Faith and Deliverance

Well, friends, we are in our last message on faith today in our series of seven faith messages. I have stated in previous messages that faith has two sides, the human side and the divine. That faith must be tried and tested for it to be true, that God will stretch and strengthen our faith as we are walking by faith along the narrow way.

And I stated that faith and hope go together like biscuits and gravy and that faith and obedience are inseparable as water is to life. And last time I brought a message I said that faith and love go hand in hand like two sweethearts. And today I will make the following true statement, friends, and that is faith and deliverance travel in harmony together because God's word is true and God is true to his word.

God is a deliverer. Oh, you have to believe that, friends. God is mighty to save and mighty to deliver.

His hand is not too short to save. But we must keep our eyes on God and wait upon him to bring deliverance on his timetable. My Bible declares in Isaiah 40 and verse 31, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint. I believe that, friends.

I believe it's true. The title of my message today, friends, is faith and deliverance. And my text can be found in Psalm 40.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. In Psalm 40 and verse 17, we see David referred to God as my deliverer. He prays, but I am poor and needy.

Yet the Lord thinketh upon me. Thou art my help and my deliverer. I make notary and owe my God.

Listen, friends. God is a God who delivers. He has a method in his deliverance.

He has a purpose. He is a methodical God and his hand is not too short to save. I want to give you seven faith principles today of how God brings deliverance.

I want to give you seven biblical guidelines in how to seek deliverance. Are you ready? Get out your pens and paper and jot these down. You can jot them down also in the margins of your Bible.

Number one, seek God with a whole heart. In Psalm 119, the psalmist declares, I have treated thy favor with my whole heart. We cannot serve God, friends, with a divided heart and expect God to work mightily through us.

Samson's heart failure came about through a divided compromise with the world and he lost his power. The church has no power today or influence because she has compromised herself with the world. We cannot have a dynamic faith and maintain a divided heart.

Now let's look at principle number two. Ask God to search your heart. In Psalm 119 and verse 67, we read, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I have kept thy word.

The psalmist realized it was his own disobedience to God that placed him in his predicament. God is a methodical God who deals with us with providential methods to teach us to be more Christ-like. Faith and deliverance can find reality together, friends, when God is through teaching us the lesson and we have learned the lesson.

Ask God to search your heart under the searching spotlight of the Holy Spirit to reveal if he has been displeased by something in your life which has brought this affliction upon you. God is a God of judgment and this word in the Hebrew means method. God is a God of method in dealing with his children.

He may be looking for obedience and we have not been obedient, or we may have an unforgiving spirit toward others, or we may be full of unbelief and he wants to teach us faith. He deals with each one of us in a peculiar and specific way, as a parent must deal with the personality of one child different from another child. You can be assured, friends, that the method God takes in either your correction or in the development of your faith will be the right medicine for your recovery and right relationship with him.

At times, God will have us pass into a season of suffering that is inexplicable to us this side of heaven as Job's suffering was to him. We may be learning the fellowship of his sufferings from Philippians 3.10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to the image of God. To be Christlike often involves what he passed through, experienced in our lives as we serve him.

Remember that, friends. And there's a text I think relates to this. Although he was a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered, so says Hebrews.

Now let's look at faith principle number three. Trust and obey and believe and pray. We see answers to our prayers when our eyes are fixed heavenward, our feet are standing firmly on the word of God, our lives are lived under the discipline of the Holy Spirit in subjection to the lordship of Christ, and our heart is set in believing God to be who he declares himself to be.

And our faith is stretched and strengthened as we place our trust in the one who hears and answers prayers and believe him to be the covenant-keeping God of the Bible he claims to be. The Christian life is lived out through faith by trust and obey and believe and pray. Oh, I believe that, friend.

I believe that's the faith life in a nutshell. Now look at principle number four. God will bring us to the place of desperation and human impossibility to demonstrate his power in answer to faith and prayer.

Look through your Bible at the multitude of instances when God moved in response to man's dependence and faith in him. When all our human resources are gone and all human effort fails, then the almighty can do more with less and demonstrate his power. Gideon had 32,000 men in his army to fight an enemy army of 135,000 against Israel.

And humanly speaking, friends, 32,000 coming against 135,000 is improbable odds of victory. But God delights in the impossible. God tells Gideon he has too many men.

Why, this goes against even human reasoning. Jehovah tells Gideon to tell all the men who are afraid to go back home. And 22,000 of his fighting men fall out of rank and go home, leaving him with just 10,000 to fight against 135,000.

Then God instructs Gideon, by stretching his faith, to have his men drink at a stream and to send home all the men who put their face down to the water to drink. And this leaves Gideon with just 300 men against an army of 135,000. That means there's 450 enemy soldiers to every one of the Jews.

Impossible odds. Gideon had the faith to go into battle with a handful of men because he knew his God and he knew that God was able to get the victory, which he did. And in Hebrews 11, we see this testimony to Gideon's faith.

For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon. So God will bring us to the place of desperation. And human impossibility.

