foundations of our faith

This podcast discusses foundational faith and how it applies to our daily struggles. Foundational faith is not basic faith, but the starting point for our Christian foundation. The podcast talks about the need for a Savior, the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, atonement for sin, the sinlessness and deity of Jesus, and the inerrancy of the Word of God. It emphasizes that everyone sins and struggles with it, but Jesus is the solution. The podcast aims to provide real, biblical solutions for real people with real problems. I'm your host, Josh, and we are going to talk about two very important things that I'm excited for today. We're going to talk about foundational faith, but first let me ask you a few questions. Are you struggling in your faith? Are you having issues every day with life? That's what this podcast is geared towards. This podcast is a podcast for real people in real time with real problems trying to find real biblical solutions. So what we're going to talk about today, we're going to talk about foundational faith and how it applies to our lives, what foundational faith is, and how it helps us in our daily struggles. So grab yourself a cup of coffee, some tea, or your favorite drink, and let's dive into what is foundational faith. I'm glad to have you guys here with us today. We've got an exciting topic, like I said before. We are real people in real time with real problems trying to discuss real biblical issues, and today's no exception to the rule. So today we're going to talk about foundational faith. So what is foundational faith? Foundational faith is not, I'll tell you, it is not basic minimalist faith. It is a starting point. It's what we base our entire Christian foundation, our faith on, is this foundation. So we're going to be discussing that today. And we're going to dive into how it applies to our lives. So that's the basis of this entire podcast. If you look throughout all our podcasts, past, present, and future, you will notice that we talk about problems on this podcast because this is a podcast for real people in real time. So we're going to talk about daily struggles and how this foundation to our faith helps us in those daily struggles. So I hope you have your coffee or your drink because I've got mine with me, and we're going to dive right into what foundational faith is. So we're going to cover a few topics today when we talk about foundational faith. Let's dive into it. I think if we have to have a starting point, we're going to start with what we're going to talk about and discuss today. The things we're going to talk about, it's going to be about six things, and they're not going to necessarily be separated into subcategories, but we're going to discuss the need for a Savior for all our sinners, the miraculous, the birth of death, and resurrection of Jesus. We're going to talk about atonement for sin. We're going to talk about the sinlessness of Jesus, the deity of Jesus, and then we're going to probably wrap it all up with the inerrancy of the Word of God. Now, something happened 2,000 years ago. I don't know if you guys have heard, but something profound happened. A movement started 2,000 years ago, and that was the movement of Christianity. That's the faith. We follow a Creator. We follow Jesus, the Christ. Why do we follow Him? Well, if we go back to Genesis, and I understand, Josh, this is a podcast about foundational faith. Are we really going to talk about creation right now? No. No, we're not. We're not. But I want you to hear me out for a brief minute. We're going to go all the way back to Genesis. We're not going to talk about Genesis chapter 1. We're God who created the world. We're not going to talk about Genesis 2. We're God gave a breakdown of how He created the world and what He created the world. But we're going to dive into Genesis 3. If you know anything about your Bible, or if you have your Bible handy, go ahead and take a moment and read through Genesis 3. Now, Genesis 3 is a breakdown of how sin entered the heart of man, and then what happened to man after sin entered the heart of man. Now, if I was to paraphrase, Genesis 3 is Adam and Eve recognizing that they did something wrong. So, if you know the story, Adam and Eve ate from a fruit, was told to them that they would be given sight like God. And you know, that's a manipulation of the devil. But what happened is sin was allowed to enter the heart of man through this disobedience. And God caught them walking or hiding, and God asked them, why are you hiding? And they were ashamed. So if you notice, they were ashamed. That's the beginning, or not the beginning, but they recognized they had done something wrong. They had sinned. They are much like us in that nature, that today we are still sinning and we're still ashamed in front of God. So, much like Genesis, just because it began in Genesis doesn't mean it ended in Genesis. If you look throughout the Old Testament, the entire Old Testament, you see where sin is rampant and wild. It's running wild. There is not one place within the Old Testament where you can see a believer or a follower of Yahweh where they don't sin. They do sin. Everyone sins, from Seth, to David, to Jonah, all the way through the Old Testament, Micah, Malachi. And then even into the New Testament, where you can see even Paul struggles with his sin nature. So, how does this work with us today? Well, we all sin. And it's a daily struggle that we all have. If you dive into Romans, and if you look into the book of Romans, as I said before, Paul talks about this conflict of his sin nature and the problems that he has. So if you look in the Romans 7, Romans is his greatest piece of work that he wrote. If you look in the Romans 7, verses 14 through 19, let me read it to you real quick, so you get an understanding of what it means to struggle with sin. From a biblical perspective, that's why the Bible is so accurate and so important, because if we read the Bible, we can see ourselves in it. So picture yourself in this as we read through this. