308: Matthew Blewett - Exhortation: Principles of Faith

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

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   Welcome to good Chris Selfian talks. I’m Levi. I’m Chris. I’m Jason. And I’m Brian, thank you for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. Each week we post a talk. That we previewed from suggestions sent in by listeners from around the world.

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   Then we record a short intro beforehand as a personalized recommendation to you on why we are sharing the talk. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk.

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   For a talk this week we are listening to an exhortation entitled Principles of Faith that was given by Brother Matthew Blewett at the Idlewild Bible School this past summer. And this exhortation is just a really good opening to the Bible School. Fun little note is that he mentions an exhortation that we have previously shared on the podcast that was given in 2007 at the Idlewild Bible School.

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   So it was really interesting to see him reference back to an exhortation from 17 years ago when the last time that he was at the Idlewild Bible School. And this exhortation is just looking at examples of faith in the ministry of Jesus. And it was just a really good way to kick off the Bible school. I’m also going to use this as sort of a way to introduce the series that Brother Matthew gave up at the Autobot Bible School. There isn’t A1 particular class that he gave that sort of stands alone to be good for the sort of format of a single class that we share on the podcast, but the entire series was excellent. He was looking at the pattern of heaven and earth. I highly, highly recommend it.

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   And I’m going to put the entire series on the good Chris Delphine talks extended feed as sort of a tie into this. This expectation isn’t a direct introduction to that series, but because it was what he used to open to it and he makes a few mentions to the study that they’re going to look at.

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   And I think the series in particular was excellent and really, really powerful. So I want to encourage people to listen to it. So we’ll put it over on the extended feed for anybody who wants to listen to it as well. I hope that you enjoy both this exhortation and if you go over and listen to his series on Heaven and Earth, that you would also enjoy that one as well. So thank you as always for listening, for sending in suggestions.

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   If you happen to have any suggestions from this past summer for any Bible schools or weekends or anything that happened while people were traveling, feel free to send them in. We always really appreciate getting kind of the new information about what’s going out there as well. And with that, I will turn it over to Brother Matthew Blewett for his exhortation entitled Principles of Faith. Well, good evening everyone.

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   It’s a great blessing to be back with many of you after 17 years. It’s a privilege for my wife Petrie to be with us and I’ve managed to convince one of my children, Jacob, to join. I hope it’s been 17 years. That’s been enough time for you to recover from our last visit, and it’ll probably take you about a whole week to get used to the accent again, I’m hoping.

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   Well, I’m sure like me, 17 years is a long enough time for your memories to be pretty fuzzy and for many of you not to have even been here because you may not have been born. So you probably don’t remember that. When I was here last, we spoke about the topic of faith.

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    And so I was quite tempted maybe to repeat many of those lessons. But as I’m sure you’re aware, after two decades, lots of things change. It’s really exciting for us to be gathered here at this particular camp with all of you and also in this beautiful place called Outerwild. It’s very special for us. I think it’s one of the the best camps I ever go to in all the world.

11. 3:59

    I don’t just say that whenever I’m in front of our new audience. And I can tell you why, because also when I think of the name Idlewild, I think first of all of wild. And it is a beautiful, wild place. I come from Africa. There’s lots of wild and, and this is a beautiful wild place.

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    You feel like you’re in the mountains. My wife has already been stung by a stinging nettle. So this is a good wild place, which is great, and it’s a place to be idle. Now, I always thought the idol was just to sort of sleep and rest. But I, I looked up in Google and the idol of Idlewild is actually from the poetry of the English. You may not have known this or I may be wrong. And it refers to peaceful and restful. And, and that’s what we’ve come to do. We’ve really come to take a week out of our very distracted and busy lives to just be restful and peaceful in focusing on our Lord and on our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s, that’s the most incredible opportunity. It’s like a, a Sabbath week that’s given to us where we can have this opportunity to deepen our faith. I mean, sure, we, we come here to to learn Bible lessons. We come here to fellowship and renew friendships. We’ve come here maybe to play some volleyball. But over and above all of that, the opportunity that is presented to us here this week is to deepen and strengthen our relationship with our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. And if we’re intentional about that, and if we start this week by saying that’s something we really want to achieve, we want to leave you knowing that having experienced everything that we’re going to do this week, not just the talks, but everything that makes up a worship week like this, we are going to find ourselves with a strengthened relationship with our Lord and Saviour.

