Acts 26:12-18
Okay, so tonight’s topic is saving
faith. We’re making our way through
the order of salvation. We’ve looked at union with Christ
and how it’s an overarching theme in salvation that we are united
to Christ in his election. We’re united to Christ in his
sufferings and his death. We’re united all the way through
to the end of the world. of salvation and that in life
and in death, as we confessed from the Heidelberg Catechism
this morning, in life and death, we belong to our faithful Savior,
Jesus Christ. So as we look at each of the
aspects of the order of salvation, we remember that they are under
the umbrella of union with Christ. And we looked at God’s election
or predestination. We looked at God’s effectual
or effective call. Last week, we looked at regeneration
and how God gives us rebirth or gives us new hearts, new dispositions
that we might love and serve. And tonight we want to look at
saving faith. And we’re turning a corner, so
to speak, in the order of salvation. God has been at work in our lives,
if you will. He has united us to Christ. He’s
called our names before the foundation of the world. He has given us
new hearts, new minds, new lives, new dispositions. And now the
appropriate response to his gospel call, his goodness, his work
in us, he’s changed our hearts from hearts of stone to hearts
of flesh. The appropriate response is to respond in faith. And just
like every other aspect of salvation, faith is a gift of God. Faith
is also an instrument that God uses to save us. Faith is, that’ll
sound really bad, faith is instrumental in our Christian life, but it’s
an instrument. It’s the way God sort of transmits
the benefits of grace to us. We took communion today. by faith,
believing that it is really the body and blood of the Lord Jesus
to us in a special way, that Jesus comes to us and feeds us
and nourishes us. It’s by faith. Otherwise, it’s
just bread and welches. It’s just a little wafer. It’s
just something to whet our appetite. We might as well go home and
eat a real meal. But by faith, we took it because
we believe that God works through the ordinance that Christ set
up. So faith is a huge part of our life. So we want to differentiate
faith from other uses. Jude writes in his little one
chapter letter that we must contend for the faith. And there he uses
faith to speak of the body of beliefs. I’m part of the Christian
faith, we say. or I’m part of the reformed faith,
we may say. And what we mean by that is that’s
our body of beliefs. But faith is also the instrument
by which we trust, we believe, we rest in God, and it’s an ongoing
faith. But there is this aspect of saving
faith, and that saving faith is when we first came to realize
our sinfulness, God’s wrath, Jesus’ mercy, and our need to
repent and turn toward God and quit living for ourselves, quit
living in Adam and walk with him. So chapter 14 of our confession
begins this way. It says, the grace of faith,
whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their
souls. It’s the work of the spirit of
Christ in their hearts. And it’s ordinarily wrought by
the ministry of the word. and it’s also encouraged and
strengthened by the administration of the sacraments and prayers.
Now that is a mouthful, but you understand this from what we
have talked about before. How does God ordinarily save
sinners? It’s through the reading and
the preaching of the word. That’s why we’ve said over and
over, the best evangelism we can have is to bring someone
to the pulpit. bring someone to worship where
they will hear God’s word read and preached. That is ordinarily,
not exclusively, but that is ordinarily how God works. We had a show of hands I think
last time we mentioned that and several of you raised your hands
indicating that you were saved under the preaching of God’s
word. But that is ordinarily how God saves. But saving faith
is a gift of God. It is a work of the Holy Spirit.
It is a gift so that, as Ephesians says, no one may boast. But the response to our sinfulness
and God’s wrath and mercy and our recognizing that the proper
response is saving faith. And our confession says, we believe
to the saving of our souls. There is a benefit to our belief. There’s a benefit to our faith
in Jesus. And that is that our souls are
saved. Now, How does this happen? How does this work? I’ll just
tell you just by way of personal testimony how it happened with
me. You know, you grow up in the
church, and you hear the gospel, you hear of salvation, your parents
teach you. Now, I know some of you didn’t grow up in the church,
but at least that’s the way it was for me. And so you hear this stuff
all the time, and you look back over your life and say, I don’t
remember a time when I didn’t know the Lord. But I can tell
you of a very specific time And it was not under the preaching
of the word, but it was under, of all things, it was under the
teaching of a professor in college who was, I don’t know whether
he was a believer or not, he was very liberal, and as much
as I like Duke, he had his PhD from Duke Divinity School, which
is about as worthwhile as the sheepskin it’s stamped on. But
he was going through the historic Christian faith, and we got to
the Reformation, and he went through Tulip, which was the
reformed response to Arminianism. And he was making his way through
total depravity. Now, total depravity infuriates
a lot of people. You can’t say that about me.
