Rightly Dividing Faith

Roger Tointon—August 19, 2023

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What we're talking about is faith! If you want a title, I would say Rightly Dividing Faith because it is so large. What do we have to do? We have to take God's Word, you know how it works, 'here a little, there a little, line up on line' (Isa. 28) and then you really start getting into it. That's only the beginning and so that's what we're going to try to do.

Heb. 11—we're going to keep going back to where we start, because we want this thing to become full circle. That's how God's Word is. Every major precept of God, it goes full circle.

Look at the universe out there. If you look in one of those big telescopes and you look out there and you see all of these things, you know, all these squares and triangles and oblong, no, they're all round.

Well, that's the way the Plan of God works. You start here and you go through the process He gives you and you come back right here and then you start again. That's the way God works with us. It is an ongoing thing. What is eternity?  It has no beginning. It has no end. Therefore, it has to be like a circle.

Heb. 11—Paul gives a very, very short and sweet definition of what faith is:

Hebrews 11:1: "Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for…"

What do we hope for? We hope for the things that God has revealed to us! And in those are promises, astounding promises. We do not understand them all. But we hope for those things.

"…and the conviction of things not seen" (v 1).

The King James says evidence. It is both! It is absolutely both, because God gives us so much evidence by the things He has made and the things that He has done in creating us. He deliberately created us because He wanted us as His children in the Kingdom of God.

So, if we're going to be fully convicted, if we are going to go through what God is telling us, we have to have the conviction! But in order to have that conviction, we have to look at the evidence that God gives us. We'll get into that a bit.

That is the beginning. As you notice, it is basically two parts. That's all He gives us. Two parts to this thing called faith!

We're going to try to open up each part by going to the process that God has and has been working with each one of us for salvation.

• Isn't that our goal?
• Isn't that what God showed us shortly after he called us?

You know that it was like that when we were first called. And then we began to learn a little more and a little more until we became convicted that it was true!.

We could look into the Word of God, and we became convicted it was true. It was literally the Word of God. It wasn't the word of men!

All those things, and they're starting to come together in a process. We're going to look at how God has worked with us and how He intends to work with all men eventually. We'll get into why us now and them, hopefully. You never know where we end up.

Jude 1: "Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to the called saints, sanctified by God the Father and kept in Christ."

• What does that mean?
• How does that go together?
• How did it come about?

We know that we're sanctified by God. We're told right there and elsewhere. But what is being sanctified by God? In His eyes, He makes us righteous!

God cannot live outside of righteousness, and therefore, He sanctifies us, but how does He do it? Through Christ! Part of that is through Christ's blood.

That is major! That's why Christ had to come here below and suffer as He did. He was willing to do that even though He hated what He had to go through as a human being.

He was a human being when He did that. He had the reactions that we do. You see something, and He knew what He was going to have to go through.

That weighed very, very heavy on Him. That's why it is so important to read about the night before He had to die in His prayer to the Father. He said, 'Father, if it be possible, take this cup from Me.'

You've all read those in whichever account: Matthew, Mark, Luke. That's how He felt. Yet, He said right after He said the first part, 'Not My will, Your will, Father.'

Now you bring that back to us. He has also called us directly, personally (Eph. 4).

Then He goes on to say so many other significant things we need to realize so that we can do what He did when He opened our mind. When we hear from the Father, we have to become convicted if it's going to lead to what God wants and why He called us.

John 6—to show and expand on what Jude is saying, to make it clear; Christ speaking:

John 6:44 "No one can come to Me unless the Father, Who sent Me, draws him…"

Then He makes a statement, and this is so often in the Word of God. Christ is saying:

All right, nobody can come to Me; all you people out there that think that you have found Me and you just walk right up and say hello.

No, doesn't work that way!

Then He says, "…the Father, Who sent Me, draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day" (v 44).

What did I talk about with circles? He then jumps clear ahead. After our period of going around that circle has been completed and we have become a literal son or daughter of God! You see how it works, It starts with the Father, and then He gives us to Christ.

Jude says, "…kept in Christ." You bet we are! Who is Christ?

• He is our Good Shepherd
• He is shepherding us
• He is our Tutor
• He is our Teacher
• He is our Savior

That's how we're kept in Christ!

You can go from the simple and expand it, and it becomes that much more meaningful. We'll see how this process works that we have gone through and are still going through.

John 6:45: "It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.'…."

Here again is just like he did in v 44, He jumps ahead and makes this statement about the future.

• When are men going to be?
• Are they all being taught now by God? Of course not! They have not been called!

It has to start with how God determined it would work. Then he says, "…Therefore everyone who has heard from the Father… [when He draws us, opens our mind v 44] …and has learned."

That can mean a number of things, but right here in going through the process of how we got to where we were in absolute covenant with God, learned. What happened after you were called? You should remember those things and I'm sure you probably do!

