 Okay. So recording is on. Welcome, everybody. Let's take a moment to pray and then we will get started. Father, we thank you that we could gather together like this and thank you for the opportunity to learn, to be equipped. We pray together, Father, those present here and those who are online, be asked that our eyes will be open to see, our ears will be open to hear, our hearts will be open to receive God. And may we be equipped, may the Word of God be imparted into our hearts and lives by your Spirit and may we receive understanding and God help us to walk in the truth that we learn and that we receive. Thank you, Father in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So welcome to BC 111 or Course on Faith. We are going to quickly review where we stopped and then we will go forward from there. So we were in chapter 4. Okay, let me just share this with the class as well. I'm going to share this. I'm just going to quickly review. We've been talking about Jesus' teaching on faith. We've been spending quite some time in this chapter. I'm just going to quickly review what Jesus taught us concerning faith. And I want us to learn and understand this as a way of life. This is how you and I are going to live. We have to live by faith in God. We have to exercise our faith in God. And we will see later on how important it is in the life of the believer to walk by faith. But we're laying the foundation. We're learning step by step. So we have been examining the teachings of Jesus concerning faith. And we'll just quickly review these statements. Jesus taught us that all things are possible through faith. He also taught us that we will receive according to our faith. And number three, we said our will and desire is involved in the exercise of faith. We said, number four, our faith is key to seeing God's glory manifested. Number five, we said Jesus taught us when things go from bad to worse, only believe. Just believe his word. And number seven, faith is released through words spoken out of a believing heart. So you believe in your heart. You have to speak those words. And that's how faith is released. One of the ways faith is released. Number seven, faith is exercise in prayer. By believing you have received when you pray. So at the time of prayer, you believe that you have received. So it's in your heart. You believe that you have received and then you will receive. And number eight, faith must be acted upon. So you need to act in line with your faith. Do something in line with your faith. Step out and do something. Now remember, in 2021, the second year of the pandemic, 2021, yeah. In 2020, when the pandemic broke out in the first wave, it seemed like, okay, it was all happening far away in other places and so on. But in 2021, especially in the month of March, April, it seemed so close because so many people that we knew were being affected. And things are very bad when you're following. And remember that time in, I think it was the month of May, I think it was the month of May when things were very bad. And then people started asking questions, what is the church doing to help others? First wave, it seemed a little far away. Second wave, it seemed so close. People being new all around us were being affected. And so the question was, what is the church doing to help people? And so I remember, I'm just sharing this as an example of acting your faith. So we call for a meeting in Bangalore, Bangalore Pastors. Of course, it was done online on Zoom and that meeting about 70 of us pastors were there and leaders were there. We were discussing what can we do? How can we help other pastors? How can we help Christian families? Of course, we can't help everybody, but at least you can help a few people. So there's a lot of discussion going on. And I remember that, but we didn't come to any conclusion. We didn't have any like, okay, this is the plan. This is what we're going to do. There was no clear idea. So anyway, I was feeling very disturbed that night. I said, God, you know, what do we do? What are we going to do? How do we proceed? How do we go forward from here? There's no clear plan, but we need to do something and we need to do it fast because people are suffering now. It's not like, you know, they can't wait. People are suffering right now. When I woke up the next morning, you know, in my mind, there was a clear plan. Okay, these are the things you need to do. This is how you have to go. So the first thing was to get permission from the key leaders in the city. So I emailed them. I said, this is what we're planning to do. I want you to give me permission, give us permission to go ahead with it. So they all wrote back, go ahead. But now the plan was simple. You know, we're going to ask, we're going to send an email, ask people if you need help, you know, you fill out a form, tell us what you need. We had six areas, we're going to help people, you know, for family needs, for education needs, for medical needs, or various things, you know, we had categories. And I thought maybe 50 people will ask for help, you