By faith, Christians are called to trust in Christ alone for salvation, for sanctification, and ultimately, for glorification. Jesus proves his glory in his trustworthiness.
Welcome to the Two Journeys Podcast. This is Sanctification Monday, and my name is Andy Davis. In this podcast, we seek to answer the question, what is spiritual maturity? We believe that spiritual maturity can be broken into four main sections: knowledge, faith, character, and action. Now, today we’re going to be zeroing in on faith, and an aspect of faith, specifically reliance on Christ. So up to this point we’ve talked about Christian maturity in terms of knowledge, factual knowledge and experiential knowledge. Factual knowledge is the knowledge of the Bible. Its facts, its teachings, its doctrines. Spiritually mature people have a thorough, deep, and complete and accurate knowledge of the Bible. Also, it’s experiential. Spiritually mature people have a wealth of rich, full spiritual experiences. And we’ve also talked about faith. And generally, we’re saying faith is the eyesight of the soul. The first element of faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we see invisible spiritual realities, past, present, and future.
And so, somebody who’s spiritually mature has a very strong faith. In other words, a very clear spiritual vision of invisible realities, spiritual realities, past, present, and future. And we’ve also talked about that beautiful verse in Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.” So, the last two Sanctification Mondays, we looked at both aspects of that. That spiritually mature people have a vigorous hope. They’re filled with a strong sense in their hearts that the future is bright based on the promises of God. So that’s half of the equation in Hebrews 11:1, but the other half is more negative but necessary, “conviction of things not seen.” A conviction of the reality of indwelling sin. As the work of sanctification, we have to know what ways we fall short to the glory of God. And so, we talked about that last time, being convicted of sin. And that’s something that spiritually mature people are.
faith enables the soul to have a strong security, a sense of stability in God as though we were resting securely on the walls of a fortress.
Well, today we’re going to talk about a fourth aspect of spiritual maturity and a faith, and that is reliance on Christ. Reliance on Christ. Now faith enables the soul to have a strong security, a sense of stability in God as though we were resting securely on the walls of a fortress. Like that marvelous hymn that John Newton, who also wrote Amazing Grace, wrote. It was entitled Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken. And he said, “On the Rock of Ages founded, what can shake thy sure repose? With salvation’s walls surrounded, thou may’st smile at all thy foes.” So that beautiful confident smile in which we’re looking down at our spiritual foes, and we know that we’re secure in Christ is greatly honoring and glorifying to God. God does not want us to be insecure or unstable, blown back and forth and tossed here and there by every wind of circumstance and by all kinds of thoughts and fears.
He wants us to be secure, but he wants that security absolutely to be in Christ. So, we’re talking about reliance. What is it we’re depending on? What are we relying on? And a spiritually mature Christian man or woman has a strong sense of reliance on God and on Christ. Think about that marvelous verse in the book of Proverbs, which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight,” Proverbs 3:5-6. So that Hebrew word trust in that verse is a rich one, a powerful one. It’s used in a variety of ways in the Old Testament. It has to do with security, has to do with peace. It’s a sense of peacefulness in reliance on God. But that verse also gives a sense of things that we should not rely on, like trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
So do not lean on your own resources. Do not lean on your own wisdom, et cetera. So that’s going to be the aspect of spiritual growth we have to focus on. Now, in the Old Testament again and again, we see how God was trying to wean Israel off of false reliances and false trust and get them to trust in him and in him alone. He had to work in them. He had to display his power. When he rescued them from bondage to Egypt, he was putting his own power on display. And that Red Sea crossing when the Israelites went across the Red Sea miraculously. The most spectacular miracle God ever did is the Red Sea crossing. And when the Israelites saw their own salvation miraculously through the Red Sea, but then saw their enemies destroyed, their bodies washed up on the shores after the judgment had fallen on them.
It says in Exodus 14:31, “When the Israelites saw the great power the Lord had displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.” So, God put his own power in display in the 10 plagues, in the Red Sea crossing. He also had to teach them again and again in the Old Testament in the desert as they were wandering through the desert and they had nothing to drink, they had nothing to eat. God taught them to trust in him to provide for all of their needs. He fed them with manna, teaching them an important lesson. That man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. So yes, he knew that they needed food to live. He knew that very well, but he also wanted to teach them that more than they even needed food, they needed God.
