In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of faith and belief in achieving one's goals. He uses examples from history, business, and everyday life to illustrate how faith can lead to success. The speaker also discusses the financial needs of the church and encourages the congregation to believe that God will provide for them. He urges them to confess with their mouths and believe in their hearts that God's promises are true. The sermon concludes with a prayer for the congregation to experience the truth of the message and become living proof of God's faithfulness.

I'd like to comment on what Mr. McIntyre said. I also am looking forward to that day because that is going to be the first time that everyone will agree with me on all the points of theology. Now I'm going to probably have to change a great many between now and then, but there will be perfect agreement in his presence. Now we've been looking at the subject of faith, first in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 1, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And I paraphrased it this way, faith is the sight of the soul, the eyes of the human spirit. Faith is the ability of the mind to see what the eyes can't see yet. It's not there yet to see, but it's going to be there because it ought to be there. Substance of things hoped for. And last Sunday, as we had considered the text according to your faith, be it unto you, left with you that which is also in your bulletin, faith consists in vividly picturing in your mind a desired goal or objective and holding that image until it sinks into your unconscious mind. It works because of your confidence in God's character and in his promises. It's supported and backed by prayer. And the key is the giving of thanks for the answer before it's received. Now I hope you thought about that during the days of the week. I hope that you have said, how does this really work? You see, all of us have a certain measure of faith. He's delivered to everyone a measure of faith according to the measure of faith. You'll have to recognize that a great many people who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, but who share our common humanity, have a kind of faith. Indeed, in fact, you find it whenever you look at any page of history. Turn to any page of history you will and you will find that there is someone that is pioneering somewhere. He has seen something and he proceeds to pursue that which he has seen in his mind until it becomes a reality. Faith is in business, faith is in driving. Oh, have you ever thought of what our whole economic life is based on? A little piece of paper. I promise to pay to the bearer. And you accept it and go home with it. You work for two weeks or a month and at the end of that time someone slips a little piece of paper in your hand. I promise to pay to the bearer. And it's a means by which you write and turn other I promise to pay. You put that one you got someplace and then somebody accepts the one you write. And the whole of our economic life is based on faith. That somebody, sometime, somewhere, is going to pay. I'm quite amazed when I discovered in international finance, for instance, vast amounts of money are transferred from one country to another and nobody ever sees a dollar bill or a coin. All it is are just some numbers that any typewriter could reproduce on a piece of paper. Coming in on a telex from somebody in England it says that there is so much and they put down a dollar sign or a pound sign or shilling or whatever it is down on the paper and then they put a great many other numbers down and somewhere way off to the right they put a period. My problem is that my period has always been too far to the left. I just haven't been able to get it far enough to the right. But what is it? Here are two or three million, billion, I don't care. You name it. What is it? It's come in on a telex and some bank accepts it as though it were really true that that much money has been transferred and then it's dispersed and the only thing that's happened is that they've used a little ink off of some ribbon. But nobody ever brings a trunk full of currency or a box full of gold. It's just numbers. But it's based on confidence that somewhere, somehow, someone is going to, that it's real. The whole thing functions on faith. You drive down the highway, there's a yellow line. That yellow line says the guy on the other side coming at you at 55 miles an hour is going to stay on his side of the yellow line. You're going 55, I hope if it's a 55 mile zone, you're going down that on your side of the yellow line and you pass four feet from each other. You had faith he was going to stay on his side of the line. Don't tell me we don't live by faith, we do. So it's everywhere. It's part of our whole makeup. We do have this measure of faith that's been granted to every man. Everyone who starts a business. How many businessmen are here? A employee or someone that's in public service. Businessmen are a rare breed of cats, if you please. A rare breed. Because they have to put money out today in the expectation they're going to get money back tomorrow. And they do it by faith. And they continue to do it. And did you know that out of every 100 new businesses