“Faith” By Brother Parrish Lee April 14th,
2013
Our general pastor, Pastor Paine,
has asked that we would spend three months out of each year on sound
doctrine. This is
one of those
months. Last week,
Bob Heirtzler
preached on baptism, and the sound doctrine for baptism. Today we’re going to talk
about faith. In
that sound doctrine, our scripture for the
month is: 2
Timothy 4:1-4
…the
time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine…
…Turned unto fables.
A warning from Apostle Paul, as led by the
Lord, to the churches all down to today, that we would hear the truth
and
resist fables. That’s
the Scripture for
the month. However,
today’s subject is
going to be on faith. Our
Scripture for
today is: Esther
4:11-17 …who
knoweth whether thou art come to the
kingdom for such a time as this?...
If we could just bow our heads for
just a moment: Lord,
we thank You for
the time that You have given u, this wonderful day that You have given
us. For, truly, You
have breathed in us the Breath
of Life and given us this day, and this is the day that You have made. We thank You for the time
of gathering
together, and coming to worship, to praise Your Name, to extol You and
to thank
You for being able to be led in Psalms, and the psalmist’s praise. We pray at this time, that, as You have said in Your
Word, that Your Word
would not return unto You void, but that it would accomplish that which
You
have sent it to do (Isaiah 55:11), that Your Word would accomplish Your
will in
our lives today, that it might feed us and strengthen us and bring us
to a more
communal walk with You, Lord. That
You
would be able to consider us Your children in whom You are well pleased. We thank you and we pray
all this in Jesus’
Name. And every one
said, “Amen.”
Such a beautiful testimony, as we
are able to go into the story of Esther.
I went through and I read the whole thing. Awesome, awesome testimony
that our sister
Esther had lived with. To
catch everyone
up on this story, what had happened, there was this king of the land. Israel was in captivity,
and there’s this
king of the land, and this King had a wife; she was the Queen, of
course. The King
was in his house, in this great
room, and the Queen had her whole section of this house. The King had called for
the Queen to come to
him, her name was Vashti, and she said no.
He asked again, “Queen, come!” and she said again,
“No.” She was
having a good time doing what she was
doing. All of the
King’s inner court and
his advisors, they got together and they said to him, “King, you’ve got
to do
something about this, because, if the Queen says no to you, and she
gets away
with it, you know what’s going to happen? all of our wives are going to
tell us
no, and then what will we do? So,
King,
you have to do something about this (this was before suffrage and the
women’s
liberation movement).” A
decision was
made, the King said, “I know what I’ll do.
I’ll go through the land, and I’ll pick the fairest
of the maidens (of
the virgins) and I’ll choose one of them, and I’ll make her a queen. Ha, ha, ha!” So, that’s what he did. they went out, and they
brought the fairest
of the virgins, and they brought them to the King’s palace, and they
had their
own room, where they spent time for purification, they called it. In preparation for the
King to choose one. Esther
happened to be one of the ones that was
gathered in.
In the course of this time, there
was a man that rose up, and his name was Haman.
He had some political aspirations, we would say. He wanted to be on the
inside; he wanted to
be in the inner circle; he wanted to be in the loop.
He started climbing the political ladder, if
you will. He was
getting inroads, and he
was getting a little higher and a little higher, and he got to the
place where people
started bowing before him. Yeah,
he
started getting those little accolades, that little acumen. There was this other guy,
named Mordecai, who
would not bow to Haman, because Mordecai was a Jew, and Mordecai had
already
made his mind that he was not going to make obeisance to anybody except
his
God. Haman noticed
that Mordecai wasn’t
bowing to him, and he got a little perturbed (I am really abbreviating
this
story, everybody; really
abbreviating
it). So Haman is
perturbed, and he makes
up his mind, “You know what I’m going to do to that guy? I am going to
figure
out how to get that guy out of the way.” So,
not only did Haman want to get Mordecai
out of the way, he wanted to get all the people like
Mordecai out of the way.
Haman secretly built a gallows, because, in his
mind, he was going to
end this guy, he was going to figure out how to do it.
After all, he was given some prestige; he was
given some clout; he was given some notoriety.
“I am quite important around this place.” He’s looking for some
letters, ad these
letters are going to give him permission to wipe out all the Jews; wipe
them
out. Yeah, this is
where he is. The
news of these interactions, these things going
on, came to Mordecai. Esther,
she is now
in the King’s palace. She
is the niece of
Mordecai. Mordecai
finds out that Haman has
provided a massive amount of people to take him, and not just him, but
all the
Jews. Mordecai
sends a note to Esther, “Esther,
you have to do something. You
have to do
something.” This is
where we pick it up. We
pick it up here at verse 11. He
sends a note, and, in verse 11, this is Esther’s
reply: “All the
King’s servants and all
the King’s provinces do know that whosoever, whether man or woman, who
shall
come unto the King into the inner court, who is not called, there is
one law of
his, that is, of the King’s, to put him to death, except such to whom
the king
shall hold out the golden sceptre, that he may live: but I have not
been called
to come in unto the king these thirty days.” That
is her reply to Mordecai. They
told Mordecai, and in verse 13, Mordecai
answered Esther, and Mordecai says, “Think not with thyself that thou
shalt
escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews.”
