Any Father, we thank you again, we thank you for this wonderful
time of worship together and what a blessing that is.
Lord, we come before you with thankful hearts also for our
children. We thank you for them and the
blessing they are to each individual family that is here,
but also to our congregation. Lord is our children hit out to
Sunday school and head out to team class.
Lord, we just ask that you will open their hearts and open their
ears to Your word. We pray that you will work in
their hearts, that they each will come to know you as their
own personal Lord and Saviour. And Father, we pray and thank
you for our Sunday School teachers and those that teach
our children. Lord, give them the words to
say. And Lord, may those words sink
deep into the hearts of our kids.
Or we thank you for the offering that has been given.
We thank you for the blessing that is as people bring and that
as part of their worship to you. But we pray for wisdom for those
that have the role to distribute that and to use that.
Lord, we pray that it'll be used for your glory throughout, that
you will be honoured and all. We thank you for Dan as he
brings the word to us this morning.
We thank you for this series and the book of Luke that we're
going through and and what we're learning from it.
And Laurie, just raise Dan comes up that you'll give him peace.
You'll give them clarity of thought in mind as he brings the
word that you've laid on his heart.
Lord, we pray for our hearts. We pray that we will be open to
hear your word this morning and not just to hear it, but let it
change our lives. Lord, we pray and there's things
we bring to you and we thank you and thank you for this time we
can have. And our Lord's name, Amen.
Hey, good morning. We are continuing, as Kevin said
in our series in the book of Luke this morning.
It's been a month since we've been in there.
We've changed things up a little bit this year where we we take a
break from our series during the school holidays.
So we haven't been in there for a little while.
So just by way of review, very quick review.
If you remember, Luke was a medical Doctor Who became
missionary and he's writing a letter to a guy named
Theophilus. And he says, I've interviewed as
many eye witnesses as I as I could to give you an orderly
account of about Jesus, right? Who was Jesus, What did he say?
What did he do? What happened?
So if you remember back, like I say, it's been a month since we
were there, but Gavin took us through the first part of Luke
Chapter 7. And that's where we're gonna be
today, Luke Chapter 7. If you want to turn there in
your Bibles, we were looking at the, the healing of the
centurion's servant. And we won't recap the whole
story, but if you remember, Jesus is hitting the guy's house
and, and he sends messages out and he, he said, I'm not ready
for you to come to my house. You know, you know, I'm sorry,
but I know how this works, right?
I'm, I'm a, I'm a man under orders.
And I also have a man in authority.
And I said, 1 soldier, go and do this, and he goes and does it.
And I said, oh, another one, come here.
And he comes. He said, you can fix this
without even coming to my house, right?
And it says Jesus marvelled at his face, right?
He marvelled at his faith. And he said this.
I say to you, I've not found such great faith, not even in
Israel, even among the people of God, right, who grew up learning
all these stories about who God was, how trustworthy God is, all
the ways that God had come through for them as a nation.
Even people from there didn't have as much trust in God and
trust in Jesus as this centurion had had.
And the centurions servant was healed.
So this guy has incredible faith and it led to the healing of his
his servant by Jesus. And Kevin didn't outstanding job
of of showing us through the Scriptures that this happened,
not not because the guy was a good guy, but because of who
Jesus was, right. And that's where that centurion
had put his faith. Now we know that without faith,
it's impossible to please him. Hebrews tells tells us there was
a story of the the woman that had a continuous flow of bright
blood and she reached out to Jesus to be healed.
He told her this. He said, your faith has made you
well, go in peace and be healed of your affliction.
Mark 534 right. So the Bible also makes it very
clear that we should always be growing in our faith, right out
of faith into faith, trusting God more and more as we grow
closer to him. And so we see lots of, you know,
that played out in lots of ways in the Scripture.
But in the Old Testament, King David, you remember, he's about
to go up against Goliath and Saul says to look, you know,
you, you can't fight this guy. You're just a youth.