So ultimately, they were relying not on the manna, not on bread, but on God. And that by God’s word they would live. By God’s word they would eat, manna in that case, by God’s word, they would drink even water from a rock. God was teaching them lessons to rely on him and trust in him. Now, the Israelites needed to learn those lessons because like us, they consistently turned away from relying on God and sought to rely on other sources of power, most especially on themselves. The ultimate enemy of spiritual maturity, of reliance on Christ as our all-sufficient refuge, provider, Savior, the enemy is self-reliance. Autonomy is ruling yourself, being in charge of your own self. Closely related to autonomy is self-salvation or self-reliance all of the troubles of your life. You’re going to look inward to find those resources.
We see a very good example of this when the 12 spies came back before the crossing of the Jordan River in the time of Moses. They were ready after a short trip from Mount Sinai, they were ready to conquer the Promised land. And Moses sent out 12 spies and they came back, and 10 of the 12 spread a bad report about the land and spread unbelief. They spread fear and doubt and greatly offended God who had carried them as a father carries a son all that way. But yet in spite of that, they didn’t trust in God. And in Numbers 14, when they talked about the land, they talked about the Anakites who were very physically large warriors. They talked about cities with walls up to the sky, and they looked at all of the obstacles militarily to them conquering the Promised land. They didn’t once think about the incredible power God had shown in Egypt and at the Red Sea crossing and all that. They didn’t trust in the Lord.
And so, they spread fear and doubt, and they said, when they looked at the Anakites and their mighty cities with walls up to the sky, they said, “We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them” (Numbers 13:33). So, what happened is they looked at the obstacles. They looked at what they were facing, and they looked inward to try to meet those obstacles. And they did not see those resources there. And that led them to fear, that led them to depression, to discouragement. And so, they were told at that point because of their lack of faith in God and their rejection of God the Savior, God judged them and said, “You will not therefore enter the promised land, but your children will. Now turn around and wander until every one of this generation, all the men of military age from 20 years up has died, except Joshua and Caleb. All of you will die and your children will go in after you, now turn around and go” (Numbers 14, paraphrase).
Well, when they heard that they changed their mind. Some of them did anyway, and they strapped on their weapons. And it says in Deuteronomy 1, Moses speaking to them 40 years later, “you strapped on your weapons thinking it easy to go up into the hill country.” What a terrible thing. At that point, they’ve got the same disease, self-reliance, they look inward at the obstacles and this time they have the opposite reaction, “We can do it.” But they’re not looking to God any more than they were before. And so, they were arrogant, and they went up. And they got whipped. And they get defeated by the residents in the land, the Canaanites. And God says, “You came down and wept before me, but I paid no attention to you” (Deuteronomy 1:45).
And so, I picture it as two sides of the same coin. The coin is self-reliance. The issue is difficulties you face in your life. If you look inward to try to meet those difficulties, that’s the essence of it, that’s self-reliance. If you do not find the resources when you look inward, you’ll be depressed. If you do find the resources when you look inward, you’ll be arrogant. So, depression and arrogance are two sides of the same coin. And that coin’s name is self-reliance. Now, when Christ comes to save us, he weens us off of all of that so that we stop trying to save ourselves from our sins. We stop trying to earn our salvation. We stop trying to solve all of our own problems. We come as spiritual beggars to Him, and we say, “Save us Lord.” We bring our emptiness, our brokenness, our sinfulness, our spiritual death, our spiritual disease.
We bring all of that mess, and we bring it to Jesus, and we trust in Him to be our Lord and Savior. But we’ve just begun at that moment. At the moment of conversion, we’ve just begun to learn how to rely on Christ as our all-sufficient Savior, refuge, provider, sustainer. We have a long way to go. We have to rely on him more and more. And so, what we’re saying here on Sanctification Monday is that God is working lessons in you so that you would not trust in yourself or in any idol. You would not trust in money or your education or your abilities or your connections or your anything. You would trust in God and in Christ alone. When I was a missionary in Japan, I had an amazing experience. And it was in a very rural area of Japan on the island of Shikoku where we were ministering.
