What Is Faith? How Do You Get It?

Dr. Dunkle, we call him, you all knew him as Mr. because he was the pastor here. But now he's a doctor. I guess he was a doctor then, but he didn't let it out so much. You know, I could just talk on and on about that man, but he's waiting, so I shan't not.

Thank you, Mr. Shoemaker, and good afternoon, everyone. It is a genuine pleasure to be back. As I mentioned a couple of people before, I feel like I've come home. I'm glad when I told that to people. They said, well, you are home. And that's exactly how it feels, and I'm glad to have Sue and Connor with me. It's always a delight when we're here, and to see so many happy faces. We're thrilled. I'm glad that Mr. Call came and whispered to me. He said, you know we still have two-hour services, so you don't have to rush. So I could cram this into a half-hour, I suppose, but I got used to the shorter services in Cincinnati, so I wasn't going to stretch it out too long. Given an addition to the announcements, just to remind everyone, when Mr. Call was listing the baptisms, he overlooked one, which is kind of a surprise because I'm pretty sure he was there. Courtney Call, her baptism was six years ago. If I know Courtney, she was purposely trying to keep it low-key. I want to launch into the sermon, but again, just to let you know, things are going along great at ABC, and I love it when I get to travel with the choir, partly because there's a potluck before services and there's the choir before I speak, so a lot of people don't care what I do. It won't be the most memorable thing of the day, and that's fine with me. But I love bringing them and showing them off. Really, I don't tell the students that much, but how proud we are of them. It's just a delight to get to work with them, and it's terrific. When I get to bring them to Portsmouth, well, actually, I didn't bring them. Mr. and Mrs. Sipes brought them, and I just followed along. I feel like I get to show off the Portsmouth congregation to the students as well, and it's a delight to do that also. I don't know if you noticed, this is one of the most international groups we've had in many years. I was thinking through my head, we've got represented on stage. We had the Philippines, we had Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico, and one student. We also have someone with us from South Africa. We had a couple of students that left us at the end of last semester from Germany and India. Thank you. How could I forget Ezekiel? And did I leave someone out? Okay, I was afraid I would because I didn't write it down. But what really makes me happy is we've got about that many Buckeyes in the class. So we've got Ohio pulling strong with it. I should mention, in case you're wondering, well, you haven't heard me in so long, you might think I normally sound this way, but it's been a full two weeks ago. I came down with a bit of a head cold, and it really just bothered me for a couple of days, but it took my voice. And so I've been croaking it out for the last couple of weeks. I keep thinking, when am I going to get back to sounding normal?

So I'll get back to my old ways of drinking plenty of water while I'm up here.

It's interesting. There are a lot of ways you can be inspired for a topic of a sermon, and certainly music is a big one, and we've heard a lot of that. It's not uncommon to be studying your Bible and have something stand out to you and say, wow, I hadn't thought of that before. I really want to bring a message about that.

Although I'll admit, more often it happens I'll hear someone else speaking on a subject, and I say, wow, that's a great idea. I should have thought of that. I'm going to go somewhere else and speak on some of that.

But I got an inspiration for this one from a place I don't normally recommend, and that's from Facebook.

Well, actually, some time ago I was going through my Facebook feed, which I don't do all that often, but somebody put up some little video clip and it said, can you believe all these songs will turn 30 years old this year? And I thought, hmm, what was that? So I thought I'd go ahead and listen, and there were a number that I recognized and some that I don't remember ever having been around, but one of them had a bit of a religious sound. It was a song called Faith.

And I thought, I think I've heard that song. So I went on YouTube. I also learned, if you've ever heard of a song, it's on YouTube.

And you can go, even if you don't know what it was called or who did it, a lot of times you can find it.

So this particular one was by a singer named George Michael.

And I wouldn't say that it was a particularly religious song, very catchy tune. But I remember, and of course I can't sing now with my voice, but over and over again it says, I gotta have faith. I gotta have faith, faith, faith.

And the guitar comes in, you know, and we'll go from there.

Now, of course, Mr. Michael wasn't... Boy, I wonder if anybody ever called him Mr. Michael. Wasn't quoting from the Bible, but the Bible says some important things. And I'll focus in on Hebrews 11 verse 6.

You don't need to turn there because I'm sure you all have it memorized. But Hebrews 11 verse 6 tells us, Without faith, it's impossible to please Him. For He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Okay, without faith, it's impossible to please God. Well, I want to please God. That's a good reason to have faith.