Why? To demonstrate his power in answer to faith and prayer. I've seen this time and time again, friends. Listen, we can accomplish more by prayer and Holy Ghost power than we can with money and manpower.

Friends, if the church of our day could only grasp this concept of faith and trust God, why, the gospel would go out like a flood in the salvation of souls. And we would shake the very gates of hell. Now friends, let us proceed to faith principle number five.

Hope in him and look for him as you wait for him. This principle is clearly seen throughout Psalm 40, which is our text today. As David seeks his God in deliverance from his troubles, the Psalm begins with the words, I waited patiently for the Lord.

The literal translation in the Hebrew is, in waiting I waited. This means his hope is entirely upon his God to come and rescue him because man cannot. Only Almighty God can accomplish this deliverance.

And David both acknowledges this and believes it as he sends his desperate prayers heavenward. We read, I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. This gives us the picture of God Almighty cupping his hand to his ear, if I may so speak, and leaning over his throne in heaven to better hear the heart cries of his servant as they rise up to heaven.

David's hope is in his God and he looks to him in prayer and he confidently waits for his deliverance. When your wagon is surrounded by Indians and you know the US Calvary is on the way, your job is to keep your head down so you won't get scalped and keep your eyes fixed on the horizon for whence your help comes. David makes a statement here and I want you to listen to it, friends, for it comes from a man of faith to us down through the years.

In verse four, he shouts down through the corridors of time to all future listeners, blessed is that man that maketh the Lord his trust. Friends, we can take that to the bank of heaven and cash it any time. Now let's look at our next faith principle, number six.

Deliverance will come on God's timetable and it will come quite suddenly and unexpectedly. How this is seen time and time again, friends, throughout our Bible. When you look at Joseph in Genesis, when he was in prison and God was working behind the scenes to raise up his servant for his purpose.

And the text says in Genesis 41 and verse 1, and it came to pass at the end of two years that Pharaoh dreamed. Listen, friends, when a sovereign God brings deliverance, he acts on his timetable and not ours, both for our good and his glory. God will bring us to the very place of, and it came to pass, and the deliverance will come.

Corrie Ten Boom was in a Nazi German war camp as a prisoner. She had watched her sister Betsy die there under the inhuman and cruel conditions. It was a extermination camp for women and 96,000 women were put in the gas chambers there.

Corrie Ten Boom had resigned herself to God's will and her sufferance. And one day while she was walking in the barracks, her name was called by the prison guard and she was escorted to an office where a clerk stamped the word released on a form and handed it to her. In her shock and amazement, she was taken out of that death camp and she returned eventually to her home in Holland.

Years later after the war, she revisited Ravensbrück and she learned that her release was due to a clerical error. And the very next week, all the women in her barracks were put to death in the gas chambers. God sovereignly opened the prison doors of that concentration camp and he delivered her quite suddenly and unexpectedly.

The same God who sent an angel to set the apostle Peter free from prison released her as well so she could testify to the world about his marvelous grace and love. Corrie Ten Boom, even in her mid-70s, traveled to 61 countries telling of God's goodness, mercy, and grace. A sovereign God had her pass through the fires of affliction and sufferance so she could be a witness to his power.

I recall the evangelist Manly Beasley relating the following incident in his life. He said that he was in the hospital, and if you know anything about Manly Beasley, you know he pretty much lived in hospitals as he was a patient with poor health all his life. Well, one week, however, he was down in the dumps emotionally and some big preacher friends flew into Dallas to visit him in the hospital to try and cheer him up, but it wasn't working.

Then Manly Beasley said, suddenly, a big woman in a plain print dress entered the room and walked over to my bedside. It was Corrie Ten Boom. She took my hand and told me how much Jesus loved me and I would be all right, and she began to pray.

And Manly said, I don't know if that room went up to heaven or if heaven came down to that room, but God was there. What you're passing through, friend, can bring glory to God in his way. And this ties to our next point, which is our last faith principle number seven.

As God moves in your life in answer to prayer, you will teach others what God has taught you and you will praise God each day and live in thankfulness to him and live for his glory. David declares in Psalm 40 and verse three, in speaking of his deliverance, he says, and he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God, whom many shall see it and fear and shall trust in the Lord. Our very own testimony of what great things God has done for us will garner us an audience like the Samaritan woman, who had a instant audience by telling her fellow man what Jesus had done for her.

And many believed in Jesus because of her testimony of Christ. Well, I hope this little lesson today, friends, has been of some help to you, and it has been to me. I've seen God move in my life in answer to prayer in remarkable ways that all I can say is with David here in our psalm, many, O Lord, my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done.

Look to him, friends, in faith, and trust him to bring it to pass. Like I said, faith and deliverance travel in harmony together because God's word is true, and God is true to his word. Let us pray, great God Almighty, by the Christ who sits at your right hand on a throne of majesty and authority, and by the cross on which he died to earn that right.

We come to you now by his blood and we ask you, great God, by your grace to increase our faith for the good of that kingdom and for your great glory. We pray these things in the strong name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.