And he's been a professional soldier since his youth.
And David says, well, and he, he goes back and he says, you know,
I'm a shepherd and I was in the fields.
And one time a lion came and attacked the, the flock.
And I, you know, God came through.
I fought off the line, he said another time after that, a beer
came through, right? So starts off the line, then a
beer, right, and a beer can. And I fought off the beer and
and God was faithful. God came through.
And so Goliath is just kind of the next step up.
It's just the next logical step up and faith for me.
And God will deal with this just like he did with the the lion
and the bear. So that's an Old Testament one.
In the New Testament in Philippians 3, Paul talks about
how although we we never really reach the goal of total faith
and total trust in God, but we should still make it our goal.
And so we should still press on towards that all the time.
We've got this centurion, right? He was a man of great faith.
So that brings up kind of an interesting question.
Does it and it doesn't. And the, the, the question is,
if I had great faith, would I get the things that I want?
If I had great faith, what I get, the things that I want.
Let me put that to you from a different angle, right?
Here's a different way of putting that is the reason I
have this health problem or this relationship problem or this
financial problem or whatever, because I don't have enough
faith. Yep, interesting question, isn't
it? We're going to look at this
right because we know that if we do have enough faith to trust
God enough to do the to do things the way that he wants
them done, that the way, the way that he's laid out in the
Scripture that life is bitter, right?
The rewards are greater. Adam and Eve seriously wish they
had never eaten their fruit right.
If if only that had enough faith in God to do things He told, do
things the way He told them to do them, it would have avoided a
lot of pain. So maybe that's key.
Maybe my level of faith is not enough.
Does that sound right? It gets weird though, right?
If you, if you take that out to the answer 3, quite a few years
ago, this is probably 25 years ago, there was this sort of
Pentecostal faith healer and he was travelling through New
Zealand and having these big, big meetings and he became quite
famous and he was on TV a lot on the news.
And 60 Minutes did the whole thing on him.
And I remember this thing from 60 Minutes, there was a guy
sitting in a wheelchair, right? And this faith healer guy is in
his face and he's saying the reason you're sending this
wheelchairs cause you don't have enough faith in, if only you had
enough faith, you'd be able to stand up here right now, right?
Then the guy was just in tears, right?
It's like, Nah, that just doesn't sit right, Does it?
Like this. There's something kind of awful
about that. So Chapter 7 tells us a lot
about faith, right? And, and answer some of these
questions. So let's carry on.
Have a look at it. We're going to start off in
verse #11 this morning, verse #11 so Luke Chapter 7 and verse
#11 if you want to turn there she is.
Now it happened the day after, right?
This is the day after he, he healed the centurion servant,
that he went into a city called Name.
So this is Jesus, right? Went into a city called Name,
and many of its disciples went with him and a large crowd.
And when he came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man
was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a
widow. And a large crowd from that city
was with her, right? So you imagine the scene Jesus
and his disciples, this big crowd and they're heading
towards Name and they get right to the sort of the near the
entrance to the city and there's a funeral procession on its way
out cause cemeteries always outside the city walls, you
know, And so they're on their way out and Jesus, Jesus in this
massive crowds on their way in and they've got this, this body
in an open casket being carried out.
And the guy that died his, his mother is there and his mother
was a widow. So she's already lost her
husband. And then this guy that died was
her only son, right. And so that that is quite a big
deal right back in those times because remember that there was
no social welfare. And so without a husband and now
without her only son, there will be no one to take care of her as
she gets goes into old age. So as well as the the usual
intense grief that comes with a funeral, there's kind of an
extra layer of sadness on on top of this one right Future for
who? This looks quite bleak.
O this number 13 says when the Lord saw her, he had compassion
on her. Then we're Compassion is the the
Greek word that's translated compassion there literally means
to feel something deeply in the pit of your stomach.
Jesus saw the scene that really got to him, you know, seeing
what was happening here. And he said to her, do not weep.
Then he came and he touched the open coffin and those who
carried him stood still so right.
