Faith Leading to Action-Trust Leading to Obedience

Luke 5:4-6 And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.

What an amazing passage of scripture! We see one of Jesus’ apostles put his faith and trust in his Master even though all the odds were against him. R.J. Rushdoony stated in one of his many lectures on American History that faith provokes action and told his class that if they believed there were a thousand silver dollars on the lawn he would not be able to keep them inside. Why is this? Because faith, belief, leads to action. We see this fact vividly portrayed in Luke 5. peter had faith and put his trust in Christ, therfore he acted upon that faith and trust, resulting in an amazing miracle.

This also shows the providence, sovereignty and power of our Lord. Though we may have tried, like Peter, when our God intervenes, His purposes are fulfilled and He is glorified. There is a lesson in these Scriptures for all believers, that if we put our faith and trust in Christ, we must act on that faith and obey our Master and He will be glorified.

An important fact that I must point out though is this, He alone gets the glory. Not us. We don’t get glory for acting, but we are rewarded. We do not get glory for having faith, but we are rewarded with eternal life where we will eternally glorify Him. This takes humility, and God breaking our pride, because we naturally will not want to glorify Him. But by His grace, we will decrease in pride and He will increase in glory.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Scotty

The Power of the Word of God

Hebrews 4:2 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Most religions have their writings. Muslims have their Koran, Mormons have the Book of Mormon, Jews have the Torah and the list goes on and on. But we Christians have the Bible, a book unlike all others. It is inspired, consistent, sufficent, powerful and able to, as Paul says, pierce the division between soul and spirit. No other book has that power, no other book contains God revelation to His chosen people.

Think into the times of the Reformation. The men who gave their lives for the translation of the Scriptures, men who suffered persecution, excommunication, rejection, ridicule and mockery for the sake of the Scriptures, it is to these men whom we owe the Bibles which we now posess. God soverignly moved through His people to free his true Church from the bonds of elitist, Roman-Catholic Church. It took courage for these men to risk their life, their families, their friends and so much more, to give us the Scriptures that we have today. Let us not take advantage of the fact that Bibles our sold all around the world and in thousands of languages, and let us not be ungrateful for our God’s svoerignty and power to impress upon his people, a desire for His Word.

The question I ask myself, and you, is this. Would we have done the same in their position? Would we have risked our lives to translate the Scriptures? Would we have risked public disgrace to make the Bible available for all men? I hope so.

In Christ, By His Grace,

Scotty

Proverbs 3

During this mornings family devotions we read through Proverbs 3, you all know it I’m sure, but some things stuck out to me this morning that I’ve never thought about before about verses 5 and 6. Here’s the passage:

Prov. 3:5 & 6           Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Now we can all give a basic, texbook answer to what this verse means, “It means to trust in God in all that you do and not to trust in your own self.” But there is more to this verse than just trusting in God. Let’s look at the context of these verses. In verse 1, it says, “My son, do not forget my teaching…” so it is addressed to sons (or children). Then later, in verse 11, it says, “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, (v. 12) for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as the father the son in whom he delights.” 

Why the verse on discipline? Becuase it is primarily in discipline that we need to be trusting. Trusting the Lord comes easy when everything is going good, but how hard does it become when we are being chastised? A lot harder. Why? Our sin of course is the first and ultimate answer, but more specifically, becuase of our pride. In verse 7, it says, “Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil.” It is when we believe that we are wise that we began to lose trust in the Lord, so this verse goes directly to the heart, “Don’t think that your wise” its saying, in fact our wisdom, the wisdom of man is evil, which explains the need to turn away from it and fear the Lord. 

So I belive the point of this passage is to show our need for trust, specifically, in two times of our lives, the first being, when God is disciplining us. We need to know that God is still soveriegn and still loving especially when we are being reproved by him, becuase we are his children and he will discipline his children. The second time, being, when we believe we are wise. This is not the time when we are humbled by God’s discipline, but we when are proud of our own wisdom, and God says, to fear Him, and to turn from our own wisdom and understanding (so called) and trust in Him. 

Like I said, it is easy to trust when things are going the way we want, but as soon as thigs go badly (in our minds) we must understand that God is far wiser than we and that trusting in him will lead to healing and refreshment (v. 8). 

To God be the Glory.