Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 31. Faith that faces death

Heb 11:33,34 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames , and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies

In the previous meditation, we moved from the more general description of Old Testament faith actions to the first of the specific events alluded to, noting that the first reference to those “ who shut the mouths of lions ,” must surely refer to Daniel in the lion's den found in Daniel, chapter 6. We now move on to the second specific event being alluded to. When the writer speaks of those who “quenched the fury of the flames,” he surely refers to Daniel's friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, in the fiery furnace found in Daniel, chapter 3.

It is an amazing story and one that has a unique element to it. It starts with King Nebuchadnezzar, not at one of his finest moments. He has made a great idol and instructs that all the leading men of his kingdom should come and bow down before it. (see Dan 3:1-7) Now of course, for those Jews who fitted in this category such a requirement went against the first of the Ten Commandments and so they would feel obliged to disobey this command. When they did that, others pointed them out to the king and required them to be put to death by being thrown into a fiery furnace. (see Dan 3:8-12) Nebuchadnezzar has them brought before him and challenges them (see Dan 3:13-16)

It is then that we find this amazing declaration by these three men: “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Dan 3:16-18)

Now note what they are saying. First of all we believe our God will deliver us from this death. However, second, if He in His sovereign will decides He wants us to die, then that is fine by us, but we won't disobey Him and worship your idol.

Now see the strength of this. First, they are willing to withstand the king's command because it is wrong. It is wrong before the Lord and it is only because of the Lord that it is wrong. He is the one who decrees what is right or wrong, and wrong tends to be that which goes against His design for humanity. To worship idols is superstitious nonsense and detracts from knowing the Lord, so it is wrong. It is that simple.

Second, they are willing to do it, knowing that there will be consequences, bad consequences. The reality is that standing up against the world's values and against Satan and his agents has consequences. The world seeks to get us to conform to their ways of thinking and behaving. They reinforce their behaviour by flaunting it on TV and in films and if we dare speak against it, the wrath and derision of the world is forthcoming. They would seek to write us off, remove us from the equation of community living, pretend we are not there or, in other words, destroy us. In communist and fundamentalist Islamic or Hindu countries Christians are severely persecuted and in some, even seeking to share the Gospel incurs a capital punishment.

In the West we have not got to that yet, and yet as the Western world tries to combat terrorism, the enemy takes the opportunity to lump Christians into the category of extremist religious zealots who are a danger to society. The first signs are there. The enemy is working to annul us in this way and so we must pray against it and seek to be such good examples of life-giving salt and light that we will be seen to be essential elements of society. I am told that in the early days of the Church, in some parts of the Roman Empire when a particular Caesar issued an edict against the Christians, local Roman governors who knew the value of having these Christians in their midst, warned them to flee until the dust had settled and it had passed by.

Third, they believe that God can deliver them. They believe in the supernatural intervention of God. The whole of the Bible testifies to this truth, that God is all-powerful and can act on behalf of His people to deliver them. There is a certain, almost humorous thread running through the Acts of the apostles as the Lord delivers His men. We see it in the early days: “Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem , bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed. Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. "Go, stand in the temple courts," he said, "and tell the people the full message of this new life. (Acts 5:16-20 ) The apostles heal large numbers (v.16), the Jewish authorities get jealous (v.17), have the apostles put in jail (v.18), but in the night an angel lets them out (v.19), and tells them to carry on preaching the Gospel (v.20). Excellent! The same thing happened with Peter (Acts 12) and the earthquake that shook Paul & Silas lose (Acts 16) was clearly more than an earth shaking, as all the chains also fell off! God at work.

Fourth, and here is the really challenging thing, these three men are willing to accept the sovereign will of God, even if it means their death – and that will not change their stance. There are times when the Lord does not step in to save people from death. Stephen was the first Christian martyr (see Acts 7). Herod had the apostle James put to death (Acts 12:2). In the early years of the Church there were hundreds of martyrs. In the two thousand years of the Christian church there have been thousands of martyrs. For the Christian, death is merely the stepping stone into their inheritance in eternity. Do we have a robust belief in heaven? If that part of our faith package? Do we believe in a God who saves both from death and through death? Perhaps the biggest question is, are we receivers of His grace in such a measure we can cope with whatever the world puts before us, trusting that our God will do what is right and be there for us with all that we need to meet any circumstance? May it be so.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 32. Faith leads to deliverance

Heb 11:33,34 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies

How easy to disdain a few words. I mean, what significance could “and escaped the edge of the sword ” have? What does it mean? The ‘edge of the sword' has got to refer to death by violence in battle . Daniel and his three friends, who we have recently considered, escaped death by punishment, unwarranted punishment certainly, but nevertheless, death by punishment . We might pause and reflect for a moment that that is at the starting point of all our faith – faith that starts with God, faith that realises we are sinners, and faith that receives a Saviour who delivers us from punishment for our Sin and instead makes us part of God's family, to be with Him for eternity. Yes, all of that comes by faith and that is, if you like, the starting point for our life of faith. But then we have to confront one who is referred to as a Destroyer who has been given permission to discipline those who disobey God – not eternal destruction (that is covered in the previous description) but temporary discipline. Satan would want to destroy but God says “Thus far and no further”. There is an aspect of God's discipline, I believe, that is just about us living in this Fallen World and having to cope with the mishaps that come our way. The lesson He is always trying to teach us is, “Rely on Me, be strong in Me.”

It is a lesson in faith that was behind so much activity we see in the Old Testament when we look at those who “escaped the edge of the sword”. The first one who comes to mind is David before he became king and was being pursued by Saul. There were various occasions when David ‘escaped the edge of the sword'. The first was when the Ziphites offered to show Saul where David was hiding in the wilderness (1 Sam 23:19,20) and we find , “ As Saul and his forces were closing in on David and his men to capture them, a messenger came to Saul, saying, "Come quickly! The Philistines are raiding the land." Then Saul broke off his pursuit of David and went to meet the Philistines.” (1 Sam 23:26-28) There was no mention of the Lord there but it appears rather a large coincidence that Saul gets called away at that point. In 1 Sam 24 we see another similar situation and then in 26:1 the Ziphites come to Saul again but a second time David spares Sail's life. Again and again Saul chases David and again and again he eludes him. You need to read David's psalms to realise he attributes his deliverance to the Lord. He is a man of faith as we have already seen in an earlier study.

The second person who comes to mind is Elijah who flees from Jezebel in 1 Kings 19 because she threatens his life (v.1,2). He flees a day's journey into the desert where an angel comes and provides for him: “All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you." So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God .” (v.5-8) This is clearly the Lord looking after him and at Horeb he encounters the Lord and is given new tasks.

The third person is Elisha who is also being pursued by the enemy as seen in 2 Kings 6 and they follow him to the city of Dothan where he is staying. When his servant goes up on the walls of the city in the morning he sees “an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city.” (v.15) and is terrified. Elisha understands a different reality: “Don't be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And Elisha prayed, "O LORD, open his eyes so he may see." Then the LORD opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (v.16,17). He then moves with prophetic anointing to deal with the ‘natural army' out there with ‘spiritual' means. Another man of faith delivered from the edge of the sword.

For us, Jesus taught us to pray, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” (Mt 6:13) That, I suggest, will be as big as our faith allows it to be. We are also to remember that “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 Jn 4:4) You and I are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the presence of God Himself. It is good to sometimes remember the Old Testament promises as well, such as, “He will not let your foot slip-- he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD watches over you-- the LORD is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all harm-- he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” (Psa 121:3-8) As we trust in Him, as we pray for protection, as we receive His grace to live wisely, we too may know that He will deliver us from destructive powers and circumstances and IF (as Shadrach and friends would have said) He deems it otherwise, then it is simply because either a) He sees a learning situation here for you or b) He wants you with Him in heaven for some purpose, but MOSTLY we may trust in those words and we too can know that He is a God who interacts with His people of faith to deliver from the edge of the sword (or any other violent situation confronting us). Hallelujah! If you've never done it before, may I recommend learning that Psalm 121 and declaring the truth of it daily.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 33. Faith makes strong

Heb 11:33,34 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies

The starting point in spiritual realities is always weakness. The world says be strong, be handsome, be beautiful, be successful, but all those thing are transitory and deceptive. We may achieve a measure of strength, we may be one of the world's ‘beautiful people' but all that happens is that it focuses us on ourselves and that, frequently, means not on Him, and self-deception so often leads to self-destruction.

As true as that is as a general principle, it is specifically true about faith. ‘Big' people in the Christian world, and especially on Christian TV so-called, so often look utterly confident, full of faith, strong and bright, and we think, “If only I could be the same.” It is deception. Yes, I believe in a God who blesses and prospers us (whatever that may mean in our own circumstances) and who wants us to be successful in what we put our hands to, but every single one of us, from TV superstar Christian to the lowliest believers is still human, is still mortal and is still prone to getting it wrong on occasion.

Listen to the testimony of what has probably been one of the most spectacular Christians in all of history, the apostle Paul, in those famous verses about this subject: “ But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12;9,10) This was a man with the most amazing revelation and because of it he recognized that the Lord needed to keep him humble.

Listen to some more of his testimony: “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” (Phil 4:11-13) He had been poor and he had been well off but neither situation was the important issue; the issue was whether he could know God's presence, God's peace and God's provision in any and every situation.

If we haven't yet got the message listen again: “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil 3:4-11)

I have included that length quote in full because it says so much. Paul had had so many things going for him that he had every ground to feel confident in himself, but one day on the road to Damascus he had encountered Jesus and never felt the same again. From then on all those self-confidence things he considered as pure rubbish. He was a nothing, a nobody – except in Christ who declared him righteous and gave him a future which will continue on into heaven - but it was nothing to do with his own strength, his own good looks, his own past successes, or his own education; he saw them for what they were – meaningless deceptions.

So where does the strength come in? “whose weakness was turned to strength.” How did that happen? It happened as these weak people believed in God, trusted in God – had faith – and then He moved and the Spirit came and stirred them into action. This is where it all happens. If you hear any message of peace and prosperity and confidence building that does not talk about receiving the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, being led by the Spirit and being empowered by the Spirit, it is deception or only part of the message. Faith is about responding to God who comes by His Spirit, in and through the work of Jesus on the Cross, and takes us in our weakness and does amazing things through us – HE does amazing things.

