 All right. Good morning and welcome to BC 111, our class on faith. This is our third week of classes and yeah, let's pray and get started. Let's pray together. Father, we just thank you for this new week and thank you for the opportunity to come together and study your Word and learn and we invite the presence of the Holy Spirit, invite you, Spirit of God, just to move upon our hearts, upon our lives, move upon our minds, give us revelation, open our hearts, open the eyes of our understanding that we may be able to see, that we may be able to understand and God let these truths sink deep into our hearts, the way you want them to be written in our hearts of God and maybe walk in them, maybe live by them, maybe conquer through them, maybe be overcomeers of God as we learn to walk by faith and we thank you, we honor you, we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So we're continuing our study our course on faith. Last week, we covered chapter two. I'm just going to go ahead and share the course notes with all of us. We covered chapter two last week, our God's sovereignty, grace and faith. I just want to encourage all of you to take some time to go through the notes. You have the lecture notes with you. So go through it. In the class I won't be reading every line and explaining everything. I'm just going to give us the main essence of it but I want you to read the chapter. Take time to read it, underline it, study it. Any questions from last week? Any questions? Everyone's okay? So I'll just quickly make one or two statements here. What we mentioned is that God is sovereign and God is all-powerful. He can do whatever he wants. Nobody can stop him and he works as he pleases. And yet even the God is sovereign, he has invited all of us to have faith in him. Right? He has invited all of us to have faith in him and he makes his blessings available to us freely by grace to all of us. So there's no partiality with God. He's not partial to any person. He's fair to everybody. So he gives everything freely by grace but he invites us all to come and receive by faith. All of us have to come and receive by faith from him. So if you want to imagine it, you can imagine like this. Faith is the hand that reaches and takes what God is freely giving to us. Right? On the other side, God is giving freely to everyone. Same equal, no partiality. Same hand. The same hand of God is giving to all of us. Everything, same. But if we are going to receive, faith is the hand that reaches and receives what God is giving freely by grace. Okay, that's just another way to imagine it, another way to picture it. Right? And so while the norm, the normal way that God will work in each of our lives is like this. He gives freely by grace and we receive by faith. Now, because God is sovereign, there are times when He will work independently of faith. He will just move as a sovereign God and nobody, you know, can question that. He will bless so many blessings and He'll just do that sovereignly. Okay? So grace and faith does not take away from the sovereignty of God. God is still sovereign, but both work together in our lives. Right? Both are there in our lives. Now, let's go to chapter 3. Sorry. So that was just a quick summary of chapter 2. Let's go to chapter 3. And in chapter 3 and 4, I want us to focus on the ministry of Jesus Christ, the ministry of Jesus, how Jesus ministered. And this is very, very important for several reasons because first of all, Jesus is the eternal Word who became flesh. That means He's the Word of God who was embodied. That means we could see Him, you know. So the Word of God we can read, we can study, we can understand, but Jesus is the living Word whom we could see. It's the Word of God in action, the Word of God expressed for us. So Jesus, the living Word, is the perfect expression of the perfect will of God. He could never be wrong. What you see in the life of Jesus is the perfect will of God. He could never be wrong. See, if you listen to some preacher or somebody explained the Bible, okay, they could be wrong because maybe they're explaining it incorrectly and so on, but not in the life of Jesus. Because He is the expression of the perfect will of God. He could never be wrong. So if you and I see it in the life of Jesus, we can follow it. Just follow because that's what Jesus did. That's what Jesus taught us. So what we want to do now, in chapter 3 and 4, is if we look at how Jesus, what Jesus did concerning faith in His ministry, right? So in the three and a half years that Jesus was here on the earth, ministry, how did He, or what did He say and what did He do concerning faith? Okay, now there's a lot more that Jesus said and did, right? He taught about the Kingdom of God. He taught parables. He revealed the mysteries of God. The many things Jesus did, but we are going to focus in on the subject of faith because we want to learn from Jesus about faith. And also I want to just mention Jesus, the Bible says, is the author and finisher of our faith. Author means he's the beginner, the originator, author, the one who starts writing, you know, author of our faith. He's