Faith That Moves Mountains

A powerful sermon on Faith That Moves Mountains. This message will transform your faith and strengthen your walk with God.

well good morning again and and welcome to our humble little abode here to our family i am so pleased that each and every one of you could be here i'm glad to be back i was actually blessed to be able to preach a sermon last week at uh kinderhook church up in valesia new york you know the church up there considers us to be their sister church we were formed in kind of the same way they were a company as we were came out of the same circumstances and uh wonderful people up there i was blessed to be able to be part of it anyway they send their regards to everybody down here as well today i wanted to talk about this idea of the importance of faith not just in our everyday lives but particularly how faith becomes important in healing because we're always praying for people to be healed or for ourselves to be healed but do we pray for a building of the faith in those people and what is the relationship between faith and the healing that we find within the bible i don't know if you've ever read any of the sermons or writings by charles spurgeon brilliant brilliant stuff and and he actually i saw three different sermons that he preached on or wrote about on this particular passage on mark 8 23 and 24. the reading is this it says jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village then spitting on the man's eyes he laid his hands on him and asked can you see anything now the man looked around yes he said i see people but i can't see them very clearly they look like trees walking around and this is a unique event in the bible where it took more than one try by jesus in order to totally heal the person of whatever it was that was ailing them and and um charles spurgeon wrote this he said had our lord cast all his miracles in one mold men would have attached unique importance to the manner by which he worked and would have surreptitiously thought more of it than the divine power by which the miracle was accomplished so that's what we're going to talk about today now jesus was a healer oh i'm sorry absolutely is this good enough to hear yeah okay jesus was a healer right i mean we can agree with that he did go around he attended to the physical needs and not just the spiritual needs but the physical needs of people and he did help to heal people as well and we can read this in the verses it says he would heal them by merely saying they were healed but you wouldn't know that because my computer is disconnected in a moment you'll know exactly what i'm talking about are you ready well we may not have a connection here today guys we may have to do this without it i don't know why oh i'm going to move this a little bit to the side because it is interfering with the signal there we go is that okay all right so that's kind of what we're dealing with here it's interfering with the signal to the um computer all right in mark 729 and john 450 we have examples where he would heal people by merely saying they were healed he would say your faith has healed you or you are healed or even from a distance sometimes that he would do it or he healed people by letting them touch him remember the lady who had the the bleeding for so long and she touched his his uh coat and he um she was healed uh this is in um matthew 9 20 and 14 36 or he healed people by him touching them many people he touched he laid hands on and he healed them and examples in march 6 5 luke 7 21-22 says at that very time jesus cured many people of their diseases illnesses and evil spirits that's important to note he didn't just heal them from physical illnesses and diseases and injuries but he also cast out evil spirits and he restored sight to many who were blind and then he told john's disciples go back to john and tell him what you have seen and heard the blind sea the lame walk those with leprosy are cured the deaf hear the dead are raised to life and the good news is being preached to the poor and that's what jesus did he went around and he met the needs of the people with whom he came in contact and it's important to note that in every single one of these cases but one that we're going to talk about the healing was immediate he touched them they were immediately healed they touched him they were immediately healed he said you're healed and they were immediately healed in every single case jesus does it on one swipe that's the power of his father in heaven and his ability or his the historical perspective in the bible of jesus restoring sight to the blind amongst all the other healings that he did right the lame and the death and those who were had leprosy and casting out evil spirits his trademark was really restoring sight to people that were blind and that was used as as a witness in the bible on many occasions in psalm 14 146 8 the bible says the lord opens the eyes of the blind now that's metaphorical as well as literal john 9 32 it says ever since the world began no one has been able to open the eyes of someone born blind so so they talk about where he healed people who may have become blind but here the miracle was that these were people that were born without sight so either it was neurological or some physical characteristic that prevented them from being able to see from when they were born and jesus was able to not just restore but to give sight to those people in john 10 21 it says others said this doesn't sound like a man possessed by a demon can a demon open the eyes of the blind in matthew 12 22 it says then a demon demon-possessed man who was blind and couldn't speak was brought to jesus he healed the man so he could both speak and see a double miracle right there on somebody um and it was immediate and i want you to remember that because that's going to become important here acts 9 17 and 18 says so ananias went and found saul now remember when saul was