Ordinary Faith - Genesis - April 26th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

Well, if you have a Bible, go ahead and open up to Genesis chapter 6, where you can follow along with the sermon handout that you got on the way in. Well, last Sunday, I was talking with Ben, and he surprised me with a little gift.

So, thank you for the books, Ben. He gave me a couple of books, some very nice, timely books. And one of them was for our girls to enjoy.

So, I read it to Adelaide one morning this past week. And it's a kid's book tells the story of the resurrection of Jesus, but sort of metaphorically or analogically.

There are these little creatures called the Sunderes, and they are trapped in darkness.

They live in darkness all of their lives, and they have this filth, this grime, this stain on them, until this mysterious, bright figure appears to come and rescue them.

The figure, of course, represents Jesus, and eventually they kill him, but he rises from the dead and rescues them. It was a great book, and it reminded me really of how valuable stories can be. How valuable stories can be.

I was talking with a friend this past week as well, and we were talking about Charles Dickens. I quoted him a few weeks ago in one of my sermons, and this past week, I had an occasion to tell my friend about my favorite Dickens book.

It's called David Copperfield, and I've read it maybe three or four times, and it's just remarkable. It is utterly remarkable, and there's something very, very powerful about it.

There's something that stories can do to us and for us that other things cannot.

And as your pastor, it's my job to preach the gospel to you, to teach you about faith and obedience and all of these biblical and theological truths, and yet, these things can be really hard to understand. And that's where stories come in.

Sometimes stories can really help us take a rational truth and bring it to life.

They can take propositions, and you put those same propositions that I've preached about a hundred times, or the same propositions that you read about in the Book of Romans, and if you take those propositions and you put them into a plot with

characters, it can make it so much more real and impactful. So I want to share a story with you this morning. It's the story of Noah, and it just so happens to be true.

The Bible presents Noah as an example of faith in God, and faith is one of those things that can be hard to understand.

We can talk about faith, I can preach about faith, you can read Hebrews 11 verse 1, but then you see faith in the life of Noah, and it becomes so much more real.

It has the power to inform and shape our understanding of what faith is, because for some people, faith is like this vague concept that has power all by itself.

Like it's just this kind of magic, and it doesn't matter if your faith is in Jesus or Buddha or Allah or in yourself. It can be in whatever you want it to be, as long as you have faith. Faith itself is magical.

And for other people, faith is all about miracles and like mighty spiritual adventures. Like God has this huge dramatic plan for everybody to change the course of history. But not everybody can change the course of history.

That'd be pretty chaotic, wouldn't it? Pretty hectic if everybody was always changing the course of history. Sometimes God needs people who change the oil or people who change the sheets on the bed.

In other words, God needs ordinary, everyday people like me and you to exercise everyday, ordinary faith. So this morning, I want to take a look at the story of Noah to see what faith really is.

His faith led him to do extraordinary things, but it was still ordinary faith. The very same faith that God is asking from us. Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us. Genesis 6, verses 9 through 22. These are the generations of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God, and Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.

Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch.

This is how you are to make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits, and its height, 30 cubits.

Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks.

For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.

But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come into you to keep them alive.

Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them. Noah did this.

He did all that God commanded him. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Father, I pray that you would help us to understand and believe your word, understand and believe your promises. Help us to trust you, God. Sometimes it can be so hard to simply believe what you tell us.

But Lord, it is so insulting that we should doubt you. So insulting that we should deny you. So I pray, God, that you would give us all the gift of faith to trust you, to believe, and most of all, to believe in your son Jesus and be saved.

We pray in his name. Amen.

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Noahʼs Faith Amidst Judgment

Now, the story of Noah is very much a story of faith, but it's also a story of justice, a story of judgment. That's the context for his faith. Look again at verse 11.

It starts off by telling us that the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. To me, that sounds a lot like how the earth is today. Does that sound familiar?

Corrupt and filled with violence? Have you heard about any terrorists committing acts of violence lately? Any gunmen running through security to kill the president?

Have you heard about anybody murdering their unborn children? I read a story recently about a corrupt politician.

In fact, I've read like a hundred stories about corrupt politicians, so many that it seems like every politician on the planet is corrupt. So whatever we might say about Noah's Day, we also have to say about our day.

The earth is still corrupt and filled with violence. That was the context for Noah's faith, and it's the context for our faith, the context of judgment.