know, but anyway, we sent the email out and the requests started coming. It was 300. Then it became 1000, 2000. And it's coming from all over India. And suddenly I realized within one week, I think, I don't know what the number was, but eventually we had more than like, I think like 10,000 requests from all across India, from every state in India. And so we were, you know, it was like overwhelming at that point. What are we going to do? We have promised, we're going to help the people. But this is like this is way beyond what we thought, you know. And, you know, I thought we'll keep maybe 50 lakh rupees and help people, but this was huge. The request had come. And so quickly we got a team together. We had our stud staff, we took on a lot of our, we call all our Bible college students who graduated. We said, we need your help. They were around the country. They all joined in. So we had a team of 25 people, mostly students in other parts. So we all worked together. And we had to do the calls, we had to check on the people, make sure everything is, you know, things are, but the point is this, that it was an act of faith. Say, God, we are going to help. And we tried to estimate, you know, how much money will we need to help all these people? First we thought, you know, 3 crore. Then I don't know what it went up to. Finally, we spent or we sent out, I forget the exact amount, but several crores of rupees, maybe three, four, five crores of rupees, I forget, we have the details. We sent out within four months or from, by the end of July it was over. So May, June, July or August. In about four months, we sent out from here, we sent out almost four, some crores, I don't know exact number, but all across the country, you know, we have like more than 6,000 pastors, families, students, over 200 communities, we bought food, sent money to buy food and so on. So the point was this, we started with an intention to help, but then everything became so big, so big, it was scary. How are you going to help these people? But then we remembered what Jesus did. He took five loaves and two fish and he fed 5,000 people. So I told our team, I said team, we put 50 lakhs, that is our five loaves and two fish. But what is needed there is so many crores of rupees. But we'll believe that money will come and money came and we just, you know, it was just an amazing thing to see what happened in those four months and all of us were working together, just serving people. The money came, people gave and we were able to give it out. So faith must be acted upon. You've got to act your faith. You have to step out and start doing something. And then as you're doing something, it might seem so big, it might seem so impossible, it might seem so, God, how are we going to do this? I got five loaves, two fish, but there are five thousand people sitting here. How am I going to feed them? But faith must be acted. You must start acting. You must start doing something. And as you start doing something, then God is going to move and God is going to take care of the situation he's going to provide. So that's just one of the many examples or instances where we've seen God move and God do some amazing things. So let's move forward. Be stopped till then. Let's move forward. Number nine, in the teaching, in what Jesus taught about faith, we see that Jesus indicated that there are different levels of faith. There is no faith. There is little faith. And then there is great faith. Sometimes, you know, example, Mark chapter four was 40. Jesus turned around to his disciples in the middle of the tomb and he said, how is it that you have no faith? Fear had displaced faith out of their hearts. So he says, you know, why are you so fearful? What is that? Why are you so fearful? You're full of fear. So when you're full of fear, there is no faith. So Jesus said, why are you so fearful? How is it you have no faith? So at that moment, Jesus was indicating these people have zero faith, no faith. Fear had filled their hearts and minds. So no faith. Then other times, when Jesus referred to people as being of little faith, that means they had some faith, but little faith. Oh, you of little faith. Some faith, they had some faith, but he said, it's still little. And then to certain people, like the Roman Sancturian and the woman from Canaan, the Lord Jesus said they were people of great faith, great faith. So Jesus is indicating there is no faith, little faith, great faith. Okay. So there are varying levels of faith. And you and I, even in our own journey, there may be times we find ourselves a no faith, God, sorry, I can't, I can't have it. I can't believe no faith. We're filled with fear or doubt or those kinds of, but there are times we have little faith. We are encouraged a little bit, little faith. But our goal is to learn how to be in a place of full faith or great faith. Okay. And that's what the Lord wants. He commends that. He commends when we are of people of full faith, full of faith. Right. People of, or you could use another word, you could, people of great