when jesus appeared to saul the first time it was the lightning bolt and saul was blinded remember and they instructed him to go into town and there would be someone there who would greet him or meet him and this was ananias and he went he found saul and he said brother saul the lord jesus who appeared to you on the road has sent me that you might regain your what your sight and be filled with the holy spirit and again there's a literal and a metaphorical component to this his sight would be restored that he could physically see and also that he would be able to see jesus in the work that he was to do it says that you might retain your sight and be filled with the holy spirit now what is the next word instantly right immediately instantly something like scales fell from saul's eyes and he regained his sight and then he got up and was what baptized because the holy spirit was upon him so it wasn't just a physical healing for saul he then became paul but there's one healing in the bible that was significantly different than all the rest and this is the verse that we read it says when they arrived at bethsaida some people brought a blind man to jesus okay i want you to listen to that it says some men brought a blind man to jesus so they he didn't come to jesus they brought him to jesus and they begged him to touch the man and heal him now did the man ask jesus to heal him who was blind did the blind man ask jesus to heal him no who did his friends asked him to heal him and jesus took the blind man by the hand and what did he do to him he let him out of the village so for whatever reason jesus chose not to perform the healing there where they were in bethsaida it says then spitting on the man's eyes he laid his hands on him and he asked can you see anything now now when's the last time that you read in the bible where jesus performed a healing that he asked the person whether they were healed or not have you ever seen that i couldn't find another instance in the entire bible where jesus had to confirm with the person being healed that they actually were healed he says to the layman get up and walk did he say hey are you walking or when he raced lazarus from the dead he said hey lazarus are you dead when he restored the sight to the man outside of of um jerusalem did he say hey uh can you see this is the first time ever that jesus asked the person whether the healing that he had performed had worked it was so weird when i read this the man looked around so there's obviously some sight he looks around yes he said i see people but i can't see them very clearly they look like trees walking around so he's got this really cataract blurry myopic vision of what might be outlines or shadows of things is this weird jesus heals the person of his blindness then he has to ask him whether he's healed and then the man says well i'm not really healed i can only see shadows i'm only partially healed and then jesus placed his hands in the man's eyes again and his eyes were open second try his sight was completely restored and he could see everything clearly jesus sent him away saying don't go back into the village on your way home then a strange story the guy doesn't come to jesus his friends bring him he doesn't ask for healing his friends ask for healing for him jesus doesn't do it there where he normally might he walks him out of bethsaida out into the areas outside the village and then he takes him two tries to heal this guy of his blindness and then he tells him don't go back into the village strange story completely out of character for every other healing that we've ever seen within the bible i'm going to come back to this in a minute and we're going to talk about what makes this story so different but my first question is this what heals is it jesus that heals people in the bible or was it faith that healed people did jesus give them a healing or did he give them faith well let's see what the bible says in matthew 9 22 it says jesus turned around and when he saw her he said daughter be encouraged what has made her well her faith has made her well and the woman was healed when at that moment what's another word for that instantly immediately mark 10 52 and jesus said to him go for what your faith has healed you and how quickly was the man healed does it say instantly immediately the man could see so here we have an instance where jesus touched the person's eyes and they were instantly healed and he followed jesus down the road in luke 17 9 it says and jesus said to the man he didn't touch him this time he said to the man stand up and go and this is a man who had been crippled from birth right stand up and go and what did the guy do he stood up and he went and what does jesus say i have healed you your faith has healed you matthew 8 5-10 it says when jesus returned to capernaum a roman officer came and pleaded with him lord my young servant lies in bed paralyzed and in terrible pain jesus said i will come and heal him but the officer said lord i'm not worthy to have you come into my home just say the word from where you are and my servant will be healed not amazing you don't need to come and touch anybody it doesn't matter if we're a million miles away you just say the word jesus and i know my servant will be healed i know this because what i am under authority of my superior officers and i have authority over my soldiers i only need to say go and they go or come and they come i just say jump and they say how high right and if i say to my slaves do this they do it and when jesus heard this he was amazed turning to those who were following he said i tell you the truth i haven't seen faith like this in all of israel so what happened to the blind man that couldn't be healed instantly where it took a couple tries is jesus losing his touch is he slipping up a bit does he not have the power that we think he does that he's got to give it a second shot in order to heal somebody of blindness well the