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    And so I wanted to start the exhortation and I guess this week by segwaying from 17 years ago, where we spoke about finding faith. And really what I’m going to be covering in my series, Heaven and Earth is really about activating your faith, about making sure that that faith becomes a reality in our discipleship.

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    So I thought we might start with this evening thinking about some core practical principles of faith that we can focus on perhaps as we go through the week and and try to put into practice to help us to achieve the goal of deepening our relationship with our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ during this incredible opportunity we have this week.

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    So in order to do that, I thought we might lift two stories that you know very well from the Gospel of Matthew that are joined, and I’ll and I’ll tell you. And they’re two stories that actually talk to us about faith. And I want to try and demonstrate to you that there are four characteristics or principles of faith that are repeated in both the stories that are quite simple and easy to remember. And perhaps we can try to put them into practice and to think about them as we move through the week. As we know, there are many, many examples of faith that we could go to.

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    We’ve got the whole of Hebrews 11, that great portfolio of faith, men and women who have demonstrated faith. But it’s interesting that Jesus in his ministry only ever declared two people to have great faith. What an incredible thing to hear from the Lord Jesus Christ that you have great faith and there were only ever two people that he encountered that he said had great faith.

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    And these are the two individuals we want to think about a bit this morning and to try and, and get these principles that I’ve I’ve mentioned already. The interesting thing about the two is that they cover the full spectrum, as it were, of potential people who can have great faith. So the two individuals from the Gospel of Matthew we have read about, the one, if you were listening carefully, it was there in Matthew chapter 8, the centurion who Jesus marvelled at because of his great faith.

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    And the other just want to make sure they’re not sleeping already. The, the Zara Phoenician. We love saying the Zara Phoenician or the Canaanite woman as she’s referred to in Matthew’s Gospel, Mark Korsu, the Zara Phoenician woman. So we have a Canaanite woman and we have a centurion. And it’s quite interesting when you put these two figures together and you say these are the two examples of great faith in the gospel.

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    And and so immediately there’s kind of like this, this, this idea that when you put these two characters together, you have the spectrum of Galatians 3 where where Paul says we are the sons and daughters of God through faith in Jesus Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither male nor female. There is neither bond nor free, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

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    Isn’t that interesting? So let’s have a look. We’ve got we’ve got. Well, first of all, both of them, rather curiously, are Gentiles. So neither of them are Jews. The ones to whom Jesus had originally come where you would have expected to find great faith, but the one of course, being a centurion would have been of Roman descent. And the woman from the, the area of Tyre is described in Matthew’s Gospel as a Canaanite, which would have been old terminology for somebody who descended from the land of of Canaan, who obviously had been the enemies of Israel when they first came into the promised land. So the first thing we have is the emphasis. Their great faith is not the reserve, as we know only of the original chosen, but the foreigner has the potential. Indeed, it is only the foreigner who shows great faith. And of course, it’s a, a wonderful lesson for us because even at this Bible school, there could be many of you feeling a bit like foreigners or outsiders, feeling like you don’t have the, the, the genes or the history or the capacity or the knowledge to have great faith. You’re just a Canaanite woman or or perhaps a Roman centurion of the world.

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    But you see, Jesus says that it’s individuals such as this who have the potential and indeed demonstrated great faith. So we have the Jew and the Greek in this case. We have the Jews already to whom Jesus had come and the Greeks who were represented by these two characters. And then we have a male and a female.

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    So just in case there was only example of a male and the females, look at the at the example and say, well, you know, maybe we don’t get the opportunities. We don’t have the same potential to develop great faith. No, it’s in every one of us that potential, that opportunity to develop this great faith. And finally, there is this contrast of a Roman centurion, a powerful man, a man of reputation, a man of significance.

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    On the one hand, we might call him the haves of today’s society, the privileged man. And then you have this Canaanite mother, someone who was definitely despised within Israel. We might call that the marginalized, the vulnerable, and again, the full spectrum. It’s not just those, of course, who are in positions of power and strength who can find great faith.