I thought of another well-known scripture. Well, actually, what it says is well-known. Most people don't think of Habakkuk, or Habakuk, depending on how you want to pronounce it. Habakuk 2 verse 4 contains the phrase, The just shall live by faith.

That principle is so important that the Apostle Paul quoted it three different times in his writing.

And although it's... Well, I'll give those to you, but there won't be a quiz later, unless it's on Mr. Call's quiz.

Romans 1 verse 17, Galatians 3, 11, and Hebrews 10, 35, all say, The just shall live by faith.

And the students can take a break. A lot of times they're looking at me, saying, Can you repeat that? You can see me Monday, and I'll repeat it.

But, you know, I want to be just.

Even more than that, I want to live.

So, to do so, as the song says, I gotta have faith.

So that's an important subject. I think it's worth considering exactly what faith is. And how do we get it?

Well, if you turn to Hebrews 11, when I mentioned it, I started doing it because I wasn't going to read verse 6, but you might remember that the very first verse of this chapter, not coincidentally known as the faith chapter, gives us a definition.

The author of Hebrews, who many of us believe was the Apostle Paul, said, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Now, this is one of what I've come in classes to start calling my grandma scriptures.

And I don't remember if I use that phrase very often while I was here in Portsmouth regularly. Okay, somebody's nodding. So I did. It goes back to my grandmother, who was the first member of our family in the church. When she came in, she started teaching my sister and I. In certain key scriptures, she thought we ought to know. And this was one of them. So now, all those years later, I think the ones that she taught us, those are the grandma scriptures. The funny thing is, I memorized this at the age of 10, and I remember having no idea what substance of things hoped for even meant. Let alone evidence of things unseen, as it said in the Old King James. It's like, what's that about?

Well, as I got older, I started reading Hebrews chapter 11. And even if I wasn't clear on exactly what substance of things hoped for might mean, I could see, well, if Paul, if his definition isn't as clear as I'd like, he certainly shows us what you can do with faith. Whether or not you know exactly how to put it into words, he shows people doing great things.

But still, it's nice to have a definition. So, I checked my trusty Strong's Concordance. The Greek word here for faith is pistis. P-I-S-T-I-S. Matter of fact, if you're really diligent, I'll give you the Strong's number. It's 4-1-0-2. So, pistis is most commonly described or defined, translated as faith. But it can also be translated as assurance, or belief, or trust.

A little lengthier definition says, the moral conviction of a religious truth. That's your faith. Or, it could be, if you're dealing with the teacher that you have faith in, it can be the moral conviction of the truthfulness of a teacher. And we could say that teacher could be God himself. Certainly, we should have faith in God.

Looking back at verse 6 of this chapter, it reminds us that the translators in English seem to believe in that. Because if you look down where it says, without faith, it's impossible to believe him. Without pistis, it's impossible to believe him. He who comes to God must believe. The Greek word for believe is derived from pistis. It's pistino. It sounds like I'm speaking Latin, but it's really Greek. Pistino, that's Strong's number 4100. It's actually the verb form of pistis. So it's basically the same word, only it's to...if faith is a noun, can I say to faith? No, we would say to believe. But to believe is to have faith. Or to trust is to have faith.

And that's good. I pulled out my Webster's Universal Unabridged Dictionary last week, and since then I had fun pulling... I actually brought it out of my office and showed everyone. I think it was here in this room where I started referencing it as my 20-pound dictionary.

And I've got a confession to make. I had a revelation a little over a week ago, because I thought of that as I brought it out. And since I had it, I took it next door to the mailroom, and I asked Mrs. Treadway who runs the mailroom if she would weigh it for me. She only weighs 6.5 pounds.

After all these years of calling it my big, heavy dictionary, it's not so heavy. But I'd like to think the meaning of it is still there. It didn't have as many different listings for the word faith as I thought. It had a few. And as I expected, though, almost all of them included the words belief or trust within their definition. The one that it gave as the essential definition was, faith is belief which is not based on proof. It's a belief that's not based on proof. And that really matches with what Paul wrote here in Hebrews 11, verse 1.

When you don't have proof, when you don't have any evidence, what you do have is faith. It is your proof. It's your evidence of what you don't see. When substantial proof is lacking, faith is your substance. To the person who has faith, it's substantial. We could say it's enough to act on, enough to base your life on. And that's important. That's a definition that I like to use for faith. To have faith is to believe in something enough to take action. You believe in it so much, you're willing to step out and act on what you believe.