blind man didn't have the faith how did that happen well first of all it says his friends brought him to jesus and begged on his behalf they didn't say affirmatively lord we know you can heal our friend what did they do they said hey can you heal our friend did the blind man ask for healing he didn't he never said a word as a matter of fact according to the bible so the first part is he didn't have the faith to begin with he didn't ask jesus to heal him and his friends didn't present the faith that he could i want you i want to go back a minute notice here what it says is that the officer said lord i'm not worthy to have you come into my home just say the word from where you are and my servant will be healed they were still asking on behalf of someone else wasn't he he was asking on behalf of his servant who was sick but did did um did he display faith in knowing that jesus could heal him with just his word from there he did but in this this part of the story the man didn't ask for for help and his friends didn't display confidence that jesus could do it number two why didn't he heal him in in um bethsaida remember the historical perspective that side was not a place of faith it was a place where likely had he done it there he would have been mocked or his friends would have been mocked which would have affected their ability or their their ability to have faith even more because they would have been likely ridiculed for what was going on for even asking jesus for the healing so what did he do he took them by the hand it says and they led them out of the village so they bring their friend they ask if jesus can heal him they don't say affirmatively that they know he can and ask for him to do it but they they inquire as to whether actually he has the power to do that and so he takes him outside the city because the city is a place that's known for for not having a faithful population and then and then he takes two tries to heal him so the first time the first time when he spits on his eyes the man sees the shadows but he doesn't see all of it now why is that faith so the man didn't have faith but what happened after jesus gave him a partial healing now he believed that he could really do it and he told him it's not here in this um in this verse here but what did jesus tell him to do before this anybody remember the story he told him to look up he touched his eyes again and he said now look up and the man said i can see he had him look at the father he looked to heaven he began to develop faith because jesus gave him a partial healing i mean i don't know about you but when i when i first started to have a relationship with jesus my faith was a bit thin because i hadn't had experience it hadn't been tested you know what i mean people were like yeah you know god can faith will move mountains but you got to bring a shovel that's what people told me you got a part to play and all this and so i would be in a tough situation someone would say well if you prayed and asked god for for guidance or help in this and i'd be like yeah well no you know i kind of got to figure this one out on my own not from a blasphemous standpoint but from a standpoint of being a new christian in particular at that time my faith had never been tested i didn't have any experience with god solving any problems for me or helping me to walk through situations that that were so difficult that i couldn't do it on my own now as as a more mature christian although not as mature as i'd like to be i still have situations sometimes that come up where there's there's a critical component to it and then after it's all over and i've messed it up so bad trying to fix it someone will say to me well did you pray about it i may have told you this story once before but many years ago i had a health condition that had been with me for an extremely long period of time a year year and a half and i i couldn't i couldn't do anything i tried every herb and natural remedy that there possibly was and i called uh um and i spoke to dr susan knows the doctor's name i can't remember but it was at uc pines and i made a an appointment to have a telephone um you know a visit and i talked to this doctor and i explained everything and the symptoms and he had the lab work that i had done and everything else and he said would you try this and i said yes and how about this i said yes did you try that i said yes what about that and everything he said well it sounds to me like you've done everything that i could possibly think of to try to deal with this he said let me ask you a question have you prayed about it and i went you know no i haven't i've been too busy trying to fix it i didn't have time to pray about it because i've been too busy trying to figure out a way to to get rid of this problem and so he prayed with me right there we prayed together and the next morning when i woke up it was gone and it's never come back now i'm just going to tell you that that none of the herbs healed me and none of the treatments and none of that stuff that we talk about that's great for natural health none of that healed me none of it it was the prayer it was having faith and believing that god could if he wanted to heal me of this and that the next morning when i woke up it was done this man that jesus went to heal of his blindness the reason they took two tribes wasn't because of jesus it was because of the faith that this man had and what he did was he tested him first and he gave him a little bit of vision maybe this person had never had any vision before and what he saw were shadows but it was more than what he had had and he came to believe that jesus could do something for him and he told him to look up and his vision was healed sometimes we need just a little taste of success in order to believe that jesus can heal us not just of our physical problems but of our spiritual and emotional and and um other problems that we might we might have you know