They don’t know that you’re a Jew, but you
know that you’re a Jew. Don’t
think that
because you’re up there that you’re going to get away.
Don’t think that.
In verse 14:
“For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this
time, then shall there
enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but
thou and
thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art
come to
the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Now, obviously, Esther had to make a decision. We’re talking about faith
here. Then Esther
bade them return Mordecai this
answer, (verse 16) “Go, gather together all the Jews that are present
in
Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days,
night or
day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto
the
king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.”
You know, Saints, so many times in
our lives we as Christians, we face situations, many times from people
who have
the rule over us: bosses,
politicians,
maybe even family members We
find
ourselves in these situations, and the question always arises as to
what to
do. Any time a
Christian is in a
situation, God has already planned a deliverance.
I want to go on record with that.
Every time a Christian is in a situation, God
already had the deliverance. It’s
not a
mystery! It’s not
up there in
space! God already
had a plan for
that. Make sure
that we know that. God
already has a plan. We’re
living in a day and time where He is so
much looking for us to be His example and testify of His Word, then
could that deliverance
come, and everybody will know that the deliverance has come to somebody
who
loves the Lord. It
has come to the house
of somebody who loves the Lord.
We just happen to be in a day and age
when people don’t want to get involved in things; people want to slide
by in
the easiest way possible. They
just want
to hide out and not be found. “Let
it
all go past, and, you know what? I’ll find some accolades, and I’ll
say, ‘Hey,
good job on y'all! But
don’t, you know,
ask me to stand up. Please. Pray for three days and
nights? no, come on. Can’t
we just say grace? “Thank
you, God. Amen.”
And as far as fasting, well, don’t you know I’m
hypoglycemic? Not
only do I have hypoglycemia, but I like
sugar, and Tastykakes. You know what? I guarantee you this thing: You ever make up your mind
to go and fast?
that’s the time when they’re going to bring the donuts.
That’s the time when somebody’s going to cook
your favorite meal. That’s
the time when
somebody brings something from somewhere and you know it’s been made
especially
for you, and if you don’t partake of it right now you’re gonna miss out. “You’re gonna miss out. Break your fast. God knows.
Do it another time; some other time.”
This is why this is in the Bible.
God knew; He knew as soon as it was coming, He knew. He knew that we were going
to … This is what
you call a set-up. This
is what you call being set up to be that
testimony. It’s
almost easy to be caught
away with that. If
you’re talking faith,
this is a great story. This
particular
story; how she went up before the King (we’re not going to go through
the whole
thing). She had
testimony, and she put
something with that testimony, she put her faith with it. She put her faith with her
testimony, and that
directed her to a Godly action. When you put your faith
with your testimony,
it will direct you to godly action.
Now, the Bible says that God has
given to every man a measure of faith (Romans 12:3), (every man, woman,
and
child—every person) so then, the question:
what are we supposed to do with our faith? Hebrews
11:1-6 …without faith it is
impossible to please Him…
Number one: What
does God want us to have with our
faith? He wants us
to have substance,
and he wants there to be some evidence.
Number two: God
wants our faith
to have a good report. Number
three: God wants
our faith to help bring
out understanding. Number
four: God wants our
faith to bring in our
offerings, and to bless our offerings.
He wants faith with our offerings.
Number five: (You
got to love
this one) God wants our faith to please Him, and, yes, our faith is
going to
translate us. By
our faith we shall be a
translation. Hallelujah! By our faith, we will be
caught up in what
they call the rapture of the church; not to touch this ground, not to
see this
earth no more! Be
able to ascend to our
heavenly home, where all of our gifts and treasures are. Great day in the morning. I’m keeping this kind of
light, because I
don’t want to start shouting and disturb the other people in the
building. Number
six:
God wants our faith to please Him.
Now, the Bible says that we need to
contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints (Jude
1:3). Not just any
old lucky, weak, some kind of
faith; God wants real faith, and He wants that faith to be just like it
used to
be. We are supposed
to contend for the
faith that was once delivered to the saints.
The faith of Moses, the faith of Elijah, the faith
of David, the faith
of all these people that did all these great things.
We are to contend for that same faith.
I got a quick story to share:
Once when I was at work, my two bosses were
sent out to another state to help this plant.
