If you want to find this passage and you don't
know exactly where it's at, if you have a pew Bible, it's on
page 1133, Luke chapter 17. And let's begin reading in verse
1 and read the first 10 verses of this passage. The Lord Jesus speaking unto
his disciples and said, it is impossible. but that offenses
will come. It's impossible. We live in a
sinful world. We live in sinful bodies. We
have sinful hearts. And it's impossible but that
sometime or another, somebody is going to offend somebody.
Somebody is going to cause another person to stumble. James said,
in many things we offend all. And he's a perfect man who don't
ever offend in words. We don't want to, we pray against
it, but just about everybody has it. It is impossible. But woe unto
him through whom they come! It were better for him than a
millstone, a large stone they ground grain with. were hanged
about his neck, and he cast into the sea, then that he should
offend one of these little ones." And Brother Larry just read to
us, those little ones are ones who believe on Him. Not speaking
of little infants, but the ones who believe on Him. Take heed
to yourself. If your brother trespasses against
you, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he trespass against you
seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to
thee, and saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him. And the apostles
said unto the Lord, increase our faith. And the Lord said,
if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say
unto this sycamine tree, be thou plucked up by the root, and be
thou planted in the sea, and it shall obey you. But which
of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto
him by and by, when he comes from the field, Go and sit down
to meet? And will not rather say unto
him, Make ready wherewith I may sit, and gird yourself, and serve
me, till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you shall eat and
drink? Doeth he thank that servant because
he has done those things which are commanded him? I think not.
So likewise you, when you have done all of those things which
are commanded, you say, we are unprofitable servants. We have
done that which is our duty to do. My text is found here in
verse 5, and I often have to resort to this text. And this message today is not
so much for you as it is for me. This encourages me. It helps
me. But the message this morning
is our text here in verse 5. Lord, increase our faith. It's a request. You know, so
often the Lord never came right out and said to His disciples
or anybody when they asked Him a question, I will. And it immediately
happened. Every time you ask him a question,
he answered you in such a way that it caused you to pause and
think about not only what you asked him, but the way he answered
you. The Lord was preaching one day,
and a man came to him and said, Lord, are there few that be saved? I don't know what the Lord was
preaching that caused this question to be asked, but it's a serious
question, isn't it? Are there few that be saved?
We believe in salvation. We believe in damnation. Are
there few that be saved? The Lord could have said, well,
there's going to be 3,249,000,000. He didn't say that, did He? He looked at that man and He
said, listen, you strive to enter in at the straight gate. Many
are going to seek to enter in and shall not be able. Don't
be so overly concerned about how many and forget about yourself. And I bet that man went by there
thinking, man, that's true. Why am I so worried about how
many? I just want to be found among the many, the many brothers. So the Lord answers this question
here the very same way. Lord increase our faith. And
He doesn't say okay and just increase their faith. But He
tells them something about the very nature of faith. And this
is four things I want to look at in this passage here this
morning. The request itself. I want to
look at the request and why they even ask it. what they knew about
faith. Lord, increase our faith. And
then secondly, I want to look at the reason for them asking
this question. Increase our faith. And then
I want to look at the Lord's response to this request. And
last of all, I want to look at the nature, something about the
nature of faith as we serve the Lord by faith. Okay? First of
all, then the request. Lord, increase our faith. There's a lot about these apostles
I don't understand, and nobody does. No matter what they say,
nobody does. They were ignorant about so many
things. For instance, look in chapter 18. Look right over in
the 18th chapter of Luke, and look in verse 31. We talk about
their ignorance about so many things, and they were ignorant
about this. Look what he said in verse 31.
He took unto him the twelve, the twelve apostles, and said
unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that
are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.
