Youtube Video

MP3 Podcast Episode

Chapters

00:00 Defining Belief: A State of Mind
00:30 Biblical Belief: The Connection to Faith
01:58 The Action of Belief: More Than Just Thoughts
02:44 Faith and Works: A Biblical Perspective
03:20 The Purpose of John’s Writing
04:20 Engaging with Belief: Jesus’ Intentionality
09:11 The Impact of Personal Interactions
14:00 The Role of Evidence in Faith
18:52 Pointing to Scriptures and Eternal Life
24:03 The Choice of Belief: Understanding Free Will

Transcript

FSOP26-03 CJ Grimes (00:00)
first one that Merriam-Webster says, it’s a state of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or something. The second is something that is accepted, considered to be true or held as an opinion, something believed. In both those definitions, it is a state of mind. It is something that you think in your head. It is something that you believe. Whether it’s true or not, it doesn’t matter. You believe it.

But that’s not what biblical belief is. That’s not the kind of belief that God desires of us. The Greek word behind belief is pistis, and it’s the same Greek word as translated faith. You cannot have belief without faith, and you cannot have faith without belief. The two are connected, never able to be separated. You cannot have one without having the other.

the noun for belief in the English Standard Version, it only appears once translated as belief in that Second Thessalonians chapter two and verse number 13. Every other time you see the word believe in the English Bible, it’s a verb. And if you grew up in the 90s or you had kids in the 90s who watched Nickelodeon, you know that verb is what you do.

It’s not just a state of mind, it is something that requires an action. If you believe in something, then you’re going to act and believe it. It’s not just going to be a simple state of mind and then you never act upon it. That is not the kind of belief that God calls for. Vines Expository Dictionary defines it this way.

as a noun, it’s a conviction respecting God and His Word and the believer’s relationship to Him.

in the verb form, pistua, which you often find that is translated as believe. says to believe, also to be persuaded of, and hence to place confidence in, to trust. It signifies, in the sense of the word, reliance upon, not mere credence. The Greek behind the word believe is not just a mental acceptance, but it is something that you do. It encapsulates your whole relationship.

with God, not just how you think of Him, but what you do because you believe He’s.

The Bible defines what belief is. In James chapter two, starting in verse number 14, it says, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them,

Go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body. What good is that?

Sidney Moore (03:20)
chapter 20, verses 30 through 31, John lays out the purpose of his writing. He says, now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name. His purpose is to bring people to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. He is writing at the turn of the century.

about 60 some odd years after Christ was on this earth. Many of the people he’s writing to never saw him in life. Some of them did, but many of them didn’t. And so he’s writing to this new generation of Christians who never saw him. And he’s saying, you need to believe that Jesus is the son of God and I’m going to help you with that by showing you what he did in life. And then John chapter one,

The very first chapter, obviously, right? I guess that was kind of redundant. But in John chapter one, the very first time the word believe is used is in an evangelistic setting. He’s talking about John the Baptist. We’re gonna pick up in verse number six. says, was a man sent from God whose name was John. And he came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all may believe

through him. He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light. So the very first time the word believe is used is talking about John the Baptist and his purpose to bring people to believe. And so we’re going to be in the book of John and what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at what Jesus did. What did Jesus do to bring people into belief?

in him. What did Jesus do to believe that he was the Son of God? What did Jesus do? What did he teach to bring people to believe? And so the first thing I want to talk about ⁓ is Jesus engaged people intentionally.

Jesus did not waste his time, he did not waste his words. Every person he engaged, every word he used, every place he went, he had a purpose. And his goal was to reach lives for God. In John chapter one, verses 47 through 50, you have a short conversation where he is ⁓ talking with Nathaniel, right? He uses two sentences.

In John chapter one, verse number 47, Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said to him, behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit. Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? And Jesus answered him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. And Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel.

And Jesus answered him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these. A short conversation, a very intentional interaction. He just calls out who Nathaniel is, right? And Israelite in whom there is no deceit. And he pretty much said, how do you know me? And Jesus said, before Philip ever came to get you, while you were under the fig tree, I knew you.

And that’s all he needed to hear. Whenever we are going out and engaging people intentionally, sometimes the conversations can go that easily. Sometimes they go a little bit longer and a little bit more in depth and a little bit more personal, right? In John chapter four, you have the woman at the well and Jesus has come there and I believe he is there for her purpose. Not only to talk to her, but see,

What happens at the end of that discussion when she goes into the town and everybody has to come out and see, he knew there were souls that were there that would be receptive. And so he goes and encounters a person in a place that very few, if any, Jews would ever go. A person who not even her own people really wanted to interact with knowing her history. And he sits down at the well with the Samaritan woman and asks her for a drink.

And she said, if you knew who I was, you wouldn’t be asking me. And look at what he does. In verse number 10, Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying, you give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. How quickly did he change that situation to a heavenly one, to a spiritual conversation. Just as easy as that. Give me a drink.

She says, you don’t know me, you wouldn’t be asking me. says, but if you knew who I was, you’d be asking me for something completely different. A water where you would never thirst. He answers her needs, he answers her questions that she has. And in the end, look at what she does after all of this interaction, after all of these personal questions being answered. Verse number 25, the woman said to him, I know the Messiah is coming.

