A Wonderful Life Series
If you were here last Sunday, then you know we’ve been talking about the Wonderful Life Sermon series. We started this series with the sermon called a wonderful life of worship. And today, we’re going to learn together why the Christian Faith is a Wonderful Faith. Oxford Dictionary describes Wonderful this way, “inspiring delight, pleasure, or admiration; extremely good; marvelous.”
The Christian faith is extremely good because it is rooted in Jesus who was described as the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace” by the Prophet Isaiah (9:6). The Christian faith is also wonderful because of the Holy Spirit, He acts on behalf of God the Father and Jesus. The Spirit has an unbreakable unity with the Father and the Son. It is a wonderful faith because eternal life is guaranteed. There are several reasons more why the Christian faith can be described as extremely good and the first is that…
1. Faith is a matter of intellectual understanding.
Hebrews 11:1 “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” NIV.
Hebrews 11:1 “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” NKJV.
· Substance in Greek refer to the title deed of things we hoped for.
· Our hope comes from the assurances of the Scripture.
· Those promises are real, actual, and guaranteed.
· Faith is based on sound reasoning and right understanding of the Scripture.
Acts 17:11-12, “11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.”
· The Bereans investigated whether Paul has the right understanding of the Scripture.
· They studied the Scripture together as a community of believers.
· They look for Jesus in the Scripture.
“39 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” John 5:39.
· We do not follow Jesus blindly, but with the right understanding, we believe His message and act on it.
2. Faith is a matter of the heart.
Proverbs 3:5-6, “5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” NIV.
· Faith is a matter of intellect as much as a matter of the heart.
· There will be times when we don’t fully understand things, and we are told to trust the Lord’s promises completely.
· Faith allows us to fully submit our hearts to Him.
· The heart is the seat of human desires and longings.
· When faith rests in the heart, all our longings and desires would be to completely abide in His promises like they have already been fulfilled.
3. Faith is a divine matter.
“’Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him. Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.’ “How can someone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely, they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!’” John 3:2-4, NIV.
· Nicodemus recognized the extra-ordinary qualities of Christ.
· Recognized Jesus miracles as divine.
“8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” John 3:8
· “The free will of the Wind” by John Piper.
· The Spirit sovereignly choosing to raise human spirit to life.
· Much like a physical birth, where a child did not decide on its own to be conceived in a womb, we were also not consulted to bring our spirit to life.
· It takes the Spirit of God to bring someone to a new life and bring us to spiritual understanding. We call this process as regeneration.
What is the result of regeneration?
· We begin to seek the things of God.
Nicodemus sought Christ and recognized the Lord’s unique qualities.
· We begin to understand the message of Christ.
Romans 10:14, takes a new meaning now, “14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”
· We begin to follow Christ.
Two more occasion where we see Nicodemus, one in John 7:50-52, where he defended Jesus against his fellow Pharisees, and the second incident is in John19:39, where he accompanied a disciple of Jesus to take Jesus’ body and buried the Lord in His tomb. So, from cover of darkness when he first met Jesus, now he went out into the open to be counted as a follower of Jesus.
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