In the last chapter of the Bible, Jesus declared, behold, I am coming soon, bring my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

So when you read the story of Noah and the faith that he had in light of God's coming judgment, I want you to understand that God's judgment is coming again. We read through this passage and it's stark and dramatic and bold.

God just declaring, like, I'm coming. I'm going to wipe out every single living being on the planet. Like God is promising to Noah, I am going to destroy the world.

Well, he's gonna do it again. Not with a flood, but with fire. And we simply, we cannot ignore that.

We cannot pretend like that's not real. In fact, Jesus says explicitly that the last days will be like the days of Noah. This is said multiple times by Jesus, multiple times throughout the New Testament.

The last days, like the future end of the world, where the Book of Revelation unfolds and God burns up the heavens and the earth and he remakes a new heavens and a new earth that are going to operate how he originally intended this earth to operate.

That future judgment of God, says Jesus, says Peter, says others, is going to be like the days of Noah. Jesus said this in Luke 17 verses 26 through 27. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.

That was Jesus' favorite title that he used to refer to himself, the Son of Man, and it corresponds with the Old Testament Book of Daniel. The Son of Man is this divine figure in the prophecies in the Book of Daniel.

And so Jesus is here applying it to himself.

And then he says regarding these days prior to the final judgment, verse 27, it says, They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all.

In other words, they didn't expect judgment to be coming. They were just having a good time, just going about their lives, eating, drinking, getting married, hanging out. They did not expect judgment to be coming.

But if the last days will be like the time of Noah, my contention is that you want to be like Noah in the last days.

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Righteousness by Faith

Noah's faith really comes down to this. It's very, very simple. Noah believed God.

When God said that he was going to judge the world, Noah believed him. And his faith produced two things in his life, righteousness and obedience. And the Bible says that if your faith is real, it will produce those things as well.

Real, genuine faith in Christ will produce, in everybody who has it, righteousness and obedience. And that's what we see with Noah. Looking again at verse 9.

It says Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And where did that righteousness come from?

Was Noah just that good? Was he just this exceptionally amazing, awesome guy, and he was super, super religious and he did all the religious stuff and he never sinned? Is that what made Noah righteous?

Well, as we'll see later, Noah wasn't that great of a guy. Later in the Book of Genesis, we see him make some massive mistakes, commit some very serious sins. So Noah's righteousness did not start with his own moral goodness.

It started with faith in God. The Bible teaches this from cover to cover. True righteousness starts with faith in God.

All true righteousness is built on a foundation of faith. If you don't put your faith in Jesus, you'll never be a good person. That's kind of a controversial thing to say.

Even as the words are coming out, I feel like a little bit embarrassed because I know there are a lot of people out there who say, oh, I'm an atheist, and they're some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. They'll do nice things.

They'll say nice things. They'll try to be charitable and kind and so on. And so I'm not denying that an atheist can do nice things.

That's not what I'm saying.

But when it comes to being a truly good person who is pleasing to God, who is morally pure from the inside out, who has true victory over sin, who truly looks like Jesus, you will never be that if you don't first put your faith in Jesus, because all

true righteousness, the righteousness of Noah, the righteousness of Abraham, the righteousness of the Apostle Paul, all true righteousness begins, is built upon the foundation of faith in God. Look for example at Genesis 15 verse 6.

It says, Abraham believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. It doesn't say Abraham gave 10% of his money to charity on a regular basis, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.

It doesn't say that Abraham prayed for an hour each day and read his Bible five days a week, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.

It doesn't say that Abraham was the nicest guy and he would give the shirt off his back to anybody who asked, and he was always looking out for other people, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.

No, it says Abraham believed the Lord, and he counted that to him as righteousness. And that same righteousness is available to us today through Jesus, John 3, 18.

Whoever believes in Jesus is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God.

So I want to challenge you to have that kind of faith, the kind of faith that trusts in Jesus for righteousness.

And I want to challenge you to have the kind of faith that trusts God when God says that he is coming to judge the world again like he did in the days of Noah.

If you want to have faith like Noah, you have to believe that Jesus is coming again to judge the world.

The Bible gives us lots of details about this, very uncomfortable details, very unpleasant details, like everybody is going to be judged for everything that they say and do.

Like God is going to rain fire down from heaven, and the mountains are going to crumble into the sea.