started in America, 95 fail in the first two years. A 95% failure within two years from all the businesses that have started. Now most of them fail because of failing to verify the facts. They hope, they assume, they presume, or they didn't keep good records, or they didn't follow up with their responsibilities. They thought that it was going to happen, but still they started in faith and they failed. You'd think with a record like that that's been going on for many decades that there wouldn't be any new businesses started. But there are more being started now than there have ever been before. Because why? There's something intrinsic. Maybe they fail, but I won't. I'm going to do it. And so there is that faith that's a function of human personality. When God made us, he built it in. It's part of the very structure and fabric of our human personality. Every model of human being that's come off the assembly line in every generation has been equipped with a certain degree of this ingredient or this ability we call faith. So we're not talking about something that's only experienced by those who've been born again. It's in a different level, but it's still the function of the human mind to see what isn't there, but what's going to be there because it ought to be there, and then to develop the appropriate steps that are necessary to get from where we are to where what we saw has become a reality. So we're not talking about some mystical emotion, some mystical feeling. We're talking about something which is a standard part of our human personality, something that we have. Now there, obviously, there are different levels and different aspects of faith. We aren't going to argue that for even a moment, but we must realize that when God commands all men everywhere to repent and to believe the gospel, he is not commanding them to do the impossible. The reason why people don't repent is not because they don't have the requisite capacity and ability to repent, because they won't repent. They could if they would, because what is repentance? A change of mind, a change of intention, a change of purpose. It's a change from I'm going to do what I want to do as a policy of life to I'm going to do what you want me to do, Lord Jesus. A change of direction, a change of purpose, a change of intention. Now, to believe that God has raised Jesus Christ from the dead. The reason people don't believe is not because they can't believe, but because they won't believe. They have everything necessary to believe, but what we recognize is that the heart of the sinner is set to do evil. That's why the scripture says God is angry with the sinner every day, because his heart is set to do evil. And that's why we ask for the Spirit of God to work in a awakening work upon the sinner and to bring the sinner under conviction of his crime. But it doesn't require, it doesn't require that the sinner has to have something. We sang a few moments ago, I know not how this saving faith to me he did impart or how believing in his word brought peace within my heart. So there is indeed a sense in which the sinner, having an obdurate, stubborn heart, a rebellious spirit, and a fixed neck and won't turn, is moved upon by God in answer to intercessory prayer and in answer to witness. And he's awakened and he's convicted and he is brought to repentance, which we know that. But what I want you to understand that when Paul wrote here, he made a statement in verse eight that indicates to us, because he's just writing to the people over there, what sayeth it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart. It's near you already. It's already there. The word of faith which we preach. The word of faith. Now you understand that with the sinner, the mind is fixed to please self. In repentance, the mind is changed from pleasing self to pleasing God. And in Romans 12, 1 and 2, we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We are told elsewhere in 2 Corinthians 10, chapter 10, verses 3 to 5, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. We as the children of God, therefore, having been born into God's family through faith, now must realize that it's a waste of our time asking God to give us what he says we already have. He says that we already have faith. But you see, we are escaped from the responsibility of believing God if we can convince ourselves that we don't have it. And therefore, what we must do is to ask God to give it to us. And then as long as he doesn't give it to us, until we feel emotionally like we have it, then we have no obligation to believe God. It's like revival. You don't hear me use the word revival very much because I've discovered that there's first 105 definitions, and I'm never quite sure which of the 105 people are praying for, though they all use the same word. The second thing is, I have found that in many times that people who are praying for revival are really asking for some situation to develop where it will be made easy for them to do what they've known they ought to have done for a long time. And they didn't have to do it because of the rest of the people weren't doing it. And so what they're doing is asking God, Lord, create a condition where I can do what I should know now I should do, but I don't