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing I do not understand, for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. For if I do the very thing I hate, or I do not want to do, I agree with the law, confessing that the law is good. So now no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh, for the willing is present in me, but doing of the good is not. For the good that I want to do, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing that I do not want to do, I am no longer the one doing it but sin which dwells in with me. So if you look at Romans, you can clearly see that Paul struggles with sin. And it's not just Paul, it's every man. Every man struggles with sin. Every woman struggles with sin. Every child struggles with sin. It's in our nature. It's our, from the very beginning since we have been born. Like everyone says, you don't teach a child, you don't have to teach a child how to lie. That child just does it naturally. It's in our nature. That doesn't mean we're not ashamed of it. That doesn't mean that we are unforgivable. Everyone's a sinner. Everyone's in need of a Savior. And if you look at 1 John, 1 John tells you basically the three categories in which we all sin. 1 John 2, 16 says, For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. Now that just categorizes what happens. It's three categories of where we sin in our life. So if we wanted to, we can even break those down farther. And if you look in Galatians 5, often Galatians 5, 22 is known for the fruit of the Spirit. But if you go back a few verses, you can see it broke down even more where the flesh sets a desire against the Spirit. And it talks about idolatry, it talks about impurity, sensuality, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, even envying, drunkenness, carousing, and the things of the like. They're the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit. So if you're walking in the Spirit, you don't have these things. That's what you would get if you read this. However, you always have these things. One way or another, it is our job, it is our responsibility to try to fight against these. And how do you fight against them? Well, that's what leads us into the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That's the gospel message. We fight against these things because we were able to give them over to the one that cleanses us from our sins, that can cleanse us from our sins if you're not saved. That's Jesus. That's what happened. He lived a sinless life. He was born of a virgin, the Virgin Mary, and if you look in Matthew 1, you can see the story of Christ's birth. And it was even prophesied long before his birth happened. It was prophesied in Isaiah, where if you read in Matthew 1, beginning in Matthew 1.18, you can see where the birth of Jesus comes into play, and if you go down farther into Matthew 1.23, it tells you, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. And then Matthew 22 tells about 23 as being prophesied in the book of Isaiah. Now, I think it's Isaiah 7.14. So it was prophesied through Isaiah, and then it happened, and Jesus was born a virgin. Now, after Jesus was born a virgin, I know I'm really walking through these things fast, and I understand that. We're going to try to cover them as thoroughly as I can, but do understand I'm trying to make these podcasts only about 30 minutes long. So if they go a little over, that's okay, but we're going to try to keep it narrowed down to 30 minutes. So Jesus' birth. He was born of a virgin, and he was prophesied to be born of a virgin. He was born by Mary, and then prophesied through Isaiah, and you can see the prophecy about him and John and Malachi. But after that, Jesus had to live. So the birth, the death, and resurrection of Jesus, but we're going to merge the topic of sinlessness, Jesus' sinlessness, into the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus because Jesus had to live a life in order for him to be a perfect sacrifice for us to cover all our sins. And if you go back through the Old Testament, you see every time man sinned, they had to provide a sacrifice. So it was a covering of the sin, and they did it yearly back in the Old Testament days. However, you only have to do it one, they only had to do it one time through Jesus. That's why he's the perfect Lamb of God. But in order for him to be the perfect Lamb of God, and he had to live a perfect sinless life. You can't, if Christ didn't live a sinless life, you can't cover sin up or forgive sin through sin. And that's why it's important to understand that Jesus was sinless. If he wasn't sinless, he could not have offered, here's a big word for you, an atonement for our sin. So basically, in order for our sin to be reconciled with God, it had to be reconciled through something that was pure and spotless, and that's where Jesus Christ came in. That's why he had to have a sinless life. So we've hit the birth of Jesus, we've hit our sinful nature, we've hit the sinlessness of Jesus. How did he complete the atonement of our sins? Well, he completed it through his death, death on the cross. And that's why, if you look at John 3.16, that's why 3.16 is so vital to the Christian faith. And I know a