Expectations of Faith
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And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
Who enjoyed that time of worship? Not my pride - but because I want us to believe what we just sang!
We sang this morning to Jesus:
When You move, darkness runs for cover
When You move, no one's turned away
Because where You are, fear turns into praises
Where You are, no heart's left unchanged
And that is exactly what we find in our passage today. Jesus removing the powers of darkness. And why? Because, very simply, He was asked to - and He does not turn away the humble heart that comes to Him for help.
And the fear that we find at the beginning of the passage is turned to praises after Jesus acts! And hearts were changed!
I want Jesus to act this morning!
I want our hearts changed this morning!
We sang this morning:
There is power in the Name of Jesus!
And that is important to always remember, because of how easily our eyes come off of our Sovereign Lord and onto - well, any number of other things.
It’s important to remember because of how readily we try to work for the Kingdom in our own power... and how we fail when we do.
Are we ready to stop working in our power and work in the power that God is ready to work through us? In the power of Jesus and His name?
Because we sang this morning:
We bring our expectations
Our hope is anchored in Your Name
The Name of Jesus
So that begs the question - brothers and sisters: what are we expecting God to do? What are we expecting God to do through us? Are we expecting much of anything?
What do we believe will happen - what do we expect to happen - when we by faith stop working in our own power and anchor our hope in Christ and Him alone?
Because we also sang this morning:
There’s an army rising up, to break every chain.
You see, we weren’t just singing to Jesus about Jesus, we were singing to Jesus about us!
Are we ready to rise up and be what God has called us to be? Are we ready for God to continue His work through us?
Well, that’s what I want to talk about today as we consider this passage.
And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them.
We saw last week - the Transfiguration - three Apostles and Jesus
So the “they” in this verse then is Jesus, Peter, James, and John - and when they came back from the mount of Transfiguration back to the rest of the disciples, they came back to a huge crowd gathered around the disciples.
And the Greek word used for crowd here means a large mass of people. But Mark still qualifies this by using a word that means great or many. This wasn’t just a normal crowd, this was a huge number of people - a great many, large amount of people!
And it also says that there were Scribes arguing with the disciples. Now, we have seen the Scribes before. They were the experts in the Old Testament. Sometimes the Gospel accounts refer to them as lawyers. And here they were, arguing with Jesus’ disciples.
Now, this is probably the reason the crowd was gathered around the disciples. If you remember back to your school days when there was a fight on the playground, it was almost unbelievable how quickly all the other kids would crowd around to see the fight, wasn’t it? It happened in a matter of seconds.
Well, that’s kind of what was going on here. There is an argument between the Scribes and the disciples of Jesus, and the crowd was drawn in by the argument.
And notice what happens when Jesus gets to them:
And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.
Here we have Mark’s “immediately” again. Jesus shows up, and just as quickly as the crowd probably formed around the argument, they run up to Jesus to greet Him.
But notice that it says they did so because they were greatly amazed.
Mark has used this word “amazed” before. Way back in chapter 1, we saw Jesus exorcise a demon from a man in the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath. It was the very first miracle of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of Mark. The demon addresses Jesus, and Jesus commands it to be silent and leave the man, and that’s exactly what happened.
And we read the reaction of the crowd there:
“And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.””
And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.
They were all amazed at this miracle. It was like nothing they had ever seen.
That word there is the Greek word θαμβέω - amazed or astonished
But the word in our passage today - where it says they were greatly amazed at just the sight of Jesus - is ἐκθαμβέω - greatly amazed! - it’s more amazed than amazed! - it means to be extremely amazed or astonished.
You see, Mark is setting the scene here for us using very descriptive language. There wasn’t a crowd, there was a huge crowd. A unusually large amount of people. And when they see Jesus, they aren’t amazed, they are extremely amazed.
The great crowd was greatly amazed!
But this time, Jesus hasn’t even performed a miracle… at least not yet. This great crowd was greatly amazed just at the sight of Jesus coming to them. Just His very presence among them was reason for more people to be more amazed than when Jesus performed His first miracle.
Why?
Because since Jesus was there, they were expecting something great! Just the sense of expectation was enough to work them up into a state of sheer amazement at Jesus!
Do you see? They weren’t amazed because Jesus had performed a miracle, they were amazed just because He was there and they knew He could.
They weren’t amazed by what Jesus had done, they were amazed by what Jesus could do - what He was yet to do, and they didn’t even exactly know what that was yet!
And here is where I ask my favorite question: what about us? Are we amazed by our Lord?
And I think I can speak for all of us when I say, “yes” - when I think about what He has done for me, when I think about how undeserving I am, when I think about Who He is and what it took to save me - yes, I am amazed beyond words! I am amazed by what He has done.
