 recording of the session is just started. So we will have this class lecture recorded. Welcome everyone, thank you for connecting. So let's pray and we get started with a we're just praying together. Let's see what the hood like to pray and open up today. Somebody just say I want to pray for us as a class and we get started. Father Collins would you like to pray? Father in heaven we thank you for this wonderful morning and the any time zone anybody who is on this call is on. So Lord as we're going to start our class our faith Lord we call upon the Holy Spirit who was left for us you know when Jesus Christ was going he said that he won't leave us as orphans but he will send for us a confeder. So Lord we are calling upon the the the Holy Spirit the Spirit of knowledge the spirit of understanding and the spirit of wisdom to help us through let our pastor be used as a vessel to teach us but don't command us. Lord we want your will to be done just as your son said. Father when he came in when he came into the house he told them let peace be upon them. So Lord we call upon the peace to be upon each and everybody of us and all those friends of ours who are don't yet connected to be connected in his own will and grace. We do pray in the name of the Father the Son the Holy Spirit and everybody says Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Good morning and welcome everyone. Thank you for connecting to the class. Right? So we'll do a quick review and we will move forward today. We have two lectures. Wonderful to spend time with God in his word and also sorry and also learn together. All right let me just go back. Let's just quickly review. Last class we in chapter three we just started looking at the ministry of Jesus. How Jesus in his earthly ministry engaged with people around this matter of faith. Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. He's the beginner and the perfecter of our faith and so what we're doing in chapter three and also in our next chapter chapter four is we're going to just look at Jesus and learn from him on the subject of faith. So in chapter three we are looking at his ministry. We are looking at how did he engage with people and what we said is you know that Jesus is the best person to learn from because he is the author and finisher of our faith and he is the same. Yesterday, today and forever that means today he will say the same things to us as he did to people 2,000 years ago or any time that we find recorded for us in scripture. So quickly to review we said that Jesus recognized and responded to people to faith in those who came to him. So when he saw that people came to him in faith he responded to that and we saw in all of these we'll give a few examples. There are obviously much more that we will find in the gospels. Secondly Jesus inquired he asked people do you have faith? So to the blind man he said do you believe that I'm able to do this and so Jesus is interested in us in knowing what's in our heart and in us in expressing our faith. Thirdly we see that Jesus encouraged faith even in hopeless situations when things went from bad to us he just said just believe just believe. So we saw the example of a Jairus where you know when things went really bad as far as his situation was concerned Jesus told him don't be afraid only believe and that's what he would tell us you know when in our circumstances in our situations he would say the same thing don't be afraid only believe and then we also saw that Jesus encouraged people to act their faith means if you believe step out on it act in line with what you believe that's what it means to act their faith. So example the 10 lepers he said go show yourself to the priests and it says here as they went as they went they were cleansed. So they came to him for healing you know they cried out have mercy on us and he said go show yourself to the priest the priest is the one who would check them and certify that you know they are well. So as they went so obviously they had to act their faith they had to start doing this and as they moved journeyed towards where the priests lived the Bible says they received their healing the cleansing. So like this there are you know many instances where Jesus encourages people to act their faith and as they act to their faith miracles took place so that's where we stopped last week so we're picking up in point number five where we are just looking at the ministry of Jesus and what did he teach people or how did he engage in faith. So the fifth one is that Jesus demonstrated that faith could affect nature. Faith could affect nature or we could say you know things in our realm in this natural realm faith affected things in this world even inanimate things natural elements example Jesus calm the storm now we are all familiar with this because all of us would have read this in the gospels but let's read it again could I request somebody to please read look chapter 8 verses 22 to 25 it's there in the pdf now could somebody read that for us please look 8 22 to 25 now it happened on a certain way that he got into a boat with his disciples and he said to them it is close over to the other side of the lake and they want to take out but as they sailed he fell asleep and the windstorm came down on the lake and they were filling with water and were in jeopardy and they came to him and evoke him saying master master we are perishing then he arose and reviewed the wind and the raging of the water and they ceased and there was calm but he said to them where is your