“The Case for Christ - Trust in the Living God’

Let us look at ‘trust’ tonight again. Last week, we saw it from the viewpoint of trust that works a work within. Tonight, we will investigate the ‘trust’ that insures the testimonial of God’s direction of life. 

There are many Scriptures, in this regard, but we will look at only a few.  

We start with Paul’s confession in 1 Tim 1:16 where he said of himself: ‘...I obtained mercy, that in me, first, Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting.’

And, then, in chapter 4, verse 10, 1 Tim 4:10: ‘...it is because we realize the paramount importance of the spiritual that we labor and struggle because we place our whole confidence in the living God...’. (Phillips Translation)

The next is found in Proverbs 3:5-6:

Prov 3:5-6: ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.’ 

By now, we all surely recognize that Paul and the life he lived after receiving Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, is to be regarded by the Christian as the pattern in the growth of the grace and knowledge of God in Christ.

His life is our ‘outline’ of the work of Christ on mankind for it gives us the guiding lines of that operation of grace in the heart.

And - it was not for himself alone, as our text indicates. What Paul experienced as a Christian was for others - for a pattern to those ‘who would hereafter believe on Him[Christ] to life everlasting’.  
 
God had a special eye on Paul’s good but He also, through Paul, had designs of His outflowing love to others, to even many, many who were yet to be born into His kingdom down to our day and beyond.

And, so, Paul made a firm case of trusting the living God. His afflictions were for the ‘consolation and salvation’ of those who received the Gospel news.(2 Cor 1:5-6) Since he lived under the sentence of death, he could not trust himself in carrying out the commission God had given him. The only ground of confidence for that was his implicit trust in God. 

We are living in a dangerous and uncertain time, probably more so now than ever before in history, since the whole world is involved in something that cannot escape the hazards existing today. And, of course, people look for and trust in something to ‘lean on’ - human power and knowledge, weapons, military defenses - for the way of escape. And, it is true: we need all those things. For everything has changed around us and it has changed so suddenly - has it not?

Yet, we Christians must become more and more aware that our consolation is found only in turning to an unchanging God  - to an unchanging, living God! 

Do you know what the dominant sin of every proud heart is? Can we say it is ‘to exalt itself above God’, to not trust the living God?

Yes - trust in the living God - this is, of course, counter to our present day thought - trust in the living God. 

Just imagine telling people to ‘trust God’. It is a meaningless expression to the ignorant, the proud, and to the ungodly - for what ground of confidence can there be when there is everything to fear?

Can a sinner’s ‘god’ - a just and avenging ‘god’ - be an object of trust? How much do we trust a person who is ready to strike, with a vengeance, his style of justice upon us? Of course, that person could never be trusted implicitly!

But, still, man with all his pride, looks for something to ‘lean on’, to trust in, whether that person or that thing can be trusted or not! So he leans on human power; or he leans on his own understanding; or he leans on his own foolish notions, or on his own ‘vain imaginations’. 

We often see people, young and old alike, resisting the good spiritual counsel of parents or elders. They ask for our opinions or advice but, in most cases, they ask with the hope that whatever advice they are looking for will confirm a decision they have already made. 

And, in case the advisor does not agree with them but gives them another alternative, then they just go ahead under their own understanding and go their own way!

But the Scripture teaches to ‘lean not to your own understanding’ but to place implicit trust in the Lord. It is nothing less than self-exaltation to think we can carry on without the counsel of the living God.

Look at how Daniel acknowledged God, even as young a man as Daniel was, at the time of his recruitment into the Persian royal academy. 
  
Nebuchadnezzar had pooled the best brains and abilities he could find to serve him in his court. He looked for strong, healthy, good-looking young men, competent, men who were quick at learning, intelligent, apt toward learning the foreign language and customs easily.

Since Daniel, along with his other three friends, had these credentials, they were enrolled in the royal academy. And they wisely and actively participated in all the requirements of study, carefully applying themselves. 

But there was one thing they could not comply with. At the very beginning of their schooling, they were faced with a significant decision that put them in a hard place.

The Babylonians sacrificed meat to their idols and the school’s dinner menu included this meat that had been used in their pagan religious practices.

The dietary laws of Jews did not allow them to eat these ‘unclean’ meats. If they complied, they would please everybody around them, which they would have liked to have done. It would have meant special honors for them. 

But, they were well aware it would not please God. So they arranged to conscientiously follow the Lord’s mind - they ‘stayed’ their minds on Him.

And do you know what that did?

Rather than destroying their practical faith, it strengthened its power - yes, it strengthened the power of their faith! It filled them with energy as they applied their faith and followed through on it.

The confidence of these young men in their God guided their steps in a uniform way - one step at a time, each step taken under divine order and direction.

We know this to be true for, some time later, when Belshazzar ruled, Daniel was described as a man ‘...in whom is the spirit of...understanding and wisdom...an excellent spirit, interpreting dreams, solving riddles, and unraveling difficult problems...in whom is light, understanding and excellent wisdom...’. Those were the traits the pagans saw in Daniel. 

Only a man, walking step by step, under divine order and guidance, with implicit trust in the living God, can come under this caliber of a testimonial. 

Do you see what their trust in God had proven? 

Daniel showed himself as a true witness for the one true God in the midst of a degenerate pagan culture - that was the first important part!

But, then, it also proved that God could trust Daniel to carry out His will upon the earth.

That is a good lesson for all Christians. Always - we always move along with simple dependence upon God. James, in 4:15, told his readers: ‘For that ye ought to say, ‘If the Lord will’, we shall live, and do this, or that.’ That means such an implicit trust in the Lord that we take all our difficulties and plans to Him, first, to be resolved. 