So he put his hand on everybody stops.
And he said, young man, I say to you, arise.
So he speaks to him as if he's still alive, but he's dead.
It's really clear on that. And this links very clearly.
There's some stuff that Paul talks about in Romans 4, but let
me just show you one bit of it where he says God who gives life
to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as
though they did. That tells you a lot about who
Jesus was right there. And here's what happens this 15
And he who was dead set up and began to speak and he presented
them to his mother. Now, if you're a sceptic, you
say, well, you know, obviously the guy wasn't dead.
He was just passed out, you know, and then he woke up, you
know, when, when Jesus did this thing?
Well, couple of things with that, right?
First of all, people aren't stupid, right?
I'm sure they checked to make sure that he wasn't just passed
out, right? There was that going on.
But but secondly, look at their reaction to this.
Since this then fear came upon all entertains fear very sort of
emphatic there in the original language there.
And they glorified God saying a great prophet has risen up among
us and God has visited his people.
If you go back, remember the story of Jesus calming the storm
and you remember that the disciples are in the boat and
there's this intense storm and they are terrified.
And you know, a storm is bad when the professional fishermen
are, you know, think they're going to die.
All right. And they, they wake Jesus up and
remember that Jesus stands up and says, you know, be still and
be quiet. And the, and the storm instantly
stops. And then it says and then they
fear the great fear that would terrified before in the storm.
But now they they feared a great fear, right?
Why? Cause they realised who they're
in the boat with, they realise. And that's what happens right
when you realise you're standing in the presence of God, then,
yeah, there, there's an owl there, right?
There's a, there's a fear, there's a, there's a respect.
And, and this is what what is happening here.
Then fear came upon them all. And then it says this and this
report about him went throughout all Judea and all the
surrounding region, right? So this happened up in Galilee.
The town of Nando's is not far from Nazareth, where Jesus was
from went up the top. And this, the report of this all
went throughout all duty and surrounding regions regions.
So for us, this would be like saying, you know, something
happened in Kerry, Kerry and everybody in Dunedin was talking
about it. And all around our Tiago, you
know, like this was a big deal, right?
Everybody was struck by the the awe of of what had happened and
what it says about who Jesus was.
While all this was going on, there was a whole big sort of
royal scandal going on in, in Israel, particularly in, in in
Galilee. Cause it was this guy here at
Antibus. He was one of the sons of here
at the great, you know, here at Antrobus had an affair with his
sister-in-law, erroneous, erroneous had left her husband
and run off with them to live in the palace in Galilee.
Now, it's kind of hard for us to wrap our heads around this, but
this would be like Megan Michael leaving Harry and running off
with William. You actually she's married to a
Prince, but then she would have been married to a Prince with
real power, right? You imagine the scandal of that
Imagine, you know, I mean, that would be you know, and would
have that would go around, wouldn't it?
I mean, that would be everywhere around the world.
That would be the the the headlines and and all this kind
of stuff. This was not against Roman law
and the Romans had appointed here at Antichrist to, to be in
charge of Galilee. So so they weren't worried about
it all. They had no problem with it, but
it was specifically illegal under Old Testament law.
You could not marry your brother's wife while your
brother was still alive and says that several multiple times,
right? So there is no doubt about this.
And so John the Baptist, right, the prophet of God who was
making the way, pointing to the Messiah, announcing the Messiah,
He kept calling them out on this.
He would not shut up about it, right?
You can say what they're doing is wrong.
This is against God's law. This should not be happening,
right? And they would not happy about
John here at Anderson, Herodias. Herodias wanted John dead.
We need to shut this guy up, right?
He's turning the people against us.
But John was very popular with the people, and here at Antonius
feared that there would be an uprising if he executed John.
And he was also aware that John was some kind of holy man,
right? And so he was afraid of what
might happen to him if he killed John.