The Bible has a number of examples, and some might say I'm foolish because I'm going to turn away from this long list of examples right where we are. But I'd like to look at some that have a little more of a narrative. If you will, join me back in Matthew chapter 14. This is one of the better-known stories of a person who has faith, but then his faith sort of wavers.

Matthew 14 will begin in verse 21. Now, this is after a story where Jesus Christ miraculously fed a large crowd with just a small amount of food, and then, of course, the people disperse. So, actually, I'll pick it up in verse 22, where it says, "...immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he sent the multitudes away." And when he sent the multitudes away, he probably looked around and said, Wow, a moment to myself.

He went up to the mountain by himself to pray. Now, when evening came, he was alone there. But the disciples that headed out on the boat, they're working their way across. And in the middle of the sea, of course, it's not a real large sea. This is the Sea of Galilee. Who whispered that? Thank you. I had this mine block there. It's not overly large, but they're out there in the middle, and they're having trouble. The wind's blowing the wrong way. Jesus figures he can catch up with them.

So in the fourth watch, this is verse 25 of the night, Jesus went to them, walking on the sea. That's one of the most famous things about Jesus. He could walk on water. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled. They thought, Ah, it's a ghost! They cried out with fear. Immediately, Jesus spoke and said, Be of good cheer. In other words, don't worry. It's me. Don't be afraid. Peter said, Well, Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water.

He said, Come on! So Peter, you can imagine. He said, All right. He steps out over the boat, and he comes walking on out to Christ. But, as the story goes, when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid. Beginning to sink, then he cried out, saying, Lord, save me! Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him. He said something famous, Oh, you of little faith! Why did you doubt? Now, we see Jesus performed the miracle.

Of course, he relied on the Father to do this work. But Jesus knew that humans cannot actually walk on water. But he also knew that the Father would do what was needed through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so, Jesus trusted his Father. He had faith, and he walked on water. At first, Peter also had faith. Well, at one point, Peter had faith that this miracle was real. That was his master standing on the water.

And Peter said, Well, if Jesus Christ can do this, he can make me walk on water. It's interesting. Remember, Peter's work for a living. He was a fisherman. He must have had a lot of experience in the water. I'm sure he'd been in it. We know from the accounts later on that he was an adept swimmer.

So he knew that man doesn't walk on water, but he trusted Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, to make him do what his experience, what his physical senses told him was impossible. But then the story shows, as the saying goes, Peter was of two minds on the subject. As he walked out there, he started looking around, and he started to believe his eyes more than his faith. He saw the wind blowing and the waves, and he doubted.

Doubt started driving out his faith. And it says he began to sink. Now, it's not an important theological question, but I sometimes wonder, how did he just drop like a rock? And Jesus had to reach down into the water and pull him out, or I sometimes wonder if he's walking and he starts going like this. And, Lord, save me! It doesn't matter either way, but one of them, obviously, is a lot more funny.

But what Christ said to him shows us that doubt is an enemy of our faith. It makes our faith little. He said, oh, you of little faith. Before the doubt entered, Peter had faith, and he acted on it. It wasn't just an idle thought.

He risked his life. It reminds us, I'm not going to go there, but another important grandma scripture is James 2, verse 20, where we're told, faith without works is dead. Not only should our faith be something that makes us willing to act, but we have to go forward and to act. But in a sense, we've moved now from, you know, we've been discussing definitions of faith to talking about what can eat away and destroy our faith once we have at least some of it.

You know, we could probably come up with a lot of things, a long list of what can damage our faith. But starting from this story, it's worth, I think we can use that phrase that Christ used. And I'll admit, I'm far from the first one to latch in on that, but he had that phrase, oh, ye of little faith. There are four different places in the book of Matthew where we see that, and it describes something different. Each one of them we could call an enemy of faith.

And I think if we know, if we can identify some of the enemies of faith, we can focus on trying to counter them so that they don't destroy our faith. We can find another one earlier in the book of Matthew in chapter 8. Matthew 8, beginning in verse 23. Interestingly, this is a fairly similar incident in that it again occurs out in the water on a boat.