But what about what He is about to do?
The problem is that our finitude limits us in many ways. So does our self-centeredness. And I don’t mean that in the sense of selfishness, I mean that we only have the ability to see things from one point of view - our own.
Because we see the world through the lens of our past experiences - my upbringing, my hardships, my accomplishments.
And what we tend to look at through that lens is, well, the present. What we are doing now. Where in life we are now. What we’re trying to accomplish now. So what happened in the past determines how we deal with our present.
So when it comes to our faith - our reliance on Jesus, our gratitude - we tend to look backwards. At what He’s done for us. And it really is amazing. We look at how far He has already brought us. And it truly is amazing.
But as Christians, God calls us to even more than that. Because - and this is important - the moment we placed our faith in Christ, and we repented of our sins and the Spirit made us new creatures, it did nothing to change our past, did it? The things we did before that were done. The sins we committed, we committed.
In other words, our faith has nothing to do with our past.
What did change, was our present condition and our future reality. We are no longer sinners destined for hell, we are sinners save by grace destined for glory in Christ Jesus!
And our eternity - ETERNITY - began. Right now, where you sit and where I stand, we are already living out our eternity. And God was even gracious enough to include in His Word a glimpse of our future when we will see Him face to face.
And for the present, that means we live as citizens of heaven - eternal citizens of heaven - who carry out the Great Commission so that when that moment comes, and our Lord descends from heaven at the trumpet blast, there will be more citizens of heaven than there are right now.
In other words, our past is now irrelevant - that’s why it’s called GOOD NEWS! - what we’ve done doesn’t matter - and our present as Christians is to be lived entirely because of what will happen in the future.
So let’s get our eyes on the future. I am not saying we shouldn’t always be amazed at what Christ has already done - we absolutely should be amazed - we should be greatly amazed!
But we are also called to be greatly amazed at what our Lord is yet to do! And not just when He returns - what He will do between now and then - all the amazing works He will yet do and all the souls He will yet save!
(The amazing part:) And He will do it through us!!!! That’s what we should be expecting!!!!!
Brothers and sisters, we can’t be like the world. We can’t let our past - our failures or our accomplishments - determine our present. As the church of God, we must let our future decide our present, and be amazed - greatly amazed - at what God has in store for us next.
What He has in store for us as individuals who live in the world but are not of the world.
What He has in store for us a church that is called to show the world what eternity is by how we live now and how we love now.
And let’s be amazed that Christ promised He would do that work through us!
Like these people in our passage, let’s let His presence - and He is here, in His church! - let His presence and our expectation of what He will do next - amaze us!
These people in our passage were amazed at His presence, and at what He would do next.
And here Mark brings the story into greater focus. We see what the argument between the Scribes and Jesus’ disciples was about, and we see why there was this sense of amazement that Jesus was now there.
And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.”
So Jesus is like the teacher that comes to break up the fight and asks the participants why they were fighting.
And someone from the crowd answers Jesus. He said he came looking for Jesus. His son was possessed by a demon. But what’s more the demon caused bodily harm to the child. It made him mute. It made him deaf - which we know because Jesus rebukes the “mute and deaf” spirit in verse 25. It also gave him seizures.
As an aside, this is why we call this kind of episode a seizure. It comes from ancient times when people with seizures were believed to be possessed by demons - they were seized by the powers of darkness - and some of them actually were… but not all.
And the word translated “seizes” means to take a sudden hold of - it’s actually a form of the Greek word that transliterate as our English word “epilepsy”. As I said a few weeks ago, etymology excites me. But I’m also epileptic, so this is kind of a personal etymological interest for me. But more on that later.
Anyway, this man comes to Jesus looking for a miracle to get rid of this demon from his son.
This is reminiscent of the Syrophoenecian woman, or the deaf man from the Decapolis, if you’ll remember - like them, this man came specifically seeking Jesus to ask for a specific miracle.
But, when the man found Jesus’ disciples, Jesus was already up on the mountain with Peter and James and John showing them that glimpse of His glory. So, based on what the man said, it would appear that the man then asked Jesus’ disciples what they could do about it. And it appears that they were unable to do much of anything about it.
Now let’s think back a few months to when we looked at Jesus sending the Apostles out two by two to preach. If you’ll remember, we saw that they didn’t just preach, but they had power over unclean spirits.
We are told that they cast out many demons - that “many” the same Greek word in our passage that describes the crowd as “great”. So they didn’t just cast out a demon or two - they were casting out a great amount of demons.