On one hand the book of Judges is quite depressing, watching how again and again Israel turn away from the Lord and are given over by Him to disciplining at the hands of enemy neighbours, but on the other hand it is an amazing testimony to the grace and power of the Lord as again and again we see the Spirit of God come on individuals and taking weak men and raising them up to become mighty deliverers who become “powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.” If you want to do a study on it, see how many times the words “The Spirit of the Lord came upon…” in Judges. Look up Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11;29, 13:25, 14:6,19 and 15:14 and see what happened when He did that – weak men became strong.

HE is the answer to your question, “How can I be strong?” Instead of focusing on how we can be strong, be beautiful, be handsome, be successful, be powerful and so on, focus on Him and His will (Mt 6:33) I like the way the Message Version puts those Matt 6 verses that speak of this: “ What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with   getting,   so you can respond to God's   giving . People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”

Teaching a prayer group that I lead, I had to say to them a little while back, “Focus on God, unfocus on the answers.” So often we are preoccupied with what we think God should do in answering our prayers, including making us successful and strong. Instead when we focus on Him and what HE wants instead of what we want, it opens up a whole new range of possibilities. Do strong people, clever people and wise people walk on water? No, they don't because they know you can't do it. Weak people who trust Jesus, people of simple faith, walk on water and end up having testimonies that put the rest of us to shame. Ponder on this.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 34. Not just men

Heb 11:35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again.

There is a very simple, basic and fundamental truth here: when things go wrong and we are faced with the impossible, God has got to be our refuge for no one else can deal with the impossible. Here in this simple sentence in our verse above we have two stories with great similarities and they both involve faith in a women. Earlier in this series we considered the faith of Rahab who ended up in the genealogy of the Messiah in Matthew chapter 1, but also included there are Tamar and Ruth (v.3 & 5). You find Tamar's story in Gen 38 and of course Ruth's story in the book of Ruth. All three were Gentiles and all three were women of faith. There is also an indirect reference to Bathsheba in Matt 1:6 with “ Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife.” Possibly a step too far for Matthew to actually name her but she was a woman of faith who was joined to the Messianic family. All women of faith.

But the two women in the Old Testament who received back their dead sons by faith were the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:17-24) and the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:8-36), each who put their trust in the Lord through the ministries of Elijah and Elisha respectively.

First of all the widow of Zarephath . She already shown herself to be a woman of faith who had encountered Elijah in the time of severe drought. In the time of shortage the Lord specifically sent Elijah to her (1 Kings 17:8) and he had instructed her to make a loaf of bread for them with her last flour and oil and said her jar of flour and oil would never run out. To give her last food away was a distinct act of faith, responding to the man of God, but she did it and experienced a miracle of provision (1 Kings 17:15,16) When her son subsequently becomes ill and dies, she challenges Elijah over the reason for it happening. Now note she doesn't assume it is just one of those things that happen in life, but she puts a spiritual dimension to it. God is a life-provider and God is a life-taker, so was her son dying an act of God to punish her for her imperfect life?

How many of us look at the down times of our lives and wonder is God punishing us? My mother, who came to the Lord late in life, expressed this similarly when something went wrong early in her new Christian life. My answer was the same then as it is now: It is always possible that God may be disciplining or training us, to draw us closer to Him and to teach us to rely upon Him, but he will not be punishing you for your sin because Jesus has died to take all your punishment. So be clear, as His child, He will not be punishing you! She prayed and climbed out of the bad situation. In Elijah's case he prays and “The LORD heard Elijah's cry, and the boy's life returned to him, and he lived .” (1 Kings 17:22) Faith provoked prayer which brought life.

The second case was the Shunammite woman who had encountered Elisha: “One day Elisha went to Shunem. And a well-to-do woman was there, who urged him to stay for a meal.” (2 Kings 4:8) as a follow on to that, she and her husband set up a room that Elisha could come and use whenever he passed by there. One day Elisha asked her what he could do to repay her kindness but she said she had everything she needed (see 2 Kings 4:11-13) so he asked his servant about her and he pointed out, “Well, she has no son and her husband is old.” (v.14) to which Elisha prophesies to her, “About this time next year, you will hold a son in your arms.” (v.16) A year later she has a son.

Some time later when the boy was still relatively young, one day he complained of head pains and died. (v.19,20) Now note what takes place – Elisha is not there: “She called her husband and said, "Please send me one of the servants and a donkey so I can go to the man of God quickly and return.” (v.22) Her instinctive reaction is to go and send for Elisha. So, “she set out and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel .” (v.25) To cut a long story short, Elisha comes and clearly prays for the boy and he lives. Now Shunem to Mount Carmel was at least ten miles so it would have taken a while to travel the twenty plus miles there and back and so the son would have been well and truly dead – but once death has occurred. Time is irrelevant to God.

So here we have two women, both confronted by the death of a loved one, and both in contact with a prophet of God. Both of then could simply have quietly gone away to a place of seclusion and mourning but neither of them gave up; they had the resource of God living with them and so they turned to that resource and cried, “Help!” Their ways of doing that were very different but the outcome was the same in both cases.

Now I have to say, in wondering how we apply this, that I know of few people who have ever been involved in raising the dead, but there are some I know. I have know of churches praying for those terminally ill and that person has wonderfully been healed. I also know of the opposite, where a church prayed full of faith and the person in question still died. The negative summary of that: God sometimes lets people die. The positive summary of that: God sometimes God snatches people back from the jaws of death.

It is often said that Elijah and Elisha prefigured Jesus' ministry. He too provided food miraculously and he too raised people from the dead. Lazarus (Jn 11) is the classic example of that but there is also the case of Jairus's daughter (Mt 9:18,19,23-25) and also the son of the widow of Nain (Lk 7:11-17) Many of us believe these accounts and so know that Jesus can raise the dead. When it comes to our own personal circumstances that may involve terminal illness or it may involve some other ‘impossible' situation, the question we have is ‘Does God want to heal this person?' The answer has to be that God wants the very best for these circumstances – for them, for you, for other watchers. It is natural to cry out to God to save our loved one – He can heal them.

Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane should perhaps be our guiding light: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Mt 26:39) Yes, it is physically possible for God to intervene but how does it ‘fit' in the overall plan or will of God? Figuratively speaking, step out and walk on the water of faith and cry out to God for healing, but if you sink into the depths of grief because you apparently get a negative answer, know that Jesus is still there and will stretch out and catch you and lift you up and stop you from drowning and will give you another day to go on with him, despite what happened.

We are on holy ground here. God feels for us and with us and sometimes, just sometimes, He does step in and we know miraculous deliverances but other times He just wants to enfold you in His love as we witness that which brings immense grief. However the challenge of these two stories is to pray and call out and use whatever resource is at hand to draw God's hand of life down on your loved one.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 35. Faith goes to the end

Heb 11:35 Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword.

The writer to the Hebrews has led us from the original Patriarchs through a list of great men of Judaism right through from the Exodus to the Exile and in a sense we have exulted in their lives but the further on he goes, the more serious it seems the writing becomes and the less glorious it seems. It is glorious what these men achieved but not glorious in the romantic sense that we might want to emulate them. Yes, faith started out stirring faith for it seemed such a wonderful gift from God to be able to do such wonderful things and achieve such heroic acts but the more he moves on the more we are faced with the unpleasant reality that faith so often has operated and still, in many parts of the world, operates in an environment of persecution. Even yesterday we came to a dividing line where honesty has to say ‘we cannot walk here except by the amazing grace of God'.

When we read, “ Women received back their dead, raised to life again,” this was not something we can say is a normal part of Christian living (except perhaps in some spiritual sense) that we can emulate, because it seems there are few who have the faith to truly believe their loved ones can be resurrected. And now here in verse 35 we read, “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.” Indeed let's face the full brunt of the horror that some have faced: “Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword.” (v.36,37) There is nothing romantic about this. Indeed this is the dark side of the world that impinges so often on the Christian Faith.

Reality forces us to face the horrors that sometimes appear on this Fallen World, horrors carried out by conquering armies, and for so much of the time in our warm and safe Christian enclaves in the West we shelter from these things – but they happen and have happened. A little while ago, aware that my knowledge of history was lacking I read Max Hastings' book, “All Hell let Loose” about the Second World war and then later his book, “Catastrophe” about the opening months of the First World War. Both titles were apt. I also came across a book simply titled “ Jerusalem ” which opens in the Prologue with a description of the fall of Jerusalem in AD70, according to the records of the Jewish historian Josephus. None of these books are comfortable reading but they give us a healthy dose of realism to make us face the evil of which sinful mankind is capable – not just a few nasty people, but even ordinary people in violent circumstances of war where blood lust strips away the shreds of civilized behaviour to cause actions too terrible to recount here.

But this is the reality of this sinful world in which at times, it seems, it is almost incapable of coping with without the immense grace of God. When it comes to faith standing before a hostile world, that has sometimes meant being tortured to make you recant and deny your faith. This is not an easy area to even consider. Indeed in the early centuries of the Christian Church, in the face of terrible waves of persecution, there became sometimes two groups of the church, those who indeed did back down in the face of threats and who were thus considered non-Christians by the others who did hold firm. It is a foolish person who has never had to stand in such circumstances who would condemn his brothers or sisters who took the path of the apostle Peter and denied their Lord. Those who do stand in such circumstances and survive, understandably find it difficult to accept their brothers, but perhaps God's grace is even greater than that which they received to enable them to cope. But we will never know unless it is something we are called to face. No, there is nothing romantic about being stoned, or being sawn in two or being put to death by the sword, but it is a reality sometimes in this fallen world.

While we hold a romantic view of such things we can imagine ourselves facing these things and going through them full of faith as some of the saints of old – and indeed in modern times – have done. Yet as you read the reality of these things honesty settles in and we have to acknowledge without the grace of God we could not handle such times – yet the grace of God is there, even though we cannot imagine how it works in such situations – but it does. In Acts, in Philippi , it was grace than enabled Paul and Silas to be praying and singing hymns in the middle of the night (Acts 16:25)

It was grace that enabled the apostle Paul to testify, “I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.” (2 Cor 11;23-27) The selfish good news is that I have lived for many years and have never been called to suffer any of those things, for which I am very grateful. Yet even in my lifetime I am aware that there are those in places like China , some Middle Eastern countries, and Burma and so on, who have not had my life of ease, who have in fact suffered many of the things these passages talk about. Praying for them seems very inadequate.

