M Street Podcast Episode 15

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is M Street weekly podcast of Mercy Street Reformed Church in Denver, Colorado. If you live in the Denver area and would like to know more about us like when we hold our weekly Bible studies or our services visit Mercy Street reform too. O RG, that’s Mercy Street reformed. Org.

Hello. Again, this is Pastor Chris Moulton. And for those of you who have listen to previous episodes of M Street. Welcome back for those of you who may be listening for the first time. Thank you for tuning in and I do hope that you’re blessed and doing so.

So the other night my wife and I watch the game show Deal or No Deal and if you’re not familiar with that particular program then let me make it as simple as I can and just say that the basic premise is the same as just about every other game show, which is when the biggest prize you can without getting skunked.

Matilda contestant on the night in which we watched kept talking about how much he believed that he was going to win at 1.2 even got the entire audience chanting the word believe believed believed over and over again as though as long as he and maybe even the audience believed well enough believe strongly enough maybe even believe long enough when he was then going to walk away with a big prize. So guess what in the end he walks away with a whopping $5. So all that believing didn’t quite work the way that he and everyone else was hoping it would but then understand this that’s really all that was it was hoping was wishing that in the end of the big prize would be one not really anything more than that. Certainly not face.

Unfortunately, we often confuse. Hope or are wishing that something would be true with faith and what actually is and that’s true. Not just when it comes to game shows but in many other areas of life as well. You see true faith is always grounded on something outside of one’s self and not on something that we simply want to be. We all have certain thoughts and ideas about things things that we wish were true or at least we’re true for ourselves. For instance. I might wish that I could fly or I might wish that I could ski like Candide thovex which is sort of the same thing. And in fact, I might even believe that one day if everything just worked out right that I would actually be able to fly indoor ski like that crazy Frenchman, but then even if I could it still not Faith still not true faith that I have.

He said it would just be something that I longed for which may or may not come to past true faith on the other hand has for its foundation its substance.

That which is true, whether we believe it or not and when it comes to True saving Faith, even the kind that saves our soul from hell that Foundation that substance is the gospel of God. Is this reveal to us in God’s word the Bible.

Last time we heard about why it is that not everyone born of the first atom and therefore wretched Sinners are saved from their sin by Jesus Christ.

The reason why everyone isn’t saved from their sin is because only those who possess true Faith or engrafted into Christ and receive all his benefits and four more on that subject. You could listen to last week’s episode. But so that then raises another question. What is true faith?

If only those who possess it are ultimately saved from the wrath of God that their sins deserve which is huge then what is it? And how does a person obtain it?

What’s the answer to that same question? Particularly? What is true faith that the Heidelberg Catechism looks at next and for that reason and because it logically fits with the order of things will do the same.

What’s on Romans chapter 3 verse 4 we read let God be true, but every man a liar and other words, even if no mere human being wherever to believe forever to trust that what God reveals to us in his words were true. It would still be true. Anyway regardless of what everyone else thinks about it. And so that’s the foundation. That’s the substance that I was speaking about a few minutes ago God’s word. The Bible is outside of us. It’s not something that we dream up on her own instead. It’s the most solid the most reliable reality that there is.

Of course, there always has been and there always will be those who mock God word who say and believe that Christians were the ones who were dreaming is in dreaming that the Bible is actually God’s revealed word of Truth to mankind. But again, that doesn’t change the reality of what it actually is God’s very word his inerrant infallible Revelation to mankind.

Know what does God reveal to us in that word? Well, he reveals how creation began and how we all got here. He reveals how our first parents fell from their original estate of sinlessness and how not only themselves but all of their offspring then became Sinners deserving of Grey deserving of death.

He reveals how that even very early on in history. God promised the way of deliverance from sin by means of his providing a perfect savior. Would one day come and destroy sin and death.

Along those same lines reviews to us just to that savior is Jesus Christ and what is necessary for him to be our savior who does forgives our sins personally? No other vital truths like them are all revealed to us in God’s holy word the Bible and in all that reveal to us there we can rest assured that it is 100% true now and always

So true face then is the catechism puts it holds for truth. All that God has revealed to us in his word and we might say that that’s the outside part of Saving faces again. It’s what’s outside of us. It’s not dreamed up by us either. Is it something that we just hope for because it sounds like something we like to have instead it comes to us from

God himself

well, then that’s what’s outside of us when it comes to True faith. And this is what’s inside of us a sure knowledge and Hardy trust or an assured confidence and all that the word of God reveal.