want to do because it might embarrass me. And therefore, I'm going to do a way, I'm going to go on without revival until everybody does it at the same time. Because the fact of the matter is, you don't have to wait for anybody else. You can have everything that God has promised whether anybody else meets God's conditions or not. Why should you penalize yourself? Why should you rob yourself? Go pray for revival, meet God's conditions, and you're going to have it, and maybe you'll be that one piece of blade of grass on fire, that'll catch the next one, and then it'll start. But what we're doing often when we're praying for revival is asking God to make it easy for us to mind it, to do what we ought to have done a long time ago. When we're praying for faith, we're asking for a God to give us an emotional feeling that the answer has come because we know that if the answer is in our hands, then we can believe God. You know, if sinners could just feel saved before they believe God, all of them would be, a lot more of them would be saved. And that's what we're asking God for faith. We're asking God to give us the answer. So because as soon as the answer comes, then we're going to have, oh, we're going to have lots of faith that's already there. So no, what does it say? The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, in thy heart. That is the word of faith which we preach. Now notice, in thy mouth and in thy heart. How strange. You would have thought that it was the other way around, wouldn't you? First in heart and then in mouth. But that's not the way the Holy Ghost says in thy mouth and in thy heart. Then he noticed in the next verse that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, Jesus to be Lord and believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Now the word of faith, which is near us, is the word of God. In John 17, 14, the Lord Jesus said in his high priestly prayer, Father, I have given them thy word. He is the word that became flesh and dwelt among us. He is the one who spoke the word and by his word, the world's were formed. Now he says, I have given them thy word. What does that mean? Explore it. It's extremely important because when he had the word as the eternal son, he spoke and worlds came into being, as I said. Now he said, I've given them thy word. I have given them the power, the ability, and the responsibility to use thy word. In John 6, verse 63, the Lord Jesus said to that company, the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. And the word that he used when he spoke to Satan, when he was tempted to turn the stones into bread, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. Every word. So faith for the believer rests solely squarely and only on the word of God. Now, do you understand why the ancient foe, this one who's been constantly at war with the people of God, this one that seduced mother Eve and father Adam and all who come since of them, and we're all brought into bondage and all have sinned. Do you understand why he has been so diligent and so assiduous in his efforts to make us lose confidence in the word? To attack the inspiration of the word, to attack the authority of the word, to cast doubt upon the authorship of the word. And how successful he's been. Why he's even been so successful that there are many teachers of whom I was one time, one myself, who have given lip service to the principle of inspiration of the scripture, but could like the Pharisees of old make the word of God of none effect by taking large portions of it and consigning it to people not yet born or long since dead. I think of one professor in one Bible school in one Midwest city who was in that company of people whom we call dispensationalist, verging on the ultra edges of the group. And he was saying that because the Psalms were written essentially to Israel, they had no application to the church or to the believer of this day. And his statement was no believer living now in the age of grace has the right to use the Psalms as the basis of a promise to expect answer from God. And one of the students timidly raised his hand and said, but professor, George Mueller used the Psalms as his main source of promises for all the miracle answers to prayer that God gave him. And the professor had the temerity, the rashness to say, yes, but God didn't have any right to. Well, I submit to you, dear friend, that God gave us the word. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word. My word is spirit in his life. I've given them my word, the word of faith, the word of God. Now we'll reverse the order. Whereas it says mouth and then heart, we're going to talk about faith in the heart. First the word in the mind. Have you ever heard someone say this? He learned those scripture verses by heart. What do we mean learned it by heart? Well, he memorized them. They're in his mind. He's put them in his mind. Have you learned the scripture by heart? Have you memorized the scripture? Do you get a verse of scripture here at Sunday that God quickens to your spirit and you make a note of it and go home and take a little three by five card and write it out large enough and plain enough so you can clip it to the visor of your car as you're driving to work? Then you