being sick isn't the worst thing that we can encounter being at least physically sick isn't the worst thing that we can have so the 64 thousand dollar question is this was jesus not able to heal the man in one try could he have yes okay was a man's faith strong enough you know i don't know the answer to this i mean i believe jesus has the power to do it but is it his power alone that heals us or is it his power and our faith that heals us the blind man progressed from no faith to a little faith and then from a little faith to faith that jesus christ could change his life that's that's a great promise for me because there are times when i feel like i don't believe i talk to talk but i don't necessarily walk the walk i might get up here and preach about it but when the hammer hits the other shoe drops sometimes you might see me acting a little different than what i might talk about up here i might become scared and all of a sudden maybe i'm not confident that anything could solve this problem whether it be jesus or not and what happens is there's this little partial healing that comes to me or a partial message or some event that occurs that's that's interim to what i'm looking for and now i remember that it's god that's working in my life that causes every good thing to happen my friend henry used to say he said when something bad happens i never blamed god he said because i know why it's happening it's because we live in a fallen world and it's because of me the decisions and the choices that i've made he said when something good happens to me i say why me god not when something bad happens there are people who start out with a small amount of faith when they come to church newcomers but the longer they're around jesus not around us but the longer they stay connected in their relationship to jesus the stronger their faith grows that's the beauty of a church to me is that we are here together as a family we're going to go to a picnic today and we're going to speak words of encouragement and lift each other up before jesus today and that people who have little faith will have more faith as we go through that mark 8 25 says and he put his hands on his eyes again oh actually i do have the verse here and it says and he made him look up now has jesus ever done that before when he healed someone of no he didn't he made him look up and he was restored and saw everyone clearly because after that first attempt he believed that jesus could in fact heal him healing requires faith matthew 17 14 to 21 says it starts this way at the foot of the mountain a large crowd was waiting for them a man came and knelt before jesus and said lord have mercy on my son he has seizures and suffers terribly he often falls into the fire or into the water so i brought him to your disciples but they could not heal him jesus said you faithless and corrupt people how long must i be with you wow that's quite a rebuke for a father asking for healing for his son right we bought him to the disciples and they could not heal him maybe they didn't believe that the disciples could heal him maybe they believed only jesus could heal them right so he says you of little faith how long must i be with you how long must i put up with you you bring the boy here to me and jesus rebuked the demon in the boy and left him and from that moment on the boy was well afterward the disciples asked jesus privately why couldn't we cast out that demon and he said what you don't have enough faith so who is he talking to when he said you faithless people his disciples so not only not only do we need faith to be healed but the people who are praying for us they what they have to have faith that we can be healed as well i mean how was it that jesus was able to heal there were two parts to it one is the faith that the person had healed them and jesus faith in the power of the father healed those people as well you don't have enough faith jesus told them i tell you the truth if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed you could say to this mountain move from here to there and that would move nothing would be impossible faith can move mountains miss white writes this she says it is not enough to say i believe we must exercise the living faith that claims the promises of god as our own knowing that they are sure and steadfast the enemy of our souls would be glad to steal away these precious promises from us and cast darkness before our eyes so that we should not be able to appropriate the good things that god means that we shall have god is waiting to do great things for us as soon as we come into a white a right relation with him but if we hold ourselves in doubt and unbelief the enemy can keep control of our minds and intercept the promises of god i i think about that god's promises they're on the way here and then what happens is there's this faithless part of me and it acts as a filter just like if i put this too close to the computer it interferes with the signal to the to the monitor to the um projector and we can't see it anymore and just as that signal that that healing power comes from god my lack of faith acts as this filter if you will it gets in the way and it prevents that from coming to me from happening it says that unbelief always results in a great loss to our souls it was said concerning one place where christ visited he did not many might work mighty works because because they're there because of their unbelief christ cannot work in our behalf if we do not manifest faith in him we should train our souls to have faith in god but instead of this how many there are who educate themselves to doubt i've heard testimony after testimony and meaning in which there did not seem to be one word of genuine faith but which cast a shadow over the whole congregation it is not god's will that we should be in this position brethren and sisters it is our privilege to walk in the light as christ is in the light he is at our right