Like millions, if not billions, of people are going to go to hell forever and ever to pay for their sins because they refuse to let Jesus pay for them for them. That's what the Bible says. Do you believe that?

Faith, real biblical faith, the faith of Noah, requires that we believe that. And I also want you to think about what God is calling you to do in response to that. He called Noah to build a boat.

He's not calling you to build a boat, but I think he is calling you to share the gospel with your unsaved friends and family.

If judgment is real, if hell is real, if you actually believe that, I think it will inevitably cause you to share the gospel with people. I've mentioned this at least five times, I think, but I'll mention it again.

There's a famous magician, entertainer guy named Penjolet, who's also, I believe, an agnostic, and he said in an interview one time that basically this, he said, I can't imagine how much you must have to hate somebody to believe that they're going to

hell, and all they have to do is believe in Jesus, and you don't even tell them about it. Like, if that's what you believe, this is coming from the perspective of an atheist or an agnostic, if that's what you believe, that everybody's going to hell,

and they just have to trust in Jesus as their one and only hope for salvation, why aren't you telling them that? Do you hate those people? I mean, what's going on? That's the kind of logic that I'm trying to impress upon you.

If we really believe, like Noah did, that judgment is real, we will share the gospel with people, and I believe we will obey God.

I think if we believe it, we'll act like God is going to judge us for every thought, word, and deed, because the Bible says that he will.

By his grace, if we trust in Christ, we can be saved despite the fact that we are going to fail that judgment, but the judgment is still coming. Even Christians are going to be judged for everything that they do. And I know it's hard.

I know it's hard to believe that these things are real, because we live in a culture that makes it almost impossible to believe.

Outside of the church, speaking of our culture, there's sort of Christian culture within the church, and then there's the culture of the world around us.

Well, outside of the church and the culture in the world around us, people scoff at the idea of God coming to judge the world. And I think it's primarily because they scoff at the idea that people are guilty and sinful.

People don't really believe that. They think that everybody's a great person deep down. We're all awesome.

And all the cheaters and liars and murders, like they're not really bad people. They're just struggling with mental health challenges. They just didn't have the same opportunities we did growing up.

I once saw a news article explaining how Islamic terrorism is actually the result of climate change. Islamic terrorism is the result of Islam. It's a response of obedience to the teachings of the Quran.

It is an imitation of the founder of Islam, Muhammad. He was a terrorist. He murdered people.

He was a pedophile, and so when Muslims today do the same thing, they're just doing what the Quran tells them to do. They're just imitating Muhammad and all the Islamic leaders that came after him. I think that's important to say.

I don't know. It's kind of a tangent, but I think it's important to say, because our world is not being honest about these things. There are bad people.

Muslims and all kinds of other bad people too. But our world says that there are no bad people.

They're just victims of climate change, or lack of opportunities growing up, or mental health challenges, or they're just responding to the way other people have mistreated them.

And if there are no bad people, it is absurd to believe that God is going to judge people like in the days of Noah. That's what the world outside of the church believes, and the world inside the church is almost as allergic to judgment.

How many sermons do you hear like this one? We're allergic to judgment because people love to talk about the love of God, and only the love of God. Like God is just so nice.

He just wants to give you a hug, that's it. Doesn't care about your sin, what sin? We're not bad people.

Sin is, I mean, Hitler was a sinner, but we're nice, we're good people, right? We're loving, and God is love, and the whole Bible is just a message of love. But there's a big difference between the Biblical truth that God is love.

The Bible says God is love, and that is true, and I am so thankful for that. But there's a big difference between that truth and the satanic lie that love is God. If you truly read the scriptures, you know that God is love, but God is also just.

You know that sin makes God angry, and you know that everybody is a sinner. And if you know that, if you accept those Biblical truths and presuppositions, then you know you can believe that God is coming to judge the world. That's the faith of Noah.

It's a faith that believes God when he says that he is coming to judge the world, and it is a faith that acts accordingly. That part is so crucial, and yet so controversial.

This faith of Noah, this epic and beautiful faith that we see here in Genesis 6, the faith that, it's the faith that we need in a wicked world that is destined for judgment. This kind of faith leads to action. Verse 22 says that Noah did all this.

He did all that God commanded him.

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Biblical Faith Defined

I love the way that the author describes the faith of Noah in Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 is really the chapter of faith.

