♪ (Music playing) ♪ Good morning, class. Class: Good morning, Brother
Keith. Hi. I'm Keith Moore. Welcome to Faith School. Faith School is the place where
our faith gets fed, our spirit grows stronger; we learn how to
be an overcomer. That's God's plan for every
believer. It's not just will for us to go
through life defeated. We are to grow in the things of
God, become stronger and stronger. We're to learn how to receive
His highest and best. The more blessed we are, the
more we can be a blessing to others. It's more blessed to give than
it is to receive. But, this doesn't just happen
automatically. The Scripture said, "As newborn
babes desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow
thereby." The Spirit of God said to people
that, "Your faith grows exceedingly and your love is
abounding," so in the spiritual things, things of God, they're
progressive. We are to feed, and exercise,
and develop, and grow, hence Faith School. We've saved you a seat right
here on the front and we want you to get your Bible, get you
something to take notes with, and come right on in here and
join us, and let's get our faith fed today. Let's pray. "Father, in Jesus' name, we all
agree together, asking for utterance, asking for the
anointing, asking for your presence enlightening us,
illuminating our minds, spirits and hearts, giving us answers
and help and direction. Give us eyes, and ears, and
hearts, that can receive it. And we purpose to not just be
hearers only, forgetful hearers, but to be doers of what you show
us, in Jesus' name. Thank You for another day in
Faith School. Amen." If you would, turn to Romans the
tenth chapter again. We've been looking all this
week. In Romans ten starting about
verse thirteen again, How Faith Comes has been our focus. We learned in previous weeks
that faith is God's choice for us as a lifestyle, a way to
live. And if you'd like to get those
messages, they're available. Go back and take the time. It doesn't take a whole lot of
time to do this, but each week we're building on what we
learned the previous week. And it doesn't take long if
you're learning about how wonderful faith is and what
it'll do for you until you say, "Okay. Okay. I'm convinced. How do I get this? Where do I get this faith? How do I get this faith?" And the answer is right here in
the perfect Textbook. Romans 10:13 tells us,
"Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved." There and then he goes into
detail how this process works, how you get from lost and
faithless, to faith and saved. He says verse fourteen, "How
will they call on Him in Whom they have not believed?" And the answer is, they can't. They won't. "How shall they believe in Him
of Whom they have not heard? So here we see how believing is
initialized. How it begins. It begins and comes from what
you're hearing. "How shall they hear without a
preacher?" So it's not just the sound of
the words mechanically-the sound waves bouncing off your ears. Why would you need a preacher
involved? Because as he goes on to say,
"How will they preach except they be sent?" So the sending has to do with
the call of God and the anointing. He goes on to say, "As it's
written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the
Gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things." Verse sixteen, "They've not all
obeyed the Gospel. Isaiah said, Lord, who has
believed our report?" or the hearing from the
preaching. Verse seventeen, "So then faith
comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Let's say that out loud: "So
faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." We looked those words up and saw
when it says "hearing by the Word of God" that it's the word
"Rhema" and it's the word "Christos." Hearing is by, or through, the
spoken Word that is anointed. The anointed, spoken Word. That's how faith comes. Not by hearing just anything,
but by hearing the anointed, spoken Word. Now, in if you'll look in 1
Timothy the first chapter and the fifth verse, we got into
this on yesterday talking about real faith versus that which is
called faith. First Timothy 1:5 says, "The end
of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, of a good
conscience, and a faith unfeigned." He describes faith, in this
case, as faith that is not feigned. "Feign" means "pretend." The CEV says, "True faith." I like the Wuest translation of
this. It says, "A faith that is not
assumed but real." So, there is what people call
faith, but it's really assumption, assuming, and or
presuming, but it's not real faith. Real faith is not presuming
anything. Real faith has heard from God. Now, that's something that I
mentioned yesterday. I said, you know, what if
somebody said, "I'm going to have Brother Keith, you know,
come cut my grass." He's going to come cut my
grass." Well, it's not that I would say
I'd never cut your grass, but you can't believe I'm going to
cut your grass unless I told you I was going to cut your grass. And you just going off and