faith yeah and they were afraid and marveled into one other okay thank you so we know this situation of this scenario this incident that happened so Jesus Jesus said you know we're going to the other side now he's he was asleep storm came so here's something completely unexpected not only is it unexpected it is something really dangerous because it's hey it's getting the boat down the boat is in the process of sinking and obviously it is something that has caused fear in the hearts of the disciples now out of their fear they go wake him up and they sing master vague we were you know we're about to die we're perishing and then Jesus calms he speaks he rebukes the wind and the water there was a calm and then he turns around to his disciples and he says where is your faith where is your faith what does it mean what does it imply what what is the implication of that question he's telling basically he's telling his disciples look I know things were bad but what you needed to do is to be in faith and not in fear it also implies that hey you could have done the same thing that I did with your faith so this question where is your faith that Jesus asking his disciples is not an unreasonable question that means he's not asking this question just to tease them or taunt them or bully them or be mean to them no he would not do that that means he's asking them a very legitimate question he's asking them a question which is implying he expected them to act that way he expected them to handle this situation in that manner where is your faith so in that turbulent situation two things stay in faith and do the same thing I did with your faith that means you calm the stone with your faith you speak to natural elements you speak to things in the natural realm and expect them to obey so Jesus is demonstrating to them the things in our realm is subject to faith another classic example is in mark chapter 11 and we will be looking at that in greater detail I'll just mention it in passing here we see in mark chapter 11 that on a certain occasion Jesus stops by a fig tree and he cursed the fig tree because he didn't find any fruit on that he said okay there will be no more fruit will grow on you henceforth he spoke to it he cursed it and the next day as they passed by the same road they saw the fig tree it was gone it was withered and in that situation Jesus teaches his disciples about having faith in God so once again we see that faith affected the realm of the natural realm there are a realm of nature natural elements whether it was storms whether it was a wind whether it was a tree whether it was sickness there was times there were no in the gospels we see Jesus speaking to sickness telling it to leave he's speaking to things in our natural realm so Jesus demonstrated that that faith affects things in the natural realm the sixth one is that we also see Jesus accommodating people outside of God's agenda in response to faith what do we mean by that we mean that during his earthly ministry Jesus came primarily to minister to the Jews the Jewish people and that was the that was God's agenda that was the plan of God that he would be sent there to the Jews the messenger and servant of God but when non-Jewish people came he accommodated them we have examples here of the Roman sanctuary he was not not a Jew but you know Jesus ministered to him or to his need there was a woman of Canaan who came and she's ministered to her need and it's quite possible there may have been many more non-Jewish people who came like that in faith and he accommodated them so it's telling us something about faith that faith to some extent I'm not saying you know Jesus went and you know obviously didn't go out and preached to all the Gentiles during the three and a half three and a half years of his earthly ministry but when Gentiles came in faith they were able to receive something that God had planned for them in the next phase to so to speak that you know after Christ would die and be raised up and ascended to heaven the gospel would definitely go out to all the nations it'll be made available to everyone but that was the next part of God's program but faith pulled into the now or was still out kept in the future and so to some extent we do we are able to do that by faith I'm not saying everything but God allows us to receive in advance some of the things through faith and so we see even examples of that in the Old Testament and so I just want to place that before us in that we are able that God allows us to do that by faith number seven Jesus helped people when they struggled in faith so you know we have records in the gospels that there were people who came and who came to Jesus and who were struggling in their faith just like us today that there will be times when we ourselves struggle with our faith but what do we see Jesus doing he helped those who struggled in faith some examples some examples there's this man in mark nine who came to Jesus on behalf of his son who was demon possessed and you know what happened that first he brought his son to the disciples of Jesus Jesus and three of his disciples were away so there were nine others left and now nine of his disciples could not help this boy who at that time was demon possessed so surely the father must have been shaken in his faith he said well I brought you know I brought my son to the disciples of Jesus nine of them are here and they couldn't help my son shortly after that Jesus comes with three of the other disciples and and this man cries out he says you know