Before they left, they had to make a decision: who are they going to leave
in charge? They’re
going to be gone for two days, and
who are they going to leave in charge to run the rigmarole, and they
said,
“Hey, let’s let Parrish do it; he’ll do a great job.”.
Wouldn’t you know it, they took off the night
before, and that day we had the biggest power outage we had ever seen. I don’t mean like that bad
storm that knocked
down all those power lines; there was something underground that blew
up, so
even the wires couldn’t be hooked back together.
We had that kind of power outage. I
had to ask, “God, why? Why
now?
God couldn’t You have waited two days, or the day
before? God, why?”
All of the sudden, I had my boss’s boss’s boss (the
managers and
directors and the plant manager) are coming to me and asking questions. People that I never talk
to, are coming
straight up to me for some answers.
I
didn’t understand. I
said, “God, you knew this was going
to happen. God,
where’s the warning? Why
me?
Why have I got to be in the spot to make these
decisions and trying to
figure this stuff out.” We
stood to lose
many, many millions of dollars. I
had my
co-workers (he don’t know more than me), some working with me, and some
did not
work with me (because the thought they should have been left in
charge—that was
a set-up. They were
looking for me to
fail to the max! fall flat on my face, and give them an opportunity—“I
should
have been the one in charge”). They
did
not understand, either. None
of us
understood at the time. The
reason I was
getting thrown into conversations with people that I never talk to—in
this
amazing power outage I was going to have to be the one making the
decisions—the
reason was that God was putting me on display.
God was lifting up a godly person, lifting him up,
and they knew! They
just didn’t like, just like the
testimony of James and John when they went before the Pharisees—they
knew that
they were unlearned and ignorant, but took note that they had been with
Jesus. They knew I
wasn’t all that
sharp. They knew I
wasn’t the smartest .boat.in
the rack. They knew
I wasn’t the
brightest bulb in the tray. They
knew,
but they were amazed—“Man, this guy’s making the right decisions.” I was too busy to
complain—all I could do was
trust in God. After
that, they said, “He
may not be all that sharp, but there’s something going on with him that
causes
him to have to make the right moves.” That’s
us, saints; God’s setting us up all the time—throws us into situations
for a
testimony. Having
me talk to people that
I never talk to for a testimony. I
didn’t understand that. Just
like all of
us. God sets us up
all the time, puts us
in situations. Now,
after all of that,
we got the plant back up—stood to lose many, many millions of
dollars—after all
of that was over and we successfully had things going, there was a lot
of
amazement that, in the midst of this great trouble, that things worked
out. So, when it
was successful, and the
reports came in, they got together and they made a decision. We’ve got to give that guy
a promotion. We’ve
got to promote this guy.
Just like Job; Job was set up.
God wanted to bless Job long before the
trials came. What
did He say? “Have
you considered my servant, Job?” (Job
1:8) Long before
the trials came, God
was considering him. Have
you considered
him, Satan? You’ve
been going to and fro
upon the earth… And
then the trials
came. Job
maintained his integrity. Now,
just suppose, what if Job had thrown up
his hands and said, “Aw, naw, that’s enough of that.
I don’t deserve it, Lord, You know I don’t
deserve it.”? But
God could see the end
and Job trusted in what God could see.
Because Job trusted Him, didn’t quit, didn’t fail,
didn’t throw up his
hands and walk away, didn’t resign, didn’t sign off, didn’t say, “God,
choose
somebody else.” Job
received his
promotion, and we have a record of that. We
have a record, the Bible says that the
latter end of Job was more than his beginning (Job 42:12). God gave him more at the
ending than what He had
at the beginning. That’s
what we call a
blessing. That’s
God promoting one of
His servants.
So, for us, we have to make sure
that, when we go through something, we don’t take our trust away, our
faith
away from what God has for us. Throw
up
our hands and quit and say, “You know, if this were somebody else, they
wouldn’t be able to handle it. It’s
somebody else’s turn, I go through more and more.”
God is setting us up because He intends for
us to be blessed more in the end than we were in the beginning. It’s always up to us. What are we going to do
with this faith? He’s
putting us on display. He’s
showing everybody around. Here
is that light of the world.
I have a current event:
I subscribe to this thing called, “Religion Today.” Many people subscribe to
different things;
this is one that I subscribe to. There
was this one article
a couple of
weeks ago that I just had to bring up.
It says that Iran put five Christians on trial. Guess what they put them
on trial for? for their
faith. This is in
there, so we can pray
for them. We need
to lift them up before
God. We got China;
we got Iran; and,
Lord knows, Sri Lanka, we know that they’ve been beaten and persecuted
in Sri
Lanka. They say
that they are a believer
in Christ, and the people who are not, want them to shut up and go away. They want Jesus gone. They put them on trial for
their faith. First
of all, yeah, we do need to pray for
them. Second of
all, no, I am not
looking forward to going to Iran.
