The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: God will take it out of God’s account and put it in your account and credit it to your account what Jesus did at Calvary. Your sins are paid for.

Host (Male): Today on The Healing Word, Pastor Jack Morris continues Living by Faith: Freedom Found in Christ. In Faith Is the Way, we look at the example of Abraham and discover that God’s plan has always been the same. Righteousness comes through faith, not works. Faith is the pathway God uses to bring His promises to life. Let’s join Pastor Morris now.

Pastor Jack Morris: Faith is the way. Faith has always been the way. Actually, the Bible clearly says in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6, without faith, it’s impossible to please God. Friend, you just can’t make it without faith. But if you have faith, you’re going to make it. God’s going to show you the way and God’s going to be pleased with you. If you want God to be pleased with you, have faith.

What I’m talking about when I’m saying have faith, I’m going to, by the help of the Holy Spirit, bring this out of the abstract and into the tangible. Without faith, I’m talking about believing and acting upon the word of God that we know and we understand. When I talk about faith, it’s sort of something way out here, up here, floating in the air. What is faith? It’s believing and obeying the word of God.

That’s it. I don’t know how to really add to that. That’s what faith is: believing the word of God. If a person believes the word of God, somebody says, "How do I know if I’m really believing the word of God?" You know when you’re obeying the word of God. Let’s make it as simple as the Bible makes it, for the Bible is very plain and right to the point. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God.

How do I know when I’m believing the word of God? When I’m obeying the word of God. I’ve heard people say things, "I believe the Bible, I believe in church, I believe in all of that stuff." But they don’t obey the Bible, they don’t go to church, and they don’t do all that stuff they say they believe in. Consequently, they don’t believe. Believing is not something I’m saying because it’s in my head and I have an academic knowledge of it. Believing is doing.

Faith without works is what? Dead. Say it again. Dead. Faith with works brings us to God, to truth, to light, and to happiness in the Lord. Now on the line point A, write down the word "The Faith of Abraham." We’re going to look at this man who is the father of all who believe and he is the prime example of faith and how faith works and he is what we will call the first man of faith.

The Lord wants us to see clearly, so he gives us this man so that we can see clearly faith in this man and how faith works. Again, bringing faith out of the abstract, bringing it into reality where we can actually see it. I’m not so good at abstracts. I want to see and then measure and then experience by knowing. God had a plan from the very beginning and that plan was to bring his son into the world to die for the sins of mankind.

That has always been God’s plan even before human history began. This was God’s plan, that Jesus would come and die for our sins. It took a period of time, but when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his son. But it was always God’s plan from the very beginning. When Adam and Eve sinned, God took a lamb, sacrificed the lamb, and took the skins of the lamb to clothe their shame and their sin.

This was a type and a foreshadowing pointing to Calvary, that there would be a true Lamb of God. This was only a type, but sin must be done away with. Sin must be forgiven. Sin must be cleansed. Sin must be hidden. How, God? How are you going to do that? With blood, with sacrifice. This was God’s sovereign choosing, His plan to bring about our salvation. It was not until Abraham that we actually saw a person, a man who began to exercise faith in this plan of God.

I’m referring to the plan of God through a blood sacrifice. Abraham was the first man to actually begin to believe and demonstrate faith in God that God would truly bring a sacrifice for sin and it wouldn’t be me being sacrificed for my sin or you being sacrificed for your sin but it would be one appointed by the Father, God Almighty. Abraham was the first one to believe that.

He is the first man of faith. Let’s look at Galatians chapter 3, verse 6. Hold your Bible up and read verse 6 together in unison: "Consider Abraham. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." Consider Abraham. This is what Paul is saying to the Galatians who began to consider other things as a way of salvation to bring them to God into right standing with God.

But Abraham was the one that Paul pointed out and said, "Consider him." All right, that’s what we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to do exactly that. We’re going to consider Abraham as our example of faith in God that will bring us salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son. Consider Abraham. This is the man that God chose so long ago to be the man of faith that would be the example, the concrete example, the tangible example that we could look at and follow.

God decided instead of just talking about faith, He’s going to show us faith in a human being, a human being just like us, so that we as human beings can exercise faith by mimicking this man Abraham. So God made a covenant. He said, "Consider Abraham. He believed God." Now that’s the important thing. He believed God. If this is the thing that you and I need to consider about Abraham, he believed God and what happened when he believed God? It was credited to him as righteousness.

Faith has always been the way. Righteousness means simply right with God or right standing with God. How did Abraham receive right standing with God? How did he do that? By believing. That’s exactly right. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t have to become anything. All he had to do was believe God.