For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked,
and spitefully entreated, and spit upon. And they shall scourge
him, and put him to death. And the third day he shall rise
again." Now if you read the Old Testament, you find this, don't
you? But look what they said. And they understood none of these
things. And this saying was hid from
them, neither knew they the things which were spoken. They didn't
understand that. Now, let me make this clear and
plain. If they were on this side of
Calvary, and they had no more understanding than this, then
we'd be very doubtful of these men, wouldn't we? But at this
time, so often they said, what's this that he's saying? We can't
tell what he's saying. They were ignorant of so many
things. But listen, they weren't ignorant of who he was. He asked
them one day, who do men say that I am? And they said, you're
the Christ, the Son of the living God. They knew Him, didn't they? And that tells us something,
brothers and sisters. Sometimes it's not how much we
know. It's who we know. We still know
very little. We know very little about the
triune, eternal God. We grasp very little of the Word
of God. But we know Him, don't we? We
must know Him. I'm so thankful that the Holy
Spirit has opened our hearts to understand the Gospel and
believe the Gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ. You must know
and believe the Gospel. But I tell you, there are so
many things we don't know. But we need to remember we know
Him. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed. They knew Him. Who do men say
that I am?" And Peter said, ìYouíre the Christ. Thatís what I say,
isnít it you?î And he said, ìFlesh and blood has not revealed this
to you, but my Father which is in heaven.î Heís so hidden, the
Father, we canít know Him except by divine revelation. My Father
has revealed Him unto you. But hereís something they didnít
know about their faith. They didn't know very much about
what the Lord Jesus was going to accomplish at this time, but
here's some things they knew about their faith. And the first
one is this, they knew they had it. Lord, increase our faith. I tell you, they were probably
more settled on this than your pastors always settled. Did you
ever wonder if you had it? Do you ever wonder, do I believe
the Lord or not? I've thought that myself. These
men were settled there. We have faith. Lord, increase
our faith. I don't know when they got it,
and they may not have known when they got it. But get it, they
did. Get it, they did. Lord, increase
our faith. The Lord sometimes rebuked them
for not exercising the faith they had. He said one time, where's
your faith? Where's the exercise of it? He
rebuked them for having little faith. Oh you of little faith.
But He never did tell them, you're reprobates. You don't have any
faith at all. Because they did. Lord increase
our faith. They had it then. And they knew
that. I'll tell you something else
they knew about their faith. They put great value upon it.
They wanted it. increased. Lord, increase our
faith. You know if you've got faith
this morning, it's precious to you, isn't it? It's precious
to you. Sometimes even when you doubt,
you have it. You wouldn't trade what little
you have for anybody else's, would you? Why, you wouldn't. Faith is precious. Go out here
and search for it and see how much real faith you find. You
won't find much saving faith. People aren't born with saving
faith. They don't muster up saving faith. Saving faith is a precious gift
of God. And if you have it, you value
it. And you wouldn't trade it for anybody's. And it's precious
in its trial. Sometimes we suffer trials for
one reason. When the Lord gives you faith,
He's going to trial that faith. The trial of it is precious.
It's a gift. It's precious. It's unique. It
has one object. The object is precious. The Lord
Jesus Christ. I often think about what my neighbor
told me one day and I've said this so many times. She came
to me and she said, you make too much of faith. And I said,
my dear neighbor, faith saves you. The Lord Jesus said to a
woman one time, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Faith justifies you. Being justified
by faith, we have peace with God. You walk by faith. You live by faith. And if you
have real faith, you'll die in the faith. It's precious, isn't
it? And if you have it this morning, I'll tell you what you wanted
increased. Lord, increase this faith. I
want more of it. That's what they were saying.
Lord, increase our faith. Thirdly, they recognized this,
they must have recognized this, that the faith they had was a
grace. They didn't just muster it up
one day. And they couldn't increase it
either. They realized it was a grace, it was a gift. Therefore,
they said, Lord, increase our faith. Why didn't they increase
it? You don't have the ability to. Man don't have the ability
to believe apart from grace, and he don't have the ability
to sustain that faith apart from grace. He don't have the ability
to increase that faith apart from grace. When the Apollos Acts chapter
18 first came on the scene, man, he was a great preacher. He was
a great preacher. But he didn't know much about
anything but John the Baptist's ministry. And Priscilla and Aquila
took him aside and preached the gospel more clearly unto him.