also the finisher, the perfect, or the one who brings it to fullness. He is the author and finisher of our faith. So the best person to go to to learn about faith is Jesus. You go to Jesus, see what we can learn from His life and ministry about faith. He's the author and finisher of our faith. So we don't have to, excuse me. So we don't have to, you know, doubt anything that we find in the life of Jesus concerning faith. So, you know, some people may object to teaching on faith. I said, oh, all we need is love. Just walk in love. Everything will be fine. Why are you emphasizing faith? You know, so on and so forth. But Jesus talks about faith. Of course, Jesus walked in love. Of course, He taught us about love. Of course, I'm not saying that's not important, but Jesus also talked about faith. So we must learn about faith as well. Okay. So don't let anybody tell us, you know, not to learn about faith and so on. And Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That means what He taught about faith 2,000 years ago, if He was teaching in the Bible College yesterday, and if He was doing this course on faith, He will teach the same thing. So imagine Jesus is here. Hello, good morning everybody. I want to teach you about faith. He will teach us the same thing today as He taught us 2,000 years ago. He's the same yesterday, today. He's not going to change. Oh, only for my disciples those 2,000 years ago. They were very old people. So I taught them like that. You're all modern people. I will change. No. Today, He will tell us the same thing about faith as what He taught His disciples 2,000 years ago. So we can be very confident about that. No doubts. Okay. So what do we find in the ministry of Jesus? So in this chapter and chapter 3, we'll talk about His ministry and faith in relation to that. In next chapter, we'll talk about His teaching on faith. They're both connected. I've just separated them into 2 chapters and I'll try to put them as statements so that we could just, it makes it easy for us to understand. So number 1, we see in the ministry of Jesus that Jesus recognized and responded to faith in those who came to Him. So there were great crowds of people who always came. Many, many people came. But Jesus recognized faith and He responded to the faith that was in the hearts of the people. It was like the Lord to people. And when He saw faith in the hearts, He responded to that. Example, the Roman Sancturian. So He was not a Jew. He was a Roman. And Jesus said, Jesus saw the Sancturian and the words He said. And He said, I have not found such great faith. That means, hey, here's a man who's got such great faith. He made a note of that. This man has great faith. Think about the paralytic and his four friends. They brought this man, was paralyzed, they brought him on a bed and they made a way to the roof. And the Bible says here in Matthew 9 verse 2, Jesus saw their faith. These four boys, they got faith. But what they did, they went onto the roof and made a way and they lowered the bed. Wow, great faith. These boys have faith. Jesus noticed that there's a woman with an issue of blood. He told her daughter, your faith, your faith. So even this woman with an issue of blood, the Kenanite woman, again, he told her, great is your faith. So what can we take away from that? What we can say is this, that the Lord Jesus still recognizes and responds to faith in our hearts. Or you can put it like this, my faith gets the attention of God. So if God sees your faith in your heart, oh, you know, I see that. I see Francis, I see friends, I see Vijay, how faith, our faith gets the attention of the Lord. He sees, he gets us noticed. So when you have faith, you can be confident that he notices your faith. He sees that you believe. You believe is what you're trusting in his word. You're leaning on his word. He sees that. Okay. Secondly, Jesus asked people if they had faith in order to receive. So when people came to him, sometimes he asked them, do you believe? And then he asked them if they had faith. So example, there was two blind men who came. What did Jesus ask them? He asked them, do you believe that I'm able to do this? He didn't ask them, did you all read the Bible? Did you all, you know, be good? All that is nice. But what he asked them was, do you believe? Do you pay? Do you trust? All right. That's what he asked. So when people came to him, he asked them. There was a man who came on with his son who was demon possessed. What did Jesus ask him? What did Jesus tell him? He told them, if you can believe, if you can believe all things are, positive. To him who? It's very interesting. It's very interesting. In the previous verse, in verse 22, the man puts the responsibility of Jesus. He says, Lord, if you can do something, please help. Jesus turns around and says, if you can believe, all things are positive. You think about it. We go to God, oh God, if you can do anything, please help me. And God looks back and says, hey, if you can believe, all things are positive. So we try to put the monkey on God and God puts back on us. That's what this man did. In the previous verse, he came, it