from the faith and common grace of temporary believers. Therefore, faith may often be attacked and weakened, but it gains the victory. It matures in many to the point that they attain full assurance through Christ, who is both the founder and perfecter of our faith. That is a packed statement, and there's lots there. And so we'll work it out piece by piece here. And so we're gonna go up to footnote 11 here, and there's three passages there. Who wants to take Hebrews 5, 13, and 14? Jeremy, Kenan, would you take Matthew 6, 30? And then Romans 4, 19 and 20, who's willing? Howard's got that, okay. So in support of this statement here, we're going to look at those texts. This faith may exist in varying degrees so that it may be either weak or strong. So go ahead with Hebrews 5, 13 and 14. Okay, very good, so we have meat and milk in the household of faith there. All right, Matthew 6. Kenan, go ahead. Okay, O you of little faith. So there we have weak faith, little faith. And then Howard, Romans 4, 19 and 20. Okay, thank you. So he grows strong in his faith. So we have the whole gamut there. And so I think this is the first thing we need to look at, is that there are varying degrees of faith. And is that a surprise to us? Is that a familiar concept? Has your spiritual life been a completely flat plateau from the time of your conversion until today? Has that been the case for any of us? Have there been ebbs and flows? Now that probably is all of us, right? Were you unsaved in those moments where your faith felt weak? Were you unsaved? I want a little bit of conviction behind that. No, good, yeah, you're right, you weren't, okay? If you're saved, you're saved, and there's no going back. Can believers experience seasons of weak faith and of lack of assurance? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay? And so one picture that helps me to understand how this can work is, and I probably have shared it here before, but let's say if we would make this analogous to air travel. Who's ever seen those, you know, 1800s, the grainy film footage of guys trying to figure out how to fly, right? Before the Wright Brothers, you see these guys with the wings, and they'll jump off a cliff, and no matter how confident they are in their contraption working, if it's not gonna work, it doesn't matter how confident they are. right? Their confidence, their faith accomplishes absolutely nothing. And I said that a few weeks ago here too, and I'll say it again. Faith accomplishes absolutely nothing. Faith honestly has zero power whatsoever. None. Faith in Christ, however, is a different matter. The in Christ is the key piece there. If you put all your faith in the wrong thing, It's the wrong thing, and there is not power in it. And so I think people frequently talk about faith as though it has this intrinsic power. Well, you gotta have faith. Well, faith in what? Faith in me? Faith in self-determination? Faith in the fate of the universe? Faith in faith? What's the faith in? And so it doesn't matter how strong your faith is if it's in the wrong thing. Likewise. Picture your great-grandma, who's never strayed more than 30 miles from the farm. And she's going to take her first trip to Florida when she's 85 years old. And she's never been on a plane before. And she is extremely anxious about getting on a plane and flying. And she's going to white-knuckle it and hold to the armrest all the way. She has a lack of faith. There's enough faith she got on the plane, but there's zero faith that this is gonna turn out okay. Does her lack of faith alter the flight? Not even in the least. It has zero bearing on what the pilots are doing, it has zero bearing on what the plane is going to do, nothing at all. Her weak faith actually doesn't dictate the outcome because there was enough faith to put her faith in something trustworthy. And so it is for believers. It's not so much the strength of our faith, it's the object of our faith. And if the object of your faith is Jesus Christ, as it must be, as it ought to be, A season of struggle does not mean that you are out of the kingdom at that time. And so I'll stop there. I don't know if that word picture is helpful for you or not. It certainly is for me. But I'll open it up for discussion on strong faith, weak faith. Does that concept make sense? Have any of us ever been tempted to think that weak faith means you're out? God kicks you out of the kingdom until you get your act back together and then you get re-adopted again? Has that been a struggle for any of us? And I think this is biblical. Faith exists in varying degrees. Oh, go ahead. Okay, very good. Did you peer into my sermon notes? No? Okay. Because we're gonna hear about that this morning too. Actually, and Carter actually read today's passage as well ahead of time, so. So it's almost like providence is lining up here. Okay, so Sonia just asked, should we see faith then as a blessing, particularly those times when our faith feels strong and vibrant and warm and healthy? Should we see that as a blessing rather than something we actually possess? And I'd say exactly. This is a key concept where it might sound subtle, but this is actually an important thing. Faith is not something you produce. Faith is not something native to you. Faith is not something you possess in the sense that you created it or you drummed it up. Faith is a gift. The faith that grafts you into Christ, that faith itself is part of the gift of salvation. That's part of the gift. If you have saving faith, it's not because you decided to have saving faith. you decided to put your trust in Christ because God gave you saving faith. So you do possess it in that sense. It's yours now. If somebody gives you a gift, if dad gave you a truck for graduation, it's your truck. It is. But that's different than saying, I created this. That's different than saying, I did this. It's saying, I received a gift from my father, so yes, it's actually mine. But saving faith is a gift. So therefore, those seasons when our faith seems strong and vibrant, to Sonia's point, is a time of blessing