Impossible is an opportunity

Although the French hero Napoleon said, “Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools,” I want to say, “There are so many impossible in my life.”  It is because I realize more and more that as I live my life, I can't do a lot of thing with my own strength and ability.  For example, I cannot change my bad habits, I don't act as I think, and my heart is not changing as I want to.  I cannot help but to admit that they are so many things that I cannot do with my own strengthen and ability.  Is this just it?  No.  There are so many things I can't do as I live in this world.  How about you?  Don’t we have so many things that we cannot do with our own strengthen and our ability?  How many things do we fail to fix and overcome?  It can be very discouraging to face these realities.  It is frustrating and sometimes even despairing.  What should we do?  What should we do when we encounter something impossible?

One day, while I was reading the Bible, the book of Numbers, I read Numbers chapters 13-14.  The two chapters show that two of the twelve leaders who came back after exploring the land of Canaan, Caleb and Joshua, reported by faith, but the other ten leaders reported a bad report which was the report of unbelief.  In other words, these ten leaders spread among the Israelites the bad report about the land by saying, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.  We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them” (13:32-33).  As a result, all the people of the community raised their voices and wept aloud and grumbled against Moses and Aaron (14:1-2).  And they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt” (v. 4).  Hearing this, the Lord told Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them?” (v. 11)  As I meditated on these words, it seemed like God was asking me, ‘How long will you not believe in me?’  When I consider that unbelief is a sin that despises and distrust God and eventually leads to disobedience to God's commandments, I realize that disbelief is not the sin that should be taken lightly.

I personally like to sing the hymn “Encamped Along the Hills of Light”.  I especially like the chorus lyrics: “Faith is the victory!  Faith is the victory!  Oh, glorious victory, That over-comes the world.”  The reason why I like this hymn is because faith in the Lord is the only way we can win the spiritual battle.  What is faith?  We can find the answer in Hebrews 11:1 – “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  Faith makes us to hope and believe against all hope (Rom. 4:18).  Faith means ‘believe, trust‘ and shows clearly that there is the object of faith.  The three important elements of faith in the New Testament are to recognize and fully acknowledge the grace God has shown, to give up and have fellowship with the Lord, to rely on the Lord completely, and to undoubtedly trust and hope in the Lord, the God of salvation.  However, this belief is not the emotion we create.  It is our entire response to God's revelation of His Word.  Faith makes us see things we can't see.  The Bible says that faith is “the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1).  Faith is the inner conviction of things not seen.  It is inner conviction that God clearly does what He has promised.  But this conviction also comes from God.  It means that we cannot just believe in God by saying "I believe!  I believe!"  We cannot be forced to believe.  Faith causes us to do things we can't do.  All those men and women of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 are people who have done by faith in God what we cannot do with our own strength and ability.  The ancestors of our faith are those who worked with the conviction that “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God” (Mk. 10:27).  Faith is grace and blessing that is from and through God.  This faith creates new works and opens up the impossible as possible (Internet).

Reading Romans 4:9-17, I thought of Abraham's faith in two ways:

(1)   Abraham's faith was faith in God who gives life to the dead.

Look at Romans 4:17a – “As it is written: "I have made you a father of many nations." He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed--the God who gives life to the dead  ….”  Abraham believed that God would be able to raise his son Isaac even from the dead, even as he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay Isaac as God commanded (Gen. 22:10, Heb. 11:17, 19).

(2)   Abraham's faith was faith in God who calls into being that which does not exist.

Look at Romans 4:17b – “…  calls into being that which does not exist.”  Although Abraham didn’t have a son even when he was around 100 years old, he nevertheless believed in God's promise to him, that his descendants would be like the stars at the heavens and the sand which is by the seashore (Gen. 15:5; Heb. 11:12).

In short, I would like to say that Abraham's faith is ‘the faith against all hope’ (Rom. 4:18).

What was Abraham's hopeless situation?  Look at Romans 4:19 – “…  he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead--since he was about a hundred years old--and that Sarah's womb was also dead.”  In other words, the hopeless situation that Abraham faced was that medically it was impossible for him and his wife to have a baby.  In fact, their bodies were good as dead.  What did Abraham hope in the Lord in this impossible situation, when the hope of having a baby was impossible in human perspective?  It was the fulfillment of the word of promise God gave to Abraham.  The word of that promise is said in Romans 4:18 (quot: Gen. 15:5): “…  So shall your offspring be.”  Although Abraham knew that his body and his wife Sarah’s body were as good as dead (v. 19), he believed in God who could raise the dead would fulfill His promise to him by giving him descendants and they would prosper like the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea (Gen. 15:5; Heb. 11:12).  In this seemingly truly impossible situation, Abraham's faith was not weakened (v. 19) but rather he was strengthened in faith and gave glory to God (v. 20).  Look at Romans 4:19-20: “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead--since he was about a hundred years old--and that Sarah's womb was also dead.  Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God.”  What an amazing faith?  Normally, the harder the situation, the weaker the faith would be, and the heart would shake more and more in doubt as to the God's promise.  But in Abraham’s case, he was strengthened in his faith even in the impossible situation.  How was this possible?  It was because Abraham was fully persuaded by God.  Look at Romans 4:21 – “being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”  God gave Abraham the word of promise and persuaded him to believe it firmly.  Thus, in the impossible situation, Abraham became more solid in faith.  This solid faith of Abraham was credited to him as righteousness before God (v. 22).  In other words, Abraham didn’t have his righteousness, but God's righteousness was given to him only by the faith that God graciously gave him.  These words were written not just for Abraham alone (v. 23), but also for us, “to whom God will credit righteousness” (v. 24).  The Bible writes about Abraham, the father of faith, who believed against all hope for not only the Roman church saints, “who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (v. 24) but also for us who live in this age.  What do we believe?  We believe in the death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection.  More specifically, the object of faith we believe is Jesus who “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (v. 25).  In short, we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  By that faith we are justified by God.  And now we enjoy the blessing of justification.

Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross and resurrected in three days from the grave?  Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross to forgive all your sins?  Do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead to justify us?  Those who have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and believe in Jesus' death and resurrection have already been regarded as righteous to God.  And God, who raised Jesus from the dead, is leading us to the heaven in this hopeless world with faith in Jesus Christ and with the hope of resurrection and of eternal inheritance.  I hope and pray that our hope will be greater because we believe in the Savior's covenant even when everything that we believed in this world is cut off.  “When He shall come with trumpet sound, Oh, may I then in Him be found; Dressed in His righteousness alone, Faultless to stand before the throne” (Hymn “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less” v. 4).

Only by faith,

Pastor James Kim