Jesus once said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Mt 26:11) as a statement of reality and it seems also true to suggest that at time or other there will always be acts of persecution against the Christian Church somewhere around the world. Indeed there are those who suggest there is more going on around the world than even in the days of the great persecutions against the early church. If it is not something you or I have been called to endure, let us be grateful. If it is something yet to come, let us realise that God's grace WILL be there. You've probably heard the story: Corrie Ten Boom, when she was a child, asked a particularly difficult question of an uncle, I think it was, about how grace comes to face trials and he put the answer in the form of one day having to go on a long train journey. Only then would she need a ticket but if it was necessary the ticket would be adequate, but in the meanwhile she should simply trust. Enough. God's grace was there for these heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, and they remained those who acted in faith as they leant on that grace and came through, ending up as either survivors here, on in heaven.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 36. Faith is being different

Heb 11:37.38 They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

For those of us who seek to be good Bible students and always think, “Now how can this apply to me today?” the good news is that I am not going to suggest this is how we as Christians are to behave today! But what picture does these two verses conjure up of some of those who appear in this hall of faith?

Well the first and obvious thing, which I have picked up in the title, is that they were different ; their values, their aims in life, everything about them was different from the rest of the population. Now I have to say that I worry sometimes that in this affluent world that we in the West experience, it seems that many Christians appear very little different from those around them. Now I would be the first to encourage Christians to be part of the culture in which they live, to fully appreciate the wonder of all God's provision and to enjoy it, but I wonder sometimes if we have gone too far and end up going to one extreme or another – one end of the extreme is being so ‘holy' (but not) as to be no earthly use, taken up with religious things and only religious things, and the other end of the extreme is so enjoying the things that God gives us that we forget who we are, rarely share our faith and certainly (and this is probably true of both extremes) rarely if ever move in the power of the Spirit to bring the love of God to this world. Now there ar e four things , I believe, in these verses that might speak to us as to how we may regain balance .

“They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute,.” These were people who did not get their values from things, did not make the focus of their life getting things, getting more money and so on. Now I am not going to praise poverty because there is nothing romantic about being poor and God clearly shows through the lives of such people as Solomon that He is not against riches, but these people who the writer to the Hebrews has in mind, when it came to it, chose a lifestyle of poverty. Now we don't know exactly who he had in mind but there have often been groups of people in the history of the church who have forsaken wealth and taken a vow of poverty to serve others. This is highly commendable but I do not find a call anywhere in Scripture for this to be the thing everyone should do.

Yes in Acts 4 there is a lovely example of how the early church was working at that point in time: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need,” (Acts 4:32-35) but there is no command for everyone to do that; in fact if everyone did that we would probably find ourselves with a state where everyone was in need. In fact, a careful reading of that passage does not say they sold everything they had, although some might want to imply that. The big question about wealth is revealed in Jesus' words to the rich young man: “Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Mt 19:21) In other words if your wealth has become the guarantee of security for you and you are unable to let at least some of it go, and it is stopping you reaching the spiritual goals you sense are there, then you need to do something drastic like getting rid of it. In the teaching that followed that Jesus makes it clear that wealth can be a real hindrance to knowing God. The reason for that is what I mentioned first above, that it becomes our security and we dare not step out in faith which relies on nothing but God's word to us.

The first challenge therefore has to be where our security is . For these people that the writer has in mind, their security was not in the things of the world – it's all right to have them, but only if that is not where our security is.

The second thing about these people is they kept on going despite the fact that they received opposition: “persecuted and mistreated.” They stood for God and refused to stand down. When the hostility and opposition came, they still refused to stand down. There people persisted in their faith even if they were the only believer there. Therefore the second challenge to us is can we be faithful regardless of who or what faces us? We will only be able to say ‘yes' to this if we realise and experience the grace of God that can keep us in the face of opposition. That grace may come in the form of wisdom to know how to answer our detractors or it may come in simple perseverance and love that will keep on and love our enemies.

You see we started out by saying they were different, they had different values to the world around them, which is why the writer now says, “the world was not worthy of them.” This is the third thing we need to pick up on. The world around us places great value on appearances and success and wealth. To keep it simple, the third chal lenge is whether or not we will hold to Biblical values rather than the world's values that we see portrayed day after day on TV. Our standards are to include righteousness, truth, integrity and honesty when it comes to dealing with others. Our standards are to hold to one member of the opposite sex for life, rejecting all the other distorted life styles of today's Western world. Our standards are to espouse humility over pride, modesty over boasting. Our standards are to maintain contentment in God's good provision rather than constantly striving for more and more wealth. If it comes, great, but it is not to be the goal of life.

Finally, these people were not tied down by the ties of the world: “They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” Again, I believe this will be a calling for some, but not a general rule for all. Some will feel it right never to have a mortgage, others will see it as providing for the next generation. Either is good; it depends on what you feel your calling is. The fourth challenge is do not get forced into confirming to what other people think it right . Listen to God for what He thinks is right for you. There are some things in life that are absolutes, for example it is wrong to murder. There are other things that are not absolutes and will depend on God's unique calling for you. For some of us, we may be called to singleness; others will not. Some of us will be called to handle riches, others will not. The most crucial issue, when it comes to faith, is what is God saying?

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 37. Faith is waiting for God's better

Heb 11:39,40 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect

We strayed into this area some while back when we considered v.9,10 and Abram living as a stranger or alien and looking for a city yet to come. I think I probably commented back then that one of my concerns for the modern church is that so often we see a people who have settled, who are content with the sub-Gospel experience of so much modern Christianity where both character and charisma are lacking. Sorry if that sounds hard but as I look around both in the UK and the USA (and what I hear of other so-called Western nations) I believe it is often a fair assessment.

Let's check it out as we consider these closing verses of Hebrews 11. “ These were all commended for their faith.” The people we have been considering have been outstanding people. They stood out because for many of them, the age in which they lived was not, in comparison to today, an era of revelation. They did not have the Bible and the earlier you go the les they had – except God. We have revelation pouring into our eyes and ears and for many the old fashioned ‘quiet time' has now been superseded by half an hour of Christian TV. Unfortunately that becomes a spectator sport and is very different from you alone with Him, with His word, listening to what He has to say through it. Even using my notes can be a cop-out. I write them to feed me and I go away fed at the end of every one. You will be less fed by them because they are second hand, and so I would always encourage you to go and spend time alone with Him. First hand faith is best.

But then he says something that will no doubt bring dismay to many: “yet none of them received what had been promised.” This sounds at first sight like a God who doesn't keep His promises but it is not. And if you didn't read that part of the verse carefully, note the word, ‘none'. NONE of then received what had been promised. Hold on, what were they promised? Well if we go right back to Abram (and the subsequent family lived in the light of this) there was a twofold promise: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you,” (v.2,3) and “To your offspring I will give this land.” (v.7)

This twofold promise – a great nation and the land – was reiterated by God again and again. They lost the land at the Exile in 587/586BC, were given it back and lost it again in AD70 and were given it again in the middle of the twentieth century. The ‘great nation' bit appeared to have been fulfilled, but the problem lies in whose definition of ‘great nation' applies. We may be content with the thought of however many million the natural nation of Israel comprised plus however many ‘Jews' have lived, scattered across the world since AD70, but from what the writer says in verse 40b, “only together with us would they be made perfect” or complete. When God speaks of a great nation, He means ALL believers, all Christians whether their origin is Jew or Gentile.

Now I know I am likely to tread on the toes of some people here in respect of Israel so may I be clear. I am sure God has a part to play in the end times for the physical nation of Israel , and the apostle Paul in Romans seems to suggest a great end time revival in Israel when at last thousands accept Jesus as their Messiah and are saved, but that is as far as it goes. Today Jew and Gentile are saved by exactly the same means – the blood of Jesus shed on the Cross. God's goal is His whole world; the kingdom of God is not limited by national or racial boundaries. Jews are saved in exactly the same was as Gentiles – by obedience and response to the gospel.

And there is another truth there to be noted in the first part of verse 40: “God had planned something better for us.” The writer to the Hebrews says God had something better for New Testament followers that people in the Old Testament period could ever have known about. In the new covenant inaugurated at Calvary , we receive clear forgiveness of sins, with an assurance that none before had. We also receive justification, our sins being fully dealt with on the Cross so that we no longer have to worry about them and keep on offering sacrifices. We also receive sonship, adopted into God's family with an intimacy never before known. We also receive the indwelling Holy Spirit who never leaves us, a resource and a power to enable us to live as the children of God in constant contact with God.

We have been studying for over five weeks men and women of faith from the Old Testament, people who stood out because they heard God and responded to Him. How amazing was that! But all these people lived in an incomplete era of God's will, it was all working towards the coming of Jesus and the coming of a new covenant.

I'm sure if there was such a thing as time travel and you brought Abram into the New Testament period, viewing the early church, he would be amazed, all these believers in God, relating to God, praying on a daily basis, prophetic gifts being exercised indicating a communication with God on an almost daily basis, not just once every few years. Yes, surely he would be astounded. Take him into the twentieth century and sit him down in a Billy Graham crusade of that century and he would not be able to take it all in. No doubt, if he could look back to his own experiences with God in those early days of embryonic faith, he would feel he hardly knew anything, hardly had any experience of God, and yet the absence of the resources that we have today made him a giant in the kingdom, a man who somehow heard God in a world where no one else was apparently hearing God, but he did and he acted on it.

But then we come to the hub of the matter which is that when it comes down to it, we can go to church, go to prayer meetings, go to Bible studies, yes even go to Bible College , but at the moment when God speaks, THAT is the crucial moment when nothing else counts. At that moment we will believe and act – or we won't. If we act that is faith; it is an imparted gift and it is an act of the will, it is a mystery. This is faith.

