Title: 2 Corinthians 5, Proverbs 3 – Walk by Faith
By: Dan Pancake
Bible Verses
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
Proverbs 3:6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
2 Corinthians 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
Introduction
I try to set some goals for the year, for myself. Sometimes, I try to set goals for the church. I do not normally announce those things but I pray about things I would like to see happen. It amazes me how often God does what we want. I pray constantly for you. I do. I want you to know that. I do not ever go to the Lord, in prayer, hardly, without praying for this church that God will bless us with His presence. The one thing I want here in our church more than anything in the world is His presence. If He is here, He is the most magnetic individual in the whole world and I believe His Word when He said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me.”
I would love to see our little church filled this year. I would. Now we might go the other way for a little stretch, but just trust the Lord, that God is going to do great things for us in this coming year. Let us walk by faith this year. That is how we live anyway. We live by faith. Right? We walk by faith. We live by faith. We will talk about that as we go along.
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
Proverbs 3:6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
Walk by Faith
We want to walk by faith. 2 Corinthians 5:7, I think I put that on your paper.
2 Corinthians 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
We do. We walk by faith and not by sight. You say, how can we possibly walk by sight in the day and age in which we live? Think about what he is saying there. He is saying, we walk by what we believe. We do not walk according to what we can see or what we can handle. Christian faith is a faith that is all about believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.
I even put a definition here about what I believe living by faith is. Let me read a little bit of it. The walk of faith is living and putting into action a lifestyle of believing and following Jesus Christ, our Lord. This faith is based on the person of Jesus Christ and includes the cardinal doctrines of our faith.
When we say, we live by faith; we are just living by everything we believe. I do not know everything I believe. This Bible is just filled with things I believe. I believe everything in it, but I do not know everything there. I do know what I know about the cardinal doctrines of our faith. I believe there is only one God. Do you? I believe His Son is Jesus Christ and He is the Savior of all humanity. I believe the Holy Spirit is the third person in the Godhead. He is Almighty God. He comes to live within us. I believe in salvation by grace. That is the only way that anybody can be saved, salvation by grace through faith. I believe in heaven. Do you believe in heaven? I also believe in hell. I believe there is a devil. I believe he is alive and well. I believe in the church. I believe the church—Jesus said, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I believe that. I believe it with all my heart. I believe that people who trust Jesus go to heaven for all eternity. I believe people, even good people, who do not trust Jesus Christ die and go to hell. Those are the cardinal doctrines. Do you believe those? That is pretty simple. Is it? We believe those things.
That is what living by faith is. It is faith based on the person of Jesus Christ himself—who He is, what He came to do, and what He intends to do. It includes the cardinal doctrines. It means that we place our faith in Jesus Christ alone for the cleansing of sin, justification before God, maintaining a righteous standing before God, and it includes our eternal hope of heaven. I have already talked about that.
The walk of faith, of course, begins with faith. We get saved through faith. Right? Did you have some feeling when you got saved? I did. I sensed the relief of sin in my life. I sensed the burden of sin going away. Somebody said, you are not saved by feelings. No. I am not saved by feelings. However, when I got saved, I sensed—that does not mean that you did. You do not have to. We are not saved by feeling. We are saved by faith! Amen! We walk by faith. It continues the journey toward heaven. We are walking by faith. We are living by faith. Anybody here tonight? We are living by faith. It will end in that glorious place called heaven because of our faith in Jesus Christ. It is all of faith. It really is.
Deuteronomy 6
Deuteronomy 6:4 & 5 is what the Jews call the Schema. In other words, it is one of their cardinal beliefs. Every Jew, even to this day—orthodox Jews—twice a day, they quote this passage. As a matter of fact, they go a litter farther than this. They go down through verse 9, if you want to open it up and read it sometime. Listen to the words as he says here:
Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:
Deuteronomy 6:5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Deuteronomy 6:6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
Deuteronomy 6:7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Deuteronomy 6:8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
Deuteronomy 6:9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
Let us stop there for a moment and think about what they are saying. They are not saying that there is only one person in the Godhead, because when you see this word, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God” the word God. That word in the Hebrew is Elohim. It is the plural form of the name of God. So, he is saying; we are one.
The word one here, if you looked it up in the Hebrew, is the same word that God said of Adam and Eve, when He joined them together and said these two shall be one flesh. What does that mean? It is just like you and your wife or husband. You are one. You do not always think the same. You do not always do the same thing. However, as a unit, you are one. You know that. The farther you go in life as a couple, the more you become one. Amen! That is what it means.