We had to pick up on what God was showing us. He had parted the veil and part of that was that we could read the Bible in part. It started very small, but we could read the Scriptures that were broadcast to us and we could say, 'Well, what do you know?' Because we never read them that way. We hadn't read them with that full inner conviction and the understanding that has to come from God.

Well, Christ said, 'You can't come to me unless the Father draws you and part that veil.' That had happened when you were called. You began to see things and hear things that you did not before.

At this point when you were called and you began to hear these things and you didn't turn and run away or you would not be listening today, you would not be here today.

Not where you are. You'd be out doing whatever. When did He give us to Christ? That's right there when we saw enough, we became convicted that it was true. It was of God. We were being dealt with. We didn't know all the different ways. I know how it struck me. It was like suddenly I was in the presence of God. It's like I could feel Him.

Then the person speaking revealed who Christ was. Now you see before we could come to Christ and be given to Christ, we had to come to  know Him. We had to be able to know who He was.

How are you going to have faith in anybody that you do not know? Well, you get to know them!

Verse 46: "No one has seen the Father except He Who is from God..."

We have Christ now, and we have just learned that He is the God of the Old Testament. That was phenomenal! That was major! I know how it struck me. But now we find out all of a sudden, we go on, we continue, we did not know the Father either.

Verse 46: "No one has seen the Father except Me… [Christ has seen the Father] …except He Who is from God; He has seen the Father."

Go back to Matt. 18:27, what does Christ say there? He says the same thing! He quotes v 44 briefly.

He says, 'No one knows Me. No one can come to Me. No one knows the Father either.'

We didn't. No one knows the Father. We didn't know Christ. We didn't know the Father. And now we have learned of Christ, and we've learned enough that we believe. But now the Father, Christ says, 'The one whom I will personally reveal Him to. That's what Christ says in Matt. 11:27.

Now we have that. Come to v 33, Christ is talking to the Pharisees, and you know what the Pharisees thought of Christ. They hated Him because He was, they perceived enough, because of the preaching of John the Baptist, they perceived that this man was a threat to their authority, and that was one main reason at that time that they hated Him, and they determined they had to get rid of Him, which they eventually did.

John 6:33 "For the Bread of God is He Who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

He's talking of Himself standing there before them, and they didn't put it together, yet.

Verse 34: "Therefore, they said to Him… [some of the people] …'Lord, give this bread to us always.' Jesus said to them, 'I AM the Bread of Life; the one who comes to Me shall never hunger; and the one who believes in Me shall never thirst at any time'" (vs 34-35).

What did He bring up? I've mentioned it already, but it is another element of this plan, of the ingredients, the substance that God gives to us that we can know Him and His Son and believe to where we can go forward and eventually become His literal sons and daughters!

Now in belief, belief and faith, we're talking about faith. We're trying to understand how it works, but you cannot separate belief and faith, because we could not have faith unless we believed first. The belief part had to come first. That's why God showed us things. That's why Christ then began to show us more things until we were—the second part of Paul's definition—convicted!

We knew now that God was. We may have believed that before, but we did not fully understand it because we didn't know Them and we didn't know how They were going to work with us and work with all of mankind.

Therefore, we had to believe and we got convicted! What did we do? We then understood we had to enter covenant with God and Christ in order to go forward, in order to be a part of these things.  We'd already heard some of the promises and we said that we want to be baptized.

The ministry in those days—this was back in the 60s for me, several decades ago—felt our salvation was on their shoulders. So they did things. They would say if you didn't bring it up, then 'Have you thought about baptism?' And I said, 'Well, yes, I have.  I hadn't mentioned it, yet, but yes, I have.'

Are you ready? They had a little short counseling and then, 'Yes, it's going to happen. It's going to happen Saturday night out at Jim Doak's garage where a big horse tank was.' That was where it would be, it would happen!

Well, they had to dip me twice. Sid Cloud was the one that dipped me and there were some others there going to be baptized. So he dipped me down and my foot came up! Somebody said, 'Nope, no, it didn't take.' So he dipped me again and I made sure I kept my foot down.

So, they came out and they laid their hands upon me and that's when God said, 'I give you the Holy Spirit.'

Did it overwhelm me to where I couldn't get up on my feet again? No! You didn't really feel anything different and you didn't see fire come down and land on your shoulder.

Well, no, it starts small! Like everything with God, it starts small! But what does it do? It grows and it grows and it grows! If in your heart, when you went into that watery grave, you were convicted… And that's what we had to be, and that's what everybody else eventually will have to be before they too can have salvation! It is a tremendous thing! But there's another thing that I should mention right here.