So he puts John in prison. John's in prison here at Athens
would bring him out every now and again and ask him sort of,
you know, philosophical questions about life and all
this kind of stuff. Can I use them for
entertainment? Really waiting for everybody to
kind of forget about John and move on to something else.
Then he could get rid of him, maybe.
But like I say, he sort of feared what might happen if he
did that. And prisons in those days didn't
feed prisoners, right? So you, you were reliant on
people to bring you food. And so John's disciples, John's
follows would would be doing that.
They would bring him food. These disciples of John are
telling John about Jesus healing the centurion servant and
raising a guy from the dead. You know, the guy from named
from the dead, these kind of things.
The John's in prison and the people in Galilee are soon going
to forget about them, and when they heard family realises
people have moved on to something else, they won't
hesitate to kill him. And John knows that, and he has
this real, genuine need, but God seems silent.
What do we do when God doesn't answer?
How does, how does faith play into that?
Like, you know, when God just seems inattentive.
And one of the things that we all have in common, and this is
probably true. If you've, if you've repented,
you've connected with Jesus Christ, you're, you're and you
have a follower of Jesus. It that'll be true for you.
But it, but it's even probably true, even if you just kind of
believe that maybe there's a God out there somewhere.
One of the things we probably have in common is that we've all
had seasons in our life where we ask God for something and God
just wouldn't do it. Now, I'm going to ask everyone
here to be honest, if there's ever been a time in your life if
you felt like God was just not answering, He just seemed
inattentive or uncooperative or or is late, right?
If you've ever had a season in your life that was like that, I
want you to raise your hand. Yep.
Yeah. Look around, right?
Lots of hands went up and you thought it was just you.
You just learned something. We we could close in prayer
right now, right? The thing with this is I think
too, is that preachers make this.
They make you think that you're the only one because they make
it sound so easy. You go home and, and God seems
to be not hearing your prayers and, and, and attentively
uncooperative or, or late and you feel like it's just you and
somebody, whether it's a, a preacher or somebody else, you
know, they just say, well, you just have to have more faith.
You just need a Raymore. You just, you just need to trust
God more. And the other thing about this
is that other people around us make this more difficult because
everything just sort of works out for them.
You know, they have their job or a career or they have a house or
their kids got into whatever school they wanted to get them
into or whatever. And everything just seems to go
well for them. And sometimes these are really
ungodly people, right? And things are just going well
for them. And, and you sort of say to
yourself, you wouldn't say it out loud, right?
You think these are not people even following God.
And here I am trying to do the right thing, and I'm trying to
go the right way and do things the way God wants and it all
goes well for them. This doesn't go well for me and
it's just kind of infuriating, right?
And, and it just kind of insinuates the fact that God
seems in attentive or uncooperative or, or light in
some way. And then you have Christian
friends and they make it even worse because they say things
like this. You know, I prayed really hard
cause I lost my house keys. And then I just had prayed and
there they were. I found them, you know, ohh, you
know, I was going to drop some dry cleaning off to the dry
cleaners and I prayed for a park.
And what do you know, somebody pulled out in front of the dry
cleaners. I just got the, the park that I
wanted, right? But you have this major thing
going on, you know, and you've been praying and begging, but
nothing changes, right? And people are praying these
small things, right? And, and God just doesn't seem
to be answering you. But you don't want to abandon
faith, right? Because it's difficult to live
life without faith. It's difficult to live life
without hope. So the question is, what do you
do? What do you do when God doesn't
seem to be answering, when he seems inattentive, when he seems
uncooperative or like, because after a while you, you start to
think like this, right? Start to think like this.
Well, if God's silent, he must be absent, of course.
Not answering my prayer, not doing what I need them to do,
then then maybe there isn't a God.
Or maybe God is not a God that's ever going to be active in my
life. If God is silent, maybe he's
absent, Maybe, maybe, maybe right.
And the doubt creeps in and there goes our faith right?
There goes our trust, He goes our confidence, and there goes
our hope. And this is where John is right.