It goes on to say:
Deuteronomy 6:5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
That is a command. I mean it is rare when somebody commands you to love them. That does not work very well in this world. Does it? Almighty God says He knows what is good for us and what is best for us. What God wants you and I to do in our lifetime—of course, to walk, get saved by faith, to live by faith and go to heaven by faith. However, while we are on our journey toward heaven, He wants us to grow in our love for Him. If you love Him, you will put Him first. If you do not love Him, you will put Him in the back seat. There are many folks doing that. However, the Lord says that is not what He wants.
Deuteronomy 6:5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
I had a friend one time that told me, “I do not think that anybody can ever say that they love the Lord with all their heart.” He tells us to. We are trying to. Therefore, I do not think there is anything wrong with saying I love the Lord with all my heart. I have heard so many saints through the years stand up and say, “I love the Lord with all my heart.” I have heard people right here in this room say, “I love the Lord with all my heart.”
Sometimes we feel, or sense that love but I love the Lord with all my heart when I do not feel a thing. Why? Because I am living by faith. Amen! In living by faith, I believe I must put God first. So, when we think about this little statement here, I have a couple of questions here that I overlooked, and I will come back and get them. If I do not get very far in this—that is okay. We are going to talk about this for a few weeks here, endlessly, until you get sick and tired of it.
Seeking Christ
First question: Are you seeking for Christ with all your heart?
What that means is that as you live your daily life, are you trying to grow closer to the Lord in your daily walk with Christ. Is there anything in your life that you love more than the Lord Jesus Christ.
I love my wife. I love her more than ever. I never dreamed, when I got married that I could love her more than then. I do. I need her a lot worse now than I did then. I love my children. Every last drop of blood in my body says I love my babies. They are mine, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Above them, I love the Lord. I am glad for what He did for me. As much as I love my children and my wife, they cannot guarantee me a place in heaven. My Savior did. He went to the cross to buy that privilege for you and I so that we can go to heaven.
So is there anything in this world more important to you than Jesus Christ. There cannot be—not if you are going to be a real Christian. Amen! There is a lot of half-hearted Christians, or so-called Christians today. They are half-way committed. They are half-way saved. They are half-way living for Jesus. They are half-way on their way to heaven. They have one foot in heaven but they have one foot in the world too. Amen! That is not us. It cannot be.
Reference Billy Graham
Today, this morning when I woke up—I always get up early. I got up at 5:30 this morning. That was my early day. I watch a little dab of the news like I always tell you. Then I go to YouTube and try to find something that entertains me or something I can learn something from. There was a sermon there this morning from Billy Graham. The sermon said, Seven Ways to Know that You have the Holy Spirit Within Your Heart. If you have not heard that, go to YouTube and look up Billy Graham and look that sermon up. It is wonderful. You want some assurance in your heart that you are on your way to heaven, that you belong to God—there is all kinds of things in his sermon that will tell you that there is no doubt you are His and you are on your way to heaven. I got fired up this morning. Amen! I know I am His. You know you are His. We sung that song Because He Lives, we live. We love the Lord. He is everything to us. Without the Lord, we have nothing. With Him we have everything.
It does not matter—I feel so bad for these people who lost everything in these fires. It is just terrible the stuff—the people in North Carolina lost every possession. That is bad when you lose every possession. I will tell you, if everything goes away in your life, you still have Jesus Christ. You have the treasure that is above all treasures. You might have a few dark days, but the Lord is on His throne. David said, I have been young and now I am old; I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread. Amen! Do you love the Lord?
Jesus First
Putting Jesus first means He is our top priority. He is our first priority in everything we do. He is the principle figure in all our lives. He is central to everything we do and think.
When you got saved—now you probably did the same thing I did, so let us go down that road for a moment or two. We got saved because we did not want to go to hell. Anybody here? I did not want to die and go to hell. I got saved because I did not want to die and go to hell. I got saved because I was scared to death that I was going to die and go to hell. I gave my life to Jesus Christ, I did not know He would saved me but glory to God, He did. Amen! I was there when it happened. Were you there? Praise the Lord! Do you know what happened after He saved us? He opened and world and a life to us that we never dreamed of. We would see these Christians taking their Bible and running off to church. Like I told you before—before I got saved I did not like them very much. However, after I got saved, I loved every one of them. What happened?