here's my son Lord help me and Jesus tells him Jesus asks of him you know how long it has this happened and then he tells him you know if you can believe and actually this man says you know Lord I believe help my unbelief so Jesus Jesus tells him if you can believe all things are possible to him who believes I'm just trying to think I was trying to recall the sequence yeah so this man cries out and he says Lord if you can do anything please help me so that's his cry now that's because he's just gone through something that's really shaken his faith you know nine of the disciples of Jesus were there and they couldn't help his son so now he's you know it's must be quite shaken as far as his faith is concerned and so he says Lord if you can do anything please help me so he's not in that place of absolute confidence and that something is going to happen he's not in that place of absolute belief in Jesus so he says Lord if you can believe help me and then Jesus turns it back to him and says he tells him if you can believe all things are possible to him who believes Jesus look if you can believe everything's possible then he admits he says Lord I believe help man believe that means he says Lord I believe you but he admits that he's struggling with some unbelief there when because of what has just happened and what what would want to be see Jesus do he goes ahead and he helps this man and delivers this child so you don't find Jesus abandoning him and saying you know sorry I can't help you you've got some unbelief he helps him anyway same thing you know we've seen the case of Peter as he got out of the boat you know you know the story of this incident when Peter calls out to Jesus he sees Jesus walking on the water he says Lord if it is you tell me to come to you and Jesus says come and so Peter gets out of the boat and he starts walking on the water to Jesus and he sees the waves he sees all of that he gets scared and he was afraid the Bible says so Peter fear comes into his mind because of all that's happening and he starts thinking and he cries out Lord save me and just immediately reaches out helps him and of course he admonishes him he says you know why were you of little faith I mean your faith decreased you started out in great faith you started from good faith but your faith decreased and why did you doubt you know why did you of course he saw the winds he saw the waves he saw all of that and he let fear come in and when fear comes in faith has to leave or faith decreases doubt comes in he says why did you doubt but Jesus helped them they went back walking on the water to the boat so even today you know it's it's when we struggle in faith in certain situations it's okay to tell them Lord you know I'm struggling help me and we can be sure that he's going to help us get out of that place of fear of doubt and see us through number eight I will I'll finish these points and then we'll take questions number eight there were times when Jesus healed and worked miracles independent of people's faith so the norm was he expected people to come to him in faith he saw their faith sometimes he asked them asked them about their faith sometimes he told them to act their faith but there were there are cases where Jesus worked miracles regardless of the individual's faith and we sound we see some examples recorded for us in John chapter 5 verses 1 to 9 there is this man by the pool of Bethesda you know and this man didn't even know who Jesus was he's been there for 38 years the scripture says there and he's been there a long time by the pool and he's waiting for the water to be stirred so he could jump in and so Jesus comes to him and says would you like to be made well so imagine a stranger coming up and asking you would you like to be made well and now this man doesn't recognize Jesus he doesn't know who Jesus is and he just says Lord I don't have anybody to help me into the water and gent Jesus says rise take up your bed and walk that means there is a release of supernatural power this man is healed and he's able to rise up and take up his bed and walk now it is very clear in John chapter 5 Jesus explains why he did that miracle he says I do what I see the Father do so that healing was something that the Father directed him to do it even though that man didn't have faith he didn't even know who Jesus was and I saw obviously didn't have any belief of faith but Jesus still healed him because the Father directed so here we're seeing the sovereignty of God at work this is a sovereign work of God independent of the individual's faith so this is what we will refer to as an exception that God does work sovereignly but those are exceptions the norm is people came to him and faith in great numbers and he ministered to them so we find another example of this man who was born blind this man too had no idea who Jesus was and Jesus healed him another example of the widow woman's son in the city of Nain there again there is no indication that the woman came to Jesus she was actually on her way to to the funeral but Jesus intercepted the funeral procession and raises her son back to life so we see that God would work in such manner even today as an exception but he's sovereign few more things number nine people came in faith on behalf of others and received for them so there are examples where people come to Jesus in faith but they came for somebody else not for their own but for for themselves but for somebody else and here again we have these same examples of the Roman sanctuary and he came to