He who is called the Christ and when he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Let’s get down to verse number 28. So the woman left her water jar and went away into the town and said to the people, come and see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? After one interaction, no matter how long it was, she left there knowing.

that this guy was something special and he might even be the Christ we’ve been looking for. And not only that, not only did he convince her of who he was, but if you skip over to verse number 39, says, Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. There’s one person that he reached, there’s one person he was intentional with and having this conversation with did not just bring herself to him.

She brought everybody she knew. She reached out to the whole town. You never know who you can reach, number one, but number two, you don’t know how many people they can reach and who they will reach. Verse number 40, so when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days and many more believed because of his words.

And they said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world.

One intentional interaction, one person that he saw after and got her to believe in who he was, then was able to reach a whole town and many people believed because he was intentional with the one. You never know how many people that we can reach and how many people those people can reach if we engage people intentionally. He saw there were needs.

When he went out in the world, he saw that people had needs. In John chapter 9, you have a man who was born blind. And he came to him and he told him to go and wash himself in the pool of Siloam and he came back to

a very intentional moment to bring someone to know who he was. And then whenever he goes around, he causes some issues. The Pharisees call him in and say, who are you and what happened? He said, I don’t know. All I know is I was born blind and now I see. And now the Pharisees are going, this isn’t right. You’re faking it. So they call in the parents and the parents say, we know this is our son. We don’t know how this happened.

But we know he was born blind, he’s of age, ask him everything.

But in John chapter 10, you have Jesus and his discussion with Pharisees. And he says, hey, you guys should be the ones who see, but you’re the ones who are blind. He saw their need to, their need to set aside their pride and engage them intentionally to tell them they need to get their lives right. They need to open their eyes because they’re missing what’s right in front of

In John chapter 11, you have the death of Lazarus and he sees the people grieving. He sees Martha coming with these people and she is in anguish. Her brother has been dead for four days saying if you had only been here. In verse chapter 25 through 27 he says, he saw the grief of Martha and those with her and comforted her saying that he is the, or that I am the resurrection and the life.

and those who believe in me, though he dies, yet he shall live. And everyone who lives and believes in him shall never die.” And Martha replied to him, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. Jesus made sure he was intentional with everyone he came across. He saw their needs intended to them. He saw the need for comfort, and he comforted them. He saw their need for physical healing, and he helped.

We need to be a people who intentionally engage others to help bring them to belief. If we never engage them, they may never come to know the truth. In Romans chapter 10 and verse number 14, it says, how will they call on Him in whom they have not believed and how are they to believe in Him whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? He says, they have to hear it.

You have to take the word out to them. If they never hear it, they can never truly believe. You have to engage people. You have to have an interaction with them. You have to be willing to do it or else it may never happen for them. You could be the one person they need to reach out to them. You have to have the conversation. In Hebrews chapter 11 and verse number six says, without faith, it is impossible to plead sin for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists.

and that He rewards those who seek Him. Again, belief is an action that involves the seeking of God. He says, if you don’t do it, if you do not have that kind of faith, He says, I can’t help you. We need to make sure we are having conversations, intentionally seeking others to bring them to believe in God.

The next one that Jesus does that I have here is that Jesus utilizes evidence. He never asks anybody to have a blind faith. He never shows up to someone and says, I’m the son of God and they say, prove it. And he says, no, you don’t need that. Just trust me. You never see that. You never see that throughout the whole Bible. God is a God of evidence. He has given us more than enough to show us who he is.

And we need to be willing to use that as Jesus was. In John chapter 20, again in verses 30 through 31, says he said many other signs that were not even written down by the pen of John. But these ones were done so that you would believe that he is the Son of God and in that belief have life in his name. Jesus went about giving the evidence of who he was. In John chapter two, the first of his miracles, you have the wedding feast at Cana.

And in verse number 11, it talks about the belief of those who saw it. This is the first of his signs he just did at Cana and Galley and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. It showed the glory that he had and it caused people to believe in who he was. He was never afraid to give them the evidence. In John chapter four,

you have the healing of the official son. His son is sick and he comes begging for Christ to help. And Jesus says, go, right? And it’ll be done for you. Your son will live. And in verse number 53, it says, father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, your son will live. And he himself believed in all his household. This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea of Galilee.

Again, not afraid to give people the evidence that they need to believe. In John chapter 11, calling out of Lazarus, right? In verse number 45, it says, many of the Jews therefore who had come with Mary had seen what he did and believed in him. If you move on to chapter 12, verses 10 and 11, you have the triumphal entry of these people going out.

and crying out Hosanna and throwing down the palm branches and their cloaks. In verses 10 through 11, it says the chief priests were plotting to kill Lazarus because of that account, because of Christ and what he did, because many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. Jesus was not afraid to give evidence. In John chapter 19, John also talks about how he was a witness.

to the crucifixion in 19, verse number 35 says, he who saw it has born witness, his testimony is true and he knows that he is telling the truth that you also may believe. He was there at the crucifixion and was entrusted with the care of Jesus’ mother. He not only saw the death of Christ, but he also ran to the tomb in John, verses 19, 26 through 27. He was there.