My whole outlook on life changed. Your whole life changed in a moment. The Bible says if any man be in Christ he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold all things are made new. That is exactly right! Through the Holy Spirit is the only way he could have said that. He said to say what we could not begin to say, that when Christ comes in, He changes everything about you. He changes the way you talk, the things you do, the places you go, and even changes the way you look. You start dressing better. You start taking care of yourself. He changes the way you deal with others. He changes the kind of person you are on the job. He changes the kind of person you are in your neighborhood. He changes everything about you.
I saw an old friend yesterday. I had not seen him in a while. He and his wife, we went to school all twelve years through. Brother Joe, a wonderful person. Joe is a wonderful guy. He lives out there and goes to Mamre Church. Do not hold that against him. Amen! LOL! That is a good church. Joe and I were talking back and forth. We played baseball together in little league. He said, I never dreamed you would be a preacher. I said, I did not either. God is so good!
When God comes into your life, He changes everything. He changes everything about you. He gives you a place—even where you work is ordered by Him. He places you where He wants you to be. He takes you away from places where He does not want you to be. We have people here to say, that is right. He has done it. Then He puts you where He wants you to be. While you are there—what are you there for? You are there to be an influence for good for the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen! God is good!
Walking with Christ. What does that mean when we start walking with the Lord Jesus Christ? We put Him first. We realize that He is the most important thing in our life. It means that His Word is more valuable than any other message in the world. There are many wonderful books. If you come over to my house, I have hundreds of books at my house. I do not even read them anymore. You have the Internet; you do not even need them. All these books, many wonderful things written about the Word of God, by wonderful people of God. However, I will tell you, nobody has written anything that compares to this book right here. This is the Word of God. This Bible does not contain the Word of God. It is the Word of God. There are some people who takes parts and throw parts out. We do not do that. It is the Word of God. His Word is more important than any other message you could ever have. His will is more important than any goal we could ever set for our lives.
Matthew 22
My next little point here on this says, putting Jesus first means we must keep His greatest commandment.
Matthew 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Also, in one of the other books, He says “and with all thy strength.” With all your power keep the Word of God. Sometimes it takes all the strength we must keep going. Amen!
John says he is struggling. We all struggle. We might as well be honest about it. Without the strength and the help of the Holy Spirit, we could not do this day in and day out. Thank God, we can now because of His presence. Amen! He is with us. We put Him first and love Him with all our hearts. We love Him with all our soul. We love Him with this thing up here. Do you know they say we only use 10% of our mind? I wished the other 90% of my mind would turn on. I wish I had some switch I could turn some of that on. We love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, all our mind, and Mark says, with all your strength. Just keep going. I met people through the years, through many of the churches have got older and said, “I have got older. I am done. It is your job now. You guys do this stuff.” Listen folks. There is no where to quit. We cannot quit.
Jack Mays, I think it was; up in Huntington. He had a church up there. He used to say all the time, “Rest if you have to, but do not quit.” I say the same thing. Take a little break from time to time. Go on vacation. Come back though. Take a short vacation, but come back and get back to it. Serve the Lord.
What does it mean to put Jesus first?
Here is a question for you today. What is putting Jesus first mean in our daily lives? When we put Jesus first, what would that look like in your daily life? What would people see you doing if you were putting Jesus first? You would be loving. You would be kind to people that you are with. That is one of the fruits of the spirit. By the way, watch that Billy Graham video. That is in there. What else? What would people see you doing? What would you do when you first get out of bed in the morning?
(From the congregation.) Talk to the Lord. Pray. Read. Be joyous.
I have a bad one from time to time and it needs straitening up. I am glad the Lord is patient with Dan Pancake.
Be faithful. (Another answer from the congregation.)
So, these things are some of the things that people would see in us if we were putting Jesus first. I put in here our actions, of course, are important. What people see us do is important. Not just so that they can see us do it. That is just who we are. Billy Graham talks about that. He talks about the lifestyle of holiness. That is what the Lord does when He comes in. He brings in Himself. When He comes in, He is Holy God. He starts separating us from some of the things we were into. Sometimes it takes us a little while to get out of some of those things. What He does is a work of separation. Sanctification is what that word means. He starts drawing us away from the things we used to be involved in.
Todd talks about his life and how his family wanted to throw him out. Maybe they should have thrown him out, as ornery as he was. LOL! All of us could have said the same thing. When Christ comes in, He changes everything. He starts drawing us in. Our actions are important.