Ephesians 2:8: Paul says: "For by grace… [God's mercy and God's love] …you have been saved…"

Look how Paul talks here. It's as if it's already done, we've already been saved. Now, God has, IF we have done the right things that he has shown us and we are walking in faith, THEN in God's eyes, we're already saved unless we turn and go the other way! So, He looks at it as done. We'll see that again in closing here.

Then he says, "For by grace you have been saved..." (v 8). How? What we're talking about!

"...through faithwe are saved, and this especially is not of your own selves; it is the gift of God" (v 8).

Now, the Holy Spirit is the gift of God, also. But that's when it's given to us. The Holy Spirit is the power of God. It's not a gift to us until He gives it to us. When did he do that? He said He would do that when we got baptized and had hands laid on and when we were convicted in our heart!

So, there we are, it has to be given. When did we receive faith? It's a gift! It comes from God! Well, it had to be right at that time!

• What does it say in Rom. 6 about baptism?
• When we come up out of that water, we are to do what?

That is the whole thing that we have to go through! We have to walk in newness of life!

How are you going to walk in newness of life following, obeying Almighty God if you don't have faith?

He had to give it to us then if we were going to do anything and to take that little bit of faith that he gave us and begin to walk in faith. That's how we walk in newness of life.

See how God's Plan works? It is a process! I've said that before and it absolutely is a process, not because I said it, because it's the way God is working with us.

Hebrews 11:6: "Now, without faith… [this is backing up exactly what I've said] …it is impossible to please God. For it is mandatory for the one who comes to God to believe…" Here we have belief again!

• we've got faith
• we've got belief
• we have conviction

All of these things and more because they come from God!

When God personally drew us, opened our mind, He knew why He was doing that. He wanted us for a special purpose. He didn't just want us as a water boy. He has a purpose for us.

Therefore, but the one who comes to God has to believe that He exists, and we do! But we do not just believe He exists, we know it as fact! That's where conviction comes in, and that's what we're going to get into now in the second part of His definition.

• you have to be convicted or you can't go forward
• you have to have faith or you don't know how to go forward

We have to piece the parts together!

We have to believe "…that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him" (v 6).

All of the writing of the apostles and Christ, what Christ uttered when He was here below, diligence is involved! It is the essence of what Christ wants, how He wants us to respond to Him. It must be with diligence!

Verse 1: "Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for…" and we've covered that!

So I'd like to look at that first part as faith is the underlying foundation that gives us full hope in what God promises!

How are we going to hope for it if we don't believe what He said? So belief comes up again, and then conviction!

The second part now: "…and the conviction of things not seen" (v 1).

What haven't we seen? There's a lot of evidence that we can see and we will touch on that! We will touch on it. It is astounding! We did not see.

We can look out and we can see the things God created in the natural world. But:

• Did we see Him do it?
• Can we see God?

No, we can't see God! We can't see Christ!

Yet, we're fully convicted that they exist and we're so convicted that we know it as fact. Well, that's God's doing, working in us through His process and through faith! It's all through faith because we believe it!

Not having seen those parts. But there is evidence. So in this second part now that we're working in, let's look at:

Verse 3: "By faith we understand… [yes we understand] …that the worlds were created by the Word of God… [we didn't see Him do it, but we believe it by faith] …so that the things that are seen were made from things that are invisible."

Rom. 1:18—because we're being confronted with this right now in a way that we have not been before in our lifetime. We're being confronted by it.

Romans 1:18: "Indeed, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the Truth in unrighteousness."

That is literally what is going on around us! And it's getting so heavy. We become grieved, and yet, we do not falter because we have faith. Again, it's by faith.

Verse 19: "Manifest among them, for God has manifested it to them"—and He has in so many, many astounding ways!

We will get some Scriptures that really do talk about that.

Then Paul says, v 20: "For the invisible things of Him are perceived from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that were made…"

Isn't that evidence? That is evidence! We can see that. So, that's another way we become convicted!

But you look out there and they begin to talk about this thing and that thing and how it evolved. Because they believed Karl Marx and all of his {????}. They tell us a lie, an absolute lie. They take God out of what we see. They say, 'No, no, it just happened.' And there was this 'big bang' and it happened.

Well, we'll see how it happened. "…perceived from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that were made—both His eternal power and Godhead—so that they… [mankind] …are without excuse" (v 20).

They're without excuse! It's all around them. It's astounding. But they reject it because:

• they want to do their own thing
• they want to do it their way
• they want to do it in their timeframe

• Isn't that what's going on?
  • Isn't that why mankind is running to and fro all over the earth?

Oh, I've got to see this and I've got to see that and I've got to go there.

Well, that's part of it and so much more!
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Verse 21: "Because when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God…"

• that's denying His Godhead
• that's denying His power and glory

God has glory!

 Anytime we submit to God, believing and doing what He told us, we are adding to that glory! That's not from us!

• Why? We're doing that because of faith!
• Where did the faith come from? It came from God!