So, Matthew 8, beginning in verse 23, we see here again, He, that is Jesus, got into a boat. This time He doesn't send them off in advance, but He gets in the boat and His disciples follow Him. And as they're out there, it says, Suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea. The boat was covered with the waves. But He was asleep. I imagine Jesus Christ with the preaching and people coming to Him and healing. He's eager to get a nap whenever He can. So He falls asleep. The disciples now are pretty scared. They've been, you know, many of them are fishermen. They know the dangers of being out on the water during a storm. And they woke Him up and said, Lord, save us! We're perishing. He woke up. He said, Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? So He rose and He rebuked the winds and the sea. And there was a great calm. That reminds me of another joke from when I was a student. He said, Boy, that calm was great. It was funnier 30 years ago. But the men marveled, saying, Who can this be? Even the winds in the sea obey Him. You know, Christ's words here are showing that He perceived fear as something that was destroying faith. And of course, that can happen to us. It makes sense, as I said, a bad storm at sea often meant death for those who were caught out in it. So the disciples, they didn't have any tangible proof that they weren't going to die. All they had was faith. But their faith was tied to this man who was sleeping. So you could see where they're a little concerned, they woke Him up. Is it hard to imagine, or is it hard to look back in your life and see where and when fear has been a factor eating away your faith? You know, I could look at my life and I can find a number of cases. So we know that it's there. We know it's something we have to identify and attack it. Focus on eliminating fear as an enemy of our faith. Now, the truth is, we could have an entire sermon or series of sermons devoted to how to deal with fear. And, sorry, Mr. Call, I'm not trying to create work for you, but I'm going to defer those to another time, because I want to move on to some of the other, you know, enemies of faith. You know, it doesn't have to be life-threatening situations. Going back a little further towards the front of Matthew in chapter 6, Jesus Christ, in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, identifies another enemy of faith. Here, I'll go back to Matthew 6, beginning in verse 25.

I remember when I, before my teenage, my dad had told me, if I reach six foot, I can make a good basketball player. And I thought about it and worried. But 610 was all I ever got. It showed in my game. So, worrying, you're not going to add a cubit, you're not even going to add two inches.

What did I say? Oh. Okay, it's been a rough two weeks. Yeah, I made 510. Yeah, if I were 610, it would show in my game. Anyways, yeah. That's what would happen if worrying could add a cubit. But it can't. Now, let's get back to where I was here. You know, in verse 28, why do you worry about clothing? Well, look at the lilies of the field.

How they grow and they neither toil nor spin. Yeah, I say, even Solomon in all his glory wasn't arrayed like one of these. If God so closed the grass of the field, which is today, tomorrow's thrown in the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith! Here's the phrase that drew us into this section. Oh, you of little faith! What is it that makes your faith little here?

Well, he's been stressing its worry. Therefore, do not worry. What shall we eat? What do we drink? What shall we wear? After all these things the Gentiles seek. Your Father knows you need these things. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Don't worry about tomorrow. Don't worry. Tomorrow, tomorrow will worry about its own things. You've got enough trouble today, he's saying. He's not saying don't do anything.

Take care of the problems of today, but worrying about the ones that might come up tomorrow is going to eat away your faith. Because when it comes to it, he's saying God is going to provide for you. How? He doesn't say. Is he going to provide way more than you need? He doesn't say. Is he going to give it to you when you want it? Is he going to give it to you in the style and quantity you want?

No, he doesn't say. What he does say is don't worry. All right, that reminds me of another song, but I'm not going to go there. Again, how to not worry? Psychologists and psychiatrists are making a good living helping people with that. And I'm not going to claim that I have all the answers. But we need to focus on that and move past it. So I'm going to leave that again and look at one more enemy of faith. Here I want to move forward in the book of Matthew to chapter 16. Matthew 16 beginning in verse 5. And this again has nothing to do with life-threatening or even the worry of going without.

But this enemy of faith might just be the most insidious because it's the one that's always with us. And it's the one where we're using a tool that God gave us, but we can let it get carried away. Matthew 16, verse 5. Now this is after another case where Jesus Christ, you know, well, He'd sent people away. He's dealing with the Pharisees and now He's alone with the disciples. And He says, when the disciples had come to the other side, they'd forgotten to take bread.

You know, they forgot to stop at Kroger on the way and get the supplies. Jesus said to them, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. So they reasoned among themselves. What's He talking about? Well, it's because we haven't taken bread. And Jesus being aware of it said, Oh, you of little faith. Why do you reason among yourselves because you brought no bread? And He reminds them of some great miracles He worked. Do you not yet understand or remember the five loaves and the five thousand?

So He fed five thousand people with five loaves and had how many baskets taken up of leftovers? Nor the seven loaves and the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? How is it that you don't understand?

I didn't speak to you concerning bread, but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then they understood. He didn't tell them not to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees. But back when He was worried, telling them they were of little faith, He said, Why do you reason among yourselves?

