Gtcotr/ws042909
Key Scripture: Mark 11:22 Have faith in God.
If someone were to ask me what I am, I would say that I am a teacher of the Word of God. My most studied subject in the Bible is faith and I love to
teach its power to heal the sick, move mountains, perform miracles, and
prosper the souls of the righteous. Faith changed my life and I know it will
change yours too.
Jesus lived by faith … Faith which affected every area of His life and
ministry. Jesus’ life was filled with mountain moving moments as He went
from the place of prayer to the place of prayer and did miracles in between.
Faith is a fruit of the spirit which grew in Jesus’ life due to His
relationship with God.
Faith will always be the result of relationship with God. How do we develop
our relationship with God? By coming to know Him through His Word and His works. The more we know about Him, the greater our opportunity to understand His Word, His Will and His Way.
So, as a teacher, teaching faith, I know that I must lay a foundation of and
properly prepare the soil of our souls to receive God’s Word and grow
greater faith. It is God’s will that every Believer be taught the Word and
Works of God. No one can beat a good Bible education … it will pay huge and eternal dividends.
Each week you allow me to give you the benefit of my decades of intense
study in order to better prepare your soul to grow great faith. Tonight’s
message is no different. Here I am again, preparing your heart to have faith in God.
As best I can understand at this point, Jesus was born around the year 4BC. It seems reasonable to assume that Mary and Joseph moved to the city of Nazareth, which is about 15 miles east of the Sea of Galilee, within the first 5 years of Jesus’ life. Jesus was raised the supposed son of a
carpenter along with His brothers and sisters like any other Jewish boy of
His day. He went to school at the local synagogue, learned to read from the Torah, grew up and worked to help the family with their needs.
In about the year AD26, when Jesus was 30 years old, He went to be baptized in the Jordan River near Jericho by His cousin, John the Baptist, who ministered in the spirit of Elijah as one crying in the wilderness,
fulfilling the prophecies of old. After this, Jesus was led by the Spirit of
God out into the wilderness of Judea where He defeated every temptation
offered by the devil.
Returning to His home town of Nazareth and to His home church, the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus preached the first message revealing who He really was. This message is recorded in the book of Luke, chapter 4, beginning along verse 18. The men who heard the message were so offended they seized Jesus and led Him to the edge of a cliff, determined to throw Him to His death. By the power of God Jesus turned and walked through the crowd who were unable to harm Him. He told them that no prophet is without honor, except in his own country and among his own people.
From that day Jesus chose the towns of Bethsaida and Capernaum as His home. He walked along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and found twelve men whom He called to be His disciples. He spent three years showing these men the love of God and teaching them about the Kingdom of Heaven. He invested Himself in these 12 and raised them up to continue the work of God in His place.
In about the year AD30 Jesus was betrayed by one of His disciples and
crucified on a Roman cross for no crime at all. His death was the promised
spotless sacrifice which paid the eternal price for all sin forever. Through
this sacrifice God reconciled mankind to Himself and opened a door to
eternal life for every person who believes in and receives Jesus as both
Lord and Savior.
The disciple who betrayed Jesus lost the position to which God had called
him. As the prophecies foretold, another person had to be chosen to replace this disciple as an Apostle to the Church. The remaining eleven disciples knew this must take place and determined among themselves to choose a replacement named Matthias. However, I do not believe that Matthias was God’s choice.
In fact, some 5 years later a young zealot, a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus, who had a reputation for persecuting Jews who believed in Jesus as Messiah, was on his way to Damascus to search out and imprison Jewish followers of Jesus. While still on the road before reaching Damascus Saul was suddenly surrounded by a great light and heard the voice of Jesus speak to him from heaven. As a result of this experience and the miracles which followed, Saul of Tarsus was converted, became a believer in Jesus as Messiah, accepted the call of God and began to preach Christ to the Jews.
People were astonished and afraid of Saul. Unsure of his motives many
believers would not accept Saul’s conversion. This however did not stop
brother Saul from serving his new found faith in Christ. With a show of
sincere and consistent commitment to the Lord, Saul of Tarsus, former
persecutor of the church, became known as Paul the Apostle, a servant of the living gospel of the Lord Jesus.
Given this divine intervention and personal commission by Jesus Christ, it
seems evident to many believers and accepted by scholars in all ages that
Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles was called and set into the place vacated
by Judas Iscariot, fulfilling the scriptures that another man would take the
place of the one who betrayed Christ.
Although Paul attempted to preach the gospel to Jews, he was not received and therefore was given to understand that he had been specially
commissioned to carry the good news of Jesus to the Gentile nations. Thus
we see his missionary journeys filled with gentile conversions carrying out
the great commission to the world.
When the Apostle Paul was finally imprisoned in Rome, many think about the year AD61, perhaps as late as AD65, he wrote some final letters. One such letter written was addressed to the son of a Greek man whom Paul had trained in the ministry. This disciple was at this time living in Ephesus where he was serving as Senior Pastor to the church in that city. The young man I am referring to is none other than Timothy.
What was the final admonition of this elderly Apostle of the Lamb? What were the last words of instruction and encouragement given to Timothy by Paul? Let’s look at 2 Timothy, chapter 2 and see.
2 Timothy 2:2 And the things that you have heard from me among many
witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others
also.
What were Paul’s parting words to Timothy? Simply … Pass It On!
Pass on the Good News … what Good News? The Good News of Jesus … God’s Living Word!
The same message Jesus preached in His first sermon that day in Nazareth…the Good News!
Luke 4
18 "The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach
the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To
proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set
at liberty those who are oppressed;
19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD."
1. You don’t have to be poor anymore
2. You don’t have to live brokenhearted
3. You can be free from physical bondage
4. Your blind eyes can see again
5. You can be free from mental and emotional bondage
6. Your inheritance has been restored
Jesus gave a six point outline and when they did not believe the Word, Jesus began to expound the reality of the scriptures by interpreting scripture with scripture. He did then what I do here tonight … teach you the Word by teaching you the Works of God in hopes to help you have great faith in God.
Jesus expounded:
Point 1: You don’t have to be poor anymore.
Luke 4
25 "Certainly there were many widows in Israel who needed help in Elijah’s time, when there was no rain for three and a half years and hunger stalked the land.26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a widow of Zarephath—a foreigner in the land of Sidon.
Point 2: You don’t have to live brokenhearted …
27 Or think of the prophet Elisha, who healed Naaman, a Syrian, rather than
the many lepers in Israel who needed help."
That’s as far as Jesus got in His exposition before:
28 When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious.
29 Jumping up, they mobbed him and took him to the edge of the hill on
which the city was built. They intended to push him over the cliff,
30 but he slipped away through the crowd and left them.
31 ¶ Then Jesus went to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and taught there in
the synagogue every Sabbath day.
In order to live by faith we must:
1. Learn the Good News
2. Live the Good News
3. Pass It On