Very well, we move on in this series from Hebrews 11 where we have been examining personal examples of faith in Old Testament saints, to wider teaching or perhaps more specific teaching on faith from other parts of the New Testament.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 38. Strong and Weak Faith

Rom 14:1,2 Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.

It is interesting that I set the structure up for where we will go in the next week's worth of meditations several days ago, starting with this one, and only yesterday found myself in a conversation with a young man, zealous for God but frustrated with the pace of change in his church. I found myself saying, “It is funny. Ten years ago I was like you, frustrated with people not going on with God and felt I wanted to start up a new church with only people who were all out for God. I remember the Restoration Movement of a number of years ago and remember putting up one of the famous names in the early charismatic movement who was also a big mover in the Restoration movement, a godly man, a gentleman and yet a man who took no captives, a man who took a cold shower every morning and a man who spoke against a ‘mixed congregation'. I used to be like that but the Lord has so worked in me that I want to serve and minister to any age and any level of spiritual maturity.”

And that's where we come to our verses above. Sometimes we hear it said that faith is just about believing but as we've seen before and now see in these verses, it is more than that. It is doing as a result of believing and the believing is because we have heard from God – but not everyone has ‘heard' the same. To start with our two verses state three important truths: first, that not everybody has the same level of faith; second, it is possible in some things to have weak faith and still be a Christian and, third, it must be implied that God still loves us and accepts us even with weak faith. Paul is talking about Christians, Christians with weak faith, acceptable to God.

As I carried on explaining to my young zealot friend, the truth is that in any church there will be all levels of maturity. Maturity I would like to suggest, , comes only with time, (plus a few other things!) and so in your church there may be people who have only come to the Lord in the past year, and others who came to the Lord forty years ago – and all shades between. But faith isn't always linked to how long you have been in the kingdom. Some people come bounding into the kingdom full of faith from the word go – “Give me some water to walk on” – and they do! Other people come into the kingdom with what I can only describe as a softer faith; it is good for everyday life but not yet ready to do miracles (who is?). My mother was like this. She came to the Lord in her late fifties and was as gentle and sincere a Christian as you could find, but ‘walking on water' would not have been her sort of thing.

I realise that I use that expression as shorthand for big faith stuff, you understand, from Peter's example of walking on the water in the middle of the night – Mt 14:28,29. So yes, there are many of us who are not yet there, but the Lord still loves us just the same. Does He want us to stay there? No, because He would love His children to be stepping out with His resources more and more. I also realise that as we worked through Hebrews 11, the writer there seemed to take us deeper and deeper in, putting before us examples of people who stepped out in the face of almost certain death, and so we confronted serious issues, which may have left some feeling nervous. The lesson from those stories is that whatever the Lord allows us to face, His grace will be sufficient to handle it – when or if it comes – and we need not worry. That may not be the path that you and I have in front of us, so we should not allow the enemy to scare us.

Let's expand the reading including our two starting verses: “ Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls.” (Rom 14:1-4) It appears to be all about what people eat. In those days they had the problem quite often, that meat that turned up for sale had first been placed before idols in worship and so some believers felt they could not eat any meat just in case it had been used in idol worship. Others said that it didn't matter and so were quite happy to eat meat even if some superstitious people recited silly words over it. God is bigger than that, they would say, so it's fine to eat it. No problem. So, two groups of people whose behaviour is dependent on what they believe right teaching would be, what they think God has said – but they are still both Christians and God accepts them both. Look, says Paul, we are all of us God's servants if you like, so leave it up to God to sort out, and He will. Leave it in His hands, and in the meantime operate in the level of faith that you have.

You know the funny thing? If that had been the Corinthian church you might have had a vegetable eater moving in the gifts of healing and a meat eater moving in the gift of knowledge. Being limited in one area does not necessarily mean we will be limited in all areas. I know of people who are strong in God's word, operate gifts of mercy and are a real blessing to the church, but when it comes to matters of the Holy Spirit generally, they question and they doubt and dip their toes in gingerly into the waters of Spirit-faith. They are not there yet, but God loves them. Other people move in gifts of prophecy but struggle in their giving; their level of generosity has not caught up with level of faith to prophesy. Do not let the enemy put you down in you feel you are weak in faith in some area; you are probably strong in another area. Just let Him work in you in due time to raise your faith levels across the board and in the meantime, just rejoice in His love for you.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 39. Little Faith

Matt 14:31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. ``You of little faith ,'' he said, ``why did you doubt?''

Faith plays a great part in the life of a Christian and yet much of the time it is a mystery for us, how it works, what happens, why it varies. That's what these studies are for, to try and help us clarify some of the issues. In the previous meditation we considered the reality that we can be strong in faith or weak in faith, but in both cases we can still be a Christians and God still loves us. We pursue that idea a little further in this study.

The verse above comes from what is undoubtedly my favourite story in the Gospels, of Jesus and then Peter walking on the water of the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night. In the previous meditation I used ‘walking on water' as shorthand for big faith, and yet in the midst of the story Peter, who has taken a leap of faith like no other man in history has taken, as he stepped out of the boat to walk across the waves to Jesus, is chided by Jesus, it seems, when having got part way, he takes his eyes off Jesus and focuses on the wind and waves and starts to sink. The trouble about scripture is that we can't tell what tone of voice a person uses and so here I wonder how Jesus was actually speaking to Peter. If we have grown up in a judgmental atmosphere then Jesus' words will appear to us as harsh criticism but I wonder if in fact they were spoken more softly with a sense of sadness about them that Peter had started out across the water with such great promise and had then let his attention drift.

What is interesting about this incident is that as long as Peter kept his eyes firmly fixed on Jesus, he could do it. It had to be God's power flowing in him that kept him on top of the waves but it was a power that required him to play a part – to keep fixed on Jesus and when he didn't, his faith took a dive (sorry!). Are there fundamental things here about faith that we perhaps so often miss? To perform the act of faith and see or hear something spectacular happen must involve the power of God whether it be praying for healing for someone or simply having a word for them. We may ‘have the faith' the step out and speak the words, but it is the Holy Spirit who puts power into them so that healing or revelation comes.

Now there is the other side of the coin, so to speak, here and that is that it needs to be God's will. I know that sounds so obvious but this comes through when we pray for someone and we don't get an answer. We ‘felt' full of faith when we prayed but nothing happened. A number of years back I had knee trouble which got so bad my wife sent to a doctor who sent me to a specialist who said, the cartilage was gone and I needed a new knee. He sent me to go away and think about it and as I sat in my car, I had a tremendous sense, I thought, of the Lord's presence and the Lord's power and I ‘saw' the x-ray of my knee with brand new cartilage. I prayed, ‘full of faith' for healing of this knee. A couple of months later I was on the operating table.

Subsequently I sought the Lord. Had I been lacking faith? No, He said, it wasn't that, it was just that I wanted you to go through that operation (which went through spectacularly well and I healed up faster than anyone else having similar operations at that time) and appreciate the wonder of the world I have put you into. Since then I have had an appreciation of this world, with all its technology, all of its surgical breakthroughs and so much more. Many of us in the Christian world are so heavenly minded that we fail to see the wonder of God's provision for us in this world. The study of inventions, which I have done since, is incredible and I believe ‘clever ideas' or scientific breakthroughs don't come without God who talks to believer and non-believer alike as He works to develop this world. Is your God this big? I have since done a study of art and literature and praised the Lord for the wonders that we have in existence that come through people made in the image of God. My ‘failure of faith' as some of the faith people would put it, has opened up a whole new world of appreciation and understanding which in turn has opened up a whole new realm of worship and praise and thanksgiving. I could say so much more here.

But back to the mysteries of faith. On one occasion we read, “And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith .” (Matt 13:58) Now does that mean that Jesus prayed and nothing happened? I doubt it. Jesus said, “ the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing.” (Jn 5:19) The Father could see that the hearts of the people there were hard and unbelieving and those are two things that work against or stop or hinder faith. No, I suggest that simply people did not come to Jesus looking for and expecting healing, so none happened.

The opposite is seen in the area of Tyre and Sidon where Jesus went and encountered a Canaanite woman who asked Jesus to deliver her demon possessed daughter. To check her out Jesus prevaricated and when she persisted we find, “ Then Jesus answered, ``Woman, you have great faith ! Your request is granted.” (Matt 15:28) That ‘great faith' was demonstrated by her coming and seeking Jesus out and then persisting with him. You want to up your faith level? Be filled with the word and with the Spirit and keep on seeking Jesus out and then keep on persisting with him!

There are times when our faith levels seem low, simply because we have not understood something and we need revelation: “Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, ``You of little faith , why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread?” (Matt 16:8) They had watched miracles of feeding but hadn't yet clued in to the realities of what happened. It was all about divine provision.

A little later Jesus said, “He replied, ``Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, `Move from here to there' and it will move.” (Matt 17:20) Now I think there are two ways of looking at this verse and both are true. The first way is to say that it doesn't matter how much faith you have because as long as it originates in God's heart, even if you are responding to Him out of weakness and with what you think is tiny faith, it still opens up the way for Him to do the most amazing things. The second way is to realise that a mustard seed grows and so as long as you do have some faith, as little as it might be, operate with it and it will grow and the more you use it, the bigger the things will get.

So you only have a little faith? That's OK, Jesus didn't send his disciples away because they had little faith; he knew it would grow the more they stuck with him. Hang in there and the days are going to get exciting! Hallelujah!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 40. Faith opens the way

Matt 9:2     Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ``Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.''

At least twice in this series I have commented about our tendency to settle, to just accept an easy life, to aim for peace, prosperity and a placid way of viewing the world. The only trouble about such a mentality is that it flies in the face of the revelation that we find in the Bible, i.e. that we are living in a Fallen World where things go wrong, a world where there is a deceiver-destroyer called Satan, and a world where Sin exists in the hearts and lives of mankind. It is a world, if you like, that is not at peace.

Now we could just view those descriptions as accurate but of no interest to us. We could adopt the approach of the desert fathers and others throughout the past two thousand years, who took to the hills or the deserts or behind enclosed walls, to escape those things and live at peace with God alone. Now the bad news for this escapee is that their Saviour left the comfort of heaven to live in this battle scarred world until the age of about thirty, after which, for the next three years he took constant action to right falleness, to counter the works of Satan and to bring down the works of Sin, before giving his life to act as a judicial remedy to appease justice.