Attitude
Patty already mentioned our attitudes. That is something I work on all the time. The Lord works on me. Then our interactions with others. Amy talked about that. That is how we talk about loving and kindness.
Fruit of the Spirit
Listen to the fruit of the spirit. Love, Joy, Peace—that is all on the inside. That is what they will see in you, by the way. If the Holy Spirit is in you and you belong to Christ; do you know what folks are going to start seeing? Hey, that guy is not as grumpy as he used to be. He is nicer than he used to be. Joy. They are happier than they used to be. Peace. They are not frantic, or worried about everything that is coming now.
Have you met people who are worried about everything that is coming down the pipe? That is a horrible way to…
Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Goodness are the next three. What is that word longsuffering—patient. Maybe we ought to put a little more that on display. Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Kindness, and Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Temperance. Faith—they want to see you living for Jesus Christ. They want to see your faith coming through you. Your life is different now. It is not just different because you are out in public. It is different everywhere. Your family needs to see that you are different since Jesus Christ. Amen! He has come into your heart. What does it mean when you put Christ first and the fruit of the Holy Spirit is coming out of you? Now they do not all come out at one time. They come out when they need to. The Lord does His wonderful work.
Idolatry
What does that look like in our family life, we already talked about that? Everything we have and everything we are—we are devoted to Him. That is what it also means. We put Him first and we keep our lives free from idolatry.
What is idolatry in all forms? What is idolatry? Idolatry is worship of anything other than our God. That was normal back in the Old Testament times and even in the days of Jesus perhaps. All those Romans had something like thirty-thousand different gods that they worshipped. They had all kinds of idols. We do not see that in our country. We still have idols. What are some of the idols today that you think people worship? Money, sports, pleasure, fame, power, beauty, strength—it can be anything. It can be anything from a house to a car, to another person that you are attracted. You put them before God. Nothing can come between you and your Lord Jesus Christ, if you are putting Him first. Anything that comes between you and Him becomes an idol to you. It must go. You will know that quickly.
If you are serving the Lord and something begins to come between you and your relationship to the Lord, the Holy Spirit is going to say immediately, “that is not right.” You say, “why would he do that?” Because he is on the inside of you and he is not going to let you get away with sin. He is not going to let you get away with stuff like that. You can do it! You can do just like the prodigal son. You can leave home, you can leave dad behind. You can waste everything you have. You can ruin your life, in a place you should not be. You can do that, but He is never going to leave you alone. In your darkest hour, He is going to come and say; “You went wrong.” Don’t you just hate it when people say, “I told you so”? He is going to say, “I told you so, now get up and go home.” Amen! That is where Christians ought to go today. Go home. Go back to God. Get ourselves out of
this…let us kind of draw back the tentacles of the things we have reached out to the world. Get hold of Christ, perhaps more deeply in our life in 2025, that we did before. Just say, Lord, I do not understand everything you are doing in my life, but I am just going to trust you. I am going to follow you.
1 Peter 22
Idol is anything that comes between you and God. Putting first Jesus means we strive to follow in the steps of Jesus. I am putting Jesus first means we strive to follow in His steps.
1 Peter 2:21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:
So, He left us an example. He suffered for us, leaving us a great example that we should follow in His steps. You would have to say that Jesus was totally committed and submitted to the plan of God. He was totally committed to that. At any moment, He could have called the legion of angels and destroyed the world. He said He could have. By the way, He is God Almighty. He did not call the angels and destroy the world. He willingly went to the cross. Can you imagine the excruciating pain He must have gone through, the embarrassment, the ridicule? Can you imagine the suffering hanging on that cross with people making fun of Him as they walked by? He did it! At any moment He could have come down, but He willingly went there. What are we saying by this? We are simply saying put Jesus first. He is the most important person in our world.
Matthew 6
He taught to seek the kingdom in Matthew 6:33.
Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
People worry about a lot of stuff: house payments, car payments and all the stuff that everybody worries about. We are trying to have too much junk anyway. Would you say amen to that? When you have too much junk and not enough money, that is a good message from the Lord. You do not need that. Amen!
1 Kings 17
There is an old story in the Bible about Elijah and the widow woman. Do you remember that?