is, oh Lord, if you can do anything, please help me. So this is not about his ability. Of course, he's able. Of course, God is able. So it's not a question on God's ability. The real question is, if you can believe, all things are positive, the immobilies. It's very interesting. So Jesus would do the same thing today. And you and I go to him for a healing, whatever, the same thing. He's not, it's not a question of whether he's able. Of course, he's able. It's a question of, if you believe, all things are possible to him who believes. Number three, okay, let me see in the chat if they have any questions. Any questions in the chat? Everybody's fine? All following me? Samuel, Arilla, Jethro, Gachin, Krisha, and there are others there. Who else? Everyone's okay? Jethro, Krisha, Nina, Prabhu, Samuel, Shiv Kumar, Surya. They're good? Okay. All right, if you have any questions, feel free to type in the chat and I will look at it from time to time. Okay. All right, let's continue. All right. So the third thing we learn from the ministry of Jesus concerning faith is Jesus encouraged faith even in hopeless. Now, this is actually a little difficult for us because when things are hopeless, we say, okay, finished. Give up. Jesus didn't do that. Think about some examples in the case of Jairus. So Jairus came to Jesus, he said, my daughter is sick at home. She's sick, still alive, but very sick. Come lay your hand upon her, she'll be well. So she's okay. They're going to Jairus' house. On the way, there's another incident that happened. So this moment comes with a show of blood and so on. So things are delayed. By the time people come from Jairus' house, don't trouble the master. Your daughter is already dead. Things have become worse. I mean, it's gone. What did Jesus do in that situation? It's very interesting for us to observe. What did Jesus do in such a situation? He didn't say, hey, you should have come to me yesterday. He said, if you had come yesterday, maybe something could have been done. He didn't say that. What did he say? It says here in verse 36 of Mark 5, as soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he said to the ruler of the synagogue, do not be afraid only, believe. Things have gone from bad to worse. Just did. It's hopeless now. But even in that situation, Jesus is saying, don't be afraid only. Think about that. Think about it. So you and I must be like Jesus. That's our call to be like Jesus. So what should you and I do in hopeless situations? We have the option, fear or faith. But he said, fear not, have faith. Do not be afraid only, believe. Do not be afraid only. So in that situation, don't be afraid, just believe. Another example is in the case of Lazarus and John 11. Again, we know that story. So Lazarus's died, is dead now for three days. And Jesus arrives on the fourth day and Martha is very frank. Lord, he's been dead four days in the grave, has been smelling now. Jesus told them, move the stone. So Martha is giving a very natural response. Of course, four days. This is what happens, natural response. Well, what does Jesus say? John 11, verse 40. Jesus said to her, did I not say to you, that means he's already told her before, right? Did I not say to you, if you would believe, you would see the glory of God. Sorry. If you would believe, you would see the glory of God. So even in that situation, Jesus is telling Martha, if you believe, you will see the glory of God. So two examples we have. In the case of J.R.S., now on the case of Lazarus. In both cases, the situations are bad. They've gone from bad to worse. They had actually sent information. Lord, one whom you love very much is very sick. But by the time Jesus comes, already four days late. But in both situations, Jesus is saying, only believe. If you believe, you will see the glory of God. So what we can take away is that even in hopeless situations, the Lord will encourage us to have faith. He'll encourage us to have faith. So nothing is beyond his reach. We have faith in God. Number four, we learned from the ministry of Jesus that he encouraged people to act their faith. What does that mean? It means that you start doing something aligned to what you believe, aligned to the Word of God. You start, you act your faith. And we see this on many occasions. You know, just give one or two examples here. There were these 10 lepers who, you know, they cried out to Jesus. And in verse 14 of Luke 17, Jesus tells them, go, show yourselves to the priests. Now try to imagine this in your mind. 10 lepers, they're all together. They see Jesus apart of the Lord have mercy on us. So maybe in their minds, expecting Jesus will come and lay hands on all of them, or he might do something. He doesn't do anything. From there, he says, go, show yourself to the priests. You know, it's like today we would say, okay, go show yourself to the doctor. Because in those days, the priests had to check and give the certificate that they are fine, those days. Today, it's like, go show yourself to the doctor or go get yourself checked. So Jesus didn't even, you know, lay his hands on them. He didn't pray. He didn't say