imagining things. "So, Brother Keith is going to
come. He's going to take out my
trash... He's going to cut my grass.. He's going to do my laundry for
me..." Well, you are likely to be
disappointed. And if you say, "I'm believing
that he will, because you've learned some things about faith
principles," and you say, "No, no, now all things are possible
to Him that believes, and if I believe it in my heart strong
enough and I say it, then you have to do it." Well, no, that's wrong. That's presumption and that's
assuming something. Faith in me can only be based on
what I told you I would do. Faith in God can only be based
on hearing from Him, what He told you He would do. You see an example of this in
the Book of Deuteronomy, I believe it is. Yeah, Deuteronomy the first
chapter. And we'll go over there and read
Deuteronomy 1:40. Deuteronomy 1:40. The Lord had told His people
Israel, that He had delivered from Egyptian bondage, from
slavery, He told them to go into the Promised Land and that He
had given it to them, now go up and possess it. Had they heard from God? Yeah. Could they have faith now to
possess the land? They can, because He told them,
"I gave it to you. Go up and take it." But when they saw the walled
cities and they saw the giants, they said, "No way. You can't do it." Basically they're saying, you
know what God told us is not going to work out. It's not right. We see this. So they rejected what He told
them. So He said, "Okay, turn then. Go back into the wilderness and
because you wouldn't believe what I told you, you're going to
wander around out here for forty years." Well, that upset them and they
said, "Okay, no, we're going to go. We're going to go." If you read Deuteronomy 1:40,
and you'll see a pattern here. He said these people are
stiff-necked, they are obstinate. You know He gave them the manna
test and He told them-the manna fell, and He said, "Alright, go
out and gather it up;" and then He said, "don't leave it." And so then they left it. And then He said, "On the
Sabbath, don't go out and get some." So guess what they did? They went out. Basically if He said don't, they
would. And if He said do, they
wouldn't. Remind you of anybody? Now just-don't raise your hand
on that one. And this is the issue. You know He's saying whatever He
tells you to do, you can only have faith to do that. Then if He tells you something
else, you can only do faith, have faith to do that. We've got to stay with what He's
telling us. Well, He said, "Go in and take
the land." They said, "No, we can't." He said, "Alright. Then go back into the
wilderness." They said, "No, we're going to
go now." That's a problem. That's a problem. So when he's-verse forty, he
said, "Turn you, and take your journey into the wilderness by
the way of the Red Sea." And then they answered and said,
"We've sinned against the Lord, we'll go up and fight, according
to what the Lord our God commanded us. And when you had girded on every
man his weapons of war, you were ready to go up the hill. And the Lord said to me, say to
them, go not up, neither fight; from not among you; lest you be
smitten before your enemies." Now, let's just stop right here. Have they heard from the Lord? They just heard from Him. Can they have faith to go up and
fight? He just told Him don't do it. Don't do it. You turn around, go into the
wilderness. Verse forty-three, he said, "So
I spoke to you; and you wouldn't hear, it but you rebelled
against the commandment of the Lord, and went presumptuously up
into the hill. And the Amorites, which dwelt in
the mountain, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do,
and destroyed you in Seir, even unto Hormah. And you returned and wept before
the Lord; but the Lord wouldn't hearken to your voice, nor give
ear to you." Why? Because they wouldn't listen to
Him. Can you see a perfect picture of
presumption? Presumption. He said, "Go up and take the
land." They wouldn't do it. So He said, "Alright. You don't want to do it, go back
into the wilderness then." And they said, "No, no, we're
ready to go." He said, "No. I'm telling you, don't go." Can you see faith is a living
thing? It's not-everything's not set in
stone. We have to hear from Him every
day to walk by faith. In fact, a perfect picture of
this is in John. When the Lord said, "I'm the
Vine, you're the branches," and He goes-I'm going to paraphrase
a little bit, He said, "If you'll abide in Me, if you'll
stay in Me, and My Words are in you, you can ask whatever you
will; it'll be done to you." Does this sound like faith? That you're having faith? You're praying in faith? You're speaking in faith? And things are happening. But you can't separate it from
this living communion with the Lord. And if He's telling you to do
something and you don't want to do that, you said, "I'm not
going to do that. I'm going to have faith to do
this." You can't have faith in Him to
do something contrary to what He told you to do. Other people may not know that