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    In fact, that’s often the stumbling block. It is those who are marginalized and vulnerable who can also find great faith. So in these two examples we have that Galatians 3 spectrum. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the opportunity to everyone here, all of you at this camp, wherever you have come from, male, female, rich, poor, disadvantaged, advantage, clever, not so clever, great faith is available. So let’s look specifically at each of these stories and see if we can maybe pick up these principles that I was referring to.

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    So if you’ve got your Bibles open, we can look at the at the example of of the centurion in Matthew 8 reading at verse 5. Now when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him pleading with him, saying, Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented. And so we have the first principle, and this is the principle that if we want faith, it’s not something that’s going to come. And this is something I probably am going to repeat a number of times over this week, but we need to be intentional in developing our relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father.

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    It needs to be something that is planned and focused and that we move towards with all of our energy and with all of our soul and being an emotion. And so this centurion is approaching Jesus and the word, the word that is used, pleading, actually means to cry, to beg. He’s intentional about his need for Jesus to work with him. So the first principle, there is this idea of being persistent, being intentional in wanting to develop our faith during this week and indeed in the time that follows thereafter. The second principle, I think it’s very clear and we we often speak about this when we think about the centurion. Jesus said to him, I will come and heal him. What an incredible physician.

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    You just ask him for some help. He doesn’t say I’ll come and diagnose him, see what’s wrong with him. Like our doctors and our physicians, I will come, I will heal him. That’s the physician that we have come to this evening. But the centurion, it says in verse 8 answered and said to him, Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only speak a word and my servant will be healed. And so the second principle of faith is humility. We need to get ourselves out of the way. And it’s that it’s that tough, that tough characteristic of humility, because the more you think about, the harder it is for it to become something that resides inside of you. But I can tell you one thing that the way we develop humility is to understand what it is to be in comparison to our Lord and our God, to understand the worthfulness of them, how worthy the Lord Jesus is, which is what we are doing actually this evening as we partake of the bread and wine, as we, as we celebrate the incredible sacrifice. It’s in the process of understanding the worthiness of another that we develop humility. Humility isn’t something you develop on your own, by yourself.

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    This week is a wonderful opportunity to develop humility because you develop it in relationship when you make someone else more worthy than yourself. And that’s exactly what the Centurion was able to do. This powerful man, this man who could command 100 soldiers to do whatever he wanted, and yet he understands somehow he has this insight that Jesus Christ is far more worthy than all of this.

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    And then the Third Point is this, the third principle of faith. Faith is developed through intercession. We’re going to see in both of these examples, these characters of great faith are developing relationship with the Lord Jesus through helping someone else. In the case of this powerful centurion, he’s interested in his servant back at home. In all likelihood, the servant was probably a Jew. He was a Roman centurion with Roman soldiers, and his servants probably would have been local citizens of the land. And, and he has this incredible interest in the welfare of this lowly servant.

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    And he is acting as an intercessor, as someone who is out there to help on behalf of someone else. And in that process, faith is developed. It’s interesting to think about that faith is truly developed in fellowship. And we have an opportunity this week, as we already heard, to say hello to the strange people or the people that may not be feeling included.

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    We have the opportunity to reach out to others, to listen to their concerns, to provide help where we can, to intercede where where we are able. And those are all the principles towards building great faith. And this was what was a part of the character of this centurion and the final principle that we see demonstrated. There are many others, but the four that I wanted to, to emphasize that we can think about this week is this incredible insight.

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    I mean, we, we don’t know where the centurion even got this from, but this insight that he had in understanding the relationship between word and creative reality. You see he says to Jesus in verse 8, but only speak a word and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me.

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    And I say to this one, go, and he goes and to another come and he comes and to my servant do this and he does it. You see, he understood something that is so profound when you come to to truly understand faith. And that is that it all begins with the word that, that, that in fact, the first principle of faith is the word, as Hebrew says, as we, we, we’re going to be talking about this week that from Genesis, it all begins with a word.

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    God speaks words and then things happen, the earth is formed, material things come into being and there is this this link, this incredible link between the word and the thing that we experience. And that’s the principle taught to us in Genesis one. And and somehow, somehow this centurion understands this first principle of faith.