faith. Right. But remember that the other comparison Jesus made that a mustard-sized, a mustard seed size of faith can move. So even if you feel, I have little faith, it's okay. That little faith, maybe enough to get the job done. So you step out on it, you start acting on it. You start acting on it. And as you start acting on that little faith, your little faith is going to grow. It's going to rise. It's going to fill your hearts. So always start out from where you are, even little faiths, in little faith. Start from there. And as you start acting, it will grow. And you will come to that place of full faith. Number 10, we can learn from the ministry of Jesus is that great faith, two things about great faith, and we close with this. Two things about great faith. Great faith is simply believing the word God has spoken. That's what happened in the case of the sanctuary. He just said, Lord, speak the word and my servant will be here. Speak the word, just speak the word and my servant will be here. And Jesus said, I've not seen such great faith. So what is great faith? It's just believing the words that God has spoken. It is saying, if God has spoken, that's enough. Believing the word. That's great faith. The other thing we learn about great faith is that it is persistent because the woman from Canaan, when she came to Jesus, she was persistent. She didn't give up. She came to Jesus and Jesus didn't answer her. He didn't say anything. Then afterwards he said, I'm only ministering to the Jewish people, the people of Israel. Then the disciples also tried to get her off. And then again, she came back and worshiped Jesus. And then Jesus said, I can't take the children's bread and give it to the dogs. So it was almost like she was facing a no all the time, seemingly, but she didn't give up. And then Jesus said, Oh woman, great is your faith. So great faith is persistent. Great faith will not give up. You believe the word, you stand on the word and you don't give up. That's great faith. So two things about great faith. It just takes God at his word. And second, it is persistent. It doesn't give up on that word. Okay. So that's outlines. Oh, there's one more point. Sorry, number 12. So what else is Jesus teach? Number 12, worry, faith and doubt. Negate faith. So three enemies of faith. Worry, fear, doubt. Three enemies of faith. You see this in the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 6. You know, he said, why do you worry? Why do you worry in the context of faith? And why do you worry? Oh, you are little faith. So worrying makes us people of little faith. So worrying. Worrying is you're here today, you're thinking about tomorrow, and you're thinking all the bad things that can happen. Okay, what if this doesn't happen? What if that doesn't happen? What if this happens? And worry makes us people of little, little. So that's one enemy of faith. So we must guard against worry. So don't worry. Instead, you choose to be in a place of faith. So faith and worry are opposites. If you have faith, it'll keep worry out. If you have worry, it'll keep faith out. They can't be in the same house together. Correct, you know? So worry and faith are enemies. So we have to choose to be people of faith. Then we can keep worry out. Being anxious about tomorrow, anxious about this, anxious about the troubles of our mind actually. Second, we already mentioned this, Jesus referred to fear as an enemy of faith. Why are you fearful? Oh, you are little faith. So here again, another enemy of faith is fear. Fear is having faith in the negative. It's in the wrong direction. It's having faith in God. We are having faith in all the bad things that can happen, what the devil can do, whatever, whatever. So fear is faith in the wrong things, in the negative. And so when we have faith, you're more confident in the negative, that we are fearful. Fear and faith are enemies again. They can't stay in the same house. If you have faith, it'll keep fear out. If you have fear, it'll keep faith out. So that's another enemy Jesus warned us against. And then he also said doubt. Here again, this is Matthew 14. So little faith. Why did you doubt? Doubt. Questioning God, his word, his promise, doubt. Again, doubt is an enemy. If you have doubt, faith stays out. Yeah, faith, doubt stays out. Okay, so Jesus gave us, mentioned these three enemies of faith, worry, fear and doubt. So keep them out. Don't let them come in. They will try to come in. They'll try. You know, faith will come, fear will come, worry will come, doubt will come, hello, can I come in? We have to keep these out. Now, I'll explain a little later that sometimes there can be things happening in our minds, but we can still have faith in our hearts. Okay, so because there's a difference between what's in your heart and what's in your mind. There's a difference. Okay, so sometimes we can have things going on in our mind. Our mind can become confused. Our mind may not have the answers. Our mind may recognize the impossibility of the situation. Our mind, you know, our mind looks at all