At the beginning, it gives us a definition of faith, and then it refers to Noah and Abraham and all these other heroes of the Old Testament, and it highlights their faith.

And then in Hebrews 12, it says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every sin that entangles us and run the race, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

So Hebrews 11, it starts with that definition of faith, and I think it's so important that we make sure we have a proper, basic understanding of what faith is. Because there's a lot of misconceptions out there.

Like I was saying at the beginning, some people think faith is just this little magical thing in everybody's heart, whatever they might believe in. Or people think that faith is all about miracles and mighty plans that God has for everybody's lives.

But faith, according to the New Testament, is simply belief or trust. And in the New Testament and the context of the New Testament, that belief or trust is always focused on Jesus.

Like believing that Jesus really died on the cross to pay for our sins. Believing that he literally rose from the dead. And trusting Jesus personally with a real heartfelt trust, the way that you trust your wife or you trust your parents.

And trusting him so much that you are willing to do whatever he tells you to do. That's New Testament faith. That's biblical faith.

And we see another aspect of it in Hebrews 11.1. It says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.

When God gives you faith, you are sure that the things that you are hoping for are going to happen. And I'm not talking about kind of everyday life sort of things like I'm really hoping I get that job or I'm really hoping that I win the lottery.

It's not hoping that kind of stuff. When it says the assurance of things hoped for, it's talking about believing with great confidence that the hope that we have in Christ is real. Like hoping that someday you'll see Jesus face to face.

I love that picture in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. How it talks about like, now we see in a mirror dimly.

As Christians, our understanding of Jesus, our vision of Jesus is like seeing in a foggy mirror, but then, in the future, we will meet him face to face. Now we know in part, but then we will know fully, even as we are fully known.

That's my hope, to know Jesus like that someday, to see Jesus like that someday. And it is my faith that assures me that that hope is going to come to pass. That's biblical faith.

It's not believing irrational things or believing things that you know aren't true or believing things for which you have no evidence. Those are all misconceptions.

Faith helps us to believe the things that we have good reason to believe, that we'll meet Jesus someday, that when we die, it won't be the end of our lives.

We won't just poof, go out of existence, but that we will be raised to new life in Christ and we'll spend eternity in heaven with Him. Faith is the confidence that we are going to get the things that we're hoping for.

And it's a conviction that the things that we can't see are real, like the risen Christ.

The apostles had the incredible privilege of seeing the risen Jesus with their own two eyes, of talking with Him, of having meals with Him, of touching the wounds in His hands and in His side.

We don't have that privilege, but our faith assures us that He really is alive. He really did rise from the dead.

Our faith assures us that there really is a God out there who knows all things, who sees everything that we do, who is perfectly good, who has all power, who has existed from eternity past.

Our faith assures us that there really is spiritual warfare all around us, that God really is guiding our lives in His providence, that the Holy Spirit really does dwell inside of us. Faith is conviction of things unseen.

When Noah first started building the ark, he didn't see the rain because it wasn't there yet. But he had a conviction that that was going to come to pass. Faith gave Noah confidence that the flood was really gonna happen.

And it says this about Noah's faith in Hebrews 11, seven. It says, by faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

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Reverent Fear and Obedience

I love the phrase the author uses there to describe Noah's actions in response to his faith. It says, in reverent fear. Do you know what that's like?

That is an attitude that pleases God, and it is an attitude that all of us need to be familiar with. There are interesting words, there are beautiful words, it's compelling, but it's something that all of us are supposed to know by experience.

This is a state of mind that we should be pursuing. This is what God wants from us to operate in reverent fear. He wants us to obey him with an attitude of reverent fear.

So what is that? It's reverent fear. I imagine the priests in the tabernacle, the great high priests going into the Holy of Holies once per year and hoping he didn't die like some of those who came before him.

That's reverent fear. Entering into the Holy of Holies, the place where God's presence dwells, having followed all the commandments and obeyed everything he told you to do, afraid but reverent in the face of the presence of God. That's reverent fear.

I think this means obeying God. Like, are the way that we go about obeying God, I think God obviously wants us to obey his commandments, but he wants us to obey his commandments with a certain attitude. And the attitude is this.

There's, you know, we can all go about obeying God's commandments in different ways. Like, we can obey them because we want to prove to him that we're good. That's probably the worst attitude that you could have.