Well, friends, that’s what the Bible says about you. And I remember
we had, it was springtime, we’d been cooped up all winter, there
was a lot of snow in the mountains of Tennessee where I went to
college, and we had class outside. It was the day before spring
break, ready to go home. And his proclamation of the truth
of total depravity made me understand I am a sinner and it’s bad news. And you see what happened there
is God the Holy Spirit worked through that event where I realized
who I am and who God is and that a righteous God and an unrighteous
sinner can’t live together in peace and harmony. And so part
of saving faith is that God gives us the grace because he’s given
us a new heart. He’s regenerated us. He’s called
us through the gospel. He lets us understand that we
are sinners and that sin is an offense to God. It is odious,
as we say. It is a stench in his nostrils.
And that our sin, every one of them, and our being born in Adam,
requires that his justice serve his wrath and condemnation toward
us. But then there’s good news. That wrath and condemnation for
God’s beloved, God’s elect, is poured out on Christ at the cross.
And so in real space and time, he gives us the gift of faith,
where we recognize our sinfulness, our need of mercy, and God’s
saving grace in Christ. And at that moment, we are saved
unto salvation. We recognize what God has done
for us, and we turn from our way of living, and we want to
live a righteous life. And you can probably tell, maybe
in vague terms or maybe very clear terms, when that came about
in your life, when the gospel became very clear to you, when
you recognized, I am a sinner in need of God’s mercy, and he
freely offers it in Christ, and you came to a saving faith in
Jesus. So it’s very interesting, just
sort of read the mechanics of it as it’s spelled out. But it’s
a grace of faith, and we are enabled to believe to the saving
of our souls. It’s a work of the Spirit of
Christ in our hearts. It’s ordinarily wrought by the
ministry of the word, and it is strengthened by the sacraments,
by prayer. It’s just a little aside, since
we had the Lord’s Supper today, you don’t have to answer out
loud. Maybe you all say no, because
it’s rainy and y’all are sleepy, but no, we believe the Holy Spirit
was at work. Wasn’t it neat to receive the sacraments and on
a dreary day? We come in with a week of being
battered and bruised by the world, and we come in and God not only
feeds our souls by the fellowship and the ministry of the word,
but he fed us today by his sacrament. He lifted our hearts toward heaven
and reminded us of all that God in Christ has done. And so he
strengthens our faith that we have, our saving faith led us
to salvation, but he strengthens our faith through that. The second
section of chapter 14 on saving faith says, by this faith, by
the saving faith, a Christian believes to be true whatsoever
is revealed in the word for the authority of God himself is speaking
therein. And he acts differently, it says,
and I’ll translate that into modern English, out of the 1600
English, he acts differently upon that which each particular
passage thereof contains. Now, I believe I was a covenant
child and the Lord was blessing my life, but I understood the
gospel very clearly under the teaching of total depravity.
and our sins and trespasses. You go to that passage in Ezekiel
37 where God says, look at those bones. Can those bones live? Well, with God’s work, yes, they
can. God calls what is dead and makes it alive. He calls what
doesn’t exist and it exists. But I imagine some of you came
to faith under different passages of scripture. Maybe, excuse me,
a more tender passage of scripture brought you to faith. I know
folks who’ve been converted by reading the early chapters of
Genesis, but different ways, or God uses different verses
under the ministry of his Holy Spirit to bring us to saving
faith. He not only helps us believe
these things to be true, but he gives us obedience. Maybe
you’ll understand it this way, you speak to your children, And
you can tell when they have a hard heart, right? Y’all can nod.
Y’all got them all out of the house now, but one. But you know
when the heart is hard. But don’t you know it when the
heart is yielding and tender? And you can say, wow, they’ve
got it. They understand. They want. They want to obey
mommy and daddy and please. And that’s what it’s like with
us. We recognize, God, I’m not in the driver’s seat. In fact,
as long as I’m at the wheel or at the helm, this is a shipwreck.