these things. So having that in your mind is not wrong. Your mind is in touch with every day of the world. You know, it's in touch. So even though your mind is aware of those things, you can still have faith in your heart. So it's not wrong that your mind is aware. We will talk more about that later. So don't confuse what's in your mind and what's in your hearts. Faith must be in your heart and faith can be in your heart, even if your mind doesn't have the answers. I understand it. We'll talk more about this later. I just wanted to mention here. All right, so we've gone through what Jesus taught us about faith and we're going to get into chapter 5. I'll give some time for questions a little later. Chapter 5, we'll talk about faith in the Old Testament. So you know, the word believe in that word faith is more of a New Testament word. You don't find it too much in the Old Testament. Especially in the King James. But in the Old Testament, people also walk by faith. They walk by faith just like how you and I walk by faith. It doesn't necessarily explain it or express it in that way. And we know that people in the Old Testament walk by faith because in Hebrews chapter 11, you have a full chapter, an entire chapter that mentions the names of so many Old Testament people and say they're all by faith, by faith, by faith, they did all these things. So we know that all these people walk by faith. Habakkuk chapter 2 and verse 4 is the Old Testament scripture that quoted many times in the New Testament concerning faith. Habakkuk said, the just shall live by his faith. The just meaning the person who wants to walk right before God. The person who wants to walk right before God, the just. How will he live? He lived by his faith in God. The just shall live by faith. That's quoted many times in the New Testament. Hebrews chapter 11, the entire chapter is pointing to people in the Old Testament because at that time the New Testament church was just born, was just a nation still growing. So the writer of the book of Hebrews is pointing back to all Old Testament people. And he's telling us that all these Old Testament people, they all walked by faith. And what they did, they actually did by faith in God. So starting from Abel, he offered the sacrifice and his sacrifice was accepted, and he did it by faith in Noah, built the ark by faith. So you can imagine God comes to Noah. So Noah a flood is coming. Now till that time it had never rains. Now you are. So till that time it never rains. And God is telling Noah, I want you to build an ark, very big ark. And so you and your family and other things I have planned, animals will come in and I'm going to cause it to rain on the earth. And Noah built the ark. Now you can imagine it must have taken a lot of faith to do that. You're building and people are asking, Noah, what are you building? I'm building a boat. For what Noah? It's going to float on water. But Noah, you're on land. Where is the water? It's going to float on. I don't know, God said it's going to rain. Rain? What is rain? So you can imagine Noah was doing that. It was an act of faith. It was a work of faith. But then in the end, he was windy kid or he came out and God fulfilled it. And so like that, you have many examples. Abraham is somebody we're going to look at in depth. We're going to look at his life because the New Testament points to Abraham as a father of faith. It's very interesting. For us New Testament believers, the Bible is pointing to an Old Testament person like Abraham and says, follow him. He is the father of faith or meaning he is the pioneer. He is the role model for a life of faith. Follow his faith. It's very interesting how we are being pointed to Abraham. So we're going to study how Abraham walked in faith. But you can see in Hebrews chapter 11 verse 8, some highlights here. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called out to go to a place which he would receive as an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going. Think about that. Somebody asks you, where are you going? I don't know. But I'm going somewhere. Where are you going? I'm going somewhere. God said that place he's giving to me as inheritance. Okay, what is the name of the place? I don't know. Where is it? I don't know. How are you going to get there? I don't know. But I'm going there. That's what it is. By faith Abraham obeys when he was called out to go to a place that he would receive as an inheritance. God said, Abraham, I have a place for you and your descendants. I'm going to take you there. Just follow me. Okay. So he took out a cell phone. Okay, where destination? I have to put where I want to go. God said, don't worry about it. Put it back. I'll take you one day at a time. I'll take you. Just follow me. And so by faith he obeys and he did not know where that place was. He knew there was a place. He knew. God said, I'll give you a place as an inheritance for you and your descendants. He knew that, but he didn't know where. He didn't know what was that place. Where? Just followed God. And so God took