John is in prison and John had preached this message that
essentially said knock it off. I'm gonna give you summed up
John's missus. Knock it off, right?
He was saying, look, God is about to do something
extraordinary, so stop doing all this sinful stuff, right?
Turn from it. Turn to God asking for
forgiveness. He was sent to announce Jesus
and he did that. He announced him.
He said here's the Lamb of God. It takes away the sin of the
world. He sent his disciples to follow
Jesus. He baptised Jesus 1st 18 Luke
Chapter 7. Then the disciples of John
reported to him concerning all these things, all the things
that Jesus was doing. Now, if anytime was a great time
for a miracle, this is it. And yet, here's John, running
away in prison. And John had friends, they come
and visit him in prison and they bring him information.
And John, here's that Jesus is out there doing all of these
miracles, right? And healing people and healing
Romans and and and doing stuff for tax collectors and strangers
and all of that. And here's John, rotting in a
dungeon and his cousin isn't helping him.
He's help helping all these enemies and strangers and people
from all walks of life, but he's not helping John and John's not
feeling the love. And John starts having some
doubts about Jesus. And so John says to his friends,
OK, I need you to get a message to Jesus for me.
And I imagine this was kind of even a little bit embarrassing
for John to ask his friends this.
But look what it says #19 and John calling two of his
disciples to him, Send them to Jesus, saying, are you the
coming one, or do we look for another?
Are you the Messiah, You the one that was promised in the Old
Testament, come and save his people.
Or do we look for someone else Then?
I bet John's disciples here did a double take when he asked them
that. Let me thinking, man, you're the
one that told us he, he was the Messiah.
You know, we're probably going to have to interrupt something.
He really be in the middle of some massive miracle or
something, or, or he'll be saying some amazing profound
thing. Everybody's taking notes.
We're gonna have to interrupt them and go.
Are you, are you actually the Messiah?
You know, Are you sure, John? You know, you'd imagine their
thoughts, right? And John would be thinking,
well, I just, I need something. I just need something right And
this is where we live. This is where we live.
Our circumstances get impacted and we feel that God is somehow
different because our circumstances are different and
we know that it doesn't make any sense, but it's real to us.
And we get like John the Baptist here, right?
I, I need some kind of shout out.
I need some kind of indication. I need to know that the stuff
that I've based my life on is actually right because it
doesn't seem to be working for me right now.
If you step back and think about it, right, there's something
very self centred about losing faith in God based on your
circumstances, right? Because you know, we hear about
an earthquake or as Zunami or something like that, where
hundreds of thousands of people are killed and the futures of
thousands of people are wrecked. And we think, ohh, no, right.
And we and we pray for those people and we, we, we send money
to help those people and all of that.
But it doesn't shatter our faith in God.
See, when When you go through a hard time, I pray.
When I go through a hard time, I doubt let me sum them about that
up in one sentence, right? I lose faith when God is in
attentive to my happiness, not yours.
In other words, when you when you go through a difficult time,
I'm sorry for you and I'll pray for you, but I'm not going to
lose my faith over that. When it happens to me, that's a
different story. When we're in a lot of pain,
when we have, you know, a major crisis in our life, our our
world tends to shrink to the size of us.
It's difficult to think about the problems of others or other
things that are going on when when we have so many issues
ourselves. John's in a dungeon waiting to
die. It's really hard for him to see
anything bigger than the size of his prison cell.
And This is why Jesus response is so important and so relevant
to us. Let me tell you what he doesn't
say. He doesn't say of course I'm the
one. Go back and tell him that he
doesn't say I'm not one and I'm breaking him out.
All right? He doesn't say that.
Here's what he says. Get ready for this, right?
Because this is for you and this is for me.
When when God seems inattentive, John's disciples go to Jesus.
They pass on John's question. And actually during that very
hour when they're doing that, like we say, writers, they're
asking the question. He is healing all kinds of
people. These miracles drop down to
verse 22. Jesus answered and he said to
them, go and tell John the things that you've seen and
heard, because John's in a prison cell, right?