It’s the smallest of the four major islands that make up the Japanese nation. And we went to this vine bridge. It was about 500 years old, something like that. Very ancient culture in Japan. We have a very new culture here in the United States, but very ancient. And so, there’s this vine bridge and it was very famous. You had to drive through many mountainous passes and all that. It took a long time to get there. And it was amazing. When I saw it was maybe 100 feet up above the river, below across a ravine, and it was supposedly completely made of vines. Well, it turned out it wasn’t. There was actually a steel cable in the center, and it was surrounded by vines. So, I think the Japanese engineers had gotten in there and wanted to be sure that it was secure. But I’ll never forget, my wife did not want to cross that swaying vine bridge.
It had little wooden slats that went across. And so, it was a little bit treacherous, but it was still pretty exciting. But I remember going across that bridge with my son, Nathaniel. He was just a toddler at the time and holding him and looking at the vines and trying to decide if they would hold us or not. And as I did, I actually was thinking about a hymn which captures the idea here of reliance on Christ. The hymn is Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy. And this is what the first two stanzas say in that hymn, “Lo! The incarnate God, ascended, pleads the merit of his blood; venture on him, venture wholly; let no other trust intrude. I will arise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms. In the arms of my dear Savior, oh, there are 10,000 charms.”
So, if I were going to trust that vine bridge, I would have to venture out on it. I would have to not have a harness with a rope system and all that. That would mean I was not trusting the bridge. I had to venture out on that bridge and entrust my weight entirely to it, or I was not trusting the bridge. And I did, and it held me securely. And so, I love that word venture. It means go out boldly on Jesus, venture on Him, venture holy. Put the entire salvation of your soul in all of its details, in all of its aspects, everything you’re going to need for the rest of your life. Put it on Christ and trust him completely. And let no other trust intrude.
Now, I love that word intrude. Imagine if you saw a young couple that loved each other. And you are good friends with both of them, the man and the woman, and they’re hugging each other. And it’s tender moment, public display of affection, something like that. And you decide you’d like to be included. So, you step up and you kind of hug, and they both look at you like, “What in the world, what are you doing here?” So that’s weird I know, that’s a weird illustration, but that’s what I mean by let no other trust intrude. Christ and your soul. That’s it. Let no third trust intrude. Don’t think, “Yes, Jesus plus this,” or “Jesus plus that.” We want to trust entirely on Christ.
Now the apostle Paul knew that he still had a lot of self-reliance inside himself. And he says in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, to the Corinthian church, he said, “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the trial that we went through in the province of Asia. We’re under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts, we felt the sentence of death. But this happened, this terrible trial happened so that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.” Now, here’s my thought. If the mighty man of God, this mature Christian, the apostle Paul had been through so many circumstances I’ve never been through, said “I still have to learn how to not rely on myself, but on God, who raises the dead,” then how much more do I? How much more do you?
we have to learn to venture out on Christ and trust in him entirely, that his death on the cross is sufficient.
And so, we have to learn to venture out on Christ and trust in him entirely, that his death on the cross is sufficient. His resurrection from the dead is 100% of your hope. And that Jesus, having already provided the atoning sacrifice, now acts as your great high priest at the right hand of God. He’s interceding for you continually, that your faith will not fail. Like he said to Simon Peter in Luke 22:31-32, “Simon, Simon, Satan is demanded to sift you like wheat. But I’ve prayed for you Simon that your faith may not fail, and after you turn back, strengthen your brothers.” That was the most terrible night of Peter’s life when he denied Jesus three times.
But Jesus had already prayed for him that his faith wouldn’t fail. So, here’s the thing. How do I know that I’m going to keep believing in Jesus the rest of my life, that there’ll be no combination of trials, of demonic opposition that will cause me to stop believing in Jesus? Well, it’s not because I’m such a great believer. I’m not. It’s because I’m trusting entirely in Jesus that his intercessory prayer ministry for me to the Heavenly Father, will be sufficient to sustain my faith. And my faith needs to be sustained. And I’m going to trust in Jesus to do that.
It says in Hebrews 7:25, “He always lives to intercede for the saints.” He’s continually praying for us to what end that our faith will not fail. So, he is taking it upon himself to sustain the faith that he began in us. And so, I’m totally relying on him to do that.
