for that exercise of faith, and he found it. And the first thing he did was forgive that young man his sins.
We think of other cases. We think of Jairus as he was coming to his home. hoping that the Lord Jesus could heal his daughter, who was at the point of death. And then some people came and said, she's already dead. Don't bother the master or the teacher anymore. Well, we're not a bother to the Lord. We can cast our burdens upon the Lord. And the Lord Jesus gave a wonderful verse there. The literal translation is, keep on believing. And you see all these bumper stickers, keep on this, keep on that. The Lord's word to us says, keep on believing. And his faith, when his daughter died, must have just taken a nose die.
And the crowd said, don't bother him. It's too late. But Jairus didn't listen to the crowd. He listened to Christ. He kept on believing. And the Lord raised his daughter from the dead. We could go on and mention Abraham. Sometimes impossibilities are the barriers between faith and the Lord. Sayer was barren. Both of them were beyond the age of having children. But Abraham went ahead and ordered his pamphlets. He believed that God was going to fulfill his promise. The Bible says he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief. What would you have done had a promise like that come to you? Most of us would have staggered back. This means he didn't just reel back in unbelief, but he stood flat-footed and said, I believe.
God is able to perform what he has promised, and God did it. These are the dynamics of faith. But there's a battle whenever we would exercise belief. The same belief that brings the blessing is the belief that overcomes the barriers. Brothers and sisters, keep on believing. God has never put in a corner. He's never put on a spot. Nothing honors him like worship, love, devotion, and believing his word. Cursed is he who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength. Blessed is he who trusts in the Lord. A fourth thing in the dynamic of faith is that we should rest our faith in God's ability.
A man once came to the Lord Jesus with a son about whom he was very distressed. He had a condition where he would cast himself in the fire and in the water. You wonder how many times people had maybe given this son artificial respiration and just brought him back from the brink of death. Was there a square inch on his skin that was not scarred by fire? The father was desperate. And he said, Lord, if you can do anything, help us. Jesus Christ took that statement, turned it at a hundred and eighty degrees and said, all things are possible to him who believes. The issue is never can God do it. The issue is always, can we believe it? And he cried out with tears and said, Lord, I believe help my unbelief and the Lord heals his son.
God is able. I would suggest that sometimes as a personal study, we take a concordance and just look up the word able and ability where it applies to the Lord. It will bless your soul. Let's think of a few of them now. Ephesians three twenty in prayer, he's able to do what? Exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. Or if we look at another passage, such as Hebrews, seven, twenty-five, he is able to save us to the uttermost. To you, twenty-four and twenty-five, he is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us false before his presence of his glory. God is able. You'll never believe the Lord for more than you believe he is able.
And I want to digress here and be careful that I'm not misunderstood. The purpose of a worship meeting is indeed to worship. And sometimes you hear people who are critical and they say, well, I didn't get anything out of it. Well, they came for the wrong purpose. We come to give the Lord because He is worthy. It's not horse trading, you see. It's not back slapping. We come because, as the passage Brother Star read, again and again it says, Thou art worthy to receive glory, honor, and power. We come to give worship because He is worthy. Now, that should be our motive. However, and don't misunderstand, however, as a side effect, as a result, we should not be surprised as a side effect, a result.
The Lord gives us a greater love, a greater sense of His ability to believe Him for more. That's not the purpose of the meeting. That's one of the blessed spin-offs of the meeting. That's one of the blessed results that takes place in the believer's life. Whenever you seek Him, God starts putting more in the little cart of blessing that follows you behind you. Now, if you turn and try to grab those blessings, what will happen, you'll miss them and you'll miss worshiping the Lord both. But if you seek the Lord and His kingdom and His worship, love and faith, Those blessings will just tag along right on behind you. And you'll begin to develop a concept of the wonder, the grandeur, and the greatness of God that will just draw out your faith and my faith in a way never before him.