This is a disaster. And so you take over. I’m tired
of living for myself. I’m tired of sinning. I’m tired
of displeasing you. And so you take over. And so there is this
ability to believe what is true if it’s revealed to us in the
gospel, but there is this obedience. And we see that very clearly
in our children, but we see it in adults. When you know somebody
who wasn’t a Christian, but now they are, you see a difference
in their lives. Maybe they were reckless or it
was It was their rule only, but we see somebody who yields obedience
to God, and what an amazing thing that is. And you can see that
in your own hearts, too. When you do things that you don’t
wanna do, but you know they please God, and that your new heart
produces those desires, what a great thing it is to feel the
weight of God, and to say, I wanna please Him. I wanna do what brings
Him great joy. So we yield obedience to His
commands. Here’s another interesting phrase,
we tremble at his threatenings. Now we read one of his threatenings
today in the morning service. We read of the warning not to
eat and drink unworthily of the Lord’s Supper. But you know,
we’re not too scared of God anymore. And you know, that’s good. We
read in Romans, there is therefore now no condemnation for those
in Christ Jesus. We’re not gonna be condemned
for our sins. Christ has already paid for them. But do we fear
and tremble at God? You know, there’s those examples
of Isaiah bumping into the holiness of God. What did he do? He shook
in his boots. Or what did John do when he saw
into heaven? He fell on his face. as though
dead. Do we approach the Lord’s table
with fear and trembling? Do we even enter into God’s house
with fear and trembling, knowing that he is a great God of wrath
and mercy, but he is a God who judges and he ought to be feared. You remember the great line in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where the little girl Lucy says
of Aslan, he’s good, but he’s not safe. And that’s the way
we should remember our God. He’s good, but he’s not safe.
And he is a God of great threatenings and justice. So we yield to his
obedience. We tremble at his threatenings.
And then we embrace the promises of God for this life and that
which is to come. We recognize God’s holiness and
we shake. We recognize his commands and
we obey them. But we also recognize his promises
and we relish in them. And that’s something we probably
also ought to give more thought to, is the promises of God. We
live sometimes like we’re paupers, right? We’re poor, we’re broke,
but we have all the riches of heaven at our disposal. They
are for us. All the promises of God are yes
and amen in Christ, and we should know them and lay hold of them. One of the reasons I like to
do a different creed every week, though we kind of rotate through
the same ones, is I like for us to see a wide variety of things
that we can confess about our faith that are true and that
assure us in a different way than they did the week before.
You know, we can say the Apostles’ Creed every week, there’d be
nothing sinful about it. But it’s nice to add the Nicene
Creed, or to say Heidelberg 1 and 2, or to do the Creed from Hebrews
1 and Philippians 2, or to speak from the truth of our confession
of faith about a topic that’s related to the sermon that day.
Those are wonderful things to do, but it gives us more variety
in the wonder and promises of God. And so let me encourage
you to dive into the scriptures, particularly the Psalms, and
you will see the wonderful promises of God for this life and the
life which is to come. And then it says, says here in
the second part, but the principal acts of saving faith are, and
this is sort of the nuts and bolts, so for those of you who
are mechanically minded and wanna know, you actually read the instructions
before you put something together, this is for you. The principal
acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ
alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of
the covenant of grace. Here’s a simpler way to say that.
We receive and rest in Christ alone for our salvation. You
see those two words. If somebody ever asked you what
is faith, you can say it’s receiving and resting. Receiving Jesus
and resting in God. And you’ll hear me use that language
a lot during church before the, assurance of pardon. I always
make sure to say to those of you who by faith have received
Christ and are resting in him alone for your salvation, these
words of assurance of pardon are for you. And that’s also
saying if you’re not in Christ, these words of assurance are
not for you. It’s a gospel call in one sense.
If you’re not saved, you’re not forgiven. And yes, that’s bad
news. We don’t say it quite that way. that way, but that’s the
implication, right? So these are good words to say
we receive and we rest in Christ alone for our salvation. And it’s by virtue of God’s covenant
of grace. One of the ways that we know
our salvation is sure is that it is written in the eternal
covenant of grace and God’s will. His covenant cannot be broken.
And so what God has said he will do, he will never undo. And that’s a wonderful thing.
Now here’s something very practical. This is the third and the final
section. I think it’s something that should encourage you very
well. It says, this faith is different
in degrees. It’s weak or strong. It may be
often and in many ways assailed and weakened, but gets the victory
growing up in many ways to the attainment of full assurance
through Christ, who is both the author and the finisher of our
faith. This faith, it says, is in different
degrees weak or strong, and it may be assailed or weakened.
Your faith often comes under attack, and we look at the culture
we live in, we look at the attack on our Christian world and life
view, and we say, you know, it’s hard to be a Christian. Sometimes
we even say, no other generation has had it as hard as we have.