You're overthinking it, guys. Don't reason yourselves into circles and work away from simple faith. Now, we do want to remind ourselves that human reason is a good thing. God gave us the intellect way above the animals, so He put it in us. In fact, I won't turn there, but Isaiah 1 and verse 18 is where God says, Come, let us reason together.

So God wants us to use our heads and think. But human reason that is not guided by faith, especially if it's lacking God's Holy Spirit, well, that human reason will work only with the information that it gathers by your five senses. What you see, hear, what you smell, taste, touch. I can imagine what you touch. Peter was touching that water thing, and that's pretty liquid. That won't hold me up. He would be reasoning. So human reason on its own won't accept the substance of things hoped for. It won't accept the evidence of things not seen. It won't accept faith as being those things.

As I said, human reason works in a man who's walking on water, and he starts thinking, Hmm, if I calculate the density of the human body, and compare that to the density of water, let's see, you've got to adjust for salt being in the water. Yeah, that's not coming out good. Now, let's think of all the times before where I've seen people in water. Oh, yeah. I reach the conclusion, I can't walk on water, and I start to think.

This is an example we can think back and laugh at. Although, I'm curious. I'm not sure if I should ask for a show of hands, but I remember learning the story again when I was pretty young, and then going to the local swimming pool, and thinking, okay, if I just believe I can walk on water, and every time I'd step out, and pshh! So I know there's another element to it. Sometimes it's believing also that God wants us to do certain things, and He doesn't want to give us a miracle to call attention to ourselves and brag and show off, which I'm sure the 10-year-old Frank would have done. Probably 50-year-old would have, too. But let's think of another example. Human reason says, okay, I get paid on Friday, and I got this stack of bills. Let's see, if I take 10% and I send it into the church, I take out another 10% and put it in the bank to be ready for the feast, now I look at the bills I don't have enough to live on.

Human reason is what says, numbers don't lie. I just can't do this. I can't tithe and live. Faith says, God is going to provide. God says, trust me. Do what I say first. Faith will turn to Malachi 3, verses 8 and 10, where God says, bring in the tithes and see if I won't open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing greater than you can receive. Again, as I've done with some of the other points, I'm going to defer addressing how to control your human reason and how to overcome this enemy of faith, because for this sermon I want to just identify these things and move on. But one thing I want to say with all of these enemies of faith, I'm not putting it off because I'm not sure that we can do it. I have faith. Each one of these can be conquered, not just by the leaders of the church, not just by the older people. They can be conquered by you and by me. And it's worth confessing they need to be conquered by me and by all of us. We all do at times, and we can. We can find ways to build that faith. And I want to back up, recap where we've been. We've considered that we need to have faith. We need to have it to please God. We want to be among the just who live by faith. Now, we understand having this faith means believing in God and believing Him enough to take action, believing Him enough to do what He says, even risk our lives on.

Now, we've seen there are enemies of faith. Fear, doubt, human reason. My mind just went blank on the other one. I know it's four. Fear, doubt, human reason, and worry. Anxious care is the way it was in the Old King James. That's why I wanted to say it that way. What we haven't considered, or what I've deliberately put off until later in the sermon, is that if faith is so all-fired important, how do we get it? How do we get more of it? That's the question. We want to be on guard to keep these enemies from whittling it away and making us of little faith. But first, we've got to have that pile in the first place. Although, I don't have faith in a pile in my backyard, but I'd like to have a pile of it up. I don't know if it's in here or in me somewhere.

How many of you listen to a message like this and then it starts going through your mind? Oh, no. I don't have enough faith. Or, I thought maybe I had faith, but now I'm not sure. You could think, well, I'm kind of like Peter. Every time I start exercising faith, then I start sinking. It fails me when I need it most. I want to offer reassurance. If you've felt that way, if you feel that way right now, you're not alone. I've felt that way. I was going to say, all of us have, but I want to stop short. I'm not sure if I want to say that about Mr. Call or Mr. Smith or some of the patriarchs among us who it seems like they've never lacked faith, but they would probably laugh at me and say, Psh, yeah. Okay, God knows what's going on with us.

So that worry about whether or not we have enough, that is in some ways from the enemies of faith. We fear that we don't have it. We doubt that we ever did. We worry about how to develop faith. And then we reason, it's just beyond my ability. It's not something I can do. On that last point, you would be correct. It's not something you can do. It's not a thing that any of us can do on our own.