Jesus on behalf of one of his servants or employees there's the woman from Canaan who came to Jesus on behalf of her daughter and there's this noble man the father who came on behalf of his son now the Bible doesn't tell us whether the Roman sanctuary and servant also believed so you know anything we say in that regard would just be a guess now you know you could guess that maybe he did believe or maybe he didn't same thing we don't know about the woman from Canaan but her daughter was somebody who had faith or did not have faith we don't know so regardless of whether they had faith or not we don't know but these people they came in faith and received for someone they cared about they received in faith in faith they received for them and just I think two more thoughts here number 10 Jesus rebuked his disciples for being of little faith and we as we saw when uh Jesus noticed his disciples stepping away from a place of believing to place of fear doubt unbelief he rebuked them he corrected them teaching us that hey stay in a place of faith don't let situations dictate your faith as you see as we saw here there was something at this time time in the middle of the storm Jesus tells them why are you fearful where are you of little faith so he rebukes them so why are you being so afraid same thing with Peter oh you have little faith oh I did you doubt uh another time there were uh the disciples uh who are wondering you know how how where is you going to get bread to feed the people he tells them oh you have little faith why are you wondering where you're going to get bread you know where you're going to get this bread to feed the people another time when the disciples could not cast the demon out you rebuked them oh faithless faithless and perverse generation now of course you're speaking to the generation and in a broader sense but there's also a rebuked to his own disciples because they did not do what he had commissioned them to do so we can take that as a message for us as well that Jesus would correct us and encourage us to move from a place of little faith or fear or doubt or being faithless and say come on come on come on come into this place of faith come into this place where you believe so he would do the same for us and lastly we see that unbelief limited Jesus from doing mighty works both uh Matthew and Mark record this in their gospels that um when Jesus went back to his own hometown of Nazareth sorry uh it says he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief in his own hometown Mark puts it like this Mark says he marveled he surprised he marveled because of their unbelief so in his own hometown he could not do many mighty works and it was because of their unbelief so unbelief therefore it actually if you want to use the term it ties the hands of God or it prevents God from working in our lives in our situation so little faith means you know i'm just weakening in my faith but unbelief is i don't believe he can do this now we all struggle with faith that's different and that's where we say Lord help us but unbelief is something we keep out of our lives because that means that just completely shuts the door on God from working in our lives and remember this was in his own hometown i mean these are people who knew him knew his family they saw him grow up and perhaps it was because of that they were an unbelief because they just couldn't accept the fact that this young man whom they saw grow up in there amongst them is now preaching and is now healing is now delivering people and he's working miracles and he says but we know this man we know this young man he grew up here he was just an ordinary person how could he suddenly do all these things and perhaps all of those kinds of reasoning all of those kinds of thinking became a barrier to them preventing them from having faith and so we got to be careful of those barriers the things that keep us from having faith right so these 11 statements kind of summarize some of the things we see in the ministry of Jesus and how he interacted with people on faith around the subject of faith what we will do in the next chapter is look specifically at the teachings of Jesus what did Jesus teach concerning faith right but i want to pause here and i want to start you know take questions discuss if you have any thoughts and so on we will take them up and discuss them all right so i'm just looking at the chat right now and there's a question there from Divya Luke 9 2029 come to the house and say why could we not cast down this kind and fasting why was Jesus telling the disciples so so this is mark 9 28 29 yeah so yeah so we look at this particular incident which is recorded for us both in matthew chapter 17 and also in mark chapter 9 where Jesus where this this this man has brought his demon possessed son to Jesus and actually brought him to the disciples and they failed to cast him out and then Jesus comes and delivers him and then the disciples you know they go privately said lord you know what happened you know because we have done this before but what happened in this case why couldn't we cast it out and Jesus tells them and i'm looking at matthew 17 verse 20 mark 9 and 23 he says yeah you know because of your unbelief because of your unbelief and then he says if you have faith you can as a grain of mustard seed you will tell the mountain to move and it'll move and nothing will be impossible to you matthew 17 20 and then he says in verse 21 however this kind is not come out except by prayer and fasting so the root cause