can, every time you come to a stoplight, you flip it down, look at it, test yourself. Are you memorizing it? Are you taking it when you ride the bus and keeping it inside a book or something so you can memorize the scripture? Is it being learned by heart? Are you hiding it in your heart? You should, you know, you shouldn't hide it in your heart. In second Thessalonians chapter three and verse one, Paul wrote to that church, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified in us. It's not just enough to have written it down and have it in a notebook someplace. We got to get it out of notebooks and into our heart. Because if we do, then as we have need and as we have problem, the spirit of God will quicken the verse that we know by heart that we've memorized, we've got in our mind, and we'll discover that. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Let the word of Christ dwell in you. Hide it in your heart. Let the word may have free course and be glorified. It's so extremely important. It isn't always a heart, hiding it in the heart. When we, out in the Uduk land in the Sudan where Marjorie and I had the privilege of being as missionaries years ago, Mal and Edith Forsberg of the Sudan Interior Mission had to translate this portion of scripture, be not afraid it is I. Well, in translation work, you'll have to make adjustments because they don't have word for word everything you have in English or Greek. So what happened was it came out this way. Don't get a shiver in your liver. It's only me. Because the seat, the organ of personality was the liver, not the muscle that pumps out blood. So God wants us to understand that with a sea of heart to us in our Grecian Indo-European culture is the seat of personality, but to others it may be elsewhere. He's telling us that this word that we have in our minds, have in our hearts, this word that we have memorized is the key to answer to everything we get from God. Now, the mind perceives the words and their meaning, understands the truth of the words. After all, they're God's words and of course they're true. And all of this is in the mind. Now, a lot of people will say, show me and then I'll believe, but that's not the way it works for God. He says, believe and I'll show you. You gotta believe you got it before you get it, I guess is a paraphrase that you put down. You gotta believe you got it before you get it. The people I said could feel saved before they believe, a lot more be saved than there are. It's a leap in the dark. So here what's he saying to the sinner? What's this word? Confess with your mouth Jesus to be Lord. That's the evidence, that's repentance. From today on he's going to govern and rule my life. And believe in your heart, God raised him from the dead after he died. If thou will confess with thy mouth Jesus to be Lord and believe in thine heart, God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. We understand that in respect to salvation, but did you know that the same thing is true of everything else we get from God? The same process, the same order. As I said, you gotta believe that you got it and then you get it. You confess with your mouth, the word, what's the word? What's the need? Well, let's talk about the need. Last week we talked about the fact that we need $850 a week to meet our budget. So that's what's our promise. My God shall supply all your needs. Every one of us have needs individually, but let's get some practice and experience in leads corporately. Maybe we all do it together, it's going to help us to do it separately. So we're all believing God. We're all believing God for $850 a week. However he wants to send it, whether he wants to send more people or wants more from the people that are here, that's up to him. But we're believing God for this. So what do we say? First, we got to say we got it. And then we get it. That's hard to do. Because that is really the same thing we're asking the sinner to do. We're asking the sinner to say that from this day on, as long as he lives, he's going to obey Jesus Christ and he doesn't have a thing in his hand. He's got to confess with his mouth, Jesus to be Lord as long as he lives. And believe in his heart that God raised him from the dead and he shall be saved. You can't reverse the order. If you could just reverse it and say, as soon as I'm sure in my heart that Jesus has saved me, then I'm going to let him be in charge of my life. No, that's not what he said. He put it the other way around. Confess with your mouth, believe in your heart. So we've got to be willing to take the position that the word, God's word is in my mouth. What is it? Well, let's just take one verse, shall we? My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory. Now, I want to just say something. The Lord Jesus is alive. He's on the throne and he's doing well and he doesn't have any of the problems of old court savings and loan in Maryland. There's no shortage of cash to honor or anything that he's committed to. The riches in glory are adequate. Now, when God, who's the president of the International Bank of Heaven, makes a pledge and says that he's going to supply all your needs according to the riches of glory, friend, it seems to me that we got to realize that God does not