from the Lord. He has blessed you with strong faith. And those times when he seems to pull away, somehow, are good for us, too, to push through that in faith. It's not that God is gone. God is putting us through something to strengthen us. But salvation is the work of God from first to last, including giving you the gift of faith that believes in the Lord Jesus. Faith is a gift of God. And we'll go into the actual, grammar of Ephesians 2 that Carter read later. Does that answer your question or am I misunderstanding you? Yeah? Okay, then there was a hand here too. I think it certainly can be that. So Lisa's asking, is God teaching us if he withdraws himself from us or seemingly moves away from us? I'll say a Low German proverb that my grandpa gave me, and it's true. I'll translate it, though, into Dutch. Maybe Low German's close enough to Dutch. There is nothing that is as hard on a Christian as many good years in a row. It can literally destroy you. Because what do we do when things go good? We start to think, oh, well, that's just how the universe operates. Right? My marriage is just good because marriage is just naturally, without any effort, marriage just goes great. And kids are just born healthy, and they stay healthy for the rest of their lives. And every single year, my farm makes money. And the weather comes, and the rain happens at exactly the right time, and then it dries up for a week while we make feed, and this is just the way the universe goes. And a sense of self-sufficiency and self-importance can really set in. And that, for a Christian, should be like a big yellow check engine sign on your dashboard. Look out when it starts to feel like things just go good for you and that's just how it operates. And so I think those times in my own life where God has felt very far away and where I struggle to pray or where I struggle to feel close to God, are important because it's a reminder things don't always go my way. It doesn't always work out. Life is hard sometimes, and those are the times which it gets natural to start praying. It gets natural to see how insufficient we are for what life demands of us, It becomes natural to see, I need Christ from first to last, from breakfast till bedtime. It's all Christ for everything. And I think that's the blessing that comes with those times that we'd rather not live in, is it forces us to our knees. It forces us to see, I can't pull this off. Matt Plett is insufficient for the task. Bob, and then Janneke, and then Dave, and then Jeremy. Okay, yeah, and so Bob's asking, what about the exact inverse of this? Can we withdraw from God? Absolutely. And I think that's what those prideful seasons of self-sufficiency are. We pull away from God because I don't, like really, at the end of the day, I don't really need God. I'm in the prime of my life, I'm healthy, what do I need God for? And Christians can fall prey to that too. And so I think us pulling away from God or us not actually believing the promises of God is a very key piece to our faith getting weak. Because whether it's God pulling us through a season or whether it's us withdrawing, the distance is growing. greater and it's a problem. I'll maybe leave that there. Am I misunderstanding what you're saying? Yes, yeah, and he is, objectively he's always there. God's not going anywhere. But God does sometimes do things like, have you considered my servant Job? There's no account that we are aware of that Job was pulling away. God just said, you know what Job really needs right now? Job needs a lot of suffering to come very fast, in a very short window of time, because that would be good for Job. That is, those are both possible. And our sin absolutely robs us of enjoyment, our sin robs us of assurance, it robs us of trusting the promises of God. R.C. Sproul tells a great story of a woman who's struggled after she got married because her and her fiance had been sexually active before they were married. And naturally, like these things always go, God strikes us at the very place where we have asked him to strike us, and sexually this marriage was a disaster. And she probably correctly very much correlated that to the fact that they had been sinning before their marriage. And she said, you know, I've confessed this a hundred times to God. We've repented, we've apologized, and I just, I can't get over this. And I've talked to 20 pastors, and I just simply cannot be free from this. Like, it's just plaguing our marriage. And he said, well, you know what you need to do is repent. Well, what do you mean? I've repented like 50 times. He said, no, no, no, you've repented for the sin. Now what you need to do is repent for refusing to believe God. What does God say he'll do when you repent? He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. You need to repent. The fornication is forgiven. You need to repent. You're not trusting your Bible. God said it's wiped clean, so just... Like the Bob Newhart sketch. Stop it! Move on. God's forgiven you. Trust what the Bible says. The shame is gone. Move on. Look forward. Go ahead. But our sin and our lack of faith in God's word absolutely can, it can work both ways, definitely. Dave, and then, or did I miss someone here? Go ahead, Dave. Hopefully you can expound on this a little bit, because I don't want to sound too Roman Catholic. But, you know, we're obviously made by grace. It's made given to us through grace. but the obedience and the works, you know, to get into that, into the habit during good times, which like you said, is sometimes easy to pass by, and sometimes during our times of doubt, to use those works of obedience that are not saved lives, but we are called to be obedient in moving them forward. You know, and even in the passage, And then I think sometimes we want to keep things in between our ears. I know for myself, you know, this is a mind thing. And sometimes, you know, you might not feel like going to church. You might not feel like reading the Bible. You might not feel like listening to a sermon. You might not, you know, whatever the case. And