Half-Faith

But without Faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6).

God can be pleased and He can be displeased. Nothing pleases our Father more than our well-being, our recovery from sin. Nothing displeases Satan more than our well-being, our recovery from sin. The Scripture states that "without faith it is impossible to please Him." Satan, the "adversary," then, we must expect, will do everything that he can to keep us from having faith.

Since the devil can't force us to sin, he has to use psychology. He has to play with our minds, twist our perceptions. He has to counteract heaven's work to save us. He is content to get us in the fine print, to lead us to veer-off course yet only in part. He knows that every departure from right, knowingly or unknowingly on our part, adds up incrementally. He knows that our conscience is so terribly delicate, so wonderfully spinnable, if we grant him the chance.

We aren't here this Sabbath morning to give glory to Satan for his giant capacity to scheme against righteousness. We must recognize that brilliant as he is, he is a higher form of being; we are out of his class. A man goes hunting for a deer. Is it any real contest? Is it any wonder when he comes home with the trophy? Satan is brilliantly intelligent. We offer him this day no homage, no respect for his diligence or his demonic cleverness. We simply give recognition that he's effective at what he does. And so we must be more effective at what we do. And what we do must be first and foremost, to be diligent in traversing the pathway of salvation. Hebrews 10:39 says that "We are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul." So today we approach a problem often standing in the pathway of the journey. It is the problem of believing that God is a rewarder.

You see, "He that cometh to God must believe that He is." Anyone here have a problem with that? I don't. I venture that few, if any, of you do either. We know that God is. We know that He exists. We can look out upon the wonders of what He has made; at the landscape of this planet so marred by sin, so battered by the flood; but even in its desolation, it is ripe with beauty. We think our thoughts, our conscience informs us plainly that this thought is right, that this thought is wrong; that sin is sin and righteousness is righteousness. The evidences that there is more than meets the eye, a realm beyond the purely mechanistic and physical, are superabundant. We do indeed believe that He is.

But what of the other? What of the believing "that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him"?

We believe that He is, but we do not always believe that He will reward those who diligently seek Him. Perhaps you are like me; I am sometimes tempted to this. I sometimes wonder whether I can be healed from all the sin I've amassed against me through all the years. "How can you think this thought? You're the pastor!" He pokes and prods and pulls and stabs against you, against your mind. Don't doubt for a moment that he knows you well. Certainly God knows you best. Just as certainly, Satan knows you second best. You may be fortunate enough to come in a distant third, although many of us wouldn't be willing to make that bet either. "The heart is deceitful and wicked above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). Do you know yourself?

We may not be so sure that we know ourselves, but we are probably convinced of one thing: there is nothing good in us. Isaiah 53:6 does not say that "most" of us like sheep have gone astray, but that "all we like sheep have gone astray." That we have turned "every one" to his own way. When Adam sinned the whole human organism was spun around and broken. Next door to us up in Price we have a neighbor. That neighbor has some dogs. One of the dogs--I'm sure of it--is a bit twisted in its mind. It constantly barks. We've been there for a year-and-a-half, but when we drive up or go out to the car to drive away, or when one of us goes out to get a piece of wood for the wood stove, the dog barks, barks, barks.

I'm glad that as a result of the fall, we humans aren't all constantly barking at one another (although that's arguable!). Yet we've been impacted in subtler ways. A dog is made in the image of a dog, and some have been bred to new depths of depravity. But humans were made first in God's image. We are a higher sort of being than dog or cat. When Adam sinned, something desperate happened. The whole race was psychologically weakened. And I want to tell you that the problem is a big one. It is so bad that those going into the work of treating the mentally ill, the psychologists and the psychiatrists, turen out to have the highest suicide rates. (When you stop to think of the kind of working-model they have--unfallen humans, the supposed products of the ever-strengthening evolutionary process producing this behavior--one can see why they would despair; those holding such beliefs see them immediately go up in a giant mushroom cloud!)

We were psychologically weakened. Our minds became highly suggestible. Do you know that in more than one place, Ellen G. White says that Adam and Eve were hypnotized? And they hadn't yet fallen at that point. Even holy beings, in their initial "perfection" (Steps to Christ, p. 17) were able to be turned by the demon. They placed themselves on Satan's ground, and he went into action and man never has been the same. If even our pre-sin ancestors were initially at risk, then what of ourselves?

You see, we inherit not only the weakness of Adam (Romans 5:6), we have added-on to that weakness by throwing an awful lot of fuel onto the psychological fire. Each time we've sinned we've weakened our resolve, scarred our soul, provoked ourself to hopelessness. Each time, we have reinforced the siren song of the demon, ever whispering that God can't save me; I'm too bad; I've gone too far. My wife might make it. My son or my daughter will probably make it. I'm sure brother X will make it. But I've gone too far.

Ever heard that line?

Know what your problem is?

You believe that He is, but you don't believe that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. You only have half-faith.

Our enemy's ploy here is to let you go on your way believing in God; just to make sure that you don't believe He loves you. But thank God, there is an antidote.