have to go out and rustle up the funds somewhere by using his master charge card to get an advance. He has taken care of it. It's in hand. Now, we've got to confess the word. What is it? My God shall supply all your needs. So first, we'll put it in the heart. Do we believe it's God's word? Do we believe God said it? Do we believe it's right? Was our purpose to please God, to glorify God? If so, then with the mouth, confession is made to the truth of God. Confession is made to the promise of God. We confess our faith in God's word. Whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed to confess with the mouth that God's promise is a present reality, is the declaration that God's word is true. Now, what does it mean? I don't know what your need is. We've talked about one here. What is it? Healing for yourself, your family? Other problems, other difficulties, other needs? Always on the same basis. The word of faith, the promise of God, confessed with the mouth, believed in the heart, and thou shalt be. Take that scripture that applies to salvation and move it over into our entire prayer life. And you've got a problem because you're now asked of God to declare with your mouth that you have something that you don't have in your hand. But what's faith? Faith is the ability to see what isn't there yet to see. It's the substance of things hoped for. So is that difficult? Yes. Do we have to ask God for faith? No. We have it. Exercise it. Obey God's word. What is it? When you pray, see when we ask God, Lord, please do this, what we're saying is, when you've done it, then we'll believe you've done it. When we see it, we'll thank you, we'll know you did it. But now he's changing it and he's saying, look, I want you to do it on the basis of my promise. Confess with your mouth, believe in your heart, and it shall be. Now I'm asking God, one thing I've asked God is that in the next seven days, I'm going to have here in front of me a whole company of people that are walking proof of the truth that we've been talking about. And you've had an opportunity to believe God and trust God. And you've taken this word simply because you've got everything to gain and nothing to lose. If you don't do it, you'll be just in the same place you are now. If you do do it and it doesn't work, you'll be in the same place you are now. So if you do it and it works, then you'll become a walking proof of the truth that we've been proclaiming. So you've got everything to gain and nothing to lose. So you're going to have an opportunity within the next 24 hours to believe God. Isn't that thrilling? Isn't that exciting? And you're going to be a living proof of the truth that I've shared with you today. You know why it's so exciting to me? Because God is quickening to my heart truths I've learned from years ago, and I'm just beginning to see them in perspective and how they apply. And by the way, I've already got some things for this week that I'm working on. Join me, shall we pray? Father, we hear again this word of faith which is near us. Confess with our mouth the truth of your word and promise because you said it is so. And believe in our hearts that you are not going to lie to us. You're not going to deceive us. You're not going to make us ashamed. Grant to us, Father, the courage to exercise the measure of faith that you've granted to us. May it be that each of us become men and women of faith. For thou hast said, without faith it is impossible to please thee. We want to please thee, and thus we know we must become men and women of faith. To that end, bless us as we continue this service of worship throughout the hours of the week as we seek to become doers of the word and not hearers only. In the name and for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we trust, we'll see of the travail of his soul in us, who opened for us this new and living way, and we'll be satisfied in his worthy name. Continuing that thought as you turn to number 304. If you open the book before we stand and before we sing and look carefully at it, there are several things that have already been touched on in the message this morning. You come to the second part, second verse, the middle of the page. Never a traitor stand, not a surge of worry, not a shade of care, not a blast of hurry, touch the Spirit there. Page 304. Go to the last phrase, the last verse, the last part. All may trust him fully, all for us to do, they who trust him wholly, find him wholly true. Now this particular song has got a little bit of a militant beat to it, so let's really get with it as we sing this song. And it is a song that is meant, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm translating it because I'm leading it this morning, it is meant to be that which we have in joy and expression. So let us turn to number 304, and let us stand together as we sing. Let it flow with perfect hidden in the every state upon Jehovah. Let's remind ourselves that tonight we will be at the strelis and we will be showing the hiding place. May the Lord bless as we look to him. Thank you for the fact that we can keep our hearts stayed upon thee by faith. This week we need your help so much. May your word, which is the living word of Jesus, be precious to us. In Jesus' name, amen.