And he went down to Achaia, and the Bible says, he helped them
much who had believed through grace. How do we believe? Through grace. The same Lord
who gives faith has to be the one to increase. And if He don't,
you can't believe, can you? You can't even sustain that faith,
and you surely can't increase that faith. Faith is indeed a
gift of God. The same Lord that gives it has
to maintain it, and He's the one that has to increase it. This should encourage us. This
should encourage us to death. If you can believe on your own,
anytime, without any grace, then you can lose it on your own.
And that's probably what people are doing today, aren't they?
Well, I believed when I was two years old. Well, I hope you did,
but boy, I tell you what. One man said, you've probably
been believing too long. One man actually said this. He
said, I was saved when I was a baby. And one man said, you've
been saved too long, man. Nobody can believe apart from
grace is what I'm saying. And when we realize that and
we realize that it's a grace, this should encourage us because
you know something, the heart of Jesus Christ is full of grace.
And He has the ability to increase that faith. Lord, increase our
faith. Increase it. He has the ability
to do that. That's why they came to Him to
do it. Now secondly, let's look at the
request itself, the reason for the request. Brother Larry read
the, I don't know if it's the parallel passage, but it teaches
the very same thing over there in Matthew chapter 13. But this
is very serious, what he was teaching in verses 1 through
verse 3 about sinning against a dear brother and offending
somebody. Offenses are going to come. But
beware, beware about offending somebody. Beware about assenting
against a dear brother. Beware about laying a stumbling
block before his way. That's serious, isn't it? That's
serious. Now, there's some just offenses. We offend people. We offend people
when we preach the gospel. And we don't apologize for that.
We preach the free grace of God. that's in Jesus Christ. We preach
electing grace, redeeming grace, calling grace, saving grace,
persevering grace, glorifying grace. We preach the pure gospel
of the grace of Jesus Christ. And we don't apologize for that
when it makes people mad. Paul said, if I yet preach circumcision,
then is the offense of the cross ceased. I tell you, the cross,
the preaching of the cross of Christ, offends this world, doesn't
it? You start preaching the cross
of Jesus Christ, and you know what that's going to tell every
man about himself? You're an ungodly, hell-deserving
wretch. Look what it costs Jesus Christ
to pay for sin. You think you're not bad? Look
at the cross. Who did He die for? The ungodly. I'm not that bad, somebody said.
Then you have no hope in this Savior. He died for bad people. for the ungodly. Do you believe the Lord chose who
He's going to save before the foundation of the world? Oh,
that offends me. What's offensive about that?
I've got a choice. It's my choice. We're not going to back up on
that. Not one iota. If that offends you, then you
go take it up with the living Lord. I'm saved according to
my will. It's my will that's the determinant
factor. The Bible says it's His will.
We're not going to back up on that. You say, that offends me.
You go to Him then. And you confront Him with that.
If you're saved according to your own free will and the power
of your own free will, then my brother, you're not saved. You're
just not saved. If your free will is the determinant
factor of your salvation, you're not saved. If the Lord has not
taught you any better than that, you say, that offends me. I won't
apologize for that. We will not apologize for that,
will we? There are some things that isn't an offense to this
world, we won't back up and edge on. But this is not talking about
that kind of offense. This is talking about deliberately
or willingly or unwillingly laying a stumbling block in the brother's
way, sinning against the brother. That's what this is talking about,
being confronted by and repenting. But notice here in verse 3, this
is some of the strangest language that we ever heard in all our
life. Look what he says in verse 3. Take heed to yourself if your
brother trespass against you. Isn't that strange? You thought
he would have said, take heed that you don't trespass against
your brother. But he said, take heed if your brother trespass
against you. That's strange, isn't it? If
somebody sins against you, he says, take heed. Take heed. The one that's been offended,
take heed. In chapter 18, Brother Larry
read this to us, the course of action that the person is to
take. And it says, go tell him your
fault. If somebody has done you wrong
and it's really upset you, They've really done you wrong and sinned
against you and it's hurt you and caused you to stumble and
you can't get over it. Here's the course of action that
you're to take. Go to that person and tell him
his fault. Tell him what he's done to you.