There’s a powerful image of this in Pilgrim’s Progress written by John Bunyan in the 17th century, the great allegory of the Christian life. And in that the Christian, the Pilgrim who’s making his way to heaven, the celestial city, comes to a house called the Interpreter’s House. And the Interpreter, who represents, I think, basically a pastor in the allegory, shows him a lot of vignettes and scenes and different things that teach him aspects of the Christian life. And one of them is called the fire burning against the wall. Picture it if you would like a stone hearth and maybe marble or something like that against a stone wall. And there’s a fire burning it. And the Interpreter showed him this and showed that there was a man continually trying to put the fire out, pouring water on it. But no matter what the man did, he couldn’t put the fire out.
And then Christian said to Interpreter, what does this mean? And Interpreter said, “The fire represents the work of grace, which God has begun in a Christian’s life, in a Christian’s heart. And the one pouring water on it to try to extinguish it is the devil. But no matter what he does, he cannot extinguish the work of grace. Now let me show you why.” So, he had him around behind the wall. And it turns out behind the wall there’s another man with a vessel in his hand filled with oil and he’s feeding the fire by means of some kind of a secret pipe that goes into the bottom of the hearth and it keeps the fire burning. And he said, “Well, what does this mean?” He said, “This is Christ, and the oil is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And by the ongoing ministry of Christ as our great high priest, he feeds the work of grace. Therefore, there is nothing Satan can do to put out the work of grace in a genuine Christian’s heart.”
And he’s behind the wall showing that the tempted who are going through trials cannot always see how God is secretly sustaining them through those trials. And so it is for us. If you were to ask me, Andy, how do you know that you will not apostatize, that you will not turn away? That there will not be a combination of temptations and afflictions that will be so great that you’ll turn your back on Jesus and deny him and refuse to follow Christ anymore? My answer is because I’m relying on Jesus to feed the work of grace in my heart, by his oil, by the Holy Spirit, the ministry of the Holy Spirit to keep me believing in Him no matter what trials come my way. So, as we look at sanctification, at the growth of Christian, I want you this week to focus on reliance on Christ. To say, “Lord, would you please increase my sense of reliance on Christ on Him alone, that I would venture out wholly on Jesus and let no other trust intrude.”
So, as we conclude today, go into your week knowing that God has gone ahead of you and will be using everything you experience this week to sanctify you and bring you more and more into conformity to Christ.
Welcome to the Two Journeys Podcast. This is Sanctification Monday, and my name is Andy Davis. In this podcast, we seek to answer the question, what is spiritual maturity? We believe that spiritual maturity can be broken into four main sections: knowledge, faith, character, and action. Now, today we’re going to be zeroing in on faith, and an aspect of faith, specifically reliance on Christ. So up to this point we’ve talked about Christian maturity in terms of knowledge, factual knowledge and experiential knowledge. Factual knowledge is the knowledge of the Bible. Its facts, its teachings, its doctrines. Spiritually mature people have a thorough, deep, and complete and accurate knowledge of the Bible. Also, it’s experiential. Spiritually mature people have a wealth of rich, full spiritual experiences. And we’ve also talked about faith. And generally, we’re saying faith is the eyesight of the soul. The first element of faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we see invisible spiritual realities, past, present, and future.
And so, somebody who’s spiritually mature has a very strong faith. In other words, a very clear spiritual vision of invisible realities, spiritual realities, past, present, and future. And we’ve also talked about that beautiful verse in Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.” So, the last two Sanctification Mondays, we looked at both aspects of that. That spiritually mature people have a vigorous hope. They’re filled with a strong sense in their hearts that the future is bright based on the promises of God. So that’s half of the equation in Hebrews 11:1, but the other half is more negative but necessary, “conviction of things not seen.” A conviction of the reality of indwelling sin. As the work of sanctification, we have to know what ways we fall short to the glory of God. And so, we talked about that last time, being convicted of sin. And that’s something that spiritually mature people are.
faith enables the soul to have a strong security, a sense of stability in God as though we were resting securely on the walls of a fortress.
Well, today we’re going to talk about a fourth aspect of spiritual maturity and a faith, and that is reliance on Christ. Reliance on Christ. Now faith enables the soul to have a strong security, a sense of stability in God as though we were resting securely on the walls of a fortress. Like that marvelous hymn that John Newton, who also wrote Amazing Grace, wrote. It was entitled Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken. And he said, “On the Rock of Ages founded, what can shake thy sure repose? With salvation’s walls surrounded, thou may’st smile at all thy foes.” So that beautiful confident smile in which we’re looking down at our spiritual foes, and we know that we’re secure in Christ is greatly honoring and glorifying to God. God does not want us to be insecure or unstable, blown back and forth and tossed here and there by every wind of circumstance and by all kinds of thoughts and fears.