yet, that is what we do. So what's Roman Catholic about saying that faith means we should obey? I don't think they have the market cornered on obedience, do they? If I'm struggling, now's the time to go deeper into listening to sermons, to reading the Bible, to listening to my lap, doing things like that. That helps me more than wondering where God is when I hear God speak out loud and read the Bible out loud. Yeah, but the fact is, and I think if we as evangelicals make a mistake here, it's that we isolate faith all by itself, which is equally an unbiblical view, right? Luther was the most adamant of anyone that it's faith alone, and yet, even Luther says, and yet the faith that saves never remains alone. it shows up in good workmanship, it shows up in being considerate to your wife, it shows up in training your children, it shows up in being at work. That saving faith is a living faith, and if it's not a living faith, James would say it's not real faith. So I don't think we should compartmentalize faith, right? So in the Roman Catholic conception, if faith plus works equals salvation, in a Protestant or evangelical conception, faith equals salvation plus works. But if the works don't show up at some level, the faith is not living faith and it's not actual saving faith. Yeah. Yep. No, very good. Jeremy. Right. he's weaker than beating on you, so where's God? He's actually working on you right now. He's actually the same way he was when you were on the shelf. And I think sometimes the pain of the trial can dull the sense of how close you are to God or not. And yeah, I just want to hold out the encouragement that God will not let, no matter how he Yeah, very good. And blacksmith, that's a great analogy. If the steel is warmed up and being beaten on, that's the existence, that proves that there is no blacksmith. Just proves the existence of a blacksmith, because life hurts. Yeah, no, that's good. Yep, no, that's a good word picture. And I think one of the comforting things of realizing that faith is a gift, faith is not something I decided to have. My decisions flow out of the fact that I have faith, but I did not decide to get faith. Once you conceive that faith itself is a gift from the Lord, suddenly you can actually believe the promise that he who began a good work in you, yeah, If faith is self-produced, if faith is something I decided to get for myself, how can God promise that, right? If God limits His sovereignty and so that, you know, well, yeah, we're just gonna see how this plays out, and it's ultimately my decision, how can God promise that? If it's a gift He puts in our hand, He'll make sure we get across the road safely. We'll make it all the way home. Let's keep moving. Yet even in its weakest form, it is different in kind or nature, like all other saving graces, from the faith and common grace of temporary believers. This is one we should think through carefully. Who wants to read 2 Peter 1, verse 1? Who's got that? Margaret. Okay. Faith of equal standing by the righteousness of God and Savior Jesus Christ. Good. Okay. So the distinction that's being made here, and we'll have to think through this carefully, because this maybe is a fine distinction, but I think it's a biblical distinction. The distinction that's being made here is that weak faith in Christ is of a different nature entirely than what seems like warm or vibrant or really strong faith not in Jesus Christ. Okay? It's a different thing. Okay, so we're dealing with apples and oranges here. Within the category of oranges, you've got some that are healthier than others. In the category of apples, you've got some that are healthier than others. But this is saying here, in its weakest form, so true saving faith, even in its weakest form, is different in kind or nature from the faith and common grace of temporary believers. What's a temporary believer? Yeah, I go immediately, I don't know why it's not in the proof text here, I'm gonna ask Benjamin Keech about that when I get to heaven. You missed the most obvious passage here. Matthew 13 is the most obvious place for me to go here. What's a temporary believer? Well, in Jesus, in the parable of the four soils, there's two types of temporary believers. One gets choked out by the weeds, and one quickly sprouts out and withers away. One gets choked out by sin, and the other just, well, it's not exciting anymore, and it just kind of peters out. So there's two kinds of temporary believers. But now we have to think carefully about that. Were they believers? Well, in one sense, sure, they professed faith in Jesus. But Jesus goes on in that parable to say that the root of the matter was not in them. It's a different category than the seed that's in good soil that perseveres. It's a completely different category. I remember one time my grandparents got home from a funeral, and my grandma said this weird comment, and I never asked her about it, and it's too late now, but I wonder if this is what she had in mind. She said that this person, she wasn't sure if they were saved or not, but they were a believer. And I was just, how can you be a believer and unsaved? But think about it. Do we all know people who, in the abstract, respect the Bible? Yeah? Do we all know people who respect Jesus and the gospel in the Bible? And they're honest businessmen, and they're loving homemakers. They've never put their faith in Jesus Christ. Okay? This is what here is called common grace. or temporary believers, okay, that there's this general kind of generic respect for the things I was taught growing up. But there's never actual saving faith. There's never I have repented for my sins. I am trusting in the Lord Jesus. It's just a kind of a general commitment to some kind of civic religion. I want to be respected in the community. And besides, you can't get elected at Steinbeck City Council if you're not a member of a church. So I guess I should find a church. Right? If I want to do business, I should probably be in a big church where lots of people will know. that I'm the best electrician here. They're not