you didn't hear from Him or that you're ignoring what the other
thing that He told you to do, and they'll just be confused
when you say, "I'm believing for this and I'm saying this is
going to happen," and it doesn't happen and it ends up badly. And then people that don't
understand say, "Well, see there. That faith doesn't work." No, you didn't listen to Him. Your faith has to be in what He
told us. How does faith come? You don't just pull something
off the top of your head and say, "I'm going to believe this. I'm going to believe for this." We seek Him, we feed on His
Word, we listen to His Spirit, we ask Him what we should say
and do in this situation, and He answers us. Does He still speak to His
people? He does. And when we've heard from Him,
oh, is everybody with me on this? When you've heard from Him, then
you know I can have faith. I've heard from Him. He said do this. He said it in His Word. He said it to me by His Spirit. So this is what I'm going to do
now. When I say it, when I step out
to do it, things will happen. God will be there. Things will work. Miraculous things even will
happen, in response to my believing, and saying. But it's not me just doing
something on my own. I have heard from Him. And that faith came living faith
that I'm now acting on. You'll see this so clearly. We're going to look at another
example of this. Over in the Book of Hebrews,
you'll see such a such a clear example of this. The Lord will tell you to do a
thing, and from hearing Him, you can have faith. And in this eleventh chapter,
the great hall of fame of faith, you'll see name after name after
name after name of people who heard from Him and got faith. The Bible said Noah heard from
God that there was going to be a flood, and he had faith to build
an ark, and to work on it for years. Every one of these, you cannot
separate their great exploits of faith from the fact that in the
beginning of this thing they heard from Him. In Hebrews eleven, let's look at
one of these. Hebrews 11:29. Verse twenty-nine, it talks
about the Israelites. It says that under Moses'
leadership, Hebrews 11:29, "By faith they passed through the
Red Sea as by dry land," this is an amazing thing. The Egyptians were chasing after
the Israelites, and this is the proverbial "in between a rock
and a hard place." They had gotten down to the Red
Sea, they couldn't go any further. Pharaoh and his troops are
closing in on them. They are furious. They want to just kill them and
wipe them off the map. What do they do? They can't turn around and go
back. They can't go forward. And the Scripture says that the
Lord spoke to Moses and said, "Why are you crying out? Tell the children of Israel that
they go forward. Lift up your rod, stretch it out
over the sea, and the children of Israel go over on dry like
dry ground, through the midst of the sea." He spoke that to Moses
concerning their situation. How does faith come? Come on, help me out, friends. By hearing. Can they have faith now to cross
the Red Sea? This is the only way they could
have had faith, because natural laws are that you can't just
walk across the sea here. We don't have anything, and
there's no ship, there's no boat, there's no way to cross
it, but they've heard from God. When you've got a Word from the
Lord, anything's possible, everything's possible. But you have to hear from Him
first. You have to-you have to ask Him
and seek and enquire and He'll give it to you through His
Bible, and by His Spirit. But notice the next phrase,
Hebrews 11:29, "By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by
dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned." Now "assaying," we'd probably
say today "attempting," attempting to do it. Now, the actions were the same
with two completely different outcomes. The Israelites stepped to go
across the Red Sea and God caused a wind to blow and it
pushed up the water and split it, and it must have been very
cold because the Scripture says that the heart of the sea was
congealed. And they-it took faith to step
down into the sea bed with these walls of water on both sides. You've never seen this before. Nobody has any idea how long
this is going to last. But, because they had heard from
the Lord and He told them. "Step in, go," they did. And the entire-we know it was
six hundred some thousand soldiers, plus all the women and
children, their livestock, and stuff, millions of people went
right across there like on dry ground. Well, the Egyptians saw, they
saw them do it, and so they thought, well, we'll do it. Did they step out by faith? Did the Egyptians step out by
faith to cross? I don't know what they were
calling it, but it wasn't faith in God. Because the Scripture says they
attempted to do it and they drowned. Now, this is a real lesson, and
it explains a lot of things how that two people can do the same
action and one of them have a miracle and the other have a
disaster. Can you see this? And maybe to the person looking
from the outside, they did exactly the same thing, and
