Mature Faith

G. Thomas Sharp • May 18, 2020

Devoid of God’s grace, the human will inevitably produces envy, malice, war; but the perfect will of the Lord always produces love, joy, and peace (2 Peter 1:3-8). Obedience to God and the subsequent manifestation of His will should, therefore, be the primary goal of all Bible believers!

In August, 1890, the ineffable Charles Haddon Spurgeon, often called the prince of preachers, presented a remarkable sermon to the congregation of Metropolitan Tabernacle in London from the Scripture passage Hebrews 11:8: “ By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” Spurgeon said that the spiritual significance of this passage is observed in the fact that Abraham obeyed by faith (an action Abraham would often duplicate).

Spurgeon further declared that obedience to God’s Word would tend to manifest “love among men, justice to all classes and peace in every land, and that the human will, devoid from God’s grace, only brings envy, malice and war!” Thus, believers should naturally seek obedience to God!

I find that many professing Christians, even though they are reasonably faithful in their church attendance, are terribly lacking in their Biblical knowledge and manifest a glaring Scriptural immaturity! And since 2 plus 2 always equals 4 (which can easily be an effective analogy for the fact that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of the Lord), it is only reasonable to assume that many professing believers are inept in their faith because they are also inept in their Biblical knowledge, and when we stand before God, ignorance will not be an acceptable excuse!

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As many of you may know, I appreciate space. Not space around me, although the older I get the more I appreciate that as well. The things in the heavens fascinate me and have for a large chunk of my life. I love working with our telescopes, allowing people to see for themselves objects that the Lord made on the 4th day of history. When I was younger I followed our Space Shuttle program, and over the years I have had the opportunity to see a couple of those shuttles around the country. Now it is great to see all the renewed interest in exploring the heavenly creation. I know most of it is for evolutionary reasons, yet over and over again something is discovered that points to the trustworthiness of God’s Word. After all, we are to study His creation as Genesis 1:28 states. On a recent trip to El Paso, it occurred to me that Blue Origin’s launch facility is in west Texas somewhere. After some quick searching I realized we were within an hour and half of it, and there was a rescheduled launch window during the time of our meeting. So, with some persuading of my colleagues, we arose early one morning to make the launch. We made it with just minutes to spare. It was spectacular! The whole launch to just beyond the Karman Line (space boundary, 62 miles/100km) and return of the rocket and capsule is about ten minutes total. While Blue Origin is best known for its New Shepherd rocket that carries paying customers to space and back with the biggest windows ever in a capsule, this NS-29 launch was purely experimental with a payload of instruments to measure simulated lunar gravity. Even though it was not a Saturn V, Space Shuttle, Starship or Falcon launch, it was great to hear and feel a launch for the first time, from blast off to the sonic boom return. It has piqued my desire to see a bigger launch now. As I began to reflect on what I experienced, the Lord reminded me of His design. Earth, our home planet, is so well designed for life. There is literally nowhere in all the universe like it. Yet He gave us the ability to discover creation beyond it. The only reason we can launch rockets and do space exploration is because He set it up in an orderly way. Physics works because He established it to work in a predictable fashion. As much as we may never understand everything in the universe from our position here, it works on an ordered reality that is reinforced by God’s Word. This is what drove Sir Isaac Newton in his understanding of physics. He wrote, “The motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone but were by an intelligent Agent.” Evolutionists may come up with theories about the origin of things in the heavens, but over and over again they are being shown through experimentation and observation to be wrong. The Lord set the order of everything in the beginning and sustains it by His Word (Hebrews 1:3). So as you look to the heavens tonight, gaze into the depths of space and observe the different facets the Lord placed up there for our eyes (Genesis 1:17). Peer through a telescope at the lesser light of the moon with marvel and anticipation of further human study in the coming years. Check out the amazing observations being made by the James Webb telescope from deep in space. All of these place a perspective of how awesome our Creator is and how much we depend on Him. Our design becomes more and more obvious with every discovery, yet in our universe we appear so minuscule and fragile. Thanks be to God that His infinite focus has, is and always will be here on us! Blessings.
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