lot of people quote 3.16 all the time, but I feel that it's a necessity for them to include 17 in it as well. It's just as important as 16 is. So let's look at 3.16 and 17. John 3.16 says, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. And if you read in verse 17, you would see the why. God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Every gospel message is wrapped up in the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The death of Jesus on the cross in around 30, 33 A.D., it's the cleansing point of our sin. That's what happens when you take a sinless, perfect Lamb of God and offer him up for our sin. It atones our sin. It covers our sin. It is as if our sin exists no more. And I think that's vital. It has to be vital. You have to understand that if you are a follower of Christ, your sin is gone. That does not mean that you will not struggle with sin in the future. That means at this beginning point, your sin is gone and you have to begin to fight your daily battle against this sin. And it continually pounds us and continually tries to infiltrate our spirit and our soul and our minds, our thoughts and everything. And that's why this podcast was really created, was to help us walk through that daily walk. I think as important as the cross is, we have to understand that the cross, if he would have just died on the cross, would not have completed the cycle, so to speak. It would be pointless if he just died on the cross, but he had to overcome our sin. So that's where the resurrection comes in. So Jesus was born, he walked a sinless life, he atoned our sins on the cross, and now he did something to complete the miraculous. He was resurrected. He came back to life, and without that resurrection, or without the resurrected body of Christ, our sin nature would still be in existence today because he had to have a victory over that sin. So it's important for us to understand that is the foundation. If you had to look at just one thing, the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, to reconcile us back to God. That is the core of what our belief is. Our belief has to be found in that. Now if we wanted to read through a few verses to understand what the resurrection is and how it has saved us, we'd have to, I think we'd have to start at Romans 6, where it says we were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, we may live a new life. And if you go into 2 Corinthians, and he died for all, that those who live shall no longer live for themselves, but he who died for them and was raised again. And then let's finish it off with 1 Peter, in 1 Peter 1, praise be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. As we look through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we can see how the miraculous birth came into existence, how he came into existence, lived a sinless life, died from a sinless life to atone for our sins, and then to overcome our sin nature, he was resurrected and then entered into heaven. It leads us into our next topic of how can he do all that? Well, because he was deity, he was God and man. Holy God, holy man. And if he wasn't, that's how he could be pure, how he could be blameless, and how he can atone our sins. If he was just merely a man, he would have sinned. If he was merely a man, he wouldn't have been able to be blameless, or sinless, or able to do any of this. He wouldn't have been able to cover our sins. He wouldn't have been able to live a sinless life. He wouldn't have been able to be resurrected from the dead. So, it's important to understand the foundation of our faith. How does that help you in your daily walk? Well, without this, we couldn't be talking about you overcoming sin, and being able to conquer the sinfulness that's in your life. So how does this help us with our daily walk? How do we understand how to get through our sin nature? Well, you have to look into, I understand that Jesus is God and man, he's the second person in the trinity, but when he was resurrected, he told us in John 16 what was going to happen. When he goes to the Father, when he goes back into heaven after he was dead, raised, or crucified, raised, and resurrected, or resurrected and raised, he told us in John 16 that he was going to send something, someone, he was going to send the third person in the trinity to help us in our daily struggles. That's what we have to depend on. We have to depend on the Holy Spirit. So, I do want you to understand, we're not going to talk about the trinity here. We're going to talk about, he is a helper, the third person. He is a helper, and he was sent to help us in our daily walk, and that's going to be a topic for another time, but how do we get through it? How do we fight it? If you take that for its understanding of what it is, and understand that the Spirit dwells inside of us, and that's where Jesus said he was going to come, and if you read in Acts, you can see where the Spirit falls on the people, in Acts. Now, like I said, if you walk in the Spirit, you see how Acts 5.22 plays out, and that's where we talked about the fruits of the Spirit. We read 5.16 earlier, but this is where 5.22 comes in place, and this is where one of those key verses in the Bible that we have to understand how it interacts with our life, and it says 5.22 says simply this, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, good such things there is no law. If you keep reading into 24, now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. And 25, if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging another, envying one another. So 5.22, and having that Spirit dwell within us, and allowing the Holy Spirit