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    Hebrews says this Hebrews 11 verse 3. By faith we understand that the world’s were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were were not made of things which are visible. This is the idea that we know there is a connection between everything that we see around us and an invisible word of power. And it’s understanding that connection that is the fundamental of faith.

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    And somehow this centurion understood it and he understood the authority that Jesus held, that he held the same authority of word that the original Creator had created with and with such words of authority, the power to recreate His servant was in the mouth of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Jesus himself appears surprised by all of this.

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    And we see Jesus response in verse 10. When Jesus heard it, he marvelled and said to those who followed, assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel. So there’s our first example of someone who demonstrated great faith and four principles, intentional, humble, someone who interceded for someone else, and someone who understood the connection between word and creation. So there was the first example.

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    Now it’s interesting when we come over to Matthew chapter 15, if you will, we’re going to see the second example that we want to just lift for for our learning this evening. And that’s the example of the the mother from Canaan as she is referred to. And it’s interesting that Matthew makes that reference because of course, Matthew is writing his Gospel to primarily a Jewish audience, and he wants to draw on the fact that this is one of the people that actually Israel was meant to exterminate when they came into the promised land because the Canaanites were a part of those nations that were to be destroyed when Joshua came into the Promised land.

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    So this is the lady that we’re meeting and we’re going to see. And hopefully it’s quite clear that the same 4 principles come out in the story of the Canaanite woman, but there are some differences. So she comes along in verse 21 of chapter 5. Jesus went thence and departed into the coast of Tyre and Sardon, and behold, a woman of came Canaan came out of the same coast and cried unto Jesus, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, you son of David.

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    My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. So quite interesting. We can immediately see this woman understands that there are some differences going on here. The centurion just approaches Jesus without any perhaps history, but there’s history here with this woman. And that’s why when the centurion speaks to Jesus, he just calls him Lord as a title of respect.

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    She calls him Lord as a title of respect. But she says, son of David, now you know your your scriptures well here, you’ll know that David was this complicated man. On the one hand, he was the worst enemy of the Canaanites and many of the original inhabitants of the Promised land. He was the guy who came and finished off any of the remaining people like the Jebusites, and in fact dealt very, very harshly with some of the remaining settlers in the land of Israel.

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    But curiously also, David was a man who had an interesting relationship with Philistines. As an example, he stayed with them for some time. He had interesting relationships with many gentiles who helped him during his times of, of, of ruling as a king. And, and I guess perhaps she’s drawing on both of these ideas. She’s hoping that that if this is the son of David, there is a part of him that can, that can help a gentile help a mother of Canaan.

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    But it seems as though it’s not possible. And here’s the contrast and a great lesson for us on that first principle of persistence, because in the example of the centurion, he asked the question and, and actually Jesus says, come and I’ll heal him. And in fact, it’s the centurion who actually delays things by saying, you know, I don’t want you to come into my home. It’s I’m not worthy for you to come into my home. But in the example of the Canaanite woman, she actually has four rebuffs before she can get any further in her request. So the first is that Jesus, it says in verse 23, doesn’t even bother to answer her.

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    And I think the little emphasis a word, you see, that’s what she needs. Just like the centurion, she knows that this man’s words lead to new creation, that this man’s words lead to life and can give life to her daughter. But Jesus, it says, doesn’t give her a word. And so the first principle, we said, is a principle of pleading. The disciples then come at the first rebuffers. Jesus ignores her.

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    She carries on. The disciples come, and they besought Jesus, saying, send her away, for she’s crying after us. Talk about persistence and intentionality. She won’t let go. How many of us in our journey of faith will pull right back if we’re offended? We’ll pull right back if we are rebuffed. And sometimes that rebuff or that offence will be somebody in our ecclesia or some other, a member of the community.

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    And that’s enough for us to to say, well, I, I don’t want to carry on with my faith journey. And sometimes that offence seems to come from God himself. And in this case the offence was coming from the Lord Jesus Christ and it wasn’t enough. She turns the offence into opportunity. They say tell her to to go away. And then he, he answers, at least she’s got him speaking. And he says I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel.

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    The third time she has been rebuffed. He’s now getting to the issue. She had alluded to it by calling him the son of David. He says, let’s make it very clear, David was the king of Israel and I as the son of David have come to the House of Israel. They would have cut many a heart.