We can't make ourselves have faith. We can't increase it on our own. It's beyond our abilities. I think Paul made that clear as well. If you will, join me in Ephesians 2 and verse 8. There's a couple key scriptures on this, and this is a very simple one, but one that bears visiting. Ephesians 2 and verse 8. Breaking into a thought, but he says, For grace you have been saved through faith, through pistis, the belief enough to base your life on.

You have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It's a gift of God. Faith is a gift of God. I'll pause because I make a living now of parsing scriptures and breaking down the meaning. A person like me might say, Wait a minute, he mentioned grace and faith. Which one of those is the gift of God? I think both, actually. But in case someone wants to say, Well, maybe it's the grace, not faith, because I don't have enough faith. Faith is a gift of God. And that becomes very, very clear if we turn back to 1 Corinthians 12.

1 Corinthians 12, we'll look in verse 4 first. I thought I might get through two glasses of water today, but I'm not sure about that now. 1 Corinthians 2.4, There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. So the Apostle Paul, as many of us well know, in chapter 12 here at 1 Corinthians, he's going to talk about gifts of the spirit. And there's various types of gifts. They all come from God through his Holy Spirit. And I'll go and list several of them, but let's jump down to verse 7.

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the prophet of all. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit. It's given through the Spirit. It's a gift of the Holy Spirit.

God gives us faith. Ephesians 2, verse 8 says, We're saved by grace through faith, and that's a gift of God. I wanted to bring that in because if I went here to 1 Corinthians 12 first, and I said, yes, there's a variety of gifts, he gave that guy faith. He gave me the word of wisdom, which is great. I love being wise, but nobody chuckled at that. It's okay. It wasn't planned to be funny. But maybe that's not the gift I got. But if we look at Ephesians 2, 8, God wants everyone to be saved. He's given everyone the gift through grace. I think salvation is important enough that regardless of what other gift God might give, He gives us all faith.

To some degree or amount, He gives us faith. And I would assert that whatever fears, doubts, worries, or anxious cares you might have, you do have enough faith to motivate action. You absolutely do. You're here. You had enough faith to think, I need to be with this group of God's people keeping the Sabbath.

And I neglected earlier to mention our brethren in Prestonsburg, but you had enough faith to be there, and you're listening to us here. Your faith motivated you. That faith didn't come on your own. God gave it to you as a gift. He gives all of us that gift. Now you might say, yeah, I made it this far.

I need more faith. That's okay to say that. There's a story in Mark 9 where a man thought exactly that. Mark 9, I believe I want to start in verse 23, but actually I might want to back up a little bit. Mark 9 is another well-known story. Actually, let me, let's drop back actually to get the whole story. I was just jumping in, but I think it's worth it. As in verse 14, Jesus came to his disciples. He'd been away, you know, doing something else.

Actually with, yeah, James and John at the top of a mountain, them seeing a vision of him being transfigured, which isn't the subject today, but he comes back and the rest of the disciples there in a great multitude, and the scribes are disputing with them. And they see Christ and they come running. And he asks the scribes, well, what are you discussing with them?

One of them said, teacher, I brought you my son who has a mute spirit. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him down. He foams at the mouth, gnashing his teeth. He becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples that they should cast it out, but they could not. And they say, yeah, not enough faith, it seems. And Jesus said that, oh, faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long will I bear with you? I'm not sure of the exact translation, because it seems like Jesus is saying, yeah, you don't have enough faith and you need to get it, because I'm not always going to be here.

But he is there now, which is good. They brought him to him. So they brought the boy with the demon to Christ. And immediately, when he saw him, so that the possessed boy sees Jesus and the spirit convulsed him, he fell on the ground, wallowed, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked his father, how long has this been happening to him? From childhood.

And often it throws him both into fire and to water to destroy him. If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Jesus says very plainly, if you can believe, if you have faith, all things are possible to him who believes. Remember, the believe there is the verb form of the word faith. The father said, I believe, but help my unbelief. It's like, I have faith. Please help me where I'm lacking faith.

Christ, I need more. What did Jesus say? You're on your own, dude. You don't have enough faith. You can't look to me. Of course not. Jesus, when he saw the people come running up, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying, deaf and dumb spirit, I command you come out of him. Enter him no more. The spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, but it left him. It went out of him, and he became his one dead.

Many people thought he was dead. Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up. When he came to the house, the disciples asked him privately, why couldn't we cast him out? Why was our faith not enough? That's reading into it. He said, this kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting. That tells us something. There are many things in this, but one is, there are times when more faith is required that we might not have. There's a way to build up.