Confront him with it. Don't be shy about it. Tell him
the whole truth. And the Bible says, if he hears
you and repents, you've gained your brother. Case is closed. You've got sweet fellowship again.
That's the course of action that you are to take. That's the first
thing you have to do. Why must we do that? Why must
we do that? If somebody has sinned against
you, why must you go to them and tell them just between you
and him? Why must we do that? Oh, we can
get ourselves in an awful mess in our hearts if we don't do
that. And I tell you why that we're apt not to do that. Why
we almost sometimes have to force ourselves to go to somebody and
talk with them is because we're so shy We get so timid. We start thinking, man, I just
can't do that. I don't have the nerve to do
that. And we're apt to carry this offense in our bosom, in
our hearts, and hit fester there. And we have all this bitterness
get within us that we can't worship, we can't love, we can't serve
the Lord. So we have one course of action. The Lord says, go to that person
and tell him what he's done. Talk it over with him. Do that. That's the only course of action
you have. If you don't, you're going to carry this around and
you're going to get bitter. Your conscience is going to be
defiled and you're going to become a mess. It's an awful thing when
you get full of bitterness. Bitterness will destroy us. If
somebody's done something to you and it's bothering you that
bad, then go to that person and talk to that person. Sit down
with them. If they hear you, good, you've gained your brother. If you have to spend some time
in prayer for the Lord to give you grace, then do that. But
that's the only course of action. But it's not easy. Secondly,
we've got to do it for this reason. If we don't do it, I'll tell
you probably what we will start doing, confiding in a brother. We'll go to somebody else and
say, here's what this person did to me and it's really bothered
me and I need to talk to you about it. And then that person
goes to somebody else and says, here's what's happened to this
fellow over there. Then the rumors start spreading all over the
place and everything gets out of hand. See that? See how important
this is? Take heed to yourself. Take heed to yourself. You know what this order teaches
us? This order teaches us not to wear our feelings on our sleeves.
Every time somebody looks at me cross-eyed, there's no sense
in me getting offended. Oh, he hates me. He don't like
me. Sorry, man, but he hates me. He don't like me. Don't we
do that sometimes? If we hear somebody say a word
that we perceive, well, he don't like me, we get all down about
it. Don't be that way. Don't be so
easily offended. Don't have your little picky
feelings out there to be pinched on or walked on or something. This is a tough world to live
in. And if we're going to be so impatient and hold things
against people, we're going to get ourselves in a mess. If every
time I perceive somebody's done something to me and I'm doing
the right thing, I'm going to spend all my time going to somebody.
You've hurt me. Well, this fellow, why'd you
do me? And after a while, somebody's going to say, man, you need to
get tougher than that. You need to get some grace. You
need to spend some time in prayer. Take heed to yourself. You know,
we've got some people, bless their heart. Well, one writer
said, They get offended at every word.
They make a man an offender for a word. Every word he says, they
twist it or misrepresent it and say, he must have been talking
about me. He must have been talking about me. Don't be that way. Don't be that way. Here's another
problem we face here that the Lord spoke to us about. If he
repents, If he repented, and he emphasizes that here in our
passage twice, if he repented. Why does he say when he repented?