He he, he can't, he can't see past the walls.
So you go back and you tell him what you can see and what you
can hear, Right, John? John's pain has shrunk his world
to the size of his prison cell, so of course he's delving.
You go and tell him what you see and what you hear.
Here's what he tells, tells him to tell John about she's
answered, to see him. Go and tell John the things that
you've seen and heard. That the blind see, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf here, the dead are
raised, and the poor have the gospel.
The good news for each to them. This is probably not immediately
obvious to us, but what Jesus is doing here is he's paraphrasing
several Old Testament passages from the book of Isaiah that
talk about what the Messiah would do when he comes, Right?
So so he's making that clear. So you can imagine the same
maybe that maybe that they're turning to leave whatever in in
Jesus, you know, make sure you tell him that don't don't forget
this right? But there's 23.
See this implicit is he who is not offended because of me
offended there means to stumble like to trip over something
right to to stumble to fall down fall away fallout measure that
right. So don't thinking.
Wait, so you're saying you might actually cause or allow things
to happen to us? They have the potential to trip
us up. It could actually cause us to
stumble away from you. And Jesus is thinking, yeah, So
what? You tell John Blessed as anyone
who doesn't stumble away from me because of anything I've done or
haven't done, it would be hard, wouldn't it, for those, those
disciples, John, They'd be thinking, OK, but you know, he's
in prison, right? And he's losing his fight and it
doesn't look good for him. He's deteriorating.
You know all about that and Jesus does.
He would be thinking, yeah, I realise that's happened because
I have left him there. What would you think if you were
Johnson was trying to put yourself in the shoes.
Okay, so maybe you don't like him.
You know, something happened when you guys were kids because
you are cousins, right. So and and this is payback.
Like you know, is it that you don't like John the Baptist.
Listen to what Jesus says about him and just drop down to verse
28 for a SEC. He said, for I say to you, among
those born of woman, there is not a greater profit than John
the Baptist. And in Matthews accountancy,
Jesus says there's nobody greater than John the Baptist,
right? John was the greatest guy,
whoever lived. So you just gonna leave them in
prison? Yeah.
So tell him to hang in there and don't lose faith just because
I've chosen not to bail you out of prison.
That's tough, isn't it? Right?
But here's the big thing here, right?
John the Baptist was going to be in prison no matter how much
faith he had. John the Baptist was gonna be in
prison no matter how obedient he was.
And John the Baptist was going to be in prison because being in
prison was part of what Jesus was doing.
And Jesus knew that. It was going to be really hard
for John to maintain faith in Jesus, his cousin, because Jesus
and his cousin had the power to bail him out and he chose, for
whatever reason, not to. Let me tell you why.
This is great news for you and great news for me because it
means that your personal circumstances don't necessarily
coincide with how God feels about you, right?
You can't even lose sight of that because like John the
Baptist, when you're in the wilderness, right, you're in in
a dry season when it seems like, you know, God hasn't been doing
anything much for us lately and things seem to be getting worse.
And and we can easily draw the conclusion that these
circumstances reflect the way God feels about me.
Does this. No, they don't.
Your personal circumstances
don't necessarily coincide with how God feels about you, right?
You don't want to draw that conclusion.
Proof of how God feels about you is what happened on the cross.
Your personal circumstances don't coincide with how God
feels about you. John the Baptist, the cousin and
the forerunner to Jesus who's talked about in the Old
Testament, right? He's a prophet who was
prophesised, right? It says this guy's going to come
and, and, and he's going to point people to Jesus, right?
This guy is stuck in prison and Jesus has lived there.
And Jesus is from John Bliss. It is a person who doesn't
stumble away from me because of Maine.
Wow, right. That's one of those truths that
you hate. That's that's not easy.
But when you're in the middle of the desert, it's one of those
things that you just cling to. So what do you do when God seems
distant? He seems unattentive and
attentive when he seems uncooperative, when?