48. 25:12

    They would have been in the end of the intentionality and the pleading and our desire to develop relationship for most of us, but not for her. She continues. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord help me. You know, we’ve all been there. You know, when we first start asking things from God, we we normally have a whole shopping list of how he must help us and please will you do this and will you do this and will you do this?

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    But when we’re really at our wit’s end, that’s the pray we pay. Lord, help me in whatever way you can, however it is possible. It may not even mean that it’s about my daughter being healed, but help me, she is desperate. You know, you might think this is the point where Jesus will relent. This is the point where he’ll come through. But Jesus answered and said it is not meat to take the children’s bread and to cast it to the dogs. My word, it’s one of the toughest lines we ever hear Jesus speak.

50. 26:24

    And all we know for sure is that Jesus, as we’re told on many occasions, knew the hearts and minds of everyone. And we know that he always acted in love. So even when we can’t fully understand what might have been going on here, we know that it was said in love and it was said to extract something out of her that maybe she didn’t.

51. 26:44

    She didn’t even know that she had at that time. And look at her response. This incredible, these words that are are repeated centuries and millennia after she spoke them. She says verse 27 truth, Lord. Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table. You see, the one nice thing about being a dog or a puppy is you get to go places many other people don’t get to go. And in this case, you get to be not just with the master in his house, you get to be in the dining room with the master under his table.

52. 27:28

    And you know what? I’ll take crumbs. Crumbs are good enough for me. Such as the humility of this woman of Canaan, the second principle, humility, She is willing to be a dog. She is willing to be called whatever name you want to call her if she can just partake of crumbs. How are we in that way?

53. 27:58

    What names are we be prepared to be called so that we can just have crumbs this evening from what the Lord has prepared. And then of course, we know, like with the centurion, her journey of faith was about intercession. She hadn’t come for herself specifically. She had come for her daughter. And just like the centurion, it was this process of growing faith through fellowship, through interceding for someone else, that the development of her faith, her great faith, is demonstrated.

54. 28:32

    So again we see a similarity. And then Jesus answered and said unto her, verse 28 O woman, great is your faith, be it unto you even as you will. And she knew, just like the centurion knew, that when he says things, they become reality. When Jesus speaks, creation happens. And just as those words are spoken, she knows her daughter is made whole.

55. 29:09

    And so there we have it. As we go out into this week with this incredible opportunity to develop our faith, our relationship, let’s be intentional. Let’s be persistent. Even when it’s hot, even when it’s really tired and it’s the third session and you want to fall asleep, some more coffee. And we just try and get the most out of it and make sure that we’re not distracted because there’s a phone and a message and an e-mail because that’s what this world is. It’s a world of distraction.

56. 29:38

    So we’re going to be intentional and we’re going to practice humility by looking for the worthiness of everyone around us and by focusing on the awe and praise of our Almighty God and the Lord Jesus Christ. And we’re going to focus on fellowship and intercession and looking out for the needs of others such that we can intercede for them.

57. 30:02

    And finally, hopefully, we are going to, by reading the word and speaking about it and understanding it better, become compelled to believe even more in its power to change things now and in the future for us. And this is the opportunity that is presented to us. So as we now start this week with the greatest celebration that we can do as a community, which is the the remembrance of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We focus on that last evening before he was crucified, and we see that Jesus, the author and furniture of great faith, demonstrated the four characteristics. Because he said with desire, I have desired to eat this meal with you.

58. 30:50

    This is something that I prepared for from the beginning of my life, for this moment. I’m intentional. I’ve planned, the room is ready, everything is ready to go. And so he was prepared and he was intentional. And of course, he said, I am going to now suffer after this Passover. I am going to give my life.

59. 31:16

    I am going to be a sacrifice for all mankind. I’m going to humble myself. Though he was made in the form of God, He was prepared to humble himself as a servant and give his life. And thirdly, he took the bread and the wine and he shared it with all of them as someone who intercedes and gives for the needs of others.

60. 31:42

    And then he said to them, This is my body and this is my blood. But at that time, of course, he hadn’t been sacrificed, He hadn’t been crucified, his blood hadn’t been spilt. But here was a man who knew that the words that are spoken will become reality. He is the author and finisher of Faith and the one we have come to focus on right now.

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