is unbelief prayer and fasting helps us deal with unbelief so you notice that in this situation when Jesus walked in he'd himself did not pray and fast that means it was it is not prayer and fasting that brings deliverance but it is faith but if i'm struggling with unbelief prayer and fasting helps move me into a place of faith and i minister out of that place of faith right so when jesus came into the situation he did not pray and fast he just ministered directly disciples could not do it why because of unbelief so what was the cure for unbelief you get into that prayer and fast you go before god get your heart right before you know just engage with god to be in a place of faith then be ministered of faith to bring deliverance another cross reference Galatians chapter three verses three and five and paul writes that he says he who ministers the spirit and works miracles among you does he do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith the answer there is obviously he does it by the hearing of faith so this is Galatians chapter three verse two and five Galatians three verses two and five that so so the point there is that when we minister the works of the spirit miracles we do it by faith i hope that's clear yes yes so thank you thank you so much shawnee your question please oh yeah i think you've already answered it in the last question but i know last week you were saying that in order for like if i'm praying for somebody the either both people have to believe in faith or even one so if either if neither one of them believe then they won't get healed right and else that was my question that the answer and also to an example you gave in terms of jesus where people came to him they didn't believe is that the example they got healed because jesus believed so those were my questions yes so the norm like we have been sharing is that both people should be in faith the person who wants to who's who needs to be prayed for and the person doing the ministry both have to be in faith that's the norm but there are exceptions meaning that's where the sovereign work of god comes in sorry let me just say the norm is both people have to be in faith then there is the other situation where the person person ministering is in faith you know the the person receiving may not be in faith yeah like we saw the examples the man by the pull of Bethesda or the blind man they didn't even know who jesus was but the person but jesus ministering to them obviously was in faith so the person ministering is in faith and they still receive so those are that those miracles too happen and those are you would say like exceptions right because it's going away from the norm the norm is everybody comes in faith but there is also room for these exceptions where the person receiving may not be in faith or the person ministering is in faith and god works miracles yeah okay thank you okay any other questions anything else to discuss before we move forward okay so um so what we did just now is we just looked at the ministry of Jesus how he engaged with people around faith now we're going to go to chapter four and i've put out the pdf in the coursework so you can take it from there in chapter four we're going to look specifically on the teachings of jesus what did he teach people so that we're basically looking at what he spoke concerning faith because and we are working on the same premise that if jesus was here today speaking to you and me he would teach us the same thing because he hasn't changed and you know times have changed that means we are here 2000 years since the earthly ministry of jesus were here 2000 years later the times have changed you know we have a lot of advanced we've made a lot of advancements in terms of technology and standard of living and all those kinds of things but the teachings of jesus are timeless you tell us to do the same thing today uh the situations that you and i face may not be exactly the same as in bible times there they were you know they faced storms in the sea now you and i may not face storms in the sea you know we may not be traveling by boat or so on but we may face storms in life situations there will be turbulent things happening around us but the same principle applies okay so we're going to get into chapter four i'll share the pdf all right jesus teaching on thing chapter four right so what we're going to do is just look at what did jesus teach people concerning faith and um we i won't just later put this before us before we get into the uh the statements of jesus that there is truth and there are facts facts can change truth will never change so what do we mean by that so let's say you know a person goes to the doctor and the doctor you know they do all the tests and they give the report and the report says you know the report for this person says okay you have such and such a disease or such and such a condition now that is fact we're not denying it you know the doctors are doing their job they have run their tests and they they've you know done all the diagnosis and to the best of their knowledge and they are giving the report and the report says uh you have such and such a disease that is a fact we are not denying it but that fact can change the truth is god said i am the lord your healer that is truth that will never change in sickness out of sickness god is god says the same thing i am the lord your healer the word of god is truth the word of god says by his tribes you have been healed that is truth that will never change in sickness out of sickness