What am I saying? That we do not have the freedom to sit back and do nothing. We are indwelt by the Spirit of the one who came to wage war on darkness and bring his light to all who would receive it. In general terms in the world, there is a favourite quote that comes in various forms and is attributed to various people. One form of it says, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Now the danger at this point, the temptation that faces any leader, is to lay down a manifesto of things we ‘ought to do'. We need to counter that temptation. Let me suggest why.

The heading to this meditation says “Faith opens the way”. Let me explain that. Look again at our starting verse: “ Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ``Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.'' (Matt 9:2) Four friends had another friend who was paralysed. We don't know why he was, he just was. They heard of Jesus and saw his healing power. The obvious thing was to get their friend to Jesus. When the crowd was too great to get through, they went down through the roof. These were men who were convinced Jesus was the answer, they had accepted the will of God, and they were right – because he was! They were men who were so convinced that they would let nothing put them off getting to Jesus.

It was their faith that got the man to Jesus, and Jesus recognised this. Now we've said many times that faith comes from hearing and so these men had heard from God. They would not have put it like that but that, I believe, is the truth of it. People don't act like this until they have heard from God. Now if they have heard from God – and Jesus recognises that – that is good enough for Jesus; he knows his Father is on this case and wants to heal this man, so he proceeds as the Holy Spirit guides him and first of all pronounces forgiveness of sins for this man. How can he do that? Because the Father seeing from outside of time, knows that His Son will die for this man's sins and so coming in repentance, this man can be forgiven. This is shortly followed by his healing.

Now do I believe that the faith of the four friends somehow sanctified the paralysed man to make him worthy of being healed? (because often we link the two things in our minds). No, I do not. There are two things here, separate and distinct although nevertheless linked. The first thing is the faith of the four men that we have explained already. Then there is the healing of the paralysed man. The link between the two, as we explained above (read it again if necessary) is that the faith of the men gave Jesus the clue that his Father was on this case and so he could proceed with forgiving and healing. Why the forgiving part? We don't know because we aren't told. We must assume Jesus knew that this man suffered a sense of guilt for some reason and had a big doubt in his mind over Jesus' being willing to heal a sinner.

I say this, not only because I believe it is right, but because I come across this again and again in good evangelicals who have read books on healing and have linked sin, repentance and healing. i.e. healing can only follow repentance for the sin that has been committed. Now as much as I would like to follow that logic because it does appear to make sense, unfortunately it is not born out by the Gospel record. If you are aware of a personal sin, repent of it, renounce and reject it for now on. However when it comes to Jesus' healing or accepting people, the Gospel record reveals Jesus' example, clearly showing that HIS order of working is i) unconditional loving acceptance, then ii) healing or deliverance and only then, iii) change of life seen through repentance. Hundreds if not thousands came to Jesus for healing and we find he healed them all, and there is no indication whatsoever that he checked out their sinful state beforehand.

We see again and again his loving acceptance of people brought their repentance and subsequent life change. See the guilty adulterous woman (Jn 8) “Neither do I condemn you… leave your life of sin.” Loving acceptance, THEN a requirement to change. Then there was Zacchaeus (Lk 19) – total acceptance, no sign of correction (dealing with issues) but that brought very clear repentance. Then there was the Samaritan woman (Jn 4) faced with sin but not condemned – her acceptance transformed her. There was also the man blind from birth (Jn 9) – the disciples wanted a blame party, Jesus refused and simply wanted to heal – salvation clearly came later (v.35-38). We want to judge before salvation or healing and in so doing put blocks to Jesus moving.

The four men brought their friend regardless of his history; he was a friend, that was all they cared about. Jesus knew of his guilt and dealt with it and then healed him. A quick aside: look Jesus knows about your friend, church member of whoever else is in your sights and he knows when they will repent or change or whatever else it is you want for them. It was Jesus' acceptance of Zacchaeus that changed him, it is Jesus love for me that has changed me, not loads of guilt-ladling sermons. I know my life has been transformed by love. When I have been loved, that has enabled me to feel secure enough to come out from behind my protective walls and face my guilt, and confess it and repent of it. I simply say these things to remove some of the barriers we put up to moving in faith. We'll see some more tomorrow.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 41. Faith hindered by guilt

Matt 15:28    Then Jesus answered, ``Woman, you have great faith ! Your request is granted.''

In the previous meditation we started to consider our role as bringers of God's goodness in acts of faith, into this war torn world, devastated by Satan and by Sin and we suggested that ‘faith opens the way for things to change', and we noted the case of the paralysed man and in so doing, noted Jesus forgiving him. This led us to start pondering on the stance that many good evangelicals take of bringing judgment and condemnation on sinners which, inadvertently hinders or stops faith flowing.

But if it is true about how we so often think about others, it is also true about ourselves. I had not intended to go in this direction with these last two meditations and yet I sense a real need to be addressed. Put most simply fear and guilt hinder or quench faith. We have considered this Canaanite woman before in a recent meditation but we need to think about her again. We read, “ A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." (Mt 15:22) Three things stand out to me about her: First, she is desperate (the way she cries out indicates that), second she appeals to Jesus' mercy (she presumably has heard about his ministry and knows he can do this – if he wants to), and third, there is no sign of repentance or even guilt in her cry.

Now I say this last thing because many years of experience teaches me that people – and especially children – do not ‘just' get demon possessed. For actual possession to take place there has to be severe occult or even satanic activity in the life of either this child or her family. In those times and in that place, it may well have started with idol worship which went deeper and deeper into the occult or satanic things. There is a cause of this, a bad cause but what is startling about this whole affair is that neither the mother nor Jesus refer to it. For her it may be that she is so shredded by the horror of the manifestations in her daughter that she is now desperate. Link that with what she has heard about Jesus and she now comes crying out to Jesus for help. As we noted before Jesus didn't initially respond to her and when he did he appeared to be prevaricating, yet she persists and so, “Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very moment.”

Now I am sure that there are Christians who have history – something that was not good. Yes, it is in the past and you have tried to forget it and indeed you cover it up by being a ‘good Christian' and yet in the deep background there is this nagging that “I cannot be a man/woman of faith and so all these studies about faith are all very well, but that can't be me.” This account of this woman says that it is not so. She acted in faith, she responded to a desperate situation by crying out to Jesus because ‘something' inside her said he was who the rumours said he was – the one who could deliver her daughter – and that is all. She didn't go pouring out her guilt and the folly of worshipping idols or whatever else it was. Yes, she knew it had been wrong but the big thing now was to get her daughter delivered – and Jesus did it without rubbing her nose in the past.

I find Jesus encounter with the woman at the well in Samaria similar. In that case Jesus did face her with the truth of her situation: “ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.” (Jn 4:14) but he doesn't pursue it or tell her to go and get her life sorted out. It almost seems as if he only said it to reveal to her that he was at least a prophet, which she immediately picks up on.

We also noted in the previous meditation the account of Zacchaeus who was almost certainly a nasty crooked, cheating chief tax collector and how does Jesus challenge this crook? “When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today." So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.” (Lk 19:5,6) The next thing we read is, “Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount,” (v.8) yet Jesus had not challenged him about his crooked dealings. It was just, in the face of Jesus' loving acceptance, Zacchaeus recognized he didn't like his life and what he did and he wanted to change it, to which came Jesus' response , “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.” (v.9) Why the reference to Abraham? Because he was known to be the first real man of faith. Faith!!! Zacchaeus has just expressed faith, NOT in response to chiding rebuke but in response to loving acceptance.

Am I saying that loving acceptance is always the way? Yes, and no. Yes it is, but sometimes (probably far fewer times than we think) it is right to challenge directly, like Jesus did with the rich young man (Mt 19:16-22) or with Nicodemus (Jn 3:1-14). Yet even with those two Jesus did not go picking over ethical failures. Jesus focused on a relationship with God – or the absence of it – and sought to remedy that.

I think the difference is that we so often want to use a person's past sin to leverage them into a place of guilt which we hope will turn into conviction and subsequently repentance and then salvation, but as I say, the testimony of the Gospels is that Jesus majored on God's love and the possibilities of knowing God. Don't let your past guilt hinder receiving His power to change today, not by your efforts but by His grace.

I may have told this story before but it bears repeating. Quite a lot of years ago I encountered a man who was clearly being spoken to by the Lord. We talked about the Lord and he argued himself into a corner where the only thing to do was to surrender to God and be born again. We became good friends but he had a problem – he smoked. For sometime this persisted until the day I baptized him. I then went on a ministry trip abroad. Now I had never told him to quit smoking and later on he asked me why I hadn't. My reply was, “Well as a believer I knew the indwelling holy Spirit would convict you of it, and then you would deal with it.” To cut a long story short he had a power encounter with the Lord in his House Group the week after his baptism and never wanted to smoke again. Before he came to the Lord he didn't have the power to stop. When he met the Lord in power, the Lord took all desire to smoke away. His absence of relationship with Jesus was the big issue; smoking was just a sub-issue. When he met Jesus, that could be dealt with. The Lord knows when we are ready to face past issues with him and he loves you while he's waiting for the time to be right. It doesn't make you a second class citizen that there are yet things he wants to deal with – we ALL have those! You CAN be a faith person while you are waiting; it not we are all doomed!!!!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 42. Faith in who

John 2:11 This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee . He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.

There is this phrase that appears in our verse above, about putting “their faith in him ,” meaning Jesus. It also appears in Jn 7:31, 8:30, 11:45, and 12:11, i.e. five times in all. It doesn't appear at all in any of the other Gospels. Why? The answer almost certainly has to be that John's Gospel was written much later that the other three and whereas they had simply sought to record the basic information about Jesus, John had had time to think and reflect on all that he had witnessed as one of Jesus' main disciples and so when he writes, decades later, he has seen far more clearly that Jesus is the Son of God and portrays him clearly as this. He understands the ‘why' of the things in the previous three Gospels.