When God seems to be late, I think if we asked Jesus, he'd
give us the same advice he gave John.
Look back and remember and look outside your circumstances and
reflect you. Look back at those times when
when God did come through for you.
Look outside your prison cell and reflect on the activity of
God. Right, because what's happening
now doesn't doesn't discount the reality of past answered prayer
that was real, that was true. And you looked back and you
realised that God was real then and God's real now.
He's just not expressing His reality the way that you want
them to right now. And then you look outside at the
activity of God, outside your little world.
It doesn't mean well for John. Eventually Herodias and her
daughter Salome Hatcher plot and and get here at Antibes to to
have John beheaded and John has killed.
It's not too long after that there's some very insecure
religious leaders pay to have Jesus betrayed and arrested and
tried and mocked and crucified, and God does nothing to stop it.
But God didn't move a single millimetre off the set over his
throne when that was happening, because even though it would
seem like he was uninvolved and not paying attention far away,
late, God was right where God wanted to be.
And the events unfolded the way that God wanted them to unfold.
And no, it wasn't the script in John's case that John the
Baptist would have written for himself and even at the end of
Jesus life, right? He actually asked the Father if
there was any other way, right? Any other way other than being
crucified and tortured to death for the sins of mankind.
And the Heavenly Father said, no, this is my plan.
And 2000 years later, we're still talking about it.
In 2000 years later, we are still celebrating it. 2000 years
later, we are all here today because of it.
In 2000, years later, people's lives are still being
transformed by it, by what seemed at the time to be the
inactivity of God, the inactivity of the God that these
two men worshipped. When God is silent, that doesn't
mean he's absent. When God seems inattentive, it
doesn't mean that he is, and when God seems to be light, it
doesn't mean that he's light. When we're in the middle of it,
we need to look back and remember, and when we need to
look outside our circumstances and reflect.
But here's the best part of this.
I think, you know, there's a message to us and that message
that Jesus gave to John's followers to take back to John.
You know, blessed as anyone who doesn't stumble on account of
me, your current circumstances are not a reflection of how God
feels about you. If he allowed the greatest man,
whoever lived, to stay in prison and later be executed, then you
don't have to doubt God's love for you, his concern for you,
His will for you, His plan for you, His ability to take what
seems like wasted time and blended into something far
greater than you've ever imagined.
So I've seen a man of great faith in the centurion whose
servant was healed. We've seen Jesus raise somebody
from the dead, right? A dead man, right?
Showing it's not about the person, right?
It's about Jesus. Jesus.
And we've seen a man of great faith begin to doubt because
despite his great faith, his circumstances went great, which
shows that our circumstances and this serial reflection of how
God feels about us or our level of faith.
One more thing about faith verse 29 and when all the people heard
him, even the tax collectors justified God, right?
They agreed that God's plan was right, having been baptised with
the baptism of John right. So those those people who
repented and preparation for the Messiah, right and were baptised
in and out as an outward sign of that did so because they had
enough faith to trust Gods to trust John's message that the
Messiah was coming, that salvation was coming.
We got a baptism service in a few weeks 17th of May and our
was sign of people who saying I I've turned to God and God has
forgiven me. They only use my life to serve
Him. These people had enough faith to
step out and trust their message that John was bringing, and so
then they found it very easy to trust what Jesus had said.
A little bit of faith was all it took.
There's 30. But the Pharisees and the
lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, not having been
baptised by Him. People who spit their their
lives studying the Old Testament law didn't even have enough
faith to believe the message of salvation through faith in
Jesus, whether it was taught by John or by Jesus.
And the Lord said to what then shall I like in the men of this
generation? And what do they like?
They like children in the marketplace, calling to one
another, saying we played the flute for you and you didn't
dance. We mourned to you and you didn't
weep for John the Baptist came near the eating bread or
drinking wine. And you say he has a demon.
The Son of Man has come eating and drinking.