Actually, know, John chapter 20 and verse number eight, John went into the empty tomb and he saw and he believed.

Jesus was never afraid to give the evidence. John was not afraid to write about the evidence and we cannot be afraid to give evidence. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the ability to do these special miracles that Jesus did. I can’t raise people from the dead. I can’t tell someone to go take a bath and they’ll come back seeing. I can’t tell someone to get up and walk.

But God has given us an abundant amount of evidence in this life to prove that He exists beyond a shadow of a doubt. We know that there is design in this earth and every design requires a what? A designer. It’s here. You can look at the human body and see it has a design, it has a purpose, it has a function, and it can’t just come about the way it is over time.

There’s not enough time for that to happen. It had to be made special. It had to be made with the purpose. It had to be made with the design. We know that this whole world functions on causes and effects. But we know that every effect comes from a cause, and there has to be some unknown cause to cause every bit of it. And we know that it has to be God.

We know what the scriptures are because of the evidence. We know that in the book of Daniel, it talks about all of the special things. Uh-oh. All of the different prophecies that come to pass in the world. The kingdoms that would come to pass, the wars that would be fought, the Syrian wars. We know that those things are accurate, and the Bible explains them all too well. We can trust

What the Bible says, we have enough evidence.

I guess I need to hurry. That’s okay.

The next thing we need to look at real quickly is that Jesus is not afraid to point to the scriptures. In the things that he did, he made sure that ⁓ he pointed to the word of God and said, this is where it comes from. In John chapter five and verse number 37, he told the Jewish leaders, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness of me. He says, if you wanna know about me, go read your Bible.

They are the ones who bear witness about me. Moses is the one who wrote about me. You can know who I am by what the Bible says. It prophesied, there are over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament that tell us who Jesus is and he fulfills every one of them. We need to be willing to open up the scriptures and point to them and say, this is what it says. This is what it says about the Christ and guess what? They all came to pass.

Not one of his promises, not one of these prophecies of Christ has been left unfulfilled. He has fulfilled them all.

In Matthew chapter 5 and verse number 17, says that he came not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. He came and did everything that the Bible says that he did. And I know we need to hurry and there’s a lot of things to go over. And I want to encourage you at this point, if you don’t know a whole lot about Christian evidences, if you don’t know a lot about Christian apologetics, there are many places to go to find them.

Apologize Express is a great one. We need to be able to show people the evidence. We need to tell them about the Tandem, or Tel Dan Steele that talks about the house of David, the king you read about in the Bible, the pilot inscription that mentions the pilot being the governor of Judea. There are facts out there, there are artifacts that provide us the information that the Bible is real and it is reliable.

and you find these things where God says that they are. We need to point to the scriptures, we need to point to the evidence.

We also need to make sure that as we are trying to get people to believe, that we’re pointing them to heaven. That we’re revealing that there are eternal destinations of the soul that go beyond this life. That this life is only temporary, that there is more out there. And we need to encourage them to obey the gospel, to believe in God, so that they can enjoy the eternal life that it offers.

17 times in John’s gospel, Jesus talks about eternal life. In John chapter three, verses one through 21, he’s talking about it with Nicodemus. And he’s saying that those who are born of water and spirit would enter the kingdom of heaven, and that those who believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. It is reserved for those who believe in him. But he also talks about the condemnation that awaits those

who don’t.

we need to make sure that they have an understanding of that one also. That if they do not believe, that they do not obey the gospel, that the wrath of God remains waiting for them. Jesus was not afraid to reveal to them their eternal destinations, and we can’t be either.

The last thing that we need to go over just real quick, and it’s the hardest pill I think to swallow, is that Jesus understood that people get to choose. We talked about the love of God and how he created us to be the object of his love and how he created us to have that true love where we have the option to love him back. But we also have the option to reject him.

And I pray that that never happens to anybody in this room and that we can reach as many people as we can with that truth. That God loves us so much, He was willing to give His Son for us. In John chapter 1 verses 10 and 11, He says that He was in the world and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him.

We need to do all we can to bring people to believe. But we also need to have the understanding that they get to choose. I remember I was in a mission field one time talking to a lady. She was ready to obey the gospel. She was loving every bit of it. And when it came to repentance and true belief, right? away from God and following, or turning away from sin and following God with all her heart. And said, here’s the sin in your life. Are you willing to get rid of it?

And she said no.

We had gone through everything. I had tried everything with her that I could think of. Talked to her about heaven and hell and the consequences not only for her, but possibly for her family. How she could lead her family one way or the other and she said.

I don’t care.

It’s a hard pill to swallow. And I’m sure Jesus had tears in his eyes just like I did whenever he encountered people and they would not come to believe in

that they get the right to choose. And so in closing, again, I wish I had every answer for you, but I don’t. But I know we can look to the master teacher who does, who gives us the model to engage people intentionally, who gives us the model to ⁓ put our faith into action, who engages people and gives them the evidence, who points people to the scriptures, who points people to their Father in heaven, who reveals to them

their eternal destination for the soul. Thank you so much for your time.