If you believe the title, leave it to me
Contents
If you believe, trust it (Heb 11:7-10)
As we thought about faith last week, we defined faith this way:
Faith is <our personal trust in God and His Word>.
Faith is not blind faith such as <I believe unconditionally>, but believing in His character. We believe in his character because he is sincere, because he loves us, and because he has the power to do everything. Also, the reason we believe in the Bible is that the Bible is the very book He spoke of. Because it is the word of someone you can trust, you believe and accept it as it is.
However, when we have this kind of belief about a certain object or a certain fact, it does not end there, but concretely we are expected to act to trust the object.
The principle of faith that I spoke of a while ago is not only applied to faith, but is also applied in our daily lives. If you think about it, we cannot live without faith for even a day.
1) When you leave town, take a bus if you don't have a private car
When boarding the bus, check the number of times it goes and the route before boarding. But by the time you get on the bus, you are already expressing your personal trust in the bus. Because when you got on the bus, you had a clear conviction in your mind that the bus would definitely go to the desired destination, for example, Cheonan Station or Express Bus Terminal. I probably wouldn't have ridden it if I didn't have that confidence.
What results have you had with your confidence? Brought specific actions to get on that bus. In this way, when personal trust is built on a certain object, specific actions and actions that trust the object are inevitably produced. If you say you believe and don't ride the bus, you don't trust it. If you believe, you are bound to act according to what you believe.
2) I go to the hairdresser to get my hair done. What if I go? I don't have any doubts or concerns about going and "I'll leave my hair to the hairdresser". Go and sit on a chair. Then tell them what hair style you want and leave it to them. Why do you leave it to me? because you trust it. If you're worried, you can't let it go.
3) Take the elevator. It climbs several tens of meters above the ground. If you fall, you die. And yet, you risk your life in the elevator. I entrust my life to it several times a day without the slightest anxiety or doubt. Why? Because we do not doubt and trust the safety of the elevator. Trust leads to trustworthy behavior. One of those actions is entrusting it.
4) As I said last week, you put your money in the bank. Starting with tens of thousands of won, some people deposit tens of thousands of won, and business owners deposit billions of dollars in banks. When you entrust such a large sum, you ask, "If I leave this money, will I get it back?" I don't doubt it. Naturally, I put my money in the bank. why? because you trust it.
In this way, all our daily actions are a series of actions of faith. There are probably too many things that cannot be done without faith. I can't go to the bank. I can't even take the bus. I can't even go to the hairdresser. I can't even go to the supermarket to buy food. How can you eat this food if you wonder if it is poisonous? I can't eat it. You act because you believe.
5) Let's take one more example. Do you believe that there is a country across the Pacific called America? I believe. But have any of you been to America? Some of you have been, but most probably haven't. I couldn't go either. But how do you believe that there is a country you haven't been to?
1. There is a reason to believe.
1) Probably because in many cases they were taught that way. When you learn to believe so, you put personal trust in that knowledge. If it wasn't for learning, everyone knew and believed that way, so I would have accepted it naturally. In this case, you believe in social norms. Everyone says that, so I agree with that.
2) In the case of a machine or technology, we will trust it because we believe in the safety of the machine or technology.
The reason you ride the elevator is because you believe in the stability of the machine.
3) If I could trust the elevator and entrust my life to it, what about God? Can you believe in God and entrust your life to Him? Or can you entrust your life to Him? Of course, you can leave it to us. Why? This is because God is a much more reliable object than a machine than a man. You can see countless people in the Bible who believe in God and entrust their entire lives to Him. You can see that you leave your family, your business, your future, your children, and even your life and death to God.
Why? Because they trusted God. When you trust, the actions that match it are bound to follow. At least in the Bible, many people believed that trusting in God was far more secure than trusting in any human or machine.
There are several examples of such in the text we read today. First is the example of Noah. God told Noah to build a big boat because he had plans to judge the world with water in 120 years from now. However, this is a demand that is difficult to obey if you think about it common sense. How can you believe without seeing what will happen in 120 years? And it doesn't take a month or two, it takes 120 years to build a ship, how can you invest 120 years on something you don't know for sure?
Still, Noah obeyed. moved into action. Why? It was because he had a deep trust in God and his Word. When you trust, you will act accordingly.