that's how some people come to the conclusion, well, you just
never know, you know, what God's going to do. And this-all this faith stuff
that people talk about, that's just a bunch of junk. No. It's entirely the difference
between what God told this person and what the Lord told
that person. And you try to do what they did
and the Lord didn't tell you the same thing He told them, it's
not going to wind up the same, even though maybe generally His
will is the same, still faith comes by hearing. What did God tell the
Israelites? I'm going to read it again. He told them, "Why are you
crying out to Me?" This is over in Exodus 14:15-
and 16. He said, "Why are you crying out
to Me?" He told Moses, "Tell the
children of Israel go forward." Are they hearing from God? "Lift up your rod, stretch out
your hand over the sea, divide it: and the children of Israel
will go over on dry ground through the midst of the sea." Have they heard from God? Was it an anointed Word that was
spoken to them? That's how you get faith. Can they have faith now to do
the impossible, to step out into something that would normally
was impassable? They could and they did. A miracle. They had faith to cross it. What had He told the Egyptians? Did God say anything? Did He tell the Egyptians to
step in and to cross? He did not. He had spoken to them though. At least seven times that I
noticed, He's told them this: "Let My people go," right? They can't have faith to cross
the Red Sea because He didn't tell them to cross the Red Sea. Moses wasn't part of the
Egyptians and they didn't hear what God told Moses. They didn't hear what Moses told
the people, and it wasn't addressed to them either. The only thing the Egyptians
could have had faith for was what God told them, "Let My
people go." They could have had faith to let
them go because that's the only thing God told them. And we laugh about it, but there
was an element of faith. Their country by this time,
after hundreds of years, the economy was largely based on all
this slave labour, and no doubt they were at a point where now
they're in fear that their whole economy and their whole way of
life could collapse without this. But if God tells you something,
He's going to take care of you. They could have had faith that
if they let all these people go they would be okay, and God
would take care of them. But they didn't. They didn't have faith for that. And so not only did they not do
what God told them to do, they tried to act on something He
told them that He never told the Egyptians and they all perished. Can you see that there's a big
difference between real faith and God and presumption? Just assuming and just asking. In John 4:41, something I really
like. The woman of Samaria, at the
well of Samaria, had gone back and told her people some things
about the Lord but then Jesus came and they saw Him and heard
Him personally and he said, "Many more believed," John 4:41,
"because of His Own Word." And in verse forty-two, they
said to the woman, "Now we believe, not because of your
saying: for we have heard Him ourselves, and we know that this
is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." That's John 4:42, "We have heard
Him for ourselves, and we know," how many understand there is no
substitute for hearing Him for how many understand there is no
substitute for hearing Him for yourself? And when you do, then you got a
solid foundation for your faith. Well, looks like our time is up
again. Let's say it like we do: "I walk
by faith. I live by faith. I overcome the world by faith. We're strong in faith, giving
glory to God." We'll see you next time. Hello, friends. Friday at Faith School is
partner day and I want to talk to you just a minute about
partnership and what it means. The Scriptures we've been
looking at in Romans says, "How shall they preach unless they
are sent?" And these broadcasts, and all of
the resources of our ministry, are made available to anybody,
anywhere at no charge. In fact, you can go to our
website and everything we've got you can get it. You can download it, watch it,
receive it, at no charge. Well, all of these things
require funds to do, as you know, so how can we do that and
not charge for it? Well, two big reasons. The faithfulness and goodness of
God to provide, and then also the faithfulness of people that
He deals with to sow. And so our partners, we call
them Word senders. And if you want to become a Word
Sender, you can. If you benefit from these
classes and these things and if you want to help send them to
other people at no charge, you can become a Word sender today. There's information on the
screen now that you can contact that, and you can get involved,
whether it's one time or on a regular basis. But remember, that when you
honor God, He said He will honor you. And it's just a truth of God's
faithfulness that when you take care of His things, He'll take
care of your things. We're believing with you. Thank you for joining us in
accomplishing the call of God.