And if you remember, Jesus told them to go without taking provisions. Why? Because to do the work they were called to do, they needed to rely on Him. They needed to rely on Jesus and His provision and His power if they were going to fulfill that mission. And they did.
Now fast forward to this event. It’s true, Jesus and the three Apostles that made up the inner circle weren’t here to help the man, but the other nine Apostles were there. Nine men who cast out a bunch of demons before.
What changed between that mission and this event?
I remember a conversation - I’ll never forget it - that I had at the first church I was part of after Christ saved me. I was the youth pastor at the time, and I was about a week away from teaching my first-ever whole church Bible study. And I remember the pastor of the church talking to me about the study.
I worked really hard to put together an hour-long Bible study (that took me literally 12 minutes - be grateful I talk as slow as I do now...) - but there in the pastors office, I remember going over it a little more slowly than I delivered it, and he asked some questions, and made some suggestions. And at the end of our discussion, he said to me: “this is a really good study.”
And of course, that made my day. My face must have lit up.
And then he paused and he said to me very seriously: “never forget brother, the pastor’s greatest enemy is pride.”
And over the years I have learned that he was 100% right, but I’ve also learned that pride has a way of sneaking up on you. Pride is shrewd. Overt pride like - “hey, look at how good I am!” isn’t a problem. It is the subtle pride.
It presents itself when I preach or counsel or minister using my ability, or my gift, or what I want to preach, and how I interpret any given passage. Because very subtly, you can take God out of the equation.
It is tempting during a busy week to just get to sermon writing and not pray over the passage early and often. To just start looking at Greek words without asking God to reveal something to me and to you through His Word.
After all, I’ve preached hundreds of sermons. Some of them pretty good! I can do this. I can just bang one out for this week like I have so many times before.
And all of a sudden, it isn’t God working through me, it’s just me working. And the fact of the matter is, I can do God’s Word no justice, and I can do you no good as a preacher or a pastor.
When I do that, I fail.
And millions and millions of powerless sermons have been preached throughout history when that kind of thinking - that kind of subtle pride - sneaks in.
And the Apostles, who had cast out so many demons - maybe hundreds! - who had done miracles in the name of Jesus so many times, they tried to cast out this demon.
They did.
And they failed.
And when any of us - when I, when you - when we serve in any capacity - no matter how small we may think it is - if we do it, it won’t do much good. No matter how good our intentions are - no matter how much we do it because we love God and our church family - if we do it, it will lack the power of God.
And when we as a church start to decide what ministries to run or what outreach to do - if we do it, it will not reap fruit. If we as a church decide who and what we are going to be as a church - if we do it, it will not be done in God’s power.
Because it’s His work, not ours. There is power in the name of Jesus! Not in Lee, not in the teaching team, not in the elders, not in the leadership team! In Jesus!
And that’s why Jesus says to those nine Apostles, and the rest of His disciples:
And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.”
Jesus tells them this is about faith. But not just faith - their lack of it. Ouch.
He calls them - His own followers - a faithless generation.
Now, may commentators try to talk around this and say Jesus wasn’t talking to His disciples, but He was talking to the Scribes, or to the crowd, or in a general sense. But I believe this was pointed directly at His disciples.
In Matthew’s account, after Jesus exorcises this demon, we read this:
“Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith.’”
Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Jesus was rebuking His own disciples - some of whom had already done miraculous works in His name - for their lack of faith in this instance.
And we need to understand what the Bible is talking about when it talks about faith.
When the Bible talks about faith - and this is important - it is always with a view to the object of our faith - Jesus Christ. Our faith has little to do with us - and nothing to do with our power - and it has everything to do with the unchangeable, all powerful object of our faith.
So that means, Jesus is rebuking His disciples for trying to exorcise this demon and leaving Him out of it.
They tried to do it. So they lacked the power of God. So they failed.
Because they lacked faith - they lacked reliance on God and His power. They believed they could do this. They forgot that it was never them that did such things - it was only ever God - it was only in reliance on Him that they cast out a multitude of demons before.
And that’s why Jesus rebukes them for their lack of faith. That’s why He gets frustrated with them - and rightfully so.
So Jesus reminds them where their power comes from.
Let this be a reminder to us where our power comes from!
It’s only ever from Him!
And that’s why He asks to have the boy brought to Him.
And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
As we have seen with other demons, the demon in the boy has a very strong reaction to the presence of Jesus. And the demon seizes the boy and throws him down in convulsions - it’s a seizure like the father described.
And Jesus sees this and asks the father how long this has been happening, and the father reveals the true suffering this boy has been through. This has been happening since childhood, he says.
The word used for “childhood” here usually refers to a child under seven. We don’t know how old the boy is here, but you get the impression from the short answer “from childhood” this had been going on for quite some time.