Well, as we make our way through Hebrews, we’ll find out that
that second generation of Christian had it far worse than we can
imagine. They were facing Nero. We’re
not there yet, though some in other parts of the world may
be. There are Christians on the run in the Middle East and in
Europe, and we should pray for them and be concerned for them
for they’re our brothers and sisters But here in America,
we haven’t really experienced persecution. Maybe there’s intellectual
persecution. Oh, you’re a Christian. You’re
weak-minded. You’re on a crutch. And you say,
no, I’m actually on life support. I was dead, and I’ve been brought
alive again. We say it’s far worse than what
they say. But we got it pretty easy here. But we’re seeing it
increasingly difficult to be a Christian. and to be a faithful follower. But
what do we do? How do we handle the attacks
on our faith? How do we handle our faithometer,
you might say, you know, the little battery meter on your
car. You want your car battery meter in the positive so your
charging system is working, your car will start, your radio will
play, and your air conditioning will run. But we want our faithometer
to be strong. But what do we do when it gets
weak? What should we do when it gets weak? We should pick
up our Bibles, because this is our source of faith. This is
what we believe in. This is what we receive and rest
in. And we need to go to it over
and over and over again, but also coming to church. Sometimes
you’ll hear me say we leave church after Sunday and we live out
of that grace during the week. But guess what? It wears out. Actually, it doesn’t. God’s grace
is always good. But guess what? He designs for you to come back
to church week after week after week. He’s designed six days
of labor and one day of rest and worship. And that one day
of rest and worship includes recharging your batteries, filling
your soul. The Puritans call it the market
day of the soul. It’s your shopping day for your
Christian life. And so we sit under preaching,
we fellowship together, we pray together, we have Sunday evening
together, we do Sunday school, we do all these things that fill
us up with grace yet again. And you know how it is with our
cars, if we don’t fill them up, what will happen? They will run
out, and guess what? You’ll be calling AAA. The Adams
towing service will be paying a visit, or the sweet highway
patrolman will get that magic thing out of the back of his
trunk and give you enough to get somewhere, and you hang your
head low and drive to the gas station. But generally, we don’t
run out of gas, right? We never let our cupboards get
bare. We make sure that there’s enough money in the bank so that
we can spend. But why is it that we will skimp? on God’s grace. Why is it we
say, you know, one more beach trip won’t kill me, or, you know,
I’ll miss the Lord’s day, or I’ll find some reason not to
be in church. We ought to consider that very
well and remember that God saves sinners through the preaching
of the word and through the ministry of the word, but he also encourages
us week after week after week. We come for our fill up. We come
for refueling, and so what a wonderful grace that is. But our faith
can be weak, it can be strong, it can grow, it can be weakened.
One way it can be weakened is by our absence from the ministry
of the word, our absence from the scriptures. You know these
cheesy church signs you drive by these churches and you just
wish that minister did not have access to those little letters.
But seven days without God makes one week. Okay, but that’s goofy,
but it’s true. Right? If you don’t eat, you
don’t live. We know what happens, but why
is it that we’re kind of happy to do that? Keep your faith strong
by keeping yourself in the life of God’s Word. I would encourage
you, if you’re not reading the Bible daily, do so. And if you’re
not reading the Bible daily as a family, do so. And that will
be very hard for you to do, let me just tell you by experience.
But it will be a blessing if you just read a psalm a day together.
You may not understand it, or we can help you get one of these
study Bibles with the little cheat notes and you can understand
it better. But start reading the Bible daily in some way,
shape, or form. but come to church every week,
but get in God’s word as much as possible, and your faith will
remain strong. So it says this faith is in degrees
weak or strong, and it’s in many ways assailed and weakened, but
it gets the victory, and it grows up to the attainment of full
assurance through Christ, who is the author and the perfecter
of our faith. And that’s one of the great comforts
we have, is life is very, very hard. Jesus knows that. God knows
that. but ultimately he wins, he gets
the victory. And we may fall across the finish
line. We may drag ourselves to the
finish, but God will get the victory. And so we don’t have
to lose heart about that. But this is saving faith. This is the response to God’s
goodness. We receive him as he’s offered to us in the gospel,
and we rest in him alone, not our own works. not any Jesus
plus something or Jesus minus something, we rest simply in
him alone for our salvation. Let’s pause now and give thanks
to him for this glorious redemption. Our Lord, we thank you for the
gift of faith that we can recognize ourselves and recognize you and
that we can receive you as you are freely offered in the gospel
and that we can completely rest in your arms for our salvation.
Help us to rest, to trust, and to grow in our faith as we strive
to walk with you. We pray all this in Christ’s
name. Amen. I will arise and go to Jesus
He will embrace me in His arms In the arms of my dear Savior
Oh, there are ten thousand charms