You aren't good. The whole point is to admit that and trust in Jesus to be your goodness for you. But you can obey his commandments hoping, you know, if I just do all these things, then God will see that I'm good, that I'm good enough.

Or if I do all of these things, then God will bless me. Then he owes me like the vending machine. I put in the money and out comes the treat, whatever it might be.

God's not a vending machine. We don't input obedience and output the stuff that we want in life. I know the right attitude for our obedience is this.

Reverend Fear, obeying God, because you know that God is holy, that God is perfectly good, and he sees everything that you do. He knows your every thought. And you know by faith that Jesus died to set you free from sin.

That the very sins that tempt us to disobedience are the sins that Jesus died to set us free from. The very sins that tempt us with disobedience are the sins that put Jesus on the cross.

Therefore, we forsake that sin, and we walk in obedience instead. That's Reverend Fear. Or to give you another example, when I'm preparing my sermon each week, I try to remember often that this is God's word that I'm preaching on.

And according to the Bible, God is going to judge me especially strict, because I'm a teacher of His word. Therefore, I will be judged with an especially strict judgment. He's going to hold me accountable for everything that I say.

Therefore, I do my best in reverent fear to pray and study and prepare each word with great care. In some ways, I thought of this analogy of like having a great coach.

I mean, I'm not into basketball at all, but for some reason, I thought that's the right coach for this analogy, the basketball coach. Like think of like the Indiana Hoosiers or something like that.

I don't really know anything about basketball, but I imagine some kid growing up in the Midwest, like longing to play for a certain coach at a college, like a legendary basketball coach, just an absolute legend of the sport.

And the kid works his whole life before school and after school, practicing and practicing and practicing.

And he makes the varsity team in high school and he plays well enough, he gets a scholarship to go to the college, and he finally gets to play for that coach. Imagine what he would feel walking into practice to play for that coach.

A sense of reverent fear. Like, this guy is an absolute legend, and I get to play for him, but I know if I mess up, he's gonna chew me out. I know if I mess up, I'm gonna hear about it, and I don't wanna mess up.

And of course, the coach is gonna chew him out, not out of anger or anything, but for his good, to teach him to help him grow and learn. And so that kid in that practice is going to operate out of reverent fear for that coach.

Well, I think in a way that gets at how we are supposed to operate in terms of our relationship with God, in terms of our obedience to God with reverent fear. To be honest, I'm not very good at it.

That's something that I feel like God has been teaching me more recently, and I'm learning, but it's hard. Our churches, the Christian culture we live in, we don't do a lot of reverent fear. We don't talk about God like that a whole lot.

We don't think about God a whole lot like that. Like I said, a lot of times, it's just God's really nice, and he just wants to give you a hug. And there's a lot of truth to that.

But there's also a lot of truth to this. And it's hard. I mean, just look at what God commanded Noah to do.

God commanded Noah to make a boat the size of almost two football fields. It details in our passage, the exact dimensions of the ark, and a cubit was roughly 18 inches. So when you translate it, the measurements came out to 450 feet long.

450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high. Building a boat like that would have been a giant, expensive, time-consuming project. And I know it's obvious, but I want to make sure that we don't overlook the obvious.

So God did not mail Noah a check to pay for the materials. That was up to Noah. God did not send a team of carpenters with power tools back in time to assist Noah with the building of the ark.

That was all Noah. God commanded Noah to do something that cost him a ton of money and time and blood and sweat and tears. It cost him just about everything.

And in faith, Noah obeyed. That is the same faith that God requires of us today.

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The Cost of Faith

What Noah did is a fantastic illustration of the faith that Jesus is calling you to, the faith that he is calling me to. Listen to the words of Jesus in Mark 8, verses 34 through 36.

Calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Whoever would save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Real faith in Jesus requires you to be able to, or to be willing to, give up everything for him.

Jesus said over and over again, believe in me and if you believe in me, it will cost you.

He demanded that people be willing to pay a price, whether it was their relationship with their parents or their relationship with their siblings or their jobs or their financial well-being or their very own lives.

From day one, Jesus made it very, very clear, this life of faith that I'm calling you to is going to be hard, and it's going to cost you a lots. But it'll be worth it. It'll be worth it.

And Noah actually did it. He gave up everything for his faith, and God does not require that for many of us. He does not require many of us to actually do it, but he does require all of us to be willing to do it.