hand to strengthen us and he tells us the greater works that he has done shall we do because he goes to the father he is ready to impart unto us the rich blessing and grace of god i mean here's the cliff notes on this if we have faith as small as a mustard seed then then god can impart upon us the ability to work miracles as well and maybe we just don't have the faith to do that so if i want to grow in my faith i need to one get out of bethsaida what does that mean why did he lead them out of the village because of the unbelief of the people there i need to change people places and things i need to walk away from those who are faithless i don't mean not witness or whatever but there came a time even with jesus where he knocked the dust off his shoes he went in he tried he preached the truth people weren't willing to hear the truth they didn't want to know the truth he wasn't going to beg him to do it he just said okay here's the truth now you have an opportunity to make your own decision you know i've told you before susan says everything happens for a reason sometimes the reason is i just make bad choices that's just the way it is we don't carry the center i know by you i'm not strong enough to carry a sinner i carry the message that's what i carry paul says i plant in apollos waters but god brings the increase our job is to plant a seed is to tell our testimony is to be a witness to another person we don't convert anybody i had a person one time that said to me well convince me that i should be a christian i said absolutely not it's not my job convince you of anything i'm a christian because of this here's my testimony you do what you want be around other people with faith that will encourage me if you're down and you're you're worried or scared or things aren't working well for you you better surround yourself with people of faith because they're just going to tell you it's going to be okay it might not be okay oh well but until it's not okay it's nice to think that it might be okay anyway right so we don't have to live in the dread of that during that time we surround ourselves with people who will pray for us and who have faith that their prayers will be heard by god develop your own story of salvation and share your faith with someone else spend more time with jesus i know people don't like this expression fake it till you make it what that means is act as though you have faith and eventually your brain will process that you are acting that way and it'll start to believe that and you will have faith after some time if you act as though you do in closing this comes from ellen white's it's called it's not fate and prayer it's faith and prayer chapter 30. it says faith is trusting god believing that he loves us and he knows best what is good for us thus instead of our own it leads us to choose his way in place of our ignorance it accepts his wisdom in place of our weakness his strength in place of our sinfulness his righteousness our lives ourselves are already his you hear that you know i was talking to to someone i know here been been to our church before and he said i i don't believe in god anymore and i said ah he's gonna be really disappointed when he finds out just because you don't believe there's a god doesn't mean there's not a god everyone's entitled to their opinion but not everyone's entitled to be right and just because you believe something that's not the truth doesn't um doesn't change the truth it doesn't obliterate it it says our lives ourselves are already his faith acknowledges his ownership and accepts his blessing truth uprightness purity have been pointed out as secrets of life's success it is faith that puts us in possession of these principles amen you know life is tough it's tough out there um whether you're just being a human being is hard but being a christian i think is harder because not only does society hold us to a higher standard but we should be holding ourselves to higher standards as well it's easy to become discouraged to become depressed um to live in fear about certain things i got that i've experienced all that probably far more often than i would like to and what happens is is the brain is only capable of processing one emotional component at a time have you ever noticed when things are bad they always tend to get worse you notice that when things are good they tend to get better because you can't experience both at the same time so you know if things are bad and getting worse in order to make them better you only have to make them good see what i'm saying so if you're in a downward spiral all you have to do is find a way to reverse it into an upward spiral and here's my challenge for you when you feel in that place quit trying to fix it yourself okay and simply surround yourself with people of faith that's all don't try to do anything if you don't feel like praying or talking to god don't do it but surround yourself with people of faith and soon what will happen is you will begin to you will begin to absorb that faith from those people as they speak about their own personal experiences and what god has done for them in their own personal testimony your faith will begin to increase and you will move from a downward spiral to an upward spiral things will go from being bad to being good and then they'll just get better and better and better until they get bad again and then you'll surround yourself with faithful people and then they'll get good again let's keep our expectations realistic this is a tough place to be but we don't have to sit in that bow of despond when we have faithful people around us that are willing to lift us up amen amen if you'll bow your heads with me may the lord bless you and keep you may he cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you may the lord lift his countenance upon you and bring you peace and everybody sad all right picnic in the park

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