him from modern day Iraq. So he came down south. He came all the way into the land of Israel. And then God says, this is the land I'll give you. But Abraham had to follow God. So he went out not knowing where he was going and God brought him. And today we see the nation of Israel and Abraham's descendants occupy the land. It's still going on. So, verse nine, he dwelt in the land of promise. So God brought him there, but he was looking for something bigger for a city who's builder and maker is God. So he was looking not just on the natural. He also was looking at the spiritual and that spiritual will happen. The heavenly Jerusalem will be established here on earth. Verse 11, you see, not only did Abraham walk in faith, we see here about Sarah, she received strength to conceive seed. She bore a child when she was past age because she judged him faithful who had promised. So by faith. Now it's very interesting and we will repeat this when we talk about Abraham and Sarah. Notice what it says in verse 11 about Sarah. By faith, she received strength to give birth and she was able to bear a child when she was past age because she judged him faithful who had promised. But you and I know. The first time or not the first time, but there was a time when Abraham told Sarah and she laughed. She said, my old man has gone crazy. She laughed. Yeah, when Abraham said, hey, Sarah, we're going to have a promised child. She laughed. But the Bible is saying here, verse 11, she judged him faithful who had promised. That means even though initially she was of no faith, she eventually came to a place of full faith. Initially she laughed. There's no faith. But she came to a place where she said, God is faithful. God who promised is faithful. She came to that place and so by faith, this is it. Now, very interesting. When God is giving his assessment of Sarah, he doesn't judge her by how she started. He judges her by how she finished. When she started, she laughed. God would have put, failed. Go. But he didn't judge her by how she started. He saw how she finished. She finished as a woman of faith. And she said, hey, she considered me faithful for what I had promised. And so by faith, she was able to give birth to Isaac. Okay. I'll do one more verse. I think it's verse 12. Think about this. This is such an amazing verse. Hebrews 11 verse 12. From one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand, which is by the seashell. Think about this. Hebrews 11 verse 12. From one man who was as good as dead. He was so old, he was as good as dead. But from such a man came a nation which has like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashell through faith. How did this happen? It happened through faith. So this is how powerful it is. That when people can say like, you're as good as dead, gone, cased, end of the world, story over, close the book, finish, everything's over. And people say that everything changes when you have faith in God. Everything changes. Your whole life story is rewritten when you have faith in God. From one man who was as good as dead came a nation like the stars in the sky and sand on the seashell. Why? Because he had faith in God, through faith in God. That's amazing. So it's encouraging for us in our lives that even if it seems like the story is over, as good as dead, our faith in God is going to rewrite the whole story. It's going to change everything. Amen. And that's the story of Abraham. We look at it. And so it talks, you know, we can look at every verse there, but Abraham was 17. I'm skipping the verses here, but Abraham, when he was tested, he offered up Isaac. So we'll be talking about this. God tests our faith. We're 17. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, God tests us, the devil tempts us, and the world has trials for us. Okay? So God tests us, devil tempts us, the world has trials for us. Now God's tests are an invitation for promotion. So you're in Bible college. You'll have tests. Why? Not to keep you here, to say now we can send you to the next class here. So the tests are not to put you down. The tests are to lift you up. So God's tests are always an invitation for promotion. Say, Abraham, I know you have been so firm in your faith, you've received the promise. Now just prove yourself in this situation. It's a test. Prove yourself in it. You're going to see experience something greater. And what happened? When Abraham passed the test, he received a greater revelation of God, because at that moment, God revealed himself as Jehovah, Jehovah. So every test will lead us into a greater revelation of God. So by faith, when Abraham was tested, he offered up Isaac. He was willing to let Isaac go. But then he passed the test. The world tempts us, temptation is a distraction. It's an invitation to wander away from God. Test is an invitation for promotion. Temptation is an invitation to distraction, wander away from God. Trials are the world's attempt at destruction. They're trying to destroy you, destroy your faith. But when we overcome temptation and we overcome trials, we