After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’”12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
Putting our confidence in Jesus and in his exclusive saving power that is His and His alone is what faith is in the Bible. Atheists have faith, they believe in many things, but it is not faith in Jesus Christ and so it is not the faith in which the Bible speaks.
In the Bible faith is always confidence in God and in His Son Jesus Christ. And this faith is seen and unseen, by which I mean, if you have faith, if you trust; you will be doing, you will be obeying what God says the life of faith is, what it looks like. And in that sense your faith is seen.
However, faith goes beyond that because true faith also is a matter of what is unseen. Why you do what you do and for whom you do it! The disciples should have done better than they did…there problem lies in the unseen, in that, they trusted themselves, they relied on the Christian duties, not on Jesus but themselves.
In one place faith is described as “looking to Jesus”; we cannot see Jesus – how much easier life would be if we could – but by faith we know that he is near, that he is present, and in our souls we look to him or turn to him, practicing his presence and act on our conviction that he is here, right here with me.
In another place faith is described as “taking hold of Jesus” (Heb. 6:18), as if we actually grab his hand and live our lives each day holding on to him like a child holding on to his parent’s hand.
I know many of you have had that experience where you are in a crowd and all of a sudden some little child is clinging to your pant leg or grabbing your hand, thinking you were his mom or dad. The child thinks he is holding on to his dad’s leg and was taking comfort from the knowledge that in that crowd of people he didn’t know, he was in touch with, he was holding onto his father or his mother. And then the shock on the child’s face when she turns around to discover that you are not her father and that she was leaning against and holding on to a complete stranger!
The world is full of people holding on to what they think is true and real but which is not; And the church? What of the church? Are we, you and I, have we, you and I, and do we daily, you and I, really take hold of Jesus…trusting Him, believing Him…even bringing our weak and beaten-up faith to Him to cling to Him all the tighter…saying I believe!!! But O Lord, help my unbelief?
I hear all the time people saying of someone that they love or who they know deeply, “Oh, he is a Christian, he has faith. I was there when they prayed to receive Jesus” But then who goes on to describe a person who doesn’t walk with the Lord at all and who hasn’t for years. But believers in the Lord Jesus don’t live on the first exercise of their faith from years ago, rather they live on the continual exercise of their faith every day! That was the disciple’s failure here.
They imagined that faith, once or twice exercised meant that at other times, it would be mechanical, they could just coast…that their faith didn’t require a dependence upon Jesus ALL THE TIME!
Let me put it another way; You cannot live on yesterday’s faith any more than you can see by yesterday’s light or drive your car with yesterday’s gas.
This is what our text is teaching us. Believers like you and me, like these disciples here, these nine men, often fail to live by faith. We often betray our faith. And that is why though this father was conscious of the weakness of his faith – mixed as it was with doubt and fear, nevertheless obtained what he so desperately wanted for his son.
It wasn’t the quality of the man’s faith; it was the power and authority of Jesus that affected the deliverance of this boy from the cruel demon who had so dominated and ruined his life. It isn’t your faith that was crucified for you. It isn’t your faith that made so many exceedingly great and precious promises to you. It isn’t your faith that rose from the dead. It isn’t your faith that is coming again. It is Jesus Christ who did, who said, and who will do these things for you. Faith by itself, separated from its object, is nothing but sentiment or wishful thinking.
But faith that is an active reliance upon the Son of God expressed in prayer to God is a power that raises the dead and meets the needs of those in trouble. (RSR)
Every believer knows all too well how weak his or her faith is. Like these disciples, we forget the presence of the Lord because we cannot see him and we start acting as if he were not there. What is that but a failure of faith?
He is there; we know it because he said he would be. But, distracted by the world of sight and sense, we do not actively rely on his presence and live as if it were not a reality. Or, we know of his mercy and his forgiveness; we know what he suffered to secure that forgiveness for us, but I will bet there are people here who confessed their sins, listened to the assurance of pardon…
…and yet will still feel the guilt, weight and presence of their sin to be greater than the grace of God in Christ Jesus…their faith in the Lord will fail…and they will leave this morning, not walking in the victory of Jesus, but still having the weight of their sin condemning them.
Let’s compare for just a moment the father and the disciples. The father is very much aware of the weakness of his faith, but relies on the Lord Jesus nonetheless, that is, he counts on Jesus to do for him what he needs to have done. The disciples on the other hand, believe about Jesus more than this man knows to do. They have more facts in their heads and they accept those facts as true, they are convinced of them. But the disciples’ faith lies inactive; it consists in convictions in the back of their minds.
Whereas the father puts his faith to work; the disciples do not. And the difference is that Christ is everything in the father’s mind. He is counting on him to heal his boy. He is looking to him to do it even amidst his own doubts and fears. The disciples, at least in this moment, are looking to themselves, however much they would have been entirely ready to admit that the power they wielded in driving out demons was a power that Jesus had given to them.
Christ had receded into the background. They were thinking that they would drive out this demon as they had driven others out before. They weren’t thinking, as the father was, about Christ driving out the demon…and the difference? Faith.
Our faith must be active in this to be sure, but our faith does not nourish us, Jesus does. Our faith does not promise us victory, Jesus does. Our faith does not send us out to the world to live for the Lord, Jesus does. And, like the father in our text, you might have only a weak, fearful and beat up faith this evening…so bring it, tattered as it might be, bring it to the Lord, bring it to the table and cry out to the Lord, Lord I believe, I believe you are life, I believe you are forgiveness, I believe you are my only hope…
…Help me to see what I cannot see, help me to feast upon the bread from heaven when all I see is the food of this world, help me to grasp hold of the One who gave Himself for me that in partaking of Him, I might now be given fully, daily over to the Savior!
I believe…help my unbelief!
Prayer: Father, forgive me for trying to create Jesus as I want Him to be. I often am demanding as a child and miss the peace that is mine that comes only in submitting my will to Yours and walking it true and abiding faith. You have graciously allowed me to taste that perfect peace and I long to taste it in fullness. Subdue my restless heart and may I find the peace that rests in the Savior, in Jesus name, Amen.
Hymn: Peace, Perfect Peace