To truly believe something means that we first have to know something about it. For example, it would be silly for me to say that I believed in the third law of thermodynamics. If I had no idea what it was more realistically perhaps to say that I believe in the government of lichtenstein’s national policy on growing rice. I don’t even know if they have such a policy so it would be silly for me to say I believe it was the same thing when it comes to God’s word if I said that I believe that but I’ve never read it and never had it read to me and never had it explained.

But then I would be professing to believe something that I knew nothing about all of which makes no sense.

For that reason true Faith, isn’t that but instead it’s a sure knowledge of what God’s word review.

Now it may not be an exhaustive knowledge. In fact in the life of any True Believer his or her faith will continue to be ever-increasing ever increasing in the knowledge of the Bible is they sit under its preaching?

But it is still a faith that rest upon what it knows to be true as it’s been revealed in God’s word.

At the same time truth is also a Hardy or a confident trust and what we know concerning God’s revelation to us. So for instance when it says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God or when it says that there is none righteous. No, not one.

The person who possesses true Faith doesn’t doubt those things especially and how it relates to them personally, but instead they hardly agree with it. They read God’s law. They know what it requires of them personal perpetual and perfect obedience, and they also then know themselves to be violators of that law on there for Sinners deserving of God’s Wrath.

But that along with that the True Believer has a hearty trust in the fact that those who repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. And so with the knowledge of both of those biblical realities they possess are there for saved by or through that instrument of true faith in the gospel of God. It isn’t wishful thinking it isn’t something based on any mere human being that with a mini mere human being could come up with but instead it rest on the word of God and it’s a Shore knowledge a Hardy trust that resides inside a person’s heart of hearts, which is another way of saying in the core of their being

Okay, but so that’s what true Faith rests upon. That’s also what it is. But then where does it come from in other words is true saving Faith something that you or I can just figure out on her own sort of like we do with math or the skill of painting or something like that.

Winstead the true face like God’s word have another source outside of ourselves even a Divine source.

Let me answer that question in this way using what we just went over trusting heartily and God’s word. We come to know.

That a person any person is saved Not By Their Own Strength, but by grace through faith and listen, not of yourselves. It is a gift of God as it says in Ephesians 2:8 another words neither are being saved nor the true faith that we come to possess so that we can have a sure knowledge in a Hardy trust is something that we come up with our own but instead it’s all from beginning to end a work of God’s grace that he works in Us by his holy spirit.

Besides Ephesians 2 we could turn to John 3 or John. I’m sorry where Jesus said that unless a person is born again as in born again from above Born Again of God that he cannot enter into the kingdom of God after which Jesus said that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is Spirit.

Course, we’re all naturally born of the flesh from our first parents, but we then need is to be born again the second time in the spiritual sense so that we can then know and trust God’s word and it’s the work of the holy spirit that enlightens our minds to that truth as he makes us new creatures in Jesus Christ. All of which comes then from a Divine Source again outside of ourselves.

I like how George Bethune put it when he wrote that sin has so disordered and impaired our moral faculty. So as to render us incapable of understanding or relishing the truth of the Divine word into our hearts are at enmity against God. Therefore there must be a regeneration or recreating of our natures and enlightening of the eyes of our understanding so that we may then know and prove the good and acceptable will of God cuz it’s revealed to us in his word.

That’s what I need. That’s what you need. That’s what each and every sinner ever born into this world needs the work of the Holy Spirit recreating us so that we can then and only then be able to not only possess but also walked by live by faith in the gospel of God.

How close is this week’s episode of one more George Bethune quote one that nicely sums up what we just went over all dreams or visions or Supernatural intimations of any kind. All Impressions sentiments or impulses of our own all dictates of public opinion, ecclesiastical decrees or traditions of men are Unworthy of trust. They are not the instruments by which the Holy Spirit works. The sword of the spirit is the word of God Alone. We believe God and his testimony we need no more.

We will take no less.

Until next time May the mercy that God bestows on sinners like myself be yours.

This is Benham Street. The weekly podcast of Mercy Street Reformed Church in Denver, Colorado to find out more about us or more about the rcus. Visit Mercy Street reformed. Org. That’s Mercy Street reformed. Org.

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