1 Kings 17 when Elijah goes to her house, and a big drought has been on for around 2 or 3 years. It had been on a long time. The creek is all dried up. The food is all gone. Everybody is starving to death. He comes to this little widow woman in the city of Zarephath and she is fixing the last little meal for her and her son. They are going to eat it and die. You know the story, right? We are going to eat this and then we are just going to die. We do not have anything left, so we are just going to wither up and die. Here comes Elijah. He comes along and says; go fix me a little cake first. (If somebody said that to me, I would say, wait a minute, I only have this little bit.) However, she must have believed that he was a man of God. She might have believed that he was talking for God. Sometimes when you are at the end of everything, you just feel like you must do just a little more, go ahead and do it. Go ahead and put forth the effort to do it. That is probably God. When she put forth just a little more effort and did what—Elijah said, you do what God wants to do and He will take care of you. He did. Did He not? Of course, the cruse of oil did not fail and the barrel of meal. I bet everyday when they went back to the barrel of meal that there was just enough for the day and enough oil for the day. Then they go back tomorrow, and there is enough for today.
You see, God has abundance. He promises us that He will take care of us abundantly. Jesus said, I am going to give you life and give it to you more abundantly. More—that means extra. Abundant means way more than you need. More means more than that. I do not know how to even count that. That would be like being Elon Musk. You have a lot more than you need. Super abundance. We only live one day at a time. We only eat our food generally one bite at a time. Right? We walk in our life one step at a time. God provides for our lives, one day at a time. Our faith says, our God will continue to take care of us no matter what. Amen!
I am almost done. Praise the Lord!
Those who follow the Lord Jesus Christ are going to stand out from others who do not. Today we hear a lot of people—I told you before when you try to witness to somebody—now maybe you tried this. Everybody you talk to now says, “Yeah, I am born again. I have been saved.” They are no more saved than the devil is saved but they say that. Why did they say that? They say that to keep you from challenging them about being saved. It is one of the tools of the devil. Listen. There is a difference between those who are saved and those who are not saved. You know it. You lived in that life. Your life was way different before you got saved. It is way different since you got saved. Amen! Those who follow the Lord stand out. I am not going to go through that list. You can go through it yourself. (Referencing a list on a handout.)
Let me ask you this. What are some of the challenges that face us as we are trying in our life to put Jesus first? What are some of the challenges we face as we put Jesus first? Business, job, family, friends, human nature, anyone else? There are a ton of challenges. You could name challenges all day if you sat there and thought about them if you really wanted to write down a big list. Anything can be a challenge to your walk with Jesus Christ. What do we have to do? We must put the challenges aside and say I am starting my day walking with Jesus. I am committing my life to Him today. I am going to walk by faith all day long today. I am going to go to bed in faith tonight. When I get up in the morning, if I get to get up tomorrow; I am going to get up and walk by faith tomorrow. However, that is another day. I will take that when it comes. Right? Sickness is a challenge. Money is a challenge—having it or not having it. Some people think that having money is the answer to all our problems. They realize that it is just more problems if you get it.
There are worldly desires to overcome because we are human. We say this all the time in Shannon’s class. “We are human.” We have that battle going on inside—the good and evil thing that is going on.
So, what are the rewards do you think of putting Jesus first? What do you think? Happiness, peace, contentment, heaven—so here is a reward and it is a great reward.
Growth
It is something that I have and I know Todd has, and I do not know how many of you…when you have done a study in the Word of God, over a period of time; not just a little here and there, but over a period of time; there is a spiritual growth that happens in your life that cannot happen any other way. It just cannot happen any other way. You grow in Christ as a little babe desiring the sincere milk of the Word. That means the only … things of life, elementary things of the Word of God. You get into the strong meat of the Word. As you get into the Word of God and as you learn it over and over again; then as time goes by, you look back across your life and say, “Man, I used to just say these things now I believe them because I have lived a lot of this stuff that I teach.” So, you grow in faith. That is one of the things that happens.
Conclusion
Of course, we talked about joy, peace and heaven. I am going to heaven. …I am going to go to heaven? Because I love Jesus. Do you love Jesus Christ? I love Him. I couldn’t go to hell. Hell would be more hell for me than anybody else in the world because all those years ago, I put my faith in someone named Jesus Christ. I cannot be happy in any way without Him. I must have the Lord. How about you?
We talk about addictions, but we are spiritually addicted to the Lord Jesus Christ. We must be. He is our Lord. He is our hope. He is our life. He is all we have. The very air we breathe. He is everything to us. That is why we are going to put God first. We are going to walk by faith.
Come and be saved!