Why didn't he say, you know, some people don't repent. Some
people just will not repent. When you go to them and confront
them with what they've done and they've offended, instead of
repenting, they get lifted up in pride and they come back against
you. That's not the nature of the
Lord's kingdom. Do you know it? That's not the nature of those
who truly believe. If they repent. Then what did
He say? Then you forgive them. Boy, Peter had a problem with
this. He's the first one who made this statement. Lord, how
many times? Till seven times in a day? He
must have been having a problem with this. The Lord said no,
Peter. Not just seven, but seven times
seventy. I doubt seriously anybody is
going to sin against you and offend you seven times in one
day. But if they do, forgive them. Forgive them freely. Forgive them fully. Forgive them
everything they said. No matter what nature of offense
it was, how bad it was, forgive them. Forgive them all. Forgive
Him. Forgive Him. True forgiveness and true repentance
will restore that fellowship, that sweet fellowship that was
lost. If you go to somebody and they
say, Brother, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I had no idea
I had done that to you. And you say, Brother, I forgive
you. And you hug one another's neck and fellowship restored,
isn't it? Sweet! I tell you, forgiveness is sweet,
isn't it? I remember one time I was preaching for Donny Bell
And he had so much company, I told him I sleep on a couch. He had
a good comfortable couch, and so I just scratched down on the
couch right next to the front door overlooking the pond. I
had a good view anyway. I have this little alarm clock
I carry with me, and I set it. I was going to get up early because
I was preaching, so I set it real early. I don't know, four
or five o'clock at the latest. So I woke up about 30 minutes
early and got me a cup of coffee and went out on the back porch
and sat in there overlooking the pond. And I forgot to turn
my alarm clock off. And it's a loud alarm clock.
And I couldn't hear it out on the porch, but everybody in the
house got woke up. Donnie come out and stuck his
head out the back door, and I'm telling you, his countenance
wasn't towards me like it used to be. Bruce, get in here and
turn that alarm clock off. He couldn't find out how to turn
it off. And everybody that got up when I went back in the house,
everybody got up. Whose alarm clock was that? Marybell and
Lynn and I would come out on the back porch and they started
on me. Bruce had woken us up and I couldn't
go back to sleep. And I finally got down on one knee, got each
one under the hand and I said, sisters, forgive me. Forgive
me. And you know what they did? They
started laughing at me. And they forgave me. Restored the fellowship,
you see. That's what happens. And it's
sweet, isn't it? It's sweet. And when your brother hears you
and he confesses, forgive him, and then you've got the sweet
fellowship restored. And forgiveness means that you
forgive him. You don't resent it anymore.
You don't hold it against him anymore. You don't wait to see
how sincere his repentance was. Yeah, I'll forgive you, but I'm
going to wait and see. And you do it again. I'm going
to remember it. The Lord doesn't do us that way, does He? He said,
there's sins and iniquities. Well, I remember no more. I may
forgive it, but I'll never forget it. That's not the way to forgive.
Freely, fully, never hold it against them. Now, if somebody
sins and they're in a position of trust, they may lose that
position. You know, I mean, if you've got
somebody out here that's brought shame on not only themselves,
but the position in the church, boy, you know, they may say,
you know, I'm getting out of this position. I'm sorry. But
boy, as far as the forgiveness is concerned, it's forgiveness
of their sins, whatever they did to you. No one of these disciples said,
Lord, increase our faith. What does faith have to do with
forgiving? It has a lot to do with it, doesn't
it? It has a lot to do with it. What does the context tell us
here about the request? Forgiveness of a brother's sins
who has offended against you. You can only do that if you're
a true believer. What does faith have to do with forgiving? It's
the very nature of heart faith that shows us how much we owe. If I never owed anything, if
I don't owe God anything, then I don't have to forgive anything.
But my soul, faith, lets me see how much I owe. How much have
I sinned? I talked with a fellow one time,
and I think he told me either two or three years, He had lived
and hadn't sinned. And he's still without saving
faith. A man that's got saving faith don't think that way. He
just don't think that way. I tell you, when the Lord gives
you faith to believe Him, you know what you say about yourself.
You say you owe more than anybody. You have sinned more than anybody.
You're the chief of sinners. Nobody sinned more than your
pastor against God. against His mercy, against light,
against His goodness, against His patience, against the Holy
Spirit, against the Son of God, against His precious blood and
His intercessions. Nobody has sinned more than me. And how could I, after I had
been forgiven so much, look at my offending brother and say,
No, I'm not going to forgive you. You can't do that, can you? You can't do it. Not if you're
a believer you can't do that. Secondly about this is this.
The true nature of faith lets us see that my goodness we owe
more than anybody. The eye of faith lets us see
this about forgiveness. The enormous price that was paid
to secure our forgiveness. It don't cost me anything