If I
were, and they put on trial (or put any of us on trial) for being a
Christian,
the verdict better be guilty; it
better
be, “Oh, we tried this person, and you know what we found out? They’re
a
Christian. They
really are a Christian,”
not no, “Oh, this one’s innocent, you can go.
You’re on your way.”
Iran,
putting people on trial for their faith. 2
Peter 1:5-6
…add to your faith virtue; and to virtue
knowledge…
Add this to your faith; add virtue
to your faith. I
had to do a little
lookup to be sure what ‘virtue’ meant, to make sure I had this thing
right. The
definition of virtue
is: Any particular
moral excellence of thought,
feeling, and action. You
know what we
need to add to our faith? virtue.
We
need to add morally excellent thought and morally excellent actions to
our
faith. So, the
question should be, how
can we increase our faith? Luke
17:5-10
And the apostles said unto the Lord,
Increase our faith…
The Apostles said to the Lord,
Increase our faith. (At
this point, the
ushers passed out some mustard seeds.
We
can’t do that over the internet, so here is a picture of a mustard seed: 
One
key point
here: It doesn’t
say faith the size of a mustard
seed, it says faith as a mustard
seed. When we went
to Israel, they were passing
these things out. They
were like peas in
a pod, but they were so small that they could easily drop. I thought, “Wow; is this
the thing that He
was talking about?” There’s
four things
we want to bring out about mustard seeds:
1. A
mustard seed might be small,
but it’s real. So,
your faith has to be
real. It doesn’t
really matter the size,
but it has to be real. 2. Mustard seed has to
planted and watered to
grow. Our faith has
to be planted; it
has to be used. Then,
it has to be
watered, nurtured, cultivated for it to grow.
3. I’ve
been told (I’m not a
farmer—I’m not a country boy at all.
I
love asphalt and concrete. I
am a man
that is a city boy through and through.
No question about it.), but, somebody who does know
something about
farming told me something about mustard seeds:
if you plant mustard, that’s exactly what you’re
going to get. If
you plant mustard with a whole bunch of
other things, that plant is going to come up mustard.
It doesn’t mix with anything else.
It will not take on the characteristics of
the surrounding plants—mustard will stay mustard.
Our faith has to stay our faith.
We don’t mix in a lot of conjecture and
philosophy; we can add to it, but we don’t mix it with our faith,
because our
faith has to stay our faith. 4. It starts off small (see
how small these
things are?) and, even though it starts out small, Jesus said it can
grow up to
be the biggest plant in the whole field.
They can take over everything.
That’s our faith.
It might start
out at whatever size it does, but it can grow to take over everything.
This (verses 7-10) means two things:
We need to
serve the Lord, and we need
to have humility. One
more story, and
one more Scripture:
I had the opportunity to fellowship
with some brothers and sisters recently.
As I was fellowshipping with my brothers and
sisters, one of the sisters
said, “Sometimes, when I talk to my husband, I just want him to listen
to what
I have to say. I
just want him to
listen. I don’t
want him to be giving
some answers. I
just want him to listen
to what I tell him. If
I want an answer,
then I’ll tell him, but if I don’t want an answer, I don’t want him to
give me
one. Men are always
trying to fix
something.” Well,
duh. What’s wrong
with that? If
there’s a problem or an issue, naturally, you
want to fix it. A
brother who is married
said to me, “No, no, no, no, no, Parrish, look:
if your wife wants you to listen to her and not give
an answer, then you
should just listen, and don’t give her no answer.
That’s how you minister to your wife. That’s makes for a
successful relationship.” I
thought, “What a simple principle.
Look for her needs and minister to her needs. I could probably use that
kind of
instruction. Hmm.” That actually means I need
to evaluate my
relationships. Do I
want to show up and
bring a solution, or do I want to minister?
I thought about my relationship with my family, and
I thought about my
relationship with my co-workers, and I thought about my relationship
with my
church family, and then I thought about my relationship with my
Heavenly
Father. Do I want
to go by the letter of
the law and make sure I’m checking all the boxes, or am I really,
really
seeking to minister? Am
I really seeking
to have a communal relationship? You
ever see that commercial about the
spaghetti sauce? This
woman finds that
she had made a decision for one spaghetti sauce, and when they got her
to try
another spaghetti sauce, it was so much better.
She says, “What other questionable decisions have I
been making?” It’s
a goofy commercial—a little funny.
The point is, we need to check out everything. 1
Peter 1:7-9
…Receiving the end of your faith, even the
salvation of your souls.
The Scripture says that the trying
of our faith is more precious than gold, and the end of our faith is
the salvation
of our souls. Sermon notes by Pete Shepherd |
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