And the father tells Jesus that the muteness and the seizures are only the tip of the iceberg. The demon sends the boy into seizures in situations where he can get really hurt, or even die.
2002. I couldn’t drive. Jenine driving Livi to Belleville then me to work - seizures are dangerous!
Seizures for this boy were dangerous!
This demon would seize this boy and try to really hurt him.
It tries to burn him. It tries to drown him. The father is convinced this demon wants the boy dead.
Can you imagine how desperate this man must have felt. He had almost no hope.
No hope, but Jesus.
He says: “BUT” - (always pay attention to the “buts” in Scripture!!) - this man of faith says: my child is surely going to die, BUT - I have nowhere to turn, BUT - Jesus, I am scared and desperate and powerless to do anything about it BUT...
Jesus, if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.
He throws Himself on the compassion of Jesus! It is the best thing anyone can do!!!
And look at what Jesus says:
And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”
And when Jesus says “if you can” He is repeating the words of the man. He is mimicking his exact words - in the Greek, the construction is exactly the same.
The man says “if you can.” And Jesus says, as if to point out the ridiculousness of the statement - “if you can”?
And why is it ridiculous?
Jesus tells him: because - “all things are possible for one who believes.”
Jesus brings this back to faith!
He tells this man all things are possible through faith.
Think about that - it is an unqualified statement that JESUS made - all things are are possible through faith!!!!
We see this in more detail in Matthews account. As we saw, the disciples ask Jesus why they couldn’t cast out the demon, and:
He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Why will nothing be impossible for the one with faith? Well, remember what the Bible means when it talks about faith. Nothing is impossible for the one with faith, because nothing is impossible for the object of our faith!
All things are possible through faith because all things are possible with God.
The man says “if you can”. Jesus repeats back “if you can.”
Then Jesus tells the man - with faith YOU can. Because Jesus is saying to the man “I can!”!
In other words, the man says to Jesus “if you can”, and Jesus says, “yes I can!.”
Brothers and sisters, yes Jesus can (say it with me - “Yes, Jesus can”). When we are scared and can’t - Jesus can! When we are desperate because we can’t - Jesus can. When we are powerless to do it - Jesus can.
And through faith, Jesus will!
And how many times have we thought about all that we could do with that kind of faith!! How many times have we thought about what Jesus said - that if we have even small faith - faith like a mustard seed - we could move mountains!!!
But how many mountains have we actually tried moving?
Where is our faith??
Well, the man here felt much the same. He wanted to believe. And He did. He believed Jesus could. That’s why he came seeking Him out to begin with.
But then the disciples tried and failed. And then Jesus came and the demon took such a hold on the boy. And the man felt so desperate. He even questioned Jesus by saying “if You can do anything.”
So Jesus tells him that he needs faith - that he needs to believe. Not that Jesus could, but that He would. That He would have compassion and act on behalf of him who had that faith.
This man had to throw himself on the compassion of Jesus! I repeat what I said before: It is the best thing anyone can do!!!
And then the man utters one of the most beautiful lines in all of Scripture - in all of human history!
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Jesus told this man to believe, and immediately, Mark says, he cried out to Jesus. Because what else can any of us do??
And he said “I believe; help my unbelief!”
“I have faith, Jesus, but my faith is weak! Grow my faith, Jesus!”
“I have faith, but am not sufficient for this task, so give me greater faith, Jesus!”
Who here has not felt this before? Maybe many times before?!?
Who here has not believed the great promise of our Lord that we could move mountains, but when standing before the mountain lacked the faith to even try?
Who here has not had complete faith that Jesus could, but shied away from what needed to be done because we in practice had very little faith that Jesus would?
Who here has not believed with all they are and all they have that what matters is where they will spend eternity, but then lived as if what matters was this world?
Who here has not believed with their whole heart that Jesus was all they needed, yet coveted earthly things?
Who here has not believed that Jesus was their true source of joy, yet neglected their relationship with Him for temporary pleasures?
Who here has not committed, and recommitted, and recommitted again to “get serious” and pray and read their Bible and serve their church family and meant it, and then found themselves exactly where they were months later, making that same commitment again?
Who here believes, yet doesn’t need Jesus to help their unbelief??
If you raise your hand, I’ll call you a liar.
Because this man verbalizes the cry of our very souls. “Jesus, I believe. Help my unbelief!”
We believe - and we do.
But we need to cry to Jesus to help our unbelief, and He will!
Like He did for this man:
And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
Jesus saw the crowd, the great multitude of people, and He showed them all that He responds to the cry of faith!
