Tuesday, October 23, 2007

By Faith... the Judges, Part 8 of 62

TEXT: "For we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7).

IDEA: We are to live by faith and not by sight.

PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate the danger of living only by what they can figure out rather than a trust or confidence in the invisible God.

There is what appears to be a throwaway line in 2 Corinthians 5:7 where Paul is talking about his heavenly existence. He writes in chapter 5, “We live by faith, not by sight.” Paul is talking about the fact that we will put off the body we have and put on a whole new body. His preference would be to go to heaven, but he accepts the fact that he remained on earth as part of God’s will.

I. What do we mean when we take that basic principle (we walk by faith and not by sight) as the means of living the Christian life?

We live by faith and not by experiences. Many Christians feel the confirmation of their living for God is some kind of unusual experience.

What is unseen is what God has promised, which is more real than what our eyes tell us about life.

To live by faith and not by sight is to believe that the obstacles we see are not as great as the power of God whom we do not see.

II. Barak is an example of acting on what God has said in spite of the fact that what he saw would have seemed like certain destruction.

Anyone looking at that scene where he goes to attack the Canaanites would have said, “The people of Israel have a fool for a general.” The Canaanites were an overwhelming foe.

What Barak had that an observer would not see is that he had the word of God that God would fight for him. What was not seen was greater than what was seen.

Evidently, as Barak swept down from the security of Mount Tabor to the plain to confront Sisera’s army, God unleashed the storm that rendered the Canaanites helpless so that the stars in their courses fought against the Canaanites and Sisera their general.

III. To live in the real world is to live in the world of faith, not the world of sight.