Our faith will never exceed our concept of the greatness and the ability of God. This is one of the reasons Paul says that I may what? That I may know him, the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his suffering. Our fifth dynamic of faith here is, increase your faith for increased blessing. And in verse twenty nine it says, Then touch tither I, saying, According to your faith, be it unto you. We could literally translate this, up to the measure of your faith, so may the measure of your blessing be. The measure of our belief is the measure of our blessing. And we may say, well, I would like to have an increase of faith.
Luke seventeen five, Lord increase our faith. One of the ways the Lord increases our faith is through trials, James one, first Peter one. Trials are God's faith increterators. And what happens is when we get into a trial, we find ourselves broken and maybe even tears falling on these white pages of Scripture. Has that ever happened to you? Big twenty pound black Bible lying out on the bed. and salty start flowing and falling on those pages. You're just all broken up, heavy-hearted, and burdened. You really begin searching for those promises, and you're not playing any little devotional games. You mean business with God because you're in a tight place and you've got to get through to God.
You're burdened. You're heavy and you're pouring your heart out to Him. And you begin in those trials to claim the promises of God. And faith begins to be exercised, and just like a muscle, the more faith is exercised, the stronger it gets. If God didn't put trials in our lives, we would not be brought to the point of exercising faith in the promises, and our faith would tend to atrophy instead of growth. Trace it out in Abraham's life. God took him up the stair steps of faith to the pinnacle of victory, where in faith he said, I'm going to offer Isaac, but he told the servants, I'm going to what? I'm going to worship God. But he had to go up the stair steps of trials.
God's faith increased the rate. And those stair steps of trials were stair steps to glory of a glorious faith. The faith we bring is the measure, the blessing we receive. If someone told us, I know where a fruit tree of infinite height is, then some of us might bring a two-foot ladder. And if we're six feet tall, then we'd get about eight feet height of fruit in our baskets. If somebody else brings a four-foot ladder, they'd get some more of the fruit. If someone brings a ten-foot ladder, well, they get that plus the height of their reach. But then there might be a quite elderly person of much more faith, and the ladder's going back this way. You know how they do when you hardly hold them, and they finally get it up against there.
And it's a big sixteen-footer. They get more than anyone else. Do you know the person here at the greatest faith could be the youngest person, some junior high or teenage young person? It's possible older people, and we have to recognize that. And the person with the greatest faith could be the oldest person here because of the length of walk with the Lord. Only God knows how much you have and how much I have. I can't measure that, and you can't either. But I know this. According to the measure of your belief, so will the measure of the Lord be in his blessing to you and me. And the greatest steps that any one of us can take if we have not done so is the step not out of the spaceship onto the moon, but the step of faith to trust Jesus Christ as Savior.
On the rock of salvation, all of the rocks will be shamrocks, but that rock will stand forever. And the greatest mistake we can make is to neglect so great salvation. No one ever got saved by neglecting Jesus Christ. Again, that's like trusting in the parachute that opens on impact. It's too late. Neglecting, never saved anyone. Trusting Jesus Christ to save everyone who's ever done it. Be sure you've done it. And be sure we can say from our hearts today, Lord Jesus, I'm trusting you and you alone. Curse it as he who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength.
Blessed are you who trust in the Lord. Father, we thank you that we can so trust your Son, Jesus Christ, as we trust you. Believe in God. Believe also in me. You tell us. And Father, we thank you that all things are possible to him that believe us. Father, we ask you now to search out needs in our midst. And may we be quick to connect those needs to the precious promises of your word and claim them. We know that your reputation, your faithfulness cannot fail. God is able to perform what He has promised, Father. Help us to do spiritual business with you right before you this morning, Lord.
And see burdens lifted, needs met, problems begin to be solved, and souls saved for anyone who has not yet trusted Him as Savior. Thank you again for this sweet remembrance, Father. And again we ask that the aroma of it may go with us as we go forth to do your will and your work. For Christ's sake, amen.