He wants us to be secure, but he wants that security absolutely to be in Christ. So, we’re talking about reliance. What is it we’re depending on? What are we relying on? And a spiritually mature Christian man or woman has a strong sense of reliance on God and on Christ. Think about that marvelous verse in the book of Proverbs, which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight,” Proverbs 3:5-6. So that Hebrew word trust in that verse is a rich one, a powerful one. It’s used in a variety of ways in the Old Testament. It has to do with security, has to do with peace. It’s a sense of peacefulness in reliance on God. But that verse also gives a sense of things that we should not rely on, like trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
So do not lean on your own resources. Do not lean on your own wisdom, et cetera. So that’s going to be the aspect of spiritual growth we have to focus on. Now, in the Old Testament again and again, we see how God was trying to wean Israel off of false reliances and false trust and get them to trust in him and in him alone. He had to work in them. He had to display his power. When he rescued them from bondage to Egypt, he was putting his own power on display. And that Red Sea crossing when the Israelites went across the Red Sea miraculously. The most spectacular miracle God ever did is the Red Sea crossing. And when the Israelites saw their own salvation miraculously through the Red Sea, but then saw their enemies destroyed, their bodies washed up on the shores after the judgment had fallen on them.
It says in Exodus 14:31, “When the Israelites saw the great power the Lord had displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.” So, God put his own power in display in the 10 plagues, in the Red Sea crossing. He also had to teach them again and again in the Old Testament in the desert as they were wandering through the desert and they had nothing to drink, they had nothing to eat. God taught them to trust in him to provide for all of their needs. He fed them with manna, teaching them an important lesson. That man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. So yes, he knew that they needed food to live. He knew that very well, but he also wanted to teach them that more than they even needed food, they needed God.
So ultimately, they were relying not on the manna, not on bread, but on God. And that by God’s word they would live. By God’s word they would eat, manna in that case, by God’s word, they would drink even water from a rock. God was teaching them lessons to rely on him and trust in him. Now, the Israelites needed to learn those lessons because like us, they consistently turned away from relying on God and sought to rely on other sources of power, most especially on themselves. The ultimate enemy of spiritual maturity, of reliance on Christ as our all-sufficient refuge, provider, Savior, the enemy is self-reliance. Autonomy is ruling yourself, being in charge of your own self. Closely related to autonomy is self-salvation or self-reliance all of the troubles of your life. You’re going to look inward to find those resources.
We see a very good example of this when the 12 spies came back before the crossing of the Jordan River in the time of Moses. They were ready after a short trip from Mount Sinai, they were ready to conquer the Promised land. And Moses sent out 12 spies and they came back, and 10 of the 12 spread a bad report about the land and spread unbelief. They spread fear and doubt and greatly offended God who had carried them as a father carries a son all that way. But yet in spite of that, they didn’t trust in God. And in Numbers 14, when they talked about the land, they talked about the Anakites who were very physically large warriors. They talked about cities with walls up to the sky, and they looked at all of the obstacles militarily to them conquering the Promised land. They didn’t once think about the incredible power God had shown in Egypt and at the Red Sea crossing and all that. They didn’t trust in the Lord.
And so, they spread fear and doubt, and they said, when they looked at the Anakites and their mighty cities with walls up to the sky, they said, “We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them” (Numbers 13:33). So, what happened is they looked at the obstacles. They looked at what they were facing, and they looked inward to try to meet those obstacles. And they did not see those resources there. And that led them to fear, that led them to depression, to discouragement. And so, they were told at that point because of their lack of faith in God and their rejection of God the Savior, God judged them and said, “You will not therefore enter the promised land, but your children will. Now turn around and wander until every one of this generation, all the men of military age from 20 years up has died, except Joshua and Caleb. All of you will die and your children will go in after you, now turn around and go” (Numbers 14, paraphrase).
