There are various parts or aspects to living by faith and the just live by faith. If you are a saved person, you live by faith. There is the part of living by faith that relates to the day-to-day living, where we decide to do what God said in His Word. Another part of living by faith is the big picture faith of seeing the world like God sees it, choosing to understand the world like God knows about it. Let me explain. We can do the first part of living by faith and pass out a tract to a supermarket check-out person or go out on Wednesday night with the teens. If we do the second part, then we are living with the comprehension that everyone is heading toward one of two eternal destinies—either heaven or hell—and we allow that to sink in to our soul. With that right view of the world, we decide differently about our career. We can’t float along in our week or month or year. There is an insanity to believing this and then acting exactly like we don’t really believe it. If we knew that someone next door was being imprisoned and tortured in his own home, we would not allow that to go on—if we really believed it. Really believing it and allowing it to occur would be the kind of insanity I was talking about. So if we really believe that people really do go someplace worse from which they can never escape, sanity would say that our life would take the direction of stopping it.

Are there universal standards of behavior, or is everything relative? We had and are still having a mortgage crisis in this country. We think that someone was at fault. We think it might be the mortgage brokers, the mortgage lenders, the banks, the congress, the President of the United States, or the people who bought the homes. But why? Why is it anyone’s fault? And why isn’t it all just an accident? We believe that people violated some standard of ethics that triggered the crisis that has the nation in a financial mess. Somebody was greedy. So we think there was a standard for greed. People were robbed. So we think there was a standard for stealing. People were lied to. So we think there was a a standard of honesty. Whatever the standards were, they weren’t followed and we ended in the economic quagmire we’re now in. Are there truths that are transcendent of human beings, above and separate from what is relative or dependent upon the situation or the people involved? In other words, is there a right and wrong? If the standard is God’s standard and it is set in the Bible, and He is counting on us to keep it, then we really are responsible for more than just what will get us into a mess. We’re responsible for all of it, because it is all God’s Word. And if we don’t keep some of it, just because we’d rather not, then how are we better than those who got us into this?

When I talk to folks and I want them to understand that things didn’t come about by accident, I refer to the human eye. One accident doesn’t turn into even one thing of complexity, order, and beauty—ever. But that’s OK with those who want to believe in an accident. It never happens in one single thing, but they want to believe that every thing, every, came about by accident. No. Just think of the human eye. So there we go. Not even one eye could have come about through a series of accidents. Accidents do not turn out that way. And everyone knows it. And that is science, true science, on the most basic, the most fundamental, level. We know from all of our observations that design comes from a Designer. And all around us is complexity and order and beauty, yes, design. Everywhere. And God, the Designer, should get the glory for it. But men would rather serve themselves in rebellion against God. This is the nature of sin and deceit and the fall of man. God Almighty should receive the credit for the eye alone, and He doesn’t even get that as billions of men look out of those eyes that God made. And even as you focus in and use your mind to read this little essay, your eyes take the light, the shapes, to send them directly into your brain to register meaning. Then you think about thinking, something the animals don’t do, because they aren’t made in the image of God.

Are you open minded? Most people want to say that they are open minded. Can you imagine someone saying, “I’m closed-minded.” Most people won’t say that. They might say, “I’m not going to change.” A lot of times that means the same thing. What does it mean to be open minded? Open-mindedness is a willingness to believe. It isn’t just listening or giving a hearing. There are those who will listen to what God said, but they have already made up their mind. That is closed mindedness. I do find that most people are closed-minded, and that fits also what I see in the Bible. Broad is the road that leads to destruction, Jesus said (Matthew 7:13-14). Broad is the road and full of closed-minded people. They suppress the truth (Romans 1:18). Hopefully reader, you’re not closed-minded, especially when it comes to what God is telling you. If you will not listen to change, you are closed-minded, in essence ignoring God. God has been good to you and you are not being good to Him. Some will say that they don’t believe in God. I’d like to give them some proof—but no. They can’t even tolerate a short presentation. I’m still waiting for someone to give me something persuasive that shows everything got here by accident. People should be able to do that, but they won’t, well, because they can’t. Accident is not a viable explanation. It’s just being closed-minded.

Through the years, perhaps you have become accustomed to certain practices working better than other ones. One tool will function better than another one for a specific purpose. The laws that apply have been created by God. God made the world, and He made it to operate in a way to His design. Not only should we do it the way He wants because it glorifies and honors Him, gives Him credit as the one Who created it and sustains it, but it also will give us better results. It truly is our Father’s world. You might be able to get it done your way, but it won’t be better than the way that is in fitting with God’s design. Over a period of time, through cause and effect, I’ve perfected the best and fastest way to clean my windshield at a gas station. All the items involved are some of the matter that God created on the first day of creation, and then relate to heat, energy, and gravity, all things also that God made out of nothing. We’ve only got a flat surface because of something that God created. At our best, we’ve merely imitated something already in the world in order to take raw materials created by God in order to make a windshield. Then there is a squeegee, paper towel material, and some kind of windex type of fluid. These are all used in a certain fashion so that my wife and I can see well when we drive our van. For sure, what we know He said, we should do.