He's saying prayer and fasting. How does that work for us? I think we know about fasting. Fasting is a way to humble ourselves. It's a way to quiet that human reasoning. It's actually a good way to counter the fear, doubt, anxious care and human reasoning. But there's more, because he also talks about prayer. I want to sit and say, I've got to work up faith.

I've got to get out of faith. You can't do it that way. Just like I could say, I have faith, so I'm going to step out in the pool. Because every time I did that, and I probably made some really goofy faces trying to have enough faith, and people wondered, what's up with that guy? It falls in every time. But faith is a gift of God. At least that's the starting point. It can be very powerful. I don't want to turn there, but if you think of Rahab the harlot, she's one of the examples in Hebrews 11, verse 31 specifically, when everyone else in the city of Jericho put their trust in a wall, in massive fortifications, Rahab met those spies and she said, I know that your God is the true God and he's going to give you this city.

How did she know? She didn't have any evidence. Well, she had the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for. God had given her faith. So contrary to all physical evidence, she believed him, and so she took action, sided with them. Now what's interesting is, at that point, she didn't know God's way. She didn't even know that she wasn't supposed to lie when she hid the spies, and they came asking the soldiers, where are those men? Well, they left already. Better go catch them. I'm sure that later on, the story shows, we see in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, she married an Israelite.

Tradition says it was one of those very spies. We don't know for sure. But I'm going to assume she started learning God's way. She heard it, perhaps she learned to read and studied it, and her faith probably grew. Her faith grew and increased just like ours can. Another important scripture I want to turn to is in Romans chapter 10. Because we've seen scriptural evidence that faith is a gift of God. That's where it comes from. But there's another place faith comes from.

Romans 10 and verse 17, Faith comes by hearing. Hearing by the Word of God. This is the conclusion to a progression. Actually, it reminded me of one of the songs the choir sang, talked about, you know, the feet on the mountains bringing this beautiful noise. It's not exactly, I'm not sure what translation it might have been quoted from, but it comes to mind how wonderful it is that people bring this good news of the Gospel.

And faith comes by hearing. Matter of fact, if you back up in verse 14, faith, remember, is belief. He said, how shall they call on Him in whom they've not believed? Okay, you have to believe. You have to have faith. Well, how can they believe in Him of whom they've not heard? How shall they hear without a preacher?

How shall they preach unless they're sent? So the Word of God is involved. To have faith is tied to the Word of God. As in verse 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Paul specifies a preacher here, and that's one of the reasons I think God wants us to come to Sabbath services, to Bible studies, to be taught God's Word and hear it expounded.

But, of course, He wants us to read it ourselves. What a blessing it is! We live in a time and a place where it's available. It's available in our own language, and various editions of our own language, with resources to help us explore. That can build our faith. It's worth also mentioning, I think, conversation with those who are not necessarily ministers. You know, it was back in the mid-1990s that Malachi 4 verses 16 and 17 became one of my favorite scriptures. I'm going to turn there. Malachi 4 verse 16.

Okay, there is a Malachi 4.16. It's Malachi 3 verse 16. That's a typo on my part. Malachi 3.16 says, Then those who feared the Eternal spoke to one another. They talked to one another. Doesn't say about what, but I can guess it had to do with the Word of God and with God's ways.

And the Lord listened and heard them. So a book of remembrance was written before them for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name. So meditate. They're thinking about these words. They all be mine, says the Lord of Hosts, on the day I make them my jewels, and I'll spare them as a man spares his own son who serves them. As I said, I link this back to the 1990s when a great heresy was creeping into the church. And I remember members of the church getting together and talking and saying, But doesn't God's Word say this? Don't these Scriptures explain that? Their faith was tested. Our faith was tested. And in studying God's Word and listening to other people, faith grew. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word of God. The power of God's Word to build up faith doesn't have to be limited to a time of crisis, though. It can happen all the time. I love it when God's people get together and start sharing stories of when God works in their lives. And I think for our students, I don't know what happens in the houses where they live late at night. Actually, every now and then I'll see Facebook posts and I'll go, Oh! Actually, I remember last year's class, for some reason they were trying on costumes or something. I think it had a catch that this is what happens when you stay up past midnight. So I put a response. I said, you should be going to bed. That's what should happen. Not this year's class is good. They always go to bed on time. But, you know, those late nights talking, when I was a student, I remember going to the laundry room sometimes late at night and having these deep talks. I was also reminded of, there's a section in our new booklet on angels. And near the back, it has a list of people having these experiences of miracles, of God's work in their lives. And when you get together and hear those stories, doesn't it do something for your faith? It does for me. I think that's something we want to share. And you might wonder how in the world can words on a page of a book or words that people speak build my faith? Faith is, you know, a gift of the Spirit.