And you say, look, a glutton and the wine Bubba, a friend of tax
collectors and sinners. Weddings and funerals are the
two biggest sort of social events in Jewish culture.
So kids will often play games related to them.
When I was a kid, you know, we used to play soldiers, play
armies and and those games are only ever lasted about 30
minutes because what would happened?
You get to a certain point. Yeah.
This is when you're like, you know, 789 and you've got bang,
bang, bang. And somebody would say, I shot
you and you didn't fall down, right.
You didn't do way. And then the whole game would
just sort of disintegrate. I'm not playing anymore because
you didn't die when I shot. You know, you didn't do what
you're supposed to do, right. So you've got these kids right
in the marketplaces. Jesus is talking about this.
And you said you like kids saying I played happy, winning
music and you learn dance right? Or I played funeral music and
you didn't Act, said. What's he talking about?
John the Baptist lived a very, very disciplined life.
He wasn't interested in climbing the corporate ladder.
He lived out in the desert and made his own clothes out of
Campbell skins and you know, animal skins and whatever he, he
did all this, he did this super disciplined life so that he
could focus intently on the role that God had given him.
And the religious leaders said the guy's a nut job.
Look at him, he's crazy, obviously, you know, demon
possessed or something, you know.
And so they rejected the message that he bought.
Jesus came and he hung out with regular people and they said,
well, some of the people he associates with it, you know,
Bogan's and lowlife, you know, he's obviously a gluttonous
drunk. Look at who's, you know, friends
are. So they rejected the message
that he bought, which was the same message that John bought.
It wasn't really about who was bringing the message, like there
was some kind of problem with John or, or they had some kind
of problem with Jesus or anything.
Like they said that's what it was about.
But it wasn't really the issue was they didn't have enough
faith to believe the message of God.
Jesus finishes with this statement, he says.
But wisdom is justified by all her children, right?
In other words, wisdom is proved correct by looking at what it
produces. John leads thousands to
repentance, to realise this and to turn from it to God and ask
for forgiveness. Jesus taught, worked, loved,
died, and rose from the dead like no one before him.
So we know we should be growing in faith and that that great
faith has great benefits and rewards.
But we also know that our circumstances are not
necessarily reflection of our level of faith.
That wasn't the case for John, one of the greatest men, whoever
lived. So what's the level of faith
that we need to make a difference in our lives?
One time was Jesus was teaching disciples that they needed to
repeatedly forgive someone. If that person was genuinely
repentant and his disciple said, yeah, you're going to need to
increase our faith to do that. In other words, you know, we're
not sure that we have a high enough level of faith in you to
be able to do that. Once we do, you know, then we'll
be able to put this into play. And Jesus response was this So
the Lord, if you have faith as a mustard seed, it's a tiny little
seed, right? You can say this to Molby tree,
be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea.
It would obey you just as easily.
They're like grass seed. You know this tiny little things
Jesus says you just need a tiny amount of faith, just the
smallest amount of trust in me, and it will make all the
difference in the world. Why?
Because it's not about you, right?
It's about who you're trusting in.
Salvation is by grace through faith.
Probably talk about that this morning, right?
Turn from your sin, ask for forgiveness.
Trust in Him to save you from the ultimate consequences of
those sends first. John 19 right?
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Just a little bit of faith, right?
Maybe you've done that. So maybe the question for you is
this. In what area of your life is God
asking you to change and do things his way?
Well, maybe it's this. What has God asking you to step
up and do you waiting until you have enough faith?
Because it's not about your level of faith.
It's about how faithful He is. It's about who He is.
Trust Him just a little bit and that will make all the
difference. Let's pray, Father, we do stand
before you in awe. We stand in reverence, knowing
who you are. And it's amazing to read these
stories that of what happened that Luke assembled, collated
for us, knowing who you are. Well, thank you that it's not
about us, it's about you. It's about our faith in you.
And Lord, we do put their trust in you this morning.
Thank you for everything you do. We pray these things in Jesus
name, Amen.