Now people said, "Today it’s faith, it used to be the law, it used to be this." No, it has always been faith. It never was anything else but faith. Someone says, "Well, what about the law of Moses?" Listen. The law of Moses came 430 years after Abraham. It’s not practicing the law of Moses. It’s having faith in God. That’s the way of salvation. That’s the way Abraham came to God. That’s the way you come to God. That’s the way I come to God.

That has always been the way. There’s never been any other way to God but to believe. Again, when you truly believe, it’s not just saying, "Oh, I believe in baptism and I believe in communion and I believe in church and I believe in living a good life and I’m going to do that someday." Well, someday when you start doing it, that’s when you start believing because true faith always acts on the word of God.

Look at point B. I want to talk about Abraham for just a moment and going to digress and go back into history for just a little bit. The history of Abraham. And I’m going to read verse 7. Understand. This is what God wants us to do. He wants us to understand. God is not trying to make the way of salvation difficult. He is trying to make it so easy. It has been made so easy. God has made the way of salvation so easy that all you and I have to do, Jesus did it all.

All we need to do is to believe on Jesus and we will be saved. That means to believe on him, to begin to practice what we believe by following him obediently and we will be saved. Verse 7 says, "Understand then that those who believe are children of Abraham." Are you a believer? You’re a child of Abraham. Isn’t that what it says there? We can trace our faith all the way back to this great patriarch Abraham.

This is the man God started with. When God had that sacrifice in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, God pointed ahead to the cross. Now Abraham didn’t understand what we understand today because we’re looking back. We have a great understanding of the cross in comparison to what Abraham had. Abraham looked forward to the cross and believed in what was going to happen. You and I turn and we look back to the cross at what already has happened.

So Abraham is looking this way. You and I are looking this way. But it’s faith in the cross that Jesus died upon on Calvary. Now when God began to initiate this great plan of salvation, he started with a man, Abraham, who would have faith. He holds him out now as an example for you and me to look at and to follow. Abraham is our mentor.

God goes into the land of Mesopotamia to the delta region between the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, and he sees a man who has a heart that will listen to the word of God. Now Mesopotamia, between the two great rivers, do you know what that country is called today? Iraq. I really thought about naming this sermon "The Man from Iraq." But I thought I’d better not put that up at the street. That might not be what I need to do.

But this was the man Abraham and he came, it was not called Iraq at that time, it was called Mesopotamia, Ur of Chaldees. The chief city at that time was Babylon. The country was called Babylonia. The chief city of Iraq today is Baghdad. One and the same. The only difference is Babylon is now in ruins about 60 miles southeast of Baghdad. It was that land where Abraham was called to follow the Lord, to come out of that land.

He came from a land of pluralistic gods. There was a plurality of gods, polytheistic. His family worshiped a multitude of gods. The old Babylonians continued to add gods to their prayer list, gods that they worshiped. This was Abraham. God called Abraham to be a man of faith, a man in the blood sacrifice, a man who worshiped many gods who lived in the Mesopotamia Delta near Babylonia. That was the very place where the Tower of Babel was built from the very beginning of history.

Now here’s where many of the descendants of Noah after the flood settled and they built great civilizations. Babylonia or old Iraq before it was called Iraq, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, was a great empire. They gave to us the first form of writing. They gave to us mathematics. They gave to us the science and the study of astronomy. A brilliant people, a great people, but a haughty, proud people.

They became so proud and so haughty that they said, "We have all of these gods. We’re going to overcome every one of them and we’re going to build a tower to heaven and we will become God over all. We will be God." And they started building their tower only 60 miles south of Baghdad in the ruins of Babylon. Now when we go into the Old Testament, into the New Testament and we read about Babylon, it is not referred at all to that geographical area of Baghdad.

Babylon in the New Testament speaks of confusion, of disgrace, of haughtiness against God. The Holy Spirit was correct in choosing that. It speaks of Babylon in the book of Revelation as the destruction that is going to come from God upon the world because the world has become Babylon. Like the old Babylon, the world has become haughty and confused, un-Christlike and ungodly. And the world itself has taken on the nature of Babylon.

It was out of that place God saw one man and said, "I’m going to choose you and it’s going to be through your line that my only begotten son Jesus is going to come into the world and be sacrificed at Calvary." This was the man God chose. This is his origin. This is where he came from. Now something happened along the way and I’m going to only put this now in parenthesis. Abraham married Sarah.

It was going to be through Abraham’s seed that the lineage now through which Christ would come. Through Abraham’s seed, the Messiah would come. God made this promise to Abraham. Abraham and Sarah waited and waited and waited years and years and years until they became old. You know sometimes you have to wait a long time for the promise of God to be fulfilled. Somebody said God’s trains run on time. Wish we could say that about airplanes because they don’t run on time.