John has realised that if Jesus is who he said he was, the Son of God who had come down from heaven (see Jn 6 and all his references to being the bread that has come down from heaven), he is to be the central feature of our faith. When we speak about ‘the Faith' we refer to the body of understanding that makes up our belief system; when we simply refer to ‘faith' we mean our response to God's word, God's revelation. John has seen that ‘the Faith' is based entirely upon Jesus, he is the focus of our faith, the one upon whom everything we believe about our salvation is based, and therefore the one to whom we respond. He is the word from God to which we respond.

Throughout the Old Testament readings we have seen believers responding to God's revelation, to His word to them, His interaction with them. Now that Jesus has come he is God's word to us – The Word of John 1 – the revelation of the Father, but in the flesh, and it is to him that we respond. Faith in God takes a new focus now, focus on his son, “faith in him”.

We cannot over-emphasise how real this is. When we put our “faith in him” we do it first because of who he is, the unique Son of God who existed in heaven with the Father from the beginning, who was involved in the very creation (see Prov 8:22-31), who existed before time who “proceeded from the Father”, as one of the creeds puts it, “begotten not created” (and ‘begotten simply means ‘comes out of'), God himself who, when he appeared on earth was described as “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) revealing the Father (Jn 14:9). Praying to the Father Jesus spoke of “ the glory I had with you before the world began,” (Jn 17:5) and of his disciples he said, “They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me,” (Jn 17:8) revealing even more his origins. The more and more you read the New Testament the more and more you will see this truth, that Jesus is unique, he is the Son of God who came from the Father in heaven, and returned to the Father in heaven. The writer to the Hebrews described his being as follows: “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Heb 1:3) That separates Jesus out from any other human being who has appeared on the earth.

But, second, we put our “faith in him” because of what he has done. We have already noted that he came down from heaven and was born as a tiny bay who grew into a man. After some thirty years he then started on three years of the most remarkable ministry that this world has ever witnessed, described in shorthand by the apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost as “a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him.” (Acts 2:22) or in Jesus own words, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” (Mt 11:5) followed, in Peter's words again by being “handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” (Acts 2:23,24) Death, crucifixion and resurrection, and then ascension (Acts 1:9) where scripture affirms he sat down at his Father's right hand and now rules in the midst of his enemies (Mk 12:19, Psa 110:1,2)

And there we see the third reason we put our “faith in him” because of what he is doing. Listen to the testimony of Scripture: “His ever expanding, peaceful government will never end. He will rule forever” (Isa 9:7) and “Christ Jesus… is sitting at the place of highest honour next to God, pleading for us.” (Rom 8:34) and “And God has put all things under the authority of Christ, and he gave him this authority for the benefit of the church.” (Eph 1:22) and “For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet.” (1 Cor 15:25) or, as we see in Rev 5 he is the Lamb of God who alone is found worthy to undo the scroll and oversee end time history. In ways probably beyond our understanding he is working into his world, especially through the church. When Jesus healed the man at the Gate Beautiful the apostle Peter testified, “By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see.” (Acts 3:16) This was clearly an act of his ongoing rule.

But finally the fourth reason we put our “faith in him” is because of what he will do . There is coming a time when he will return again as a conquering king – see Rev 19 so that “ at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:10,11)

Thus at the heart of The Faith is The One and it is on him that we focus as he leads us by his past works and his present activity towards a future climax, as he too serves the Father: “Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” (1 Cor 15:24,25) So one day we will join with all the others in heaven and join in and sing, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! …. To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” (Rev 5:12,13) Hallelujah!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 43. Visible Faith

Acts 14:9     He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed

As we start to draw near to the end of this particular series of meditations there is something about faith that I realise we have not touched upon: it is visible. The danger in a series like this is that it just remains theoretical, but faith is a very practical thing. We've seen a number of times what it is – responding to God's word – and we've seen how it can vary in different people, some weak in faith over a particular issue, another strong in faith.

We've also seen how it can vary in respect of different areas of our lives thus, for instance, we noted that a person can be full of faith in respect of giving or hospitality but not full of faith for healing. Now both of those areas that I've just mentioned are visible, practical areas. Even to make sense of the sentence and to understand what I've just said, we have to envisage that person giving, or another person ministering healing. Giving and healing are the two outworkings of faith in that instance.

Now it is not only the outworking that is visible, it is the inner belief or assurance of what is hoped for that also becomes almost tangible. Let's look at the verses that go with our one above: “ In Lystra there sat a man crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, "Stand up on your feet!" At that, the man jumped up and began to walk.” (Acts 14:8-10) How fascinating that Paul looked at this crippled man and saw him listening attentively to what he was preaching and ‘saw' that this man was taking it all in and was believing it. Faith was rising in this man that said, “Yes, this is true, yes I can go with this,” and that faith opened the door for Paul to command healing. In this first example this inner assurance was discerned by Paul.

Let's consider a second example. We've already seen the same thing when we considered the four men bringing their paralyzed friend on a pallet, through the roof: “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” (Mt 9:2) Now you might say it didn't need much discernment to see that these four men had faith, but it's not the point how we see, simply that it is visible to see. In that case it was visible by the acts.

To take a third example, it was clearly very visible to see by the words of the centurion who came to Jesus in Capernaum (see Mt 8:5-10). The very words were words of faith. Faith was revealed through words therefore. So it can be an inner discernment, outward acts or outward words that reveal or perhaps recognizes this faith.

When the apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians he was able to write, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ.” ( Col 1:3,4) Somehow their very lives shone with faith. Now the context there rather suggests that this faith that is being referred to is all about how they responded to the Gospel and are now living out their Christian lives, holding firmly to Christ. Whereas the previous three examples we've given were in respect of faith being made visible on specific occasions, this reference seems to suggest a much wider application – faith that is visible, that is faith that permeates the whole life. Now we have made this point earlier in these studies that we may see specific instances of faith but we are called to live lives of faith, lives as we saw in the previous meditation focused on Jesus, but also lives that generally hear and respond to God.

Without wanting in any way to sow seeds of doubt or even guilt or condemnation, may I gently ask, do the people of my church know me as a person of faith? Is my faith visible? Twice in Acts we have descriptions of men who were clearly men of faith that was visible: “They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit,” (Acts 6:5) and speaking of Barnabas, “He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith,” (Acts 11:24) Faith people have a living relationship with the Lord, I would suggest. They spend time in God's presence (the daily ‘quiet time') and they hear God and are blessed by God and testify to God and see God in their circumstances.

We may like to think of faith as a quiet characteristic that is just there but the apostle James would disagree with that: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder.” (Jas 2:14-19) No, faith is observable.

When you give in response to the Holy Spirit's prompting, that is faith. When you encourage someone at the Holy Spirit's prompting, that is faith. When you enquire how someone is and they tell you of their difficult times and you pray over them, that is faith, and when you go a step further and ask them how you can help them, that is faith. When someone shares they are feeling unwell and you pray over them, that is faith. When you are praying for people and you get a picture for someone and go and share it with them, that is faith. When you sense a prompting of the Lord to invite a neighbour round for coffee (or wine and cheese) to share the Lord, that is faith. When they are looking for people to go and help build an orphanage for two weeks and you say yes, that is faith. When you sense the Lord prompting you to go after a new job, that is faith. There are a multitude of ways that faith is expressed and becomes visible.

May we be like the Colossians who could be praised because their faith was obvious to the world. Faith like this communicates Jesus in ways that words do not. We need words and actions but sadly so often our words fall on deaf ears because the heart has not been warmed by faith actions, actions coming with the love of God. May we be people of both words and actions.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 44. Faith follows repentance

Acts 20:21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.

We have moved on from the faith chapter of the Bible, Hebrews 11, and are now picking up specific issues pertaining to faith. We have seen how you can be weak in faith or strong in faith, how you can have little faith, we have seen how faith opens the way for great things to happen, but we've also seen how guilt hinders faith, and we have seen how faith needs to be focused on Jesus and lastly we saw how faith becomes ‘visible'. The thing I often find about doing these studies is that the more you do the more they open up other avenues for consideration, things that are often very obvious.

It is to one of these that we now turn and in many ways it is very obvious except as we ponder on it I believe we are going to see things that are not quite so obvious. Our verse above comes from the apostle Paul speaking about how he has preached the Gospel and for it to ‘work' there are two aspects of it that must come about. The first is repenting and then the second is having faith in Jesus. Now we recently spent a whole study in considering the second aspect, that of focusing our faith on Jesus. I suspect that few of us when we turn to Christ see it as fully as the fourfold layout I provided there but instead we see Jesus in two ways I did not emphasise there – that he must be both Saviour and Lord.

Let's just pause up with that for a moment or two. For us to receive and enter into the salvation that God has provided for us we must accept Jesus as Saviour otherwise we won't even get out of the starting gate, so to speak. The whole point is that we are and were sinners who needed saving. We first needed saving because we were guilty and we deserved punishment. We needed Jesus to be our Saviour who takes our punishment on the Cross. But we also needed saving out of the power of sin and we needed help to get free from that and live new lives, and because Jesus took our guilt and punishment the Father could then impart the Holy Spirit or Spirit of Jesus to indwell us to deliver us from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of His Son (Col 1:13)

Jesus saves us from destruction into a new life as a child of God, adopted into God's family but if we are to know how we are to live and what God wants for us in the years of life we have left on this earth, we also need Jesus to be Lord, the one who guides, directs, teaches and directs us. We cannot fully enter into all He has for us unless we submit to and let Jesus lead us into His will for our individual lives.

Now both those two things are, we said, the second aspect of the two things that are necessary for our lives to ‘work' as we receive the salvation God offers us through Jesus. The first aspect we said was repentance. Now why is that so important?

Well, the thing about repentance is that it is

•  first of all recognising that we have fallen short of God's standards, and we were godless, having little or no knowledge of Him because we were self-centred,

•  second, that we are helpless to free ourselves from our state, we have no power to change ourselves to become selfless and godly,

•  third, that without help we are hopeless, we have no future beyond what we now know (because we are helpless to set ourselves free) and

•  fourth, only God can set us free

•  fifth, that we recognise this with sorrow so that

•  sixth, we cry out to Him to forgive us and change us, and

•  seventh, throw ourselves on His mercy to do all these things.