actively disbelieving the Bible. They respect the Bible. Maybe they actually respect the Bible. Maybe they actually respect Christ. But that's different than having living faith in Jesus Christ. And once you frame it that way, I think that's the people Jesus is talking about in his parable of the sower in Matthew 13. The root of the matter's not there. Yeah, it looks good. It's there for a season. Eventually they'll decide they like their sin better than Christ. Eventually they decide they like their respectability better than the shame of the gospel. They're temporary believers, or again, another theological term for this is common grace. This is the kind of grace that God gives to creation generally. It's not necessarily saving grace, it's just common grace. It's God's kindness towards his creation generally in restraining evil. But that doesn't mean that everyone who's not being as evil as they possibly could be is saved in that sense. And I'm not sure if I'm explaining that properly, so I'm gonna stop there and ask if this kind of category makes sense. Did you have your hand up, Marina? Yes, if it's the kind of belief or the kind of faith that the Bible also further defines as actual living faith. James keeps us from easy believism. It's a faith that actually trusts in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins and for my righteousness. To say, yeah, I'm a theist. I mean, I look around and I don't think this is the forces of nature. There must be a higher power. If you want to call him God, I don't care. Okay, well, so further there, what does it mean to believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? Yeah, it sounds like actual belief to me, which is different. To believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, now it's specific, this isn't a general theistic higher power, it's the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and a name also expresses a will, so there's a willingness on our part to follow. Okay, so this is the living faith that James talks about, the kind that doesn't get choked out by weeds, the kind that doesn't dry up when its roots need to set. When Jesus says that the root of the matter is not in these people, what he's saying is there's not living faith there. There's a general, I'm okay with a higher power, I'm okay with living a generally moral life. I don't have anything against Jesus. but I'm not gonna humiliate myself and say that I'm completely unworthy and I have to throw myself on his mercy, right? So that would be the category difference I would make is some people have a generic trust in a higher power or a general respect for Jesus, but they're not willing to be humiliated to the point of bending the knee to the cross of Christ. Peter and then Don. Yep. Yeah. No, it's a great example. Pete just mentioned the example of King Agrippa. Almost you have persuaded me. He's not a Christ-hater. He's willing to be persuaded. He's just not there yet. Another example, if we go down that road, that I think was Cornelius. He was a God-fearer, and then he got saved. Before he was saved, he was a God-fearer, right? But that's different than saying living, active faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Dawn. Yeah, those doctrines are all safely stored in all my theology books on the bookshelf. And now that they've been carefully preserved by Herman Bovink in his Reformed Dogmatics bookshelf, we better make sure nobody ever touches those doctrines. Keep them safely there on the shelf. Nobody touch it. Nobody bring dirt into the church. Because if sinners start repenting, we're going to have problems here. So make sure that it stays perfectly preserved in the bookshelf. That's not living, active, breathing, trusting faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I see we're at 10.21, so why don't we carry on this conversation next week? Let's close in prayer, and then we can have some time of fellowship before call to worship here. Father God, thank you for your Word. I also want to thank you for the work of others who have gone on before us to summarize your work and to help us to summarize the doctrines of Scripture. Lord, and most importantly, I pray that you'd be with us As believers, Lord, that we are giving more than just vague assent to You existing or to some vague, impersonal notion that Jesus died for sins, Lord, but we would see this in personal, experiential terms, that You did not just die for sinners, Lord, but that You died for me. And I pray that we would see that in a vivid living way, that that faith would be living and active in our hearts, in our minds, and that it would spill over into the kind of obedience that brings you glory, that it would not be a sanitary or isolated thing, but that it would get busy doing the kinds of things that you have called us to do. Lord, I want to thank you for each one here this morning. Lord, I pray that you would put away all distractions. I pray that as we prepare for corporate worship, Lord, we pray most importantly that you would be glorified Lord, but we also are trusting You to feed us this morning, to strengthen us through music and through prayer, through Scripture reading and through the exposition of Your Word. Lord, I pray that You would help us, lead us, guide us, strengthen us. Lord, and if there are some here this morning that are walking in a season of weak faith, Lord, if it is truly faith in you, then I pray that you would use that season of weak faith to strengthen, to bend, to shape, and ultimately to grow back into a strengthened and renewed faith in you. Lord, thank you that you are patient. Thank you that you bring us through different seasons. Lord, and we also pray for the conversion of those whose faith is not real and it is not in you. Lord, we pray that you would give that gift, that you would open the eyes, that you would unstuff the ears, That you would take out the heart of stone and replace it with the heart of flesh that beats for you Thank you Lord. God us the rest of this morning pray this all in the strong name of Jesus and amen