One more scripture I want to look at here, tied to that. Well, not necessarily just only one more, don't. But John 6, verse 63, is a powerful scripture to remember. John 6 and verse 63, Christ said this about His words. And remember, Christ was the Word, and He spoke words. John 6, 63 says, it's the Spirit that gives life. The flesh prophets nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life. As I said, Christ literally spoke the Word of God, and He literally was the Word of God. And God's Word is a spiritual thing, and it's life-giving. And it builds faith. The Word of God builds faith. Faith is not of yourself. It's a gift of God. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word of God. Jesus said, the words that I speak are Spirit, and they are life. We keep referring back to the Spirit in a couple of different ways for faith. As I said, faith is listed among the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12.

But interestingly, unlike any of the other gifts of the Spirit listed there, faith is also listed in Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23. Galatians 5, 22 and 23, many of us, I'm sure all of us know, is a listing of what Paul called the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.

I should finish. Gentleness, self-control. But faith is a fruit of the Spirit as well as a gift of the Spirit. There's a dual way of getting that faith in us, of God building it in us. Again, not depending on ourselves. A concept that came to me, and I remember speaking on it here, and I have other times, I think we could see a difference between a gift of the Spirit and fruit of the Spirit. And that a gift is something that God can impart immediately. Think of that path, almost at Passover, that Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out and people began speaking in other tongues and people understood other tongues. That was a gift. They didn't work at it, they didn't practice, they did nothing for it. God gave it to them. And our initial faith is like that. Rahab the harlot just suddenly believed that the God of Israel was the God. Just like at some point in our lives, we believed. But faith is also a fruit of the Spirit. And if we look around us in nature, fruit doesn't appear like that. We're moving into spring. We're starting to see the plants come up, but it's going to be a process. It's going to take time, even with the lilies sprouted. They're going to have to grow and expand and put out buds and flowers and eventually fruit. It comes over time along with the other. Love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith. It's going to take time to mature. We can encourage that maturing by studying the Word of God, talking to God.

As I said, prayer along with fasting, listening to others speak the Word of God.

But it takes patience. If you've got a tree in your back, an apple tree, and you see those flowers, I've never seen anybody who could go out and just encourage the apples into maturity. Come on! Get here! I'm hungry! I need an apple!

You just got to wait. We can't force faith, but we can nurture and grow it. You can get apples, better apples, and perhaps sooner if you fertilize the ground. Make sure a good sunlight is reaching that tree, making sure it has all the water that it needs. And we can ask God to increase our faith along with doing our efforts. I won't turn to Luke 17, verse 5, but in Luke 17, 5 is after Jesus told the disciples something pretty difficult, and they just looked at Him and said, Lord, increase our faith! Now, Lord, increase our faith, because we don't know if we've got it. But I imagine in some ways that's what happened to Peter when he was walking out to Jesus Christ on the water, and doubt started making his faith small. He faltered. He started to sink. But did he? Did he go to the bottom? No, of course not. He knew where to ask, where to look for that help. He said, Lord, save me! And Jesus Christ reached out His hand. He didn't let Him sink. I think I could say if we reach out our hand, He won't let us sink. One of the other examples, when the disciples are in the boat, and the waves are coming up, and they're afraid they're going to perish and go to the bottom, they woke up Jesus Christ. They knew who could save them. Lord, save us! We're perishing it. Now, in both cases, Christ corrected them. You know, owe you a little faith. But He didn't say, owe you a little faith, go to the lake of fire. He said, owe you a little faith, why did you do this? Implying the other. You did right in coming to Me. And that's the thing. He saved them first, corrected them after. Jesus Christ and God the Father want to save us. They want to help our faith. And they don't slap us, they don't condemn us when our faith is little. And they encourage us. You know, I have to believe that, because I know at times my faith is faltered. You know, even, well, I shouldn't say even me, maybe I should say especially me, but if God reached out and saved Peter, He'll reach out and save me. I have to have faith in that. And He'll reach out and save you. Faith is a gift. As I said, it's a gift, but it's also a fruit of the Spirit. That's pretty powerful and comforting. And when I think about it, as I said, George Michael was right. I gotta have faith. Okay. Without it, we cannot please God. But God makes it possible. He makes it possible for me and for you to have faith. He makes it possible for us to grow and mature in faith. And like the apostles, we can look to God and say, Lord, increase our faith.