It's not of us! But we believe and we do because of faith! Mankind is truly without excuse!

"…but they became vain in their own reasonings, and their foolish hearts were darkened" (v 21). They became cannon fodder for Satan and the devil!

They've all died except the ones alive now. But the same thing will happen to the ones that are alive today!

He says, 'I'm going to cut it short—limit it. I'm going to not let it go as long as it would be before mankind would destroy themselves because He wants seed for the Millennium. That's another whole subject!

Psa. 33 really is getting to what I wanted to. We've heard and gone over some of this about the creation. It's astounding; God's creation!

I wish I could take you all up on that high mountain ridge in the San Juan Range in Colorado on a beautiful day! To look out there across the mountain range after mountain range and these beautiful valleys filled with all beautiful plants and trees that God created! That's where it came from. That shows the glory of God!

Psalms 33:6: "By the Word of the LORD were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." God breathed and it was so! It existed!

• How do you like that?
• What kind of power does that show?

Only the power of God, not of some so-called scientist that says it evolved!

Verse 7: "He gathered the waters of the sea together like a heap, putting the depths in storehouses."

What do you think He has in mind with that? He put them in storehouses! He's got something in mind. There's all of eternity out there. Think about it.

Verse 8: "Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him."

We of all people should do that and be able to do that because of what God has done in us. He did it all. Now, we had to respond! Yes, indeed, that's our part, but He did it. He started it. He is going to finish it in us IF we do not turn back.

Verse 9: "For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast."

Unless you're in LA, when's the last time when you were standing the ground began to rock like this. Well, maybe the people in LA. need a waking up!

But it stands fast! What does the sun do? The earth turns on its axis so that every 24 hours… It's done that since He created it.

Now all of that also is going to change somehow. We do not understand exactly how, but it continues because God said it will until He changes it!

So I want to close here and I want to go to Psalm 139. This is a very emotional song. I'm only going to cover four verses here, but it gets back to what we have been trying to understand here together. That's what this is all about. We're trying to understand.

Psalm 139:13: David says: "For you, O God, have possessed my reigns. You have possessed my reins; You have knit me together in my mother's womb." God can do that! He has done that! It's us and all other human beings knit together.

Verse 14: "I will praise You, for I am awesomely and wonderfully made…."

Now we get back to evidence that we saw in the second part. By conviction, we look at these words and we know they're the Word of God! This is how God does things. This is what He did with us and for all mankind in creating them.

One day He has the power to raise them up in the eighth day. That is something absolutely marvelous and wonderful.

"…Your works are marvelous and my soul knows it very well" (v 14).

See the conviction that David had? That's why he could make mistakes and bounce back, because he had that conviction!

Verse 15: "My substance was not hidden from You when I was made in secret and intricately formed in the lowest parts of the earth"—his mother's womb!

Then he doubles down on that. He says, "Your eyes did see my substance..." (v 16).

That's when the sperm united with the egg by mighty power of 480,000 volts! Instantaneous! That is God that did that! Yet, at that moment, we became an individual to God! We were not formed, yet, but He could see what we would be in nine months. Then He could see if we walked forward after He called us, what we would become.

That's God's power;  that's something! That is the power of the God we serve! Why do we serve Him? Because He gave us faith, and we can believe!

I want to just briefly say one thing. I found a picture sorting some of my old Scriptural files. I don't know how I got it.

It was a picture of a doctor operating on a woman so that he could operate on the baby. He had to do a cesarean. The baby had something, and they said it will not go full term unless there's this operation. And the one doctor says, 'I can do it.'

So they let him go forward. The picture shows after he had carefully did the cut for opening the mother's tummy so that he could get at the fetus.

'Oh, it's just a fetus.' No, it was a baby! It was about five months old, not quite; four months to go to full term. But it was a baby! This picture shows it. After he had done that, he's still holding the knife in his right hand, and he's holding the incision open and his one finger is out there, and this little arm comes up. You could see four fingers and a thumb, and they were gripped around that doctor's finger like that.

It showed that hand wrapped right around his finger, and that doctor said he froze. He could not move for over a full minute and continue with the operation, he was so overcome!

This five months, we'll call it fetus, that they say is not life, yet! Now you can understand how God hates abortion!

It is absolutely insidious, the callousness of mankind! But we have seen the glory of God, and we have faith that he will bring us to full glory with Him!

Scriptural References:

• Hebrews 11:1
• Jude 1
• John 6:44-46, 33-35
• Ephesians 2:8
• Hebrews 11:6, 1, 3
• Romans 1:18-21
• Psalm 33:6-9
• Psalm 139:13-16

Scriptures referenced, not quoted:

• Isaiah 28
• Ephesians 4
• Matthew 18:27, 44
• Matthew 11:27
• Romans 6

RT:bo/po
Transcribed: 8/23/23

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