He requires all of us to be willing to do things that might sound crazy. God told Noah to build a giant boat and put thousands of animals on it. And God may tell you to give 10% of your money away.

For some people, that's just as crazy.

Like in this economy, to give 10% of your income, you already give California 14%, you give the federal government 20%, and how is a person supposed to live after giving all of that away and giving an additional 10% to God with housing and food and

everything skyrocketing? Giving 10% of your money to God might sound just as crazy as building an ark. Or imagine if you're a young woman in the world today and you want to have a godly marriage.

Imagine telling your friends that you submit to your husband. They might think that you've lost your minds. Are you kidding me?

Men are evil. What about the patriarchy? Don't you watch TV?

Every husband is a bumbling idiot. They cannot be trusted to do anything or be in charge of anything, and you're going to submit to one? Like that's insane.

Ben pointed out recently, Ben's kind of the star of the show in this sermon, but he pointed out recently that there are really two alternatives in modern media.

Every TV show, every movie since like 1980, the husband is an absolute idiot and can't be trusted with anything, or as Ben pointed out, he's not an idiot.

He's violent and angry and vengeful, and he'll fight to the death to defend his family, which is pretty good, but he's going to be very much emotionally unavailable. Very much like not present in your life, not kind, not warm, not loving.

So either way, you know, either option is not a guy that you want. Or imagine if you're a young man in the world today. Talk about faith doing things that are hard, doing things that seem irrational and crazy to other people.

Imagine if you're a young man in the world today and you want to be meek and humble, like the Bible tells you to be.

Like when everybody else at work is playing politics and making sure the boss knows how smart they are and how hard they work, you quietly do your job to the best of your ability. You don't play the political games.

You don't throw other people under the bus so that you can get the promotion. You're not manipulating and scheming to make yourself look the best. You're simply working hard and trusting God to take care of you.

To some people, that sounds crazy. That sounds absolutely absurd. But faith in God requires us to trust God enough to do things that sometimes seem crazy.

It requires us to trust God enough that we are willing to do things that the world laughs at. It requires us to trust God enough that we'll do what he says, period.

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Faith and Works

In other words, faith requires obedience. James chapter 2 verse 20 says, faith without works is dead. If your faith does not produce obedience to God, then it is not real faith.

It is dead faith. And yet, obedience is not the foundation of our faith. Righteousness is.

Faith is. Abraham believed God, and God counted it to him as righteousness. I love that statement in James, faith without works is dead, but people often misunderstand that statement.

They often misunderstand all of James chapter 2. Because in James chapter 2, it says faith without works is dead. And then it says, wasn't Abraham justified by his works?

And it points out to Abraham's obedience in his life, where he was willing to sacrifice Isaac, like God had commanded him to do. And people get this idea that, well, if I'm going to be saved, I need faith plus works.

I need faith plus obedience, and that's how you please God. That's how you go to heaven when you die. That's real Christianity, faith plus obedience.

But there's a big difference between faith plus obedience and faith that produces obedience. You are not saved by grace through faith plus obedience. You're saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and nobody seems to get that.

I mentioned this last week, I think, but I had a conversation recently with a Jehovah's Witness, and we kind of went back and forth on a lot of different stuff, but this was the main sticking point.

He's like, well, you're telling me that if you believe in Jesus and you put your faith in Jesus, then you can go and just do whatever you want to do, and the way that you live your life doesn't matter. That can't be right.

And I was like, yeah, that's not right. That's not what I'm saying. And he's like, yeah, so you can't just go and live however you want.

If you really believe in Jesus, if you really trust in Jesus, then you have to do all the things that the Bible commands you to do, and that's how you're saved. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no.

If you trust in Jesus, if you have faith in Jesus, it will transform you from the inside out so that you naturally desire to please God and obey his commandments. That's the difference. It's not faith plus works equal salvation.

It's faith inevitably transforms you and causes you to walk in obedience to God. You are not saved by faith plus obedience. You are saved by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone.

And the world does not understand that. The world cannot comprehend that, a faith that has that kind of transforming power. Jehovah's Witnesses do not get it.

Catholics do not get it. Nobody gets it, but it's the gospel. This is how Paul puts it in Romans 3, verses 23 and 24.

And we'll finish with this. He wrote, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That's what we are putting our faith in.