to dwell within us, that's how it helps us in our daily walk, because we don't have to depend on ourselves, so to speak. We have to allow. We still have to allow the Spirit to operate through us. The Holy Spirit's not a switch. It's not a trigger, but we have to be sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is telling us, and sensitivity sometimes is subtle, and sometimes it's yelling at us. So you know without having the Spirit in you that certain things are evil, and you don't have to, or you shouldn't do those things, such as stealing or murder or anything like that. However, there are subtleties that you may not pick up on that you have to rely on the Holy Spirit to tell you, and to live with the Holy Spirit, and that's where the jealousy comes in, and that's where your boastful nature comes in, and that's what you have to walk by the fruit of the Spirit, and allow the Spirit to speak to you. That's why you need love, you need joy, you need patience, you need goodness, you need kindness, you need faithfulness, you need gentleness, you need self-control, and you gain that, all of that as a package through the Holy Spirit who was sent to you by Christ from the Father to help us walk in righteousness, and forgiveness, and self-control with what God has set us forth to do. That's how it can help us in our daily struggles, in our daily walk. You're saying, maybe Josh, this really doesn't answer any of my questions. Well, does it? I think it kind of does, because until you start looking at this whole world from a spiritualist perspective, you're kind of going to be blind to what the world is. If you look at the way the world is shaped, how it is orchestrated, it's done not on a human level, it's done on a spiritual level, and you have to realize that's where the Spirit comes in, and how we have to operate in the Spirit, and when we have to allow the Spirit to walk through us and work through us. So, we've walked through the foundation of our faith, and I told you we were going to wrap it up with the inerrancy of the Word of God. We can say all these scriptures, but if you do not believe that God's Word is true, it's pointless. If God's Word is an error, it's pointless. It's pointless. So, we have to understand that inerrancy of the Word of God is saying that the Bible in whole is true, and the words of God live and dwell within the Bible. If we don't believe that the Bible is true, and we don't hold to the necessity of the Word of God being wholly true, then everything we just said is pointless, because if you can't believe what the Bible says, you can't believe in the birth, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, which if you look at that, if you don't believe in that, your entire foundation crumbles. Without Christ's gospel, it crumbles, and it is pointless. So, without the Word of God, you can't really understand as well as how to help you through without the inerrancy, and without the Word of God being true, and complete, and whole, we can't walk in the Spirit. We can't operate our daily life through the Spirit, because if the Word of God is wrong, and it's not true, then how do we know we have the Spirit? How do we know that Christ died on a cross? How do we know He was born of a virgin? How do we know that He lived a sinless life? And how do we know that He is deity? All that crumbles. And how does the inerrant Word of God help us in our daily walk? Well, that right there is the foundation of your faith. It is without the Word being true, you don't know anything in the Bible. And none of the Bible is true if it's not true. So, you have to walk in the Word and understand that the Word is true for it to help you in your daily walk. So, the inerrancy of the Word of God is, by and large, a necessity for us to walk a spiritual walk, and walk in the Spirit, and operate in the Spirit, and understand the foundation of our faith. And that helps us in our daily struggles, because we can lean on the Word of God and understand that what it says is true and how it can help us through our life. Now, without getting into the entire structure of the Bible, there are many things within the Bible where you can see how it can help us in our daily walk. It talks about prayer. It talks about the foundations of the world. It talks about man's struggle with sin. And that's why it's important to follow it and understand it, and understand that it is true. And that's how the inerrancy of the Word of God helps us in our daily struggles. Without it being true, there's no point in picking it up and reading it, because if it weren't true, we would operate without it. We would walk on a human level. So, I hope you guys all enjoyed the podcast today. And I hope that in some way, form, or fashion, this was beneficial to you. So, if it just reached one of you, I'm so glad that we did it. I hope that you guys enjoyed the podcast, and I hope to see you guys in the future. So, if you would be so kind, click on the subscribe button and come see us every week. We will be hosting a podcast, sorry, every two weeks. And throughout our podcast, we will have special guests that we will continue to work through our daily struggles and how the Bible helps us in our walk with the Lord and helps us in our daily walk. So, if you guys don't mind, hit that subscribe button. Check out the website, Authentic Life Podcast. And check out our Facebook. We will be, in the future, we will be putting these podcasts in visual form as well as audio form on YouTube. And check us out there as well. So, we will see you guys later. I hope you guys have a blessed week, and we will see you next time. Have a great day.