Repentance means all of these things and if we have seen or done less than all of these we will not have fully appreciated Jesus as Saviour and Lord, partly because we have not seen the need and partly because we have not been utterly sincere. Put in a nutshell, so to speak, repentance is the doorway to a life of faith because it is relying on God and not my old life. When there is true conviction and true repentance each one of us will come to God in a measure of desperation; it is a crisis moment when we reject our old life and its self-centered and godless ways and cry out to God for deliverance. When we did that, He steps in, declares us forgiven, declares us adopted as His children, and puts His Holy Spirit within us to be our new power and direction source…. and so it begins!

Yes, that is just be beginning. The apostle Paul, speaking about his ministry said it was “to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.” (Rom 1:5) We've seen above how making Jesus Lord of your life means submitting to his leadership, i.e. being obedient to all he says, and that is faith and flows from faith. Along the way, there will be time and time again when we recognize that for faith to flow we need to repent – reject the path of godless self-centredness and let go again and let him lead the way. I think it was Mother Basilea Schlink, leader of the   Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary in Germany , who wrote a book, ‘ Repentance - The Joy-Filled Life' which suggests that repentance is an ongoing part of the Christian life. It is what we just said, that rejecting the path of godless self-centredness and turning it all over to Jesus to save us and lead us as ongoing Saviour and Lord - and that is an ongoing life of faith.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 45. How Faith Justifies

Rom 3:25,26 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished-- he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

The thing about the Bible, and especially the New Testament, is that it uses words that we rarely encounter anywhere else in life and so we have to spend some time defining those words and seeing how they are used. We've been doing that for a number of weeks with the word ‘faith'. The two verses above are laden with words that need defining and once we see what some of them mean, we will see how they are related to faith. The first is a phrase, “a sacrifice of atonement” When you atone for something you make up for it. In the Old Testament, in the Law of Moses, the Israelites offered offerings, animal sacrifices as a way of acknowledging their sin and their repentance. As they offered it, they placed their hand on the head of the animal being sacrificed as a way of showing they identified with it and that it would be taking their punishment. As they saw it die in front of them, the severity of sin and a life having to be given for it, made it very real.

The Living Bible says of verse 25, “   For God sent Christ Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to end all God's anger against us.” That sums it up. The Bible says that Jesus was ‘the Lamb of God' who was sacrificed in his death on the Cross, to be the one who stood in our place and took our sin. This is at the very heart of our belief system, the very reason why we can be saved. Did Jesus die for every single person on the planet? Yes, but they have to appropriate it for themselves. It has no effect until we, individually take it as the means of our personal salvation – and that is an act of faith.

Now in those verses above, Twice Paul says God did this to demonstrate his justice. Now ‘justice' is all about putting things right. If a wrong has been committed, it needs putting right. Children say, “It's not fair” appealing to (in their minds at least) a universal agreement that there is right and wrong, good and bad, fairness and unfairness. If a brother, say, has done wrong against them they look to the parent to punish the other. If a toy has been taken, they expect it to be given back. Justice brings a balance and harmony whereby onlookers afterwards say, ‘yes, that is fair.'

So the first time Paul says it, he says , “ He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.” In other words, people before Christ appeared to ‘get away with it' and so Christ's death dealt with all those sins committed before him where people had said sorry but there was no punishment given. Justice would say, ‘that was unfair, those Old Testament people getting away with it. Someone ought to have taken their punishment. But then he adds a second instance: “he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Rom 3:25,26) Whenever was ‘the present time' it should be seen that God was not letting sinners get away with it. Someone should be punished for all this wrongdoing that goes on. The only one ‘big enough' was the Son of God. That, whether we understand it or not, is what the Bible declares and requires every ‘believer' to accept to be a Christian. It is the only reason why God can forgive you and me. To believe this and to live according to this is faith.

But there is a word we haven't yet considered and it is one that has very practical outworkings – ‘justify' . When we ‘justify our actions' we try to explain why they were the right ones. When we justify a course of action we seek to show why it was the right one. At the end of the last world war, the Western authorities, the ‘Allies', justified why it was right to drop two nuclear bombs on Japan to bring an end to a war that might have just dragged on and one. That argument ‘made it right' to drop them killing so many. So when Paul says, “the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus,” he means, “Jesus, the one who puts right in God's eyes all of those who have faith in Jesus.”

We've considered it before but let's just remind ourselves, “those who have faith in Jesus,” simply means those who trust that Jesus is God's answer to the problem of their sins, their guilt and their punishment. Now there is another side to this coin that we'll consider in the next meditation but for the moment let's consider how we may rest in this knowledge that we have observed so far in this particular study.

Writing to Timothy, Paul refers to “holding on to faith and a good conscience .” (1 Tim 1:19) and later on when speaking about deacons he says “They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.” (1 Tim 3:9) Similarly the writer to the Hebrews said, “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith , having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess.” (Heb 10:22,23). Now the idea that is being conveyed through all these verses is that as we hold on to the truths that we have been considering, we hold to them by faith and when we “hold unswervingly” to them they will ensure we maintain a clear conscience before God.

Now I say all this because so often Christians lack assurance and that lack means they worry about their relationship with God, worry about whether they are truly accepted by God and worry about the sins they have committed and worry about that Sin thing that still lurks in the background. You will lack assurance if you do not hold firmly to those verses and the truths we have been considering here. You ARE forgiven and your guilt HAS been fully dealt with because of Jesus' work on the Cross. Every single sin you ever committed or are likely to commit is covered by his death on the Cross. The Judge has made the final declaration over you when you turned to Christ and put your trust in him – not guilty! Your guilt has been removed. This justification thing is about completely clearing you of all guilt, NOT because somehow you have made up for your past wrongs but simply because the Son of God has been punished for them and as far as justice is concerned, they have been adequately dealt with in the eyes of the law.

If we hadn't decided to start considering faith by working through Hebrews 11, then this perhaps should have been the starting point of everything to do with faith – how faith in what Jesus has done on the Cross is applied to your life and that opens up the way for you to live a life of faith. And that is a good place to stop and pick up again tomorrow.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 46. How Faith makes Righteous

Rom 3:23 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

In the previous study we considered such terms as “a sacrifice of atonement”, and ‘justice' and ‘justify', and we concluded thinking about how it was important to hold a ‘good conscience'. Now at the beginning of Romans Paul says, “In the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith.” (Rom 1:17) and so following through on these ‘religious terms' or terms that appear in the Bible but rarely elsewhere, we would do well to pick up on this word ‘righteous'.

We find it first of all in respect of Abram: “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Gen 15:6) So believing AND obeying God, because obedience was part of that incident, is a basic definition of righteousness. As Paul later expressed it, referring to Abram, “being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Rom 4:21,22) That produced in Abram the intent to try for a baby. That was faith but it started from the moment he heard the words and believed them.

Moses later put that obedience in the context of the Law: “if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness .” (Deut 6:25) God had given them His Law and so obeying that Law would be righteousness.

Now we need to look more deeply at this for the Bible tells us that, “the LORD Almighty will be exalted by his justice, and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness .” (Isa 5:16) i.e. God's righteousness is one of the things that makes Him holy – utterly different. So how can God obey Himself? God instinctively does what He knows is right. Everything God has designed – this world as it was originally before Sin entered it – is perfect because it is instinctively right. It is instinctively right because God knows everything – He is all-knowing and all-wise, He knows how everything works best and that is how He designed this world, including us.

But then we find this same thing being referred to in the ‘Coming One', the Messiah, as the psalmist speaks of him prophetically: “You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” (Psa 45:7) Jesus loves what is right, because it comes from his Father and everything the Father thinks, says or does is right. Because we live in a sinful world, the acts of the Father are sometimes acts of judgment – but they are always right! “When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness. Though grace is shown to the wicked, they do not learn righteousness; even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil and regard not the majesty of the LORD.” (Isa 26:9,10) Judgments, I suggest, are either disciplinary (to bring about change) or terminal (to bring an end to wrong that will not happen otherwise). Isaiah has this insight that when discipline comes, people learn, but where there is a set, sinful heart, people will not be moved, even by God's grace.

To summarize, therefore, righteousness is the right way of doing something, right in God's eyes, conforming to His perfect will. We've seen it above as obeying God's revelation. For Jesus, even maintaining a right appearance was important: “Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." (Mt 3:15) i.e. let's ensure we maintain every appearance of what is right before the Father, doing His will.

Now there are dangers in talking about righteous behavior because some people will think that it is righteous behavior, what they see as acts of good, that will win God's approval. The trouble is that no human being is every truly righteous if we equate it with good acts. Even Moses had to say this to Israel : “Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.” (Deut 9:26) In the New Testament the apostle Paul taught, “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (Rom 3:22) The righteousness that God is looking for is founded in faith, in responding to what God has said, not in what you think is right and when that comes to Jesus, that means ‘believing in him' as we have seen before.

That is the basic faith we are called to. When we come to Christ, believing in him, we are justified AND declared righteous. It is a righteousness that comes first through belief and then that belief leads to action. Both are different dimensions of faith. God declares us righteous because we believe in Jesus, and then we act on that belief. Actions FOLLOW belief, but we were declared righteous before we started doing anything. You ARE righteous because you believe in Jesus. Let your actions come out of that belief. That is faith and then faith!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 47. Faith Opens the Door to Grace

Rom 5:1,2 “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” (Rom 5:1,2)

Let's take some short cuts and try defining grace from the outset. You may have heard the Sunday School acronym, GRACE = G od's R iches a t C hrist's E xpense or to put it another way, all of God resources that are available to us through what Christ achieved for us on the Cross. Put even another way, it is the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit within us who provides us with all we need to live out the Christ-like

and Christ-directed life. Put like that we can see just how important grace is in the life of the Christian.

Indeed when we examine the Scriptures we see it is all over the place. First of all, when we consider Jesus' himself , it was even there: “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.” (Lk 2:40) Now some say that grace is God's favour, and that is true, even though I don't think it says enough, but it was certainly true of Jesus. Indeed it would appear that in Jesus there was no limitation on this grace because, referring to his ministry, the apostle John wrote, “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.” (Jn 1:16) i.e. blessing after blessing came from Jesus, from that unlimited grace within him, the Son of God.

