Tony Evans - Faith Can Change Your Destiny
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Summary
Drawing from James 2, the preacher distinguishes between justification by faith (for eternal salvation) and justification by works (for experiencing God’s tangible intervention in everyday life and history). Using Abraham and Rahab as examples, he shows how obedient actions tied to faith deepen intimacy with God, mature faith, and make God’s favor visibly evident to others. The core message is that true friendship with God—where people notice His power flowing through you to bless you and others—comes when faith produces obedient works, especially in trials.
Being Called a Friend of God
Has anybody ever called you a friend of God because they saw what God was doing in you and through you that benefited you, and from you benefited others too? Because the hookup is so tight and so close that it becomes visible in history, not just academic in the head. It is a relationship that is obvious. He says, «By works, Abraham was—watch this—justified by faith.» By works? Wait a minute, that’s an odd term. The Bible talks about justification by faith; Paul talks about that all the time. You’re justified by faith—just by faith alone. You are justified by faith apart from works because he’s talking about going to heaven.
Two Kinds of Justification
Now we have a whole different use of the word justification in James 2. He says there’s a second justification by works. The justification by faith has to do with eternal destiny; the justification by works has to do with God’s intervention in history—in your life, in our lives, in our circumstances, in our prayers answered, in the power given, in the victory over, and in the deliverances—in the circumstances of life that have to come because you are declared righteous by your work, not by your belief system. He says that his faith was perfected. The word perfected means matured; it developed, his faith grew.
Growing Faith Through Works
You don’t grow faith by looking for faith; you grow faith by doing the work. Because by his work, his faith was perfected, it matured. He had a bigger view of God, a bigger view of God’s power, purpose, and intervention. It all grew. If you want more faith, do more work—not just busy work, but the application of biblical truth in life’s decisions. That is called obedience in scripture. When the work is tied to the faith, then the faith grows. In the Olympics, you have high jumpers; they can jump about eight feet, springing off the ground. You also have pole vaulters; pole vaulters can go 18 feet. High jumpers go about eight feet; pole vaulters, 18 feet. That’s because a pole vaulter has a pole, and when they run and they put the pole in the box, the pole bends, and the pole springs them higher than they could ever jump on their own.
Works as the Pole for Faith
Work is your pole. You can only go so far with faith alone. But when you grab the work and attach it to the faith, the work propels your faith to a higher level than it existed previously, and that work typically is called for in a trial. It’s typically called for in a trial. So he says Abraham was called a friend of God. Now I know we like to sing the song «I Am a Friend of God.» That’s a nice song. A lot of God’s children are not friends of God. To be a friend of God speaks of an intimacy that has been developed because of the growth of faith and your experience of God intervening in your circumstances. If God is not intervening, his presence is not being manifested, it’s because the intimacy is not there.
Visible Intimacy with God
But when the intimacy is there, two things happen: God, in the Old Testament, called Abraham his friend. But then people saw all that God was doing in Abraham, and they said he must be a friend of God. Has anybody ever called you a friend of God because they saw what God was doing in you and through you that benefited you, and from you benefited others too? Because the hookup is so tight and so close that it becomes visible in history, not just academic in the head. It is a relationship that is obvious.
So a lot of Christians aren’t God’s friends. Some of you, some of us have kids, and they’re not our friends. They’re our children, but we’re not close to them. We don’t have that kind of connection to them. So he says, «No, Abraham passed the test, and he got a deeper experience in history of God’s reality in his life because his faith produced work.»
Rahab: Faith in Action
He then goes to a female illustration: «In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?» He says, «Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works when she received the spies and turned them out another way?»
Okay, so you all remember the biblical story—Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. In the book of Joshua, God tells Joshua to go to this pagan city, and he’s going to judge it. So they sent in a couple of spies to spy out the land. Rahab lived in the red-light district. Wherever you see Rahab’s name in the New Testament, her occupation is always attached to it. When the spies came, they thought the red-light district would be a good place not to be detected. Christians would have had a hard problem with those spies, but they go to the red-light district, figuring this.
Rahab’s Risk and Lie
Remember, Rahab, the madam of the house, decides she has heard about your God, and she has heard what he’s been doing. She believes in your God. She had a belief system, so she took them in by faith. The authorities discovered that the spies were at Rahab’s house; they discovered that the spies were there, or at least the thought was that they were there, and came knocking on Rahab’s door. «Rahab, we heard that the spies are here from Israel. Is that true?» She said, «Absolutely not.» She lied.
Now, parenthesis, because I know what you’re saying: does that mean it’s okay to lie sometimes? Now, some of y’all took that further than it was intended. The one time it is okay to lie is when you’re faced with two sins, and you have to make a choice because either choice is a sin, so you make the choice where God would get the greatest glory. She believes that it would be better to spare the life of the spies than to turn them over, so she lied. And not only did she lie, but then she sent them out. The verse says another way.
The Scarlet Thread and Deliverance
So the authorities were coming in this door; she let them out of that window through the scarlet thread and let them escape. But on their way out of Dodge, they said, «Because you have done this—your work—when we first showed up, you told us you believe, but because of what you just did—your work—you gather all your family; you bring them into your house, and when we shut this mama down, you and everybody in your house will be spared.»
Now, there is a statement about her house that’s in the story in Joshua that is easy to miss. It says her house was embedded in the wall. So her house was attached to the wall. That means that when the walls of Jericho fell down, there was a piece of the wall still standing. There was a piece of the wall still operating because her house was attached. And because of that, this piece was testimony that God can cover you in history when everything is collapsing around you. God can cover you in history when everything is falling apart around you and your family because everybody in the house was covered.
Changing Legacy Through Obedient Faith
But not only that, God not only saved her life, he changed her legacy and he changed her destiny. Because Rahab the hoe, Rahab the harlot, Rahab the prostitute, Rahab the lady of the night, where the Bible never lets you forget that that was her background. Because every time her name shows up, her previous occupation shows up with it. But it says when Israel left, she left with them. She ran into an architect who put together the architectural structure for the city of Jerusalem. The architect fell in love with a hoe; the architect fell in love with a harlot. He married Rahab. When you read Matthew chapter one, and it’s telling you the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Rahab the harlot’s name is there. She’s in the line of Jesus Christ.
When you read Hebrews chapter 11 and it tells you about all the great people of faith, Rahab’s name is all up in there. So what God tells you is you may have had a bad background, but if your faith will go to work, I can change your future destiny. I can change where you wind up because her faith was working with her work. She didn’t just believe it; she moved on it. And when she moved, history got changed, destiny got changed, and identity got changed.