anything to them. He simply says, go, show yourself to the priests. If you were neither there, what would we have done? And you would have looked at, hey, how's your hand? Still the same. How's your hand? Still the same. He's telling us to go and show ourselves to the priests, but nothing has changed yet. Nothing has changed because the Bible says, as they went, they were pledged. That means they had to turn around and start walking to where the priest was. As they went, we don't know how many steps they took. Maybe they went one kilometer, I don't know. So for one kilometer, they're looking at their hands, still the same. They're checking with everybody else and they're still the same. Where are you going? I'm going to the priest. Why? Jesus said, go show yourself to the priest. But problems are still there. Symptoms are still there. But the Bible says, as they went, you don't know how long, how far, but as they went, they were. It's a big lesson for us that we need to act our faith and there are times when as we are acting our faith, the miracle comes. We don't wait for the miracle and then say, Hallelujah, praise the Lord. No. You act your faith. You start doing something in line with the words. His word was, go show yourself to the priest. That was the word he gave. And as they start acting that in line with that word, they start going to the priest as they went. The healing began to happen. They were cleansed. So this is how Jesus ministered and his teaching or something that many times we have to act our faith first before we see the miracle. We have to act our faith. Look at another example. We are familiar with this. In John 4, we read about a noble man. He comes to Jesus and he has a son who is not well and he invites Jesus, please come to my house and my son is almost dying. And in this case, Jesus tells him, go home, your son lives. Go home, your son lives. Now, if it was our day, we would immediately WhatsApp. You'll send a message. Hey, is John fine? Then they can reply, John is fine. But those days, nothing like that. All he had was the words of Jesus. Jesus said, go home, your son is fine. And the Bible says here, the man believed the word that Jesus spoke and went his way. He believed the word and he went. So can you imagine now, as this man is making his journey back home, the only thing he has is the words of Jesus. Jesus said, go home, your son is fine. Your son is alive. That's all he had. Just those words. Go home, go your way, your son lives. Those are the only words here. That's all. And then he's going home with the expectation that his son is well because Jesus said, that's faith in action all along the journey. Jesus said, my son lives well. Jesus said, my son lives well. Jesus said, my son lives well. In his mind, I'm sure thoughts would have come. What have you son is not with? What if, you know, all those doubts in his mind, but he had the words of Jesus, your son is well. Go home. And so this man, he had to act his faith. So Jesus encouraged people or he actually required that people act their faith and then they experienced miracles. Same thing with the man who was born blind. Jesus put clay on his eyes. He said, go wash in the pool of Salom. So, you know, ask somebody, can you take me to the pool? Why do you want to go to the pool? Jesus told me to go and wash my eyes and say, as he went and as he went and did it, he received his miracle. So even today, when we exercise faith or when we want to exercise our faith in God, part of that is that we must act in line with our faith, act in line with what you believe. And that is you expressing your faith and that will get God's attention and that causes faith to produce in our lives. Number five, Jesus demonstrated that faith could affect nature. So we see Jesus, he's speaking to winds and waves in Luke chapter 8 in another gospel. There is the wind and the waves and he's speaking to winds and waves, natural elements to nature. We also see and we know that, you know, Jesus spoke to a fig tree because the fig tree. So Jesus is and in both cases in Luke chapter 8, he brought about the whole subject of faith. He said, where is your faith? In other words, he's telling them, his disciples, I'm doing this by faith. So when he calmed the winds and the waves, he talked about faith. When he cursed the fig tree, he spoke about faith. In other words, he said, I'm doing what I'm doing by faith. So we must understand our faith can dominate natural elements, things around us, circumstances, situations, elements of nature, our faith can dominate those things. Jesus showed that to us. So even natural circumstances, situations, our faith can dominate. Number six, Jesus accommodated people outside of his agenda in response to faith. So what does that mean? So when Jesus was in his earthly ministry, in that three and a half years of ministry, his focus was the people of Israel. And he was ministering to the people of Israel. But there were people who were not from Israel. They were not Jewish people. When they came in faith, he still ministered to them, the Roman Sancturian, the woman from Heina. When they came in