become stronger. And we overcome temptation and we overcome trials through faith in God. So are they tests, trials, temptations? God tests us. The devil tempts us. The world has trials for us. But everything we can overcome. And every time we overcome either a test or a trial or a temptation, we're going to go up higher in God. Are you with me? Have a question? Oh, it starts. Again, so then we see here, we read about Isaac, we read about Jacob, we read about Joseph, we read about Moses, amazing, amazing stories and how they were able to come out of Egypt. We read about the walls of Jericho and so many more. And so verse 33, he says, you know, all these people, there's so many others for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jeff and David and Samuel and the prophets. And I was, he's saying, there's so many more people that we can point to and say all these men and women live by faith in God. So the Old Testament is full of people who walked by faith in God. We can go and look at all those stories and learn some lessons on how to live by faith in. Take a look. And we'll be looking mainly at Abraham, but there are all these other people that we can look to. And it says in verse 33, that through faith, they did amazing things. They subdued the conquered kingdoms, they worked righteousness, they obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of the forest, skipped the edge of the sword, out of weakness, they were made strong, they were valiant and in battle, they turned to fight the armies of the aliens. The dead came back to life and so on. But then it also mentions that through faith, they were able to go through hardships. Okay, it says that in the second part of verse 35, others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. Verse 36, they went through mocking and scourging and chains and imprisonment, they were stoned, they were sawed, sawed in two, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword, they were wandered about in sheepskins and goat skins and so on. And it says here, all these having obtained a good testimony through faith did not receive the promise. So what's it saying? So there are those who had great accomplishments through faith and there are others who went through hardships, but it was still an act of faith. Through faith in God, they were able to go through it, they didn't quit, they didn't give up through the hardships. So it gives us all these things, they were tortured and they went through all these things. But it was through faith, it was a work of faith that they went through all those things. And then it says, it seemed like in our eyes, their faith did not put them over. But verse 39, all of these, all of them obtained a good testimony through faith. Who's giving testimony? Gods. God is saying, well done, you didn't give up, you didn't quit, you were challenged, you were persecuted, whatever, well done, you didn't give up. So they received a good report. So when the world looks at them, it seems like, hey, they were defeated, they got killed, they suffered. But when God looks at it, he says, I'm giving you A plus good reports, I'm giving you, they obtained a good testimony through faith. And they did not receive the promise. What is the promise he's talking about? He's talking about, when he talks about Abraham, he's talking about that eternal kingdom, an entry into that eternal kingdom. They didn't experience it. Why? Verse 40, God having provided something better for us, that is the New Testament believers, that they should not be made perfect apart from us, because God had a different plan. What was God's plan? God's plan was, they, the Old Testament saints, along with us, should enter into that kingdom. So that's why they didn't get it then. Why? Because God had a plan that together them and us, we will enter into the kingdom. So when we study the end times, you'll see how the church, that is the New Testament believers, along with those who have died in the past, that we will all enter into the kingdom. That's Revelation 20. When God, when the new heavens, the new earth are there and heavenly Jerusalem, they'll all be there. Actually, from the millennium, Revelation 20 verse 4, from the beginning of the millennium, all of us will be there. When Jesus establishes his kingdom here on earth to rule and reign a thousand years, the kingdom will be given to the saints and we will reign with him. So God has that plan. We will all enter into that kingdom, the Old Testament saints and the New Testament saints. So the Old Testament saints, they died in faith, but they didn't experience this. They didn't experience that heavenly kingdom. Why? Because God wanted all of us to enter into that kingdom. You're with me? Alright, so let's pause here and I've gone all the way till time. Okay, those of you online, you're all with me so far. Any questions? Everyone's good? Okay. Alright, so thank you. I see your comments in the chat. I appreciate that. So let's take a quick 10 minute break. We'll come back and then we will proceed forward. Thank you.