And He commands the demon - the mute and deaf spirit - to leave the boy. And after one last convulsion, the demon is exorcised and the boy is left motionless, as if dead.
And then Jesus - after working the miracle out of His great compassion - He lovingly takes the boy by the hand and lifts him up.
Jesus could.
Jesus would.
Jesus did.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus still will!
Because our Savior did what He does, because He is Who He is. As He said to Moses from the burning bush - I AM WHO I AM - and He doesn’t change!
So He will still do what He does because, He will be Who He is, always and forever.
He is the God Who - out of His great compassion and immeasurable grace - He is the God Who acts on behalf of His people.
He alway has been - from the the Garden of Eden after the Fall, to the calling of Abraham, to the preservation of Israel, to the return of the remnant to the land, all the way to Calvary where He gave everything for our sake.
He is the God Who acts on behalf of His people.
He still is. The God Who is making us - right now - by His Spirit and through His Word - right down to the very words we are looking at today - He is the God Who is acting in us, Who is helping our unbelief, and is making us more like Him.
He is the God Who is acting through us to continue His work of grace and compassion!
He is the God Who acts on behalf of His people.
He always will be. He is the God Who will work through each of us to make us even more like Him - Who will work in and through us to shine His glory into the world through our lives and our love - Who will save the souls of dead men and women and make them alive in Him - and Who is coming again to be with us forever.
He is the God Who acts on behalf of His people.
The question is, what will His people do?
What will we do?
Well, we aren’t quite done with our passage. Look at what happens next:
And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”
Like we’ve seen before, once the disciples are alone with Jesus, they ask the question they didn’t want to ask before.
“Jesus, why couldn’t we cast the demon out?” And in the question we see the answer. They asked why WE couldn’t cast the demon out.
That subtle pride sneaked in. And they didn’t even know it.
So Jesus again reminds them Who has the power, Who they need to rely on, and Who can help their unbelief.
And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
Why could they not cast it out? Because they were relying on themselves. On their power.
So Jesus effectively points them away from themselves and to God.
Very simply, if they wanted to do it, they needed to humbly ask God to do it. They needed to pray to the One Who does the work in and through us.
And so do we.
Three things to remember:
We need faith:
We need faith. Something we know, yet don’t often enough think about. We need faith.
It’s not credulity - not a blind faith. No! We believe God will, because He always has, and promises He still will! (The substance of things hoped for!)
We need faith that God can.
We need faith that God will.
We need faith that God is.
Because we need to.
Brothers and sisters, we need to rely on God to work, because we need to work.
We need faith. And we need only turn to Him and ask, and He will not turn away the request of a humble heart.
2. We need to pray
Like I have said many times before, only God has any power (nobody else has any).
God calls us to tap into that power. Why? To do what He has called us to do, to be what He has called us to be, and to increase our faith!
Prayer doesn't change God (sovereignty - God ordains that we will pray, and He chooses to act independently - ordains the ends and the means - but he ordains that He will act according to our prayers we are responsible to pray).
And when we pray, God acts. And when He acts, it increases our faith (see number one).
Prayer is not just how God works His power in the world, prayer is God’s power at work in us!
Burk Parsons (@BurkParsons) tweeted at 9:34 PM on Fri, Oct 02, 2020:
We don’t believe in the power of prayer.
We believe in the power of God, and that’s why we pray.
(PRAYER WALL) - let’s all pray, because God will act, and it will increase our faith
3. This is Jesus’ work
Who do we rely on to do the work? It depends on who we believe is doing the work!
Jesus promised He would do the work.
And we can expect that He will do just that!
Because He is Who He says He is!
Jesus - He didn't pray. He just acted in power at the request - the prayer - of the man. - Proves He is exactly Who He says He is! He is God in the flesh!
Dave L.’s first point of application last week was “Jesus is indeed the Majestic Son of God!”
That’s why we can be confident - why we can expect - that He will do what He has promised, and He will continue His work in and through His church - through MCC - through you!
Let’s move forward in the power of God - and the name of Jesus! - to see what God will do next through us:
With Expectation -
“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!” - William Carey
the order here is critical!!!!!
With Faith - it isn’t our faith that needs to be strong - our God is strong - and He is building our faith!
With Prayer - handing it to God, because it’s His work anyway.
And let’s always remember what we sang this morning.
We sang this morning:
God I need You, I need You, I need You
Every breath, every pulse of my heart
Christ have mercy, have mercy, let mercy abound
I need You, I need You now
Let that be the prayer of our hearts, because we need Him to move, to act, to increase our faith, and to be to us Who He is - a God that saves, a God that works, a God that keeps His promises, and a God that has promised He will do all of this, through us.