faith, he still ministered to them. They were not Jewish. They were not of the nation of Israel. But he still ministered to them. So here's the thing that today, suppose you have to pray for somebody who's not from a Christian faith. They have not heard about Jesus. But if they come, some of you shared your testimonies, but if they come, can we pray for them? Yeah, we don't say, oh, we can't pray for you. Of course we can. I believe that God will touch them, minister to them, work miracles for them. If they come and ask for prayer, if they come saying, I believe Jesus will do this for me, of course we can pray. We don't say no. He has never turned them away, even in ministry. He didn't turn them away. They came in faith, he prayed, or he ministered to them. Number seven, you all with me so far? Yes? Okay. Number seven, Jesus helped people when they struggled in faith. That means when people were finding it difficult to believe. They had doubts in their head, and they were confused and all of that. He helped them. Example is this man who in Mark 9, we also read it in Matthew 17. He had brought his son, who was even possessed. First he brought them to the nine disciples. You imagine the story. Jesus and three of his disciples were away. They were up on the mount of transfiguration. So other nine disciples were there. So this man brings his son, who was troubled by demons. He brings him to the nine disciples, or nine of them are there. Surely they can help my son. And they have done it before. But on that day and that moment, they were not able to help. So his faith must have been really shaken, right? Because, hey, I brought my son to the disciples of Jesus. Nine of them, they couldn't help myself. What to do? And then Jesus comes. So this man is struggling in his faith because he's already had one experience where nothing has happened. And that's why he looks at Jesus. He says, Lord, if you can do something, nine of your disciples couldn't do it. If you can do something, please help me. And Jesus says, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. This man is very honest. He says, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. That means I believe, but I'm also struggling with doubts now. I'm also discouraged because just maybe five, ten minutes back, the disciples ministered, nothing happened. So Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. So he's honest. I believe, but I'm also having doubts. There's also unbelief. I'm struggling. Jesus didn't shout at him. Go sit in the class, learn about faith. He didn't shout at him. He's still ministered. He still helped the boy. So like that sometimes when people come and we are ministering to people, we believe there may be struggles, there may be doubts in our mind, there may be discouragement, there may be situations that have happened that have discouraged us. Don't think that the Lord will discard or disregard. He will still work. Just continue to encourage the faith and eliminate the doubts. Same thing in the case of Peter, as he walked on the water, Peter started walking on the water, he got out of his boat and he was walking on the water, but then he saw the waves, he saw the winds and he became afraid. He got scared and then he began to sink. So he started out in faith, but he ended in doubt. So you can imagine, he took a lot of faith to get out of the boat and start walking on the water, but he started out in faith. Then he saw the winds and the waves, he began to doubt, but then Jesus caught him and pulled him up. He said, Oh, you have little faith. I mean, why did you doubt? He said, Oh, you have little faith. Why did you doubt? He didn't give up on him. He helped him even though he was struggling in his faith. Just one more. I know I've given you a lot of points. We want one more. We'll take a break after that. So number eight, there are times when Jesus healed and worked miracles independent of the individual's faith. Remember, this is a sovereign sovereignty of God. We see many examples. At the pool of Bethesda, there was a man who was there for 38 years. He didn't even know who Jesus was, but he called Jesus. The blind man didn't know who Jesus was, but Jesus ministered healing to him. And of course, in the widow's son, the name, her son was raised back to life. So there are times when Jesus worked miracles, even when people did not have faith. So that's why, you know, when we minister to people, the ideal is that we should encourage them to believe. But sometimes, even if they don't believe, it's okay. Just pray, just minister, because God can move sovereignly and work a miracle. And that will bring them into faith. You all with me? Okay, so let's take a break. Now, I know it's a few minutes early. Any questions? I can tell. Let me see here. Okay. A lot of questions here in the chat. Okay, Jetshin, Jetshin Joel question. I understood faith works within me and not on God's ability because he's the author and finished my question. When it comes to my healing, I'm able to continue excess faith and God has healed me just according to his word. But when it comes to praying for others, especially