Well, when they heard that they changed their mind. Some of them did anyway, and they strapped on their weapons. And it says in Deuteronomy 1, Moses speaking to them 40 years later, “you strapped on your weapons thinking it easy to go up into the hill country.” What a terrible thing. At that point, they’ve got the same disease, self-reliance, they look inward at the obstacles and this time they have the opposite reaction, “We can do it.” But they’re not looking to God any more than they were before. And so, they were arrogant, and they went up. And they got whipped. And they get defeated by the residents in the land, the Canaanites. And God says, “You came down and wept before me, but I paid no attention to you” (Deuteronomy 1:45).
And so, I picture it as two sides of the same coin. The coin is self-reliance. The issue is difficulties you face in your life. If you look inward to try to meet those difficulties, that’s the essence of it, that’s self-reliance. If you do not find the resources when you look inward, you’ll be depressed. If you do find the resources when you look inward, you’ll be arrogant. So, depression and arrogance are two sides of the same coin. And that coin’s name is self-reliance. Now, when Christ comes to save us, he weens us off of all of that so that we stop trying to save ourselves from our sins. We stop trying to earn our salvation. We stop trying to solve all of our own problems. We come as spiritual beggars to Him, and we say, “Save us Lord.” We bring our emptiness, our brokenness, our sinfulness, our spiritual death, our spiritual disease.
We bring all of that mess, and we bring it to Jesus, and we trust in Him to be our Lord and Savior. But we’ve just begun at that moment. At the moment of conversion, we’ve just begun to learn how to rely on Christ as our all-sufficient Savior, refuge, provider, sustainer. We have a long way to go. We have to rely on him more and more. And so, what we’re saying here on Sanctification Monday is that God is working lessons in you so that you would not trust in yourself or in any idol. You would not trust in money or your education or your abilities or your connections or your anything. You would trust in God and in Christ alone. When I was a missionary in Japan, I had an amazing experience. And it was in a very rural area of Japan on the island of Shikoku where we were ministering.
It’s the smallest of the four major islands that make up the Japanese nation. And we went to this vine bridge. It was about 500 years old, something like that. Very ancient culture in Japan. We have a very new culture here in the United States, but very ancient. And so, there’s this vine bridge and it was very famous. You had to drive through many mountainous passes and all that. It took a long time to get there. And it was amazing. When I saw it was maybe 100 feet up above the river, below across a ravine, and it was supposedly completely made of vines. Well, it turned out it wasn’t. There was actually a steel cable in the center, and it was surrounded by vines. So, I think the Japanese engineers had gotten in there and wanted to be sure that it was secure. But I’ll never forget, my wife did not want to cross that swaying vine bridge.
It had little wooden slats that went across. And so, it was a little bit treacherous, but it was still pretty exciting. But I remember going across that bridge with my son, Nathaniel. He was just a toddler at the time and holding him and looking at the vines and trying to decide if they would hold us or not. And as I did, I actually was thinking about a hymn which captures the idea here of reliance on Christ. The hymn is Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy. And this is what the first two stanzas say in that hymn, “Lo! The incarnate God, ascended, pleads the merit of his blood; venture on him, venture wholly; let no other trust intrude. I will arise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms. In the arms of my dear Savior, oh, there are 10,000 charms.”
So, if I were going to trust that vine bridge, I would have to venture out on it. I would have to not have a harness with a rope system and all that. That would mean I was not trusting the bridge. I had to venture out on that bridge and entrust my weight entirely to it, or I was not trusting the bridge. And I did, and it held me securely. And so, I love that word venture. It means go out boldly on Jesus, venture on Him, venture holy. Put the entire salvation of your soul in all of its details, in all of its aspects, everything you’re going to need for the rest of your life. Put it on Christ and trust him completely. And let no other trust intrude.
Now, I love that word intrude. Imagine if you saw a young couple that loved each other. And you are good friends with both of them, the man and the woman, and they’re hugging each other. And it’s tender moment, public display of affection, something like that. And you decide you’d like to be included. So, you step up and you kind of hug, and they both look at you like, “What in the world, what are you doing here?” So that’s weird I know, that’s a weird illustration, but that’s what I mean by let no other trust intrude. Christ and your soul. That’s it. Let no third trust intrude. Don’t think, “Yes, Jesus plus this,” or “Jesus plus that.” We want to trust entirely on Christ.