2. The important thing is that if you trust in God, you will never have any regrets.
Look at Noah. After 120 years of patience and obedience, a great flood occurred in the end according to God's word.
So is Abraham. One day, God told him to leave his hometown and relatives and go to a place he had never been before. Then I will give the land to Abraham and his descendants. So, Abraham believed and obeyed God and His Word, and when he lived silently waiting day by day, he could eventually see God's promises being fulfilled. If we trust God and go out, God will never deceive or disappoint us.
But the people and machines we almost blindly believe in every day, every day, are not. I have bad memories of the elevator. One day, I took the elevator up to the 15th floor, and I rode it alone. But on the 12th floor, the elevator suddenly started shaking and stopped.
You don't know how upset I was. When I came to my senses and rang the emergency bell, the security guard was also bewildered and told me to stay still and wait. After being locked up like that for about 10 minutes, the security guard came on foot, panting for breath. And there have been times when I artificially opened the elevator from outside and got out. After that, I don't really trust Elevate.
There are times when I go for a haircut and it is difficult. Sometimes I cut my hair too short to make him a soldier. Sometimes I make it in a completely different style that I don't want. How about the bank? There were times when banks went bankrupt during the IMF. What we believe in 100% is actually not perfect. They are incomplete objects. I don't know when it will happen.
But God is not. He has a perfect personality. There are no lies. If the character of God is revealed even in the slightest bit, Christianity must be closed on that day. Because Christianity itself stands on the premise that God is perfect.
God is perfect not only in character, but also in ability. You can do anything. If God does not have such power, then Christianity must be closed. We believe in God because he is not a god like Zeus in Roman mythology, but the almighty God who made the whole world and rules the whole universe. But if God is not like that, Christianity must be closed.
So, even now, many people attack with various things in order to destroy Christianity. Liu Wellis, who wrote the novel Ben-Hur we know well, was also an atheist. In this man's heart, Christianity was too vain. So, he decides to expose the fiction of Christianity and eliminate Christianity from the world. Then, he visits libraries in the United States and Europe to do research to uncover the myths of Christianity.
However, this man who had been digging into the Bible to uncover the fiction of Christianity, the more he digs into the Bible, the more he realizes that the Bible is not a fiction but a fact. So, what I was trying to write a book that reveals the fiction of Christianity is rather the disappearance of Ben-Hur, who apologizes for Christianity.
We believe that God's person is perfect and that His power is perfect.
Our faith is based on the premise of God's character and personality.
3. If God is so omnipotent, is it difficult for Him to create the universe with His Word? Is it easy? It's easy.
God, if Almighty God is right, it is not difficult for him to create the universe with his Word. If it is not God, it is nonsense, but if He is God, it is not difficult to create the world, and it is quite natural.
If Jesus is the Son of God, it is not unusual for him to walk on water. Raising the dead is no wonder. If we consider that the miracles in the Bible were performed by God, it is not a strange event at all, but a natural event.
We believe in Almighty God. I trust in his power and character. And I entrust my life to him. Everyone! If God is such a trustworthy person, can our trust in Him be worse than an elevator? I trust the elevator and put my life in it, but what if I don't trust God more than the elevator?
He said that if you really trust it, the behavior that matches it will come naturally. If I say I believe in the safety of elevators and I don't get on them, I don't believe them. If you believe, there must be an act of entrusting your body to it.
If I trust God, I naturally entrust my life to Him and depend on Him. So, looking at the Bible, many people believed in that God and acted. The story of the Bible is the story of how such people believed and acted. The story of Abraham, the story of Moses, the story of David, and the story of Daniel are all stories that show how they acted because they believed in God.
What other message does their story show? They believed and acted, and the living evidence of God appeared. One of the evidences is that the promises made by God must be fulfilled. And sometimes miracles happen. The important thing is that if you believed and acted, you could experience the existence of God.
< Conclusion >
Everyone! Faith is our personal trust in God and His Word. If you can't trust God and His person, you can't really trust what He says. But the God we believe in is perfect both in person and ability.
He is more perfect than any man or machine we believe in. When you trust in Him, you are never disappointed. And it never fails. So it is far better to trust in God than to trust in your strength or wisdom, or any visible position or money.
If you trust God, I want you to entrust your life specifically to Him. Please express your trust. Then he will never let us down.