my family, our loved ones, how does this work? Okay, so that's Jetshin's question is he's able to have faith for himself for his own healing. But when it comes to others, so Jetshin, the norm is that we help them also have faith because remember, faith is the hand that receives from God. So if at all possible, you share the promises of God with them and sending healing and then encourage them so that together you have faith in God. So that's the norm. But like we were just saying, there are times when God will work, but that's based on the sovereignty of God and God will work independent of faith. So there's nothing wrong in beginning to pray. But the norm is to share the word, encourage them to have faith, and then believe God together. Nina's question, while Jesus healed in response to faith, he was not limited by a person's lack of it. As in the case of the penalty, the penalty of the pull up at this up, it is a rare occurrence. What do we take away from this? Yeah, I think Nina, maybe towards the end we kind of addressed that that the norm is that he healed in response to faith. But then there are examples like the man by the pull up at this to where he healed independent of faith. And that's where we mentioned it's, you know, it's a sovereign work of God because he healed one while there were so many others who are around the pool at that time. All right, get chained again. At times I keep praying for specific people continually, but see not change to them. Is this lack of my faith? How do I go about praying consistent faith without being discouraged? Yeah, just and so if it all possible, try to get them to come into a place of faith. And we will see, and I think we mentioned this earlier also, are sometimes there are hindrances to the exercise of faith. For example, we said faith works through love. So if the people are, you know, holding unforgiveness, that could become an hindrance to the release of their faith. And so, you know, we may need to deal with that. And there are some situations where, you know, when you help somebody to release forgiveness, then they're able to then exercise their faith. So things like that, but most very basic, you know, just encourage them with the word of God, and they will be able to exercise their faith. Jat Shin, Jat Shin is a lady past. Okay. Thank you, Nina. Sorry, Jat Shin. I am, please forgive me. Okay. Krisha, should we take big, take big risks and steps in faith, thinking we're aligned with God's will? As we discussed earlier, God is sovereign. What if we are not aligned with his will and he does not answer? What should we do about his fear? So Krisha, what I would say is for all of us, as we learn how to exercise faith in God, first important thing is, see faith grows, faith grows. So we grow in status. So we would always encourage us to learn how to, learn how to exercise faith, even in small, in small things, in certain situations in our lives, you know, and then we grow in faith and they're able to believe God for greater things and bigger things. So we would, they would always encourage, you know, people, all of us to grow in our faith, you know, learn how to exercise faith, do it in small things, things that are not risky, things that are not, you know, that don't have great cons, damage in case, you know, we fail. So learn how to access faith in small things and then we go on to believe God for greater things. Okay, so that's, so that's how I'd encourage us to do that. So then we can, we can always look back and say, you know, God has helped me. Now it's like David, David killed the lion and the bear before he went out and faced the lion. So, you know, we learn how to deal with the lions and the bears before we go out to face our giants. So if we do that, that'll really help us in our journey. Any questions? Yes, Charisma. You can sit down. Okay, so Charisma's question here is, Jesus taught us if we have faith as a mustard seed, we can tell the mountain to move. And then on the other hand, he tells Peter, he rebukes Peter, oh, you are little faith. Why did you do it? I would understand it like this. So when Jesus taught about faith as a grain of mustard seed that can move the mountain, what he was teaching us is that faith is to, he was teaching us about the power of faith, that faith as small as a mustard seed can move a big mountain. So that's how powerful faith is. That does not mean we should be people of little faith. He's telling us that this is how powerful faith is. In comparison, a mustard seed can move a big mountain. That's how powerful faith in God is. So that's one side. But when he rebukes Peter, oh, you are little faith, the real issue is we need to come, we need to be people of absolute confidence in God, full faith in God. That's the thing he wants to teach us. So our goal should be to be in a place of full faith in God and we should understand that faith in God is very powerful, that it can move mountains. So that's the two questions. Okay, those of you online, hopefully you understood Charisma's question and answer. Okay, fine. Let's go for our break, 10 minutes, and we'll be back. Thank you.