But second , when it comes to our salvation, our coming to Christ , the believers were referred to as, “those who by grace had believed.” (Acts 18:27) suggesting that is only with God's help and God's resources that we actually come to believe. Indeed the very Gospel is referred to as “the gospel of God's grace.” (Acts 20:24) because that is ultimately what it is all about, God bringing us to a position where we can receive all of His goodness that He wants to share with us. We didn't emphasize it earlier but the truth is that God's grace is a pure gift, there is nothing we can do to earn it. Indeed the very act of justifying us that we considered previously was an act of grace, for justification is just one part of God's resources available to us: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Rom 3:23,24) As the Message version puts that, “God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift . He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.” Yes, it was all a work of God.

But then third , once we come to Christ there is just as much a need of His grace for daily Christian living . So often the apostle Paul would recognise this need: “ Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom 1:7) and it is grace that enables us to have faith: “Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring--not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham.” ( Rom 4:16) Receiving the fruit if all God's promises for us, is what Christian life is all about, which brings us to our starting verse again, “ Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” (Rom 5:1,2) Faith, we said, opens the doorway into the life of grace.

But, fourth , it is more than that, it is grace for service : “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.” (Rom 12:6) and “I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way--in all your speaking and in all your knowledge.” (1 Cor 1:4,5) The gifts we have, the knowledge we have, the abilities we may have to speak, are all gifts of grace, freely given by God and not earned. Indeed, says Paul, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Cor 9:8) i.e. whatever God gives you to do, He will also provide the resources to do it.

Now let's draw these four threads together. What is it that unites them? Faith. All four have to be appropriated by faith. We saw in an earlier study that by faith we believe in Jesus, but here we have seen that he is THE resource provider and in him there is limitless supply. Faith flows when we accept this truth and turn to him to provide for us all we need.

Second, we spoke of grace in the coming of our salvation. To receive this free gift of God we have to accept the simple truths that we have seen previously about what Christ has done for us and what he has achieved for us, and how it now applies to us.

Third we spoke of grace being the resource we need to live out our ordinary everyday lives, revealing and exhibiting the love and goodness of God. For that to happen the grace of God has to be received on a daily basis, we need to turn to him and declare our dependence on him daily, and that is an act of faith.

Finally we spoke of grace for service and the same thing applies here. Daily we need to reiterate our complete reliance upon him to do the things he calls us to, and that is an act of faith. Everywhere faith and grace are linked together. Grace is God's provision, and faith is the way we receive it. Hallelujah!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 48. How Faith Sanctifies

Acts 26:17,18 I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'

As we start to draw near to the end of this series we come to this word ‘sanctify' which is rarely encountered in ordinary everyday life. We have touched on it previously but we now focus on it in our logical progression of following through from justification, considering righteousness and now the outworking of our salvation in the period between today and the day we pass on from this experience to go to heaven.

Let's save time and define it from the outset. Sanctification is all about being separated off to God by being different, given over to Him. To sanctify someone means to set them apart by being different. As with many of these things it has a past, present and future application, and although our focus here will be different, we invite you to do your own study in Scripture on this in your own time.

First, we were sanctified when we were born again; we were made holy by the presence of the Holy Spirit coming into us, we were set part to God, different from the rest of sinful mankind. Yes it was that wonderful. We were forgiven, cleansed, adopted and empowered.

Second, we are being sanctified as we live out our lives and in many ways this is the one we need to give most thought to here because it is all about how we live out our lives being separated to God, and we will shortly consider the faith dimension.

Third, we will be utterly sanctified when we pass into heaven and into eternity and we will consider this in the last of these studies.

So let's look at our starting verses above: “ I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.' ( Acts 26:17,18) These were Jesus' words to Paul on the road to Damascus , the ministry to which he was calling Paul. It was to call people to turn from one life to another, from a life in darkness with Satan, to the kingdom of God where they would receive forgiveness of sins because of what Jesus had done on the Cross, a people set apart to God by faith.

A word from Habakkuk appears more than once in the New Testament: “ my righteous one will live by faith.” (Heb 10:38) It means we will receive that life by faith and we will live that life by faith. This life of sanctification and this process of sanctification are both received by faith. As we have seen before, it is when we hear God's word to this effect and respond positively to it. That is faith. Faith starts us off and faith keeps us going.

But we have also seen that faith involves doing and so in a number of places in the New Testament we find instructions to be living in a particular way, and in each case it is a call to be sanctified and a call to be worked out by faith, For example, “ Be self-controlled and alert . Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith , because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” (1 Pet 5:8,9) It is a call to resist Satan's wiles, his temptations and to remain pure. We play a part in the sanctification process as we exercise our will to DO what is right and reject what is wrong.

Paul also used this language in his teaching: “It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God;” (1 Thess 4:3-5) Notice again that in both these examples, the call to us is to be self-controlled, or to take control against Satan and against sin. That is the part we play in it.

Paul continued on, “For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life,” (1 Thess 4:7) which sums up the life goals we now have or, to put it another way, “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness .” (Titus 1:1) This sanctified life leads to godliness, becoming more God-like or more Christ-like (see 2 Cor 3:20). This is our calling, to be different, to be godly, to be different from the world and their abandoning of values. Instead we hold to God's values.

Now Peter recognized that these lives were not always easy: “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” (1 Pet 1:6) i.e. we live in a Fallen World where things go wrong, people are nasty, and so on. But this doesn't mean we just give up when it gets hard. Yes, there will be times when we are tired and weary and feel like giving up. There will be times when the enemy, in the form of Satan, his minions or other people, comes against us and seeks to sow fear or discouragement These are the tough times of life – and they are as real for the Christian as they are for anyone else – but, says Peter, “These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Pet 1:7)

These testing times are allowed by the Lord as part of that sanctification process and as we respond positively to them our faith will be revealed and be shown to be genuine and it will bring glory to Jesus, especially when he comes back and is revealed and all the angels will praise and worship him for what he has achieved through us. But Peter recognizes that that has not happened yet and so he adds, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” (1 Pet 1:8) There, we have gone the first circle – we're back to believing in Jesus, even when we can't see him and we live accordingly, and that is faith. And so he continues, “for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Pet 1:9) And so the wheel continues, so to speak, our faith brings the reality of our salvation and we are being changed more and more into the likeness of Jesus, and this is sanctification, a process that will continue as long as we live on this earth. Then it will be complete as we see him face to face. Hallelujah!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 49. Faith For Eternity

Titus 1:2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life , which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time,

I suspect that if we are honest, the truth is that most of us do not, on a day by day basis, ponder on the reality of eternity, or of eternal life. It tends to be older people with their aches and pains and even life-threatening disabilities who find themselves wondering about a better world free from pain and suffering. For the rest of us (as I said, if we are honest) we get taken up with just coping with the material world in which we have lived for so long and which is so familiar. In fact it may be the fact that we do not have a very clear picture about that life in eternity that means we speculate about it only a little.

“Before the beginning of time.”: Yes, this is the truth, that before God even started creating this world, He looked into the future, saw Sin and saw what needed to be done to redeem us, and finally saw the wonder of an eternity filled with redeemed beings, those who have been through this world, lived in sin, came to the end of themselves and when confronted with that which Jesus the Son would do at a specific point in time-space history, would turn to Him and receive all His love and goodness with the end game being living with Him in heaven in eternity. All of that God saw before He decided to make this world that would be perfect to start with, yet soon marred by Sin and the only reason He continued with it was because of what He saw could be achieved by the end, a redeemed people with Him there in eternity. Have you ever seen this before? You have been designed for eternity!

As Paul said to Titus, his calling was to bring faith to those God knew from the beginning would turn to Him, His ‘elect'. It is a case of faith responding to knowledge – the news of the Gospel that opens up salvation to us, and the possibility of lives revealing godliness, and just in case we think this was God's list ditch stand, Paul reminds us of that which we have just been considering – that it was all part of God's plan formulated before He created anything. This all comes to light when we hear the preaching of the Gospel and that knowledge stimulates faith which ends up bringing us into God's kingdom now on this earth and in eternity with Him in heaven. Let's just see those verses again but in their completeness: “ Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness-- a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior,” (Titus 1:1-3)

Yesterday we finished with some words from 1 Peter. We focused on the fact that Peter spoke about us at the present having to “suffer grief in all kinds of trials” (1Pet 1:6) but let's finish by looking at the words that went before that: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Pet 1:3-5) Note how much of this has a future element to it: “living hope” and “an inheritance” and “kept in heaven” and “until the coming” and “to be revealed in the last time.” All of that points forward. We have a hope of something yet to come which has been revealed to us when we have been born again through the new birth , confirmed by the resurrection of Jesus, a future inheritance waiting for us in heaven for all of us faith people that will be revealed to everyone in the last time.

Talk to your unsaved neighbor about this and it will appear pie in the sky to them, an unreality on the same plane as fairy tales but one day the reality will strike home – this world wasn't all there is. Have you ever seen the film ‘Men in Black' where we are eventually shown an entire tiny, tiny universe in a small glass ball around the neck of a cat – and then we are left wondering if this world that we inhabit is yet just another tiny existence inside another larger but still tiny ball. The writers of that film were wondering about the existence of reality and that leaves us wondering, I wonder if this present existence is like that first tiny universe in a glass ball in comparison to heaven, and on comparison to eternity?

The Bible keep on giving us hints about what is yet to come and the doorway to that future eternity is Jesus Christ (who did actually say “I am the door”). We may not have many insights about what it will be like, but we have sufficient to say there is another very real world, more real than this one even. As we suggested earlier the presence of this material world is so strong that that is so often all we can see. To believe in this future is an act of faith. Remember we considered the truth that faith can be strong or weak and that we can do things to strengthen it. As we read our Bibles, as we pray and worship, we will constantly be reminded of this greater reality to which we are coming closer day by day, and be reminded that this isn't all there is. This should enable us to hold this present existence lightly and when loved ones pass out of this existence and into the next, we can be glad for them even if we mourn their loss. May the reality of the next world grow stronger and stronger in us day by day.

Well, we have come to the end of this series on focusing faith and I hope it will have left something substantial with you. Dare I even suggest you go back through the series and reread five a day, for it is, I believe one of the most significant that I have ever written. I intend to go back though it and let it impact my life more and more for we are called to be a people of faith, and faith, we have seen can grow stronger. May it be so.