Should the plan of salvation be about heaven or eternal life? Did Jesus make it about those things? Is it really about something different? The problem in a presentation of salvation to the lost is not in offering eternal life. Paul wrote in Romans 6:23 that the “gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Jesus did not repudiate the question of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19 when he asked what he must do to obtain eternal life. Eternal life and heaven are about eternity and God wants us to think about, focus on, and consider eternity rather than the here and now, the temporal, and that which will pass away. Most people aren’t focusing on or even considering eternity. They are obsessed rather with their time on earth. They are more concerned at being rich in this world than in the next. They are laying up treasures on earth rather than heaven. A presentation of the gospel that targets eternal life for the hearer is a biblical presentation. The problem comes in the terms for eternal life. We don’t receive eternal life by works. We won’t receive eternal life if we won’t give up this life by faith. We won’t receive eternal life without repentance. We won’t get heaven if we are so caught up with this earth that we dismiss Jesus Christ. Eternal life comes by faith, faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work. You’ve got to believe in Him.

How do you know if that voice you hear is you, the Holy Spirit, or Satan? It could be any one of the three and it could be that you are being deceived into thinking that it is the Holy Spirit when it is either you or worse Satan (or one of his demons). And there is a lot of validation by “God told me” or the “Holy Spirit led me” today. And sometimes, that “telling” or “leading” turns out like the person wanted it, so he thought it must be God that was at work. To start, God isn’t telling anyone anything on the level of Scripture today. The Bible is finished, once and for all delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:2-4). And what was completed was sufficient (2 Timothy 3:16-17; Psalm 19:7-11). The Holy Spirit will lead us. True. But how does He lead us? By means of God’s Word. Ephesians 6:17 says that the Sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. You know it’s the Holy Spirit (and not Satan or you) if it is the Word of God. I’m not saying it has to be exact wording of the King James Version. I’m saying that it will be a voice that lines up with the exact teaching of Scripture. And if you are not sure, then go to someone in the church that knows the Bible or even the whole church to make sure. Jesus said that He sanctifies through the truth and that the truth is the Word of God. Our guidance will be Scriptural guidance. And if it isn’t in the Bible, don’t hold it up as that authoritative. It isn’t.

This is 2011. Four hundred years ago was 1611. 1611 was the year the Authorized English Version of the Bible, the King James Version, was published. The KJV wasn’t the first English translation. Alfred was an early English king, 8th century. He did a partial one, of course by hand. John Wycliffe did his famous translation in the fourteenth century. And then we had the Tyndale version and the Geneva Bible. The latter were done from the same Hebrew and Greek texts, the Hebrew Masoretic text and what is called the textus receptus, the text of the New Testament received by the churches. After the King James Version, that was it on the English translations. Christians accepted that as their Bible. It was a scholarly work, a beautiful work, and then it was from the preserved text of Scripture. People agreed on it. It was the Bible. No modern translation comes from the same text, even the New King James comes from a slightly different text for the Old Testament. No translation has had the impact of the King James. It has affected English culture by a wide margin more than any other book. It is God’s Word. It is a trustworthy translation, accurate and authoritative and, yes, readable. The modern translations come from an entirely different text with 7% differences, so we continue using the King James.

Recently in our series through 1 Corinthians, in chapter nine and verse sixteen, Paul comments on his motivation for preaching the gospel. He says he does it out of “necessity” and then because “woe is unto” him if he doesn’t preach it. Those may not seem like the impressive motivations that we would expect from Paul. Couldn’t it be “because he loved it,” or “because of the great results,” or “because he liked seeing people get saved.” But no. It was necessary. He was required to do it. And he was a creep if he didn’t. Those will get you out of your chair, won’t they? But actually, they really will. When you get up to go to work or do a lot of the jobs you have to do as a man, you don’t do them because they are fun or they make you feel good. Someone said that half the job is just showing up. You show up because you have to. Once you get there you might get some good feelings about being there, after you’ve accomplished some of the work. But that isn’t what makes your feet hit the floor and pull one leg on at a time. No, you do that, because that’s what men do. That’s what’s required of you. What Paul wrote actually works for me too. I think about it like the following. “I believe this. This is what Jesus did. This is what He wants me to do. I’ve got to do it. I don’t feel like it, but I’m going to do it anyway. Because it’s the truth, and that’s good enough for me.”

We often say that the Christian life is a struggle. We say that because that is how Scripture presents the Christian life, as a struggle. The struggle is between the Christian’s new nature and his flesh. In Galatians 5:17, Paul speaks of it this way: “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” That’s the problem. The problem is severe enough that Paul, in his description of his own Christian life, explains in Romans 7:15, 19: “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. . . . For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.” Saying that the Christian life is a struggle is not bad. The Christian keeps going. He doesn’t give up. He struggles. He doesn’t just go his own way and do his own thing. People who do that are not Christians. They are not struggling. So be happy if you continue to struggle. I say this, not because it’s fine for you to sin—it isn’t. Paul wouldn’t want the saints, who had sinned, to become discouraged. Discouragement doesn’t tend toward victory in this struggle. It weakens us in our struggle when we lack in hope. That’s why it is important during our struggle to hear the Word of God taught and preached. The Bible will strengthen our new nature to succeed in the Christian life.