In the fullness of time, God’s son came. But Abraham became impatient. Sarah became impatient. Friend listen, have you prayed some prayers that are not answered yet and you’re becoming impatient? Well just listen to me for just a little bit. Hold on, hold steady, don’t move too quickly and by all means don’t help God answer your prayer. Don’t help God. Abraham and Sarah, they decided they’re going to help God.

Sarah, listen, you wives, listen. If anybody has influence in this world, it’s the wife. I want to tell you a story about Adam and Eve. She pretty had some pretty good influence on Adam, didn’t she? But then look at Sarah. Sarah said to Abraham, I’m going to use my own words and paraphrase but this is the story in a nutshell. She said, "God made a promise. God said it was going to be through your seed. But you don’t have any seed. There is no heir."

She came up with an idea. She said, "I have a concubine. She’s really a good-looking woman and I want you to go into her and I want you to have her to have a baby by you and it will be your seed. It’s the seed of Abraham. God said it would be the seed of Abraham so it won’t be through me but it’ll be through Hagar." Well sure enough, Hagar got pregnant and she had a son and his name was Ishmael.

Ishmael was born and the scripture says in Genesis chapter 16, it says that Ishmael shall be like a wild donkey of a man. A wild donkey of a man that every man’s hand will be against him and his hand will be against every man. God said that through Isaac, through Jacob, and remember it was Jacob whose name was changed to Israel. And now you see the Jewish people coming into being.

From Abraham comes Isaac, the Jews. From Abraham comes Ishmael, the Arabs. The Jews went on to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for Jesus himself was a Jew, a Hebrew, which brings in the people of faith, the Christians. Now from one man: the Arabs, the Muslims, the Jews, and the Christians. Well Abraham is now told to take Isaac and sacrifice him. It was very confusing. "Lord, I tried through Ishmael, that didn’t work. Now you’ve given me Isaac and now you want me to sacrifice Isaac."

Abraham now had matured in his faith. He’s no longer questioning God. He’s no longer in a hurry to get the answer. He’s going to do exactly what God says whether he understands it or not. "You want Isaac? I’m going to give you Isaac." He takes him, he builds an altar. But God saves Isaac. Again, God is telling Abraham it’s going to be a sacrifice. It’s going to be through this boy Isaac that the true Lamb of God is going to come.

As a Father, God, I’m going to put my own son on an altar. It’s going to be through him. Believe in him. He’s not here yet, but believe in him. He’s coming the same way that Isaac is being sacrificed, he’s coming, my son, to be sacrificed. Believe Abraham, believe. That’s the only thing that you and I need to believe in today. And if you believe in that, the Christ of the sacrifice, you’re a child of God and you’ve accepted the whole Bible, the whole economy of God, by believing in Jesus.

Jesus is the answer to all of our needs. Jesus is the answer to our forgiveness and our sins. Now briefly let me tell you the purpose of the law. The law was given by Moses. God spoke to Moses, gave him the Ten Commandments and Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament. Usually when we talk about the law, we’re talking about the whole Old Testament. All of the Old Testament.

The law had one purpose only, and that was to lead us to Jesus. That’s all. Did you get what I just said? The law had one purpose only, and that was to lead us to the cross, to Jesus, to the sacrifice. The Gentiles at the time Paul wrote this, the Gentiles were following the tradition of circumcision and they thought they had to do all of that. These Galatians were Gentiles who were never Jews but they thought now in order to become a Christian and be saved and go to heaven when I die, I have to become a Jew.

Paul says all of those ceremonies that you’re now tacking on are useless. All you need is Jesus. All you need is the cross. All you need is His broken body and His shed blood. Believe that. What’s the purpose of the law? The purpose of the law was to lead us to Jesus. In the Greek world, there was a household servant that would take the child, the family child by the hand and take the child to school.

Protecting the child from danger, take the child to the entrance of the school, to the school door and deposit the child to the teacher and then leave. The household servant that brought the child and escorted the child did not teach the child anything. The whole ministry of that household servant was to take the child by the hand to the teacher. Now that was the purpose of the law.

The purpose of the law is to tell us that we are sinners, that we need a savior, thus bringing us to Jesus who does the saving. Look, I want you to open your Bible to Galatians chapter 3. We’re already in chapter 3 but now go over to verse 23. "Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law."

This person was just a household servant or a nanny, if you please, to take the little Greek child, boy or girl, to the schoolhouse. The law was the same thing. The law told us that we’re sinners. The law, the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament revealed to us that we broke the law, but it never tells us how to get saved or to be cleansed from our sin. It never reveals to us the way of eternal salvation.