It means being in the habit of going to Him in the first place before self-will, self-pleasing, self-wisdom, self-interest can get a grasp upon our innermost beings. We acknowledge Him and He directs us. Can you see why the Lord is able to trust us, then?

Coming back to Daniel, it is not inconceivable that these four young men endured some anguish and abuse from their schoolmates. 

But, the first evidence of their implicit trust in God came when King Nebuchadnezzar needed to have his strange dream interpreted. 

No one among all his wise men could do it. The problem for them was that the king would not tell them the contents of his dream. 

‘If they were magicians and as wise and clever as they professed to be, then they should be able to do a simple thing like that’, is how the king probably reasoned.

He threatened to kill them all since they did not produce. It would have been a rash action - for who would have sustained and maintained his court then? But, perhaps he did not think of that - but, his rashness turned out to be a very good thing.

Had the king revealed the content of his strange dream, who knows what the wise men would have invented as their interpretations to it! But only God knew its content and only God would reveal it in His way and in His time and for His purpose! 

This was about the time Daniel interceded for his schoolmates. Daniel’s God was no magician; neither was Daniel a person who claimed to be anyone at all. 

But it did put Daniel and his friends in charge when Daniel spoke up for their lives - everything now depended on the trust the Lord had placed into the hands of these four young men.

Why? It was because it was going to prove something at this moment of history: the stage was being set to show the reality, the wisdom, and the power of the one true God as over against the inarticulate and impotent imaginary gods the magicians, astrologers, and soothsayers worshipped.

You see, it is a sure sign that a man’s religion is dead, his understanding of a living God is just not there, when he worships a dead idol or a ‘thing’ or uses some religious ‘gimmick’. We see much of that taking place today, too; it is even advertised in commercials and makes a newsworthy event, as well, at times.

But Daniel trusted himself to God’s faithfulness, to the One Who could do the impossible. He let the living God be supreme!

Nebuchadnezzar and all Babylon were going to be confronted with the unanswerable proof that only Israel’s God was real, sovereign, and limitless in His power.         

Thus, with sober, practical, reverent faith and with a quiet, subdued, cheerful readiness to turn neither to the right nor to the left, Daniel and his friends went straight to the living God and inquired with Him.

This was trust - trust that had nothing to do with this small group of God’s people - with their great intelligence nor the great amount of book learning and royal instructions they had.

It had to do with simply trusting God - it had to do with their pliable spirits - looking to Him for needful guidance and wisdom! God was ruling in the affairs of men with this faithful, small, insignificant group!

‘No confidence in ourselves’ could be written across their lives! And so, also, could it be inscribed across Paul’s life.

‘We trust in a living God’, Paul said. We are ‘living’, yes, but our existence is entirely dependent upon the providence of God. It depends upon that which comes by reason of His divine decree, by virtue of our vital union with our ever-living Head, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul wrote this, in essence, to Timothy in 1 Tim 6:13-16: ‘...I urge you, as in the sight of God, the Source of all life, and before Jesus Christ,...that you keep your precepts unsullied and flawless, irreproachable, untouched by evil, clear from shame, until our Lord Jesus returns which, in His own time, He will show Who is the blessed Controller of all things, the King over all kings, the Master over all masters, Who is the only Source of immortality...’.

God is self-existent, the only really ‘living’ Being in the entire universe in the fullest and the most emphatic sense of the word ‘living’.

And if we cannot put our trust in Him, in whom then shall we trust?

‘If His courts are sustained, not by what men can devise, but by His own divine knowledge; if He stands sovereign, not by weapons and mighty armies, but by His own omnipotence; if He Himself is all sufficient, not because He gathers up all things unto Himself, but because all things originate from Him,...then, is He not a God we all can perfectly trust in since He cannot fail us, nor can He fail Himself in any respect or degree?’

Read for yourself through the first four or five chapters of Daniel and see how implicit trust in God became so real and so evident by these young men.

Listen - our trust in the living God ought to be the testimonial of our lives; it ought to be the testimonial of the church; it ought to be the pattern for the world!  

We have nothing of the spiritual knowledge of God inherent in us - nothing at all! Yes - we have that inherent longing for Him, but not the inherent knowledge for Him.

That comes when we receive Christ. What there is, has been obtained and sustained by the constant flowing and outpouring of the power of His divine life in us. And that is fed with an unending trust in Christ. 

There is an easy, practical way to trust Him, you know. You can say, ‘I have little or no trust, but I do know it is the Word of God, so no matter how I feel, I will act on God’s Word and just trust Him.’
 
The Word of God is the secret of faith and trust in Him. ‘Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.’

‘Trust in the living God’. 

Daniel and his friends took the step. Paul, with the power of Christ in him, trusted the living God under all the trying and difficult scenes he faced along the way. 

Do not look for some quality within yourself to enable you to trust Christ. Rather, look unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith and trust.

Trust in yourself and you are doomed to disappointment; trust in idols, in a ‘thing’ or in a gimmick, and it will leave you empty; trust in your friends, and they leave you flat; trust in riches, and it does not satisfy; trust in reputation and someone is sure to tarnish it.

But trust in the living God and lean not unto your own understanding; acknowledge Him and your path will be directed in Him.

And, please do not think this trust is just an elementary rudiment for salvation only. Oh no - for when the dark days surround us as we move on in Him, it is the ‘light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ that we will need to trust more than ever before!   

I will close here with these thoughts tonight. Lord willing, we shall continue next week. In the meantime, go in complete confidence in our Lord. Let your trust in Him grow in the fellowship of His grace and truth as you face each one of your days this week! Let it be that testimonial that makes a difference for the world to take notice! 

Amen. Let us pray!