the word of god reads the same so this person who is sick who's been given the doctor's report yeah they have faced the fact there's some sickness in their body some disease the doctor says this is what we've diagnosed that's a fact now the person has a choice to they can believe god they can have faith in god in the truth of god and change the fact that means they can receive healing the disease can leave their body and the fact changes yesterday so they go back to the doctor the doctor you know runs the test again and this time the report says this you're fine so two reports same person facts have changed once once the report said you were sick now it's saying you know you're fine the fact has changed but the truth reads the same or his tribes you have been healed so we have the choice to always believe the truth right and we don't need to modify truth to accommodate facts or experiences so the wrong thing to do if this person got a report from the doctor saying you're sick the wrong thing to do is oh god made me sick or god is not my healer no no no don't change the truth the truth says god says i am the lord your healer the truth says by his tribes you have been healed that's the truth that will never change but the fact can change okay so keep the two differences the differences between the two don't change the truth through accommodate the fact expect the fact to change to align itself to the truth so when you talk about fact we talk about experiences life experiences right now let's get into the teachings of Jesus and you know we will see what are Jesus teachers about faith so first thing that you want to understand is Jesus said all things are possible through faith all things are possible now we can look at some of the teachings of matthew and i've just you know put out some of the references here in matthew 17 20 can somebody read that for us please so Jesus said to them because of your umberly for surely i say to you if you have faith as a muster seed you will say this mountain move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you now these are the words of Jesus these are not somebody you know some somebody else's but these are the words of Jesus himself and Jesus said if you have faith if you have faith nothing will be impossible to you now we will look at the other part of the verse as well a little later i'm just emphasizing this one part he said if you have faith nothing nothing will be impossible for you he repeats that again and mark 923 just puts it in a different way he said if you can believe all things all things are possible to him who believes now this is the teaching of Jesus so i'm emphasizing that that you know this this is what he would teach us today if you know he came to us to speak to all of us he would say the same things all things are possible to him who believes so we must be of the same mind that when we go through life situations and you know we will face very difficult you know whatever we face in life some situations may look impossible some things may seem impossible for God to help us or God to do something there but we must believe the words of Jesus he said nothing will be impossible to you he said all things are possible so we are of the same mind lord i know my situation looks bad i know things look very difficult um perhaps even humanly speaking people would have said nothing can change but you said if we have faith nothing will be impossible you said if you can believe all things are possible so i'm going to join with you i'm going to grieve with you jesus that's what i'm going to do the other thing i just want to highlight here is you know when jesus talks about the mustard seed he says if you have faith as a mustard seed he's just showing us the power of faith you know think about mustard seed and think of a mountain let's think about it a mustard seed so tiny so small think of the mountain huge but he says faith is so powerful faith is so effective that a small amount of faith in God can cause a big outcome a big result that's the point right so uh don't get so caught up with you know okay is my my faith the size of a mustard seed or not don't worry about that just get the main message so he's just giving us a comparison right he says he's using the word as uh so as usually in English would be would say it's similarly it's a you know it's just a comparison so he's saying faith as small as a mustard seed can affect such a big thing in your life that means faith is so powerful it is so effective it can do something so great right why is that possible because the power or the force behind the mustard seed size faith is God himself God is working through our faith or we could say our faith gives God the opportunity to work in our lives so even that little amount of faith we have or you know that that faith that we have it may look so small but our faith in God is very powerful because it is God working through it so don't worry about the size you know mustard seed mountain so it's not it's just a comparison so don't just forget about the size factor but think about this faith gives God the opportunity to work through your life and faith is powerful because God is working through our faith and nothing therefore is impossible okay you're going to pause here for now we'll take a quick 10 minute break and we'll be back we'll continue looking at the teachings of Jesus concerning faith we'll pick up here at point two okay and we'll also take questions towards the end of the class okay see you in 10 minutes thank you