The sacrifices had to be repeated over and over and over once a year. The priest would take the blood, go into the mercy seat and sprinkle it at the mercy seat before the Father. But it was inferior. Every year he had to repeat it again. So the law came along and tells us that we’re sinners, but we keep trying and we keep trying and we keep trying through blood sacrifices never to feel truly forgiven and liberated from our sin and from our guilt.

It’s like when my father was dying of cancer. The doctor sends word to the family, "Your father is dying. He has cancer. It’s inoperable." He stops. I said, "Is there anything more? Why did you stop there?" "No," he says, "there’s nothing more." Did you hear what I said? I said it was inoperable. Does that mean nothing can be done? Does that mean he’s going to die? Doctor says, "That means he’s going to die. It’s inoperable."

That’s exactly what the law did. The law tells us you’re a sinner and you’re going to die in your sin. I listen for something more but the law has nothing more to offer. The law brings me to that place where I feel condemned, where I’m judged, it tells me and shows me clearly that I have broken the law. I feel guilty, I feel condemned, I feel convicted. God help me, there’s no place else to go. And then God sends Jesus.

Hallelujah! The way, the truth, and the life. Jesus. And here’s the one that Abraham has been looking forward to all the way back in the Garden of Eden and the sacrifice pointing someday, someday, someday. Someday has come. You and I today can believe on him who came, who went to the cross, who took our sins. The Bible says that he died and not only did he die as a lamb, now he acts as a priest, our savior.

He takes his own precious blood like the Old Testament priest would take the blood of the lamb, go behind the veil into the Holy of Holies, into the mercy seat and sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat. Looking up to God, God would look down upon the mercy seat, that would help temporarily. But then Jesus came. He’s the true Lamb of God. John the Baptist saw him and said, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."

He takes it away forever. All sin, he takes it away. All sin that is confessed, he takes it away. Not only was he the Lamb of God, but he became our high priest. He took his own precious blood. He goes into the Holy of Holies of heaven to the very throne of God and with his own precious blood, he pours it out on the mercy seat. Jesus does this. The Father looks upon that, the Father’s anger is appeased.

God says, "I’m not going to judge that sinner because that sinner has repented and confessed. I look at the blood, their sin has already been paid for. Here’s the evidence of it. They go free." They are cleansed. I’m not angry with them anymore. Their debt has been paid. I see your blood that paid their debt. Now that’s what Abraham believed in. He didn’t know. You and I know it today.

Abraham never had a communion service like you and I have. We have light, we have knowledge, we have the experience of coming to Jesus and experiencing, truly experiencing the results of his broken body and his shed blood. Now on the last one, I want you to write down "object", the object of Abraham’s faith. I must close now but I must read one more scripture and I’m going to turn to Micah chapter 5, verse 2.

Micah chapter 5, verse 2: "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." Now what is he saying? Whose origins, simply meaning whose goings forth. Jesus has been going forth for you. Listen to me friend, listen to me. I must close but I want you to hear this.

Jesus has been going forth for you as your representative to the throne of God long before you were ever born. God did not start loving you when you were born but from ancient times, from before the human history was recorded, before you were ever born, thousands and thousands of years ago and before that. Jesus would go to the Father as your representative to plead for you, to plead your cause. He knew you were coming.

Notice it says from ancient times, meaning from the days of eternity past he has been going forth. I read that scripture and I said, "Oh my soul, stop and wonder that God would care and God would love so much." When did God start loving me? From everlasting to everlasting God started loving you. Long before the mountains were brought forth, long before the channels of the deep were dug, long before the oceans appeared, God had you in his mind and in his sight, thinking of you often, planning a way to get you into heaven someday.

Now what do you need to do to get there? Believe. Abraham believed and it was credited to him. You see, when God’s son went into heaven and put the blood on deposit, like going to a bank and putting something on deposit. Now we’ve got to draw on that account. I know what happened 2,000 years ago, but how can I get it from there to here? How can I draw on the account of Mount Calvary, the cross, the broken body, the shed blood?

How can I draw on the accomplishment of that? How can I draw on the account of the blood of heaven? How can I get it from there to here? Believe. Say it with me: Believe. Believe. And the scripture says it was credited to Abraham. God will take it out of God’s account and put it in your account and credit it to your account what Jesus did at Calvary. Your sins are paid for.

Oh my friend, my friend, I wish I were eloquent, I wish I could preach. I wish I could tell you how much he loves you and how long he has loved you. Whose going forth has been from everlasting to everlasting with you in his mind and you on his heart.

Host (Male): Today’s message reminds us that faith has always been God’s way: trusting him fully and believing his promises, even when we don’t yet see the outcome. Be sure to join us for the final message in this powerful series, "Ugliness into Beauty", next time on The Healing Word.