Now the apostle Paul knew that he still had a lot of self-reliance inside himself. And he says in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, to the Corinthian church, he said, “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the trial that we went through in the province of Asia. We’re under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts, we felt the sentence of death. But this happened, this terrible trial happened so that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.” Now, here’s my thought. If the mighty man of God, this mature Christian, the apostle Paul had been through so many circumstances I’ve never been through, said “I still have to learn how to not rely on myself, but on God, who raises the dead,” then how much more do I? How much more do you?
we have to learn to venture out on Christ and trust in him entirely, that his death on the cross is sufficient.
And so, we have to learn to venture out on Christ and trust in him entirely, that his death on the cross is sufficient. His resurrection from the dead is 100% of your hope. And that Jesus, having already provided the atoning sacrifice, now acts as your great high priest at the right hand of God. He’s interceding for you continually, that your faith will not fail. Like he said to Simon Peter in Luke 22:31-32, “Simon, Simon, Satan is demanded to sift you like wheat. But I’ve prayed for you Simon that your faith may not fail, and after you turn back, strengthen your brothers.” That was the most terrible night of Peter’s life when he denied Jesus three times.
But Jesus had already prayed for him that his faith wouldn’t fail. So, here’s the thing. How do I know that I’m going to keep believing in Jesus the rest of my life, that there’ll be no combination of trials, of demonic opposition that will cause me to stop believing in Jesus? Well, it’s not because I’m such a great believer. I’m not. It’s because I’m trusting entirely in Jesus that his intercessory prayer ministry for me to the Heavenly Father, will be sufficient to sustain my faith. And my faith needs to be sustained. And I’m going to trust in Jesus to do that.
It says in Hebrews 7:25, “He always lives to intercede for the saints.” He’s continually praying for us to what end that our faith will not fail. So, he is taking it upon himself to sustain the faith that he began in us. And so, I’m totally relying on him to do that.
There’s a powerful image of this in Pilgrim’s Progress written by John Bunyan in the 17th century, the great allegory of the Christian life. And in that the Christian, the Pilgrim who’s making his way to heaven, the celestial city, comes to a house called the Interpreter’s House. And the Interpreter, who represents, I think, basically a pastor in the allegory, shows him a lot of vignettes and scenes and different things that teach him aspects of the Christian life. And one of them is called the fire burning against the wall. Picture it if you would like a stone hearth and maybe marble or something like that against a stone wall. And there’s a fire burning it. And the Interpreter showed him this and showed that there was a man continually trying to put the fire out, pouring water on it. But no matter what the man did, he couldn’t put the fire out.
And then Christian said to Interpreter, what does this mean? And Interpreter said, “The fire represents the work of grace, which God has begun in a Christian’s life, in a Christian’s heart. And the one pouring water on it to try to extinguish it is the devil. But no matter what he does, he cannot extinguish the work of grace. Now let me show you why.” So, he had him around behind the wall. And it turns out behind the wall there’s another man with a vessel in his hand filled with oil and he’s feeding the fire by means of some kind of a secret pipe that goes into the bottom of the hearth and it keeps the fire burning. And he said, “Well, what does this mean?” He said, “This is Christ, and the oil is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And by the ongoing ministry of Christ as our great high priest, he feeds the work of grace. Therefore, there is nothing Satan can do to put out the work of grace in a genuine Christian’s heart.”
And he’s behind the wall showing that the tempted who are going through trials cannot always see how God is secretly sustaining them through those trials. And so it is for us. If you were to ask me, Andy, how do you know that you will not apostatize, that you will not turn away? That there will not be a combination of temptations and afflictions that will be so great that you’ll turn your back on Jesus and deny him and refuse to follow Christ anymore? My answer is because I’m relying on Jesus to feed the work of grace in my heart, by his oil, by the Holy Spirit, the ministry of the Holy Spirit to keep me believing in Him no matter what trials come my way. So, as we look at sanctification, at the growth of Christian, I want you this week to focus on reliance on Christ. To say, “Lord, would you please increase my sense of reliance on Christ on Him alone, that I would venture out wholly on Jesus and let no other trust intrude.”
So, as we conclude today, go into your week knowing that God has gone ahead of you and will be using everything you experience this week to sanctify you and bring you more and more into conformity to Christ.
