Restoration 2013: Jesus.

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Restoration Ministry

Mark Howard

Just Shall Live By Faith

Father in heaven, I would ask this morning, or this afternoon rather, for your Holy Spirit to guide our understanding as we seek to know you better and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Now on Saturday night, We were talking about the concept of righteousness by faith.

Just to boil it down simply, righteousness is the state of being righteous or good.

Not man's idea of good, but God's idea of good.

And the reality is, there's only 1 who is good.

That's what Jesus said, remember, when the rich young ruler came to him and he said, good teacher.

There's only 1 who is good and that is God.

The Bible says in Romans 3, no 1 is good, no not 1, speaking of humanity.

So when we are talking about righteousness, we are talking about the very goodness of God.

The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 6, and you can turn there if you have your Bible, 1 Corinthians 6, I have to get to the passage myself, and verse 9, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

That's nothing new to you I'm sure, but righteousness, the goodness of God is required for us and there's only 1 way the Bible tells us we can get it.

In Romans 1, the apostle says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed." It's the only righteousness that's going to count.

The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, To all those who believe.

And so, the idea is, the righteousness of God is required.

The only way we're going to get it is to have faith.

And on Saturday night, we talked about what does that mean?

And Paul tells us it's the kind of faith that Abraham had.

Simply, Abraham believed that whatever God promised that God could do for him, God could do.

It was that implicit trust in God that brought to Abraham the righteousness of God.

It's that implicit trust in God alone that will bring to you and me the righteousness of God.

I want to flesh that out this morning a little bit.

Aaron Ralston in 2003, April 2003, he's an avid rock climber, and in April 2003 he was going out for an easy day's climb.

The 1 problem that he had that day, well 1 of the problems that he had when he went out was he didn't tell anybody where he was going and nobody was with him.

His idea was to go and he parked his, I'm trying to remember how this went again.

He parked his truck, he took his truck, he dropped his bike off at 1 end of this route that he was going to go and climb through this canyon in Utah, Blue John Canyon.

And then he drove his truck to the other end and he was going to climb through the canyon, get his bike, ride up to his truck and go home.

The problem is, as he was climbing through the canyon, he came to a place where he was rock climbing, he was between 2 surfaces of rock, so he was bracing himself in between, coming down, coming down.

And he was almost down at the canyon floor.

He was about, I want to say, between 8 and 12 feet above the canyon floor.

There was a big rock that was wedged, apparently very tightly, between the canyon walls.

So he stood on top of that rock, and then he jumped down.

The problem is when he jumped, because he was close enough to the ground, when he jumped, his feet hit the bottom, and that rock loosened and came down.

It looked like he was coming down on his head.

He put his hands up and the rock came down and pinched his arm and wedged there in the canyon between the 2 walls.

So now here he stands with his feet on the ground and his arm wedged between this rock and the canyon walls.

Remember he didn't tell anybody where he was going.

And in that 5 day period he had to think through all the different things that he could do.

1 of the things that he thought about was chiseling away at the rock.

There's a picture he took with his digital video camera.

You can see his arm wedged between the rock walls there.

On his way to the trip, he forgot any kind of good hiking tool or leather man tool, but they gave him this little model, that's the real deal, that he got at some kind of climbing store before he went.

And it was a cheapo model, It was not very sturdy.

And he took that tool and he began to chip away at the rock.

He thought he could chip away around where his arm was caught.

He tried, of course, to get his hand loose.

And he tried to move the rock and leverage the rock and nothing worked.

And he was left with the idea, there's 2 more ideas, 2 more options left for him.

He could die there or he could cut his arm off.

You know, I'm telling you the story about the guy like he's alive, right?

He had to go through this process of cutting his arm off there in Blue John Canyon.

And he'd been using the knife blade that he had to do the impromptu surgery with and chiseling rock for days, which meant it was very dull.

I thought about showing you the video where he describes the process.

I mean, this is a medical school, it wouldn't be a big challenge here, would it?

But then I thought, he gets pretty graphic about how he had to go through each part.

The first thing, he tried, he had the concept a couple days before, but when he tried that dull blade and everything, he realized it's not gonna cut through my bones.

But he had the epiphany a couple of days later that if he could leverage himself and break his bones, then he could cut through.

And he describes that whole process down to the last part where all he had left to cut through was a little bundle of nerves.

And you know, anyway, I'll spare you the rest of the details there.

I think there's a real good biblical application here.

I want to take you back to scripture, and I want to go to the book of Romans.

Some of you would be so grossed out right now you wouldn't be able to focus.

Romans chapter 1, Again in verse 16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ or the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek, for in it, that is the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written.

And then this part you know the rest don't you?

Now I'm gonna suggest something this morning that I think is really important that we grasp.

And that is just that very phrase, that just shall live, live by faith.

I've been a pastor long enough to hear lots of different theories and I'm afraid that in Christianity at large, there's this mentality, and you've heard this saying before, I'm not against this saying in the right context, but let go and let God.

I've known a lot of Christians who have let go and they've tried to let God and their spiritual life is taking a nosedive.

Because they don't understand what happened, I'm trying to let go and let God.

The Bible says the just shall live by faith.

The person of faith acts upon their faith.

What we looked at Saturday night in the story of Abraham was where we saw Abraham acting upon his faith.

I want to share with you a few examples in the ministry of Jesus where Jesus teaches very clearly the important aspect of us acting on our faith.

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Just Shall Live By Faith

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