He keeps coming back at you, throwing your past failures in your face. He throws the present ones too. Of course, none of us have any present failures(!).

See, each time we sin, we are giving him the bullets he needs to hit us with another catastrophic psychological "zap." "You sinned and you know it," he says. "You sinned and I know it. You sinned and God knows it. You're obviously toast."

The devil says, "He'll reward you all right. He'll turn you on the spit. He'll burn you on the slow-fire. Don't even bother fanning any spark of hope. You are a gonner."

It is a pyschological trap. Men, women, and children, old and young, the brightest minds and the dimmest, the sweetest and the sourest, the beautiful and the beastly; he has a poison for all of us. He will cast an image up before the young ladies of a beautiful super-model. But you don't know that off-screen she's caught in bulemia and self-hatred because she's been led to think herself too fat. Before the men he'll display the strapping olympic athlete on the Wide World of Sports. But you don't know that beneath the heroic front he is very unsure what he'll be doing in two years as age creeps up on him. All these portrayals of super-people that jump off the screen and prod us to think that we are drones and nothings destined for blandness are pressed into our eyeballs to tramp us down deeper into the dust. We think that these people have it together and that we haven't lived up to even the most basic humanness. It is subtle, it is sedimentary, building up on our pysche over time, layer upon layer of reinforcement that we are failures in life and failures in spirituality. While the fantasy of the televised images is but a lie, our moral failures stand out starkly in our mind. We know we have sinned. We know that God hates sin. We've sinned and fallen, and turned and risen, over and over, so many times.

So where is the hope? The last part of the verse is where the hope is. Notice what it says there: we must believe "that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him."

If you have sinned, but turned, then have you not taken that painful step? Have you not diligently sought Him? And if you've fallen again and again, but arisen again and again, have you not diligently sought Him? Do you think perhaps you have sinned 1000 times? And have you turned to Him and sought forgiveness and heart-change again? Then have you not diligently sought Him? Have you sinned, do you think 2000 times, and turned back and sought Him? Have you sinned perhaps 3000, 4000, or 5000 times, and turned and diligently sought Him, although you despaired?

What is the number? Is it closer to 50,000? 100,000? A million? Tens of millions? How many times have you turned back to God after failing? Cannot you see that every time you turn back to Him, you are living-out diligent seekerhood? No, we are not saying that we should sin that grace may more abound; but we are saying that when it seems like there is no hope, pause for a moment and recognize that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Besides, how could you even turn back to Him unless He had rewarded you with help? We having nothing in ourselves to bring to God. We have nothing in us to bring to the table; there is no secret button built-into us that we can somehow push and become instantaneously spiritual again. Even our repentence is not strictly our own. It is a gift from God (Acts 5:31). It is a reward even.

For those who diligently seek Him.

No friends, don't forget to pray to Him. When you've slipped it seems so far, and you can't come up with any reason to hope, then look back at this one. You can pray, "Jesus thou Son of David, have mercy on me" (Luke 18:38).

And He will.

He will.

Do you recall the wonderful paragraph from the Desire of Ages speaking of the Centurion who sought the mercy of Christ?

The Jewish elders who recommended the centurion to Christ had shown how far they were from possessing the spirit of the gospel. They did not recognize that our great need is our only claim on God's mercy. In their self-righteousness they commended the centurion because of the favor he had shown to 'our nation.' But the centurion said of himself, 'I am not worthy.' His heart had been touched by the grace of Christ. He saw his own unworthiness; yet he feared not to ask help. He trusted not to his own goodness; his argument was his great need. His faith took hold upon Christ in His true character. He did not believe in Him merely as a worker of miracles, but as the friend and Saviour of mankind.

It is thus that every sinner may come to Christ. 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us.' Titus 3:5. When Satan tells you that you are a sinner, and cannot hope to receive blessing from God, tell him that Christ came into the world to save sinners. We have nothing to recommend us to God; but the plea that we may urge now and ever is our utterly helpless condition that makes His redeeming power a necessity. Renouncing all self-dependence, we may look to the cross of Calvary and say,--

'In my hand no price I bring;

Simply to Thy cross I cling.' (Desire of Ages, p. 317).

So in this holiday season, a time they tell us when people from one end of the planet to the other are more depressed than any other time of year, don't stumble into the trap of the demon. He hates Jesus. He hates you. He wants you to feel his pain. Don't take him up on it.

Seek Him diligently. Return to Him. Ask Him to create in you a clean heart. Ask Him to renew a right spirit within you (Psalm 51:10). You will not be disappointed.

Believe to the saving of your soul. He ever liveth to make intercession for you (Hebrews 7:25). Take Him at His word. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you (Philippians 4:18).

Do not despair; do not lay down on the devil's couch for his psychological therapy. Believe that God is a rewarder of His seekers. You are a seeker of His. You need Him. He knows it. He knows you. He loves you. He sent Jesus on the most expensive mission there ever was or ever will be, to buy you back and to heal you.

When provoked to sin, tell the devil, "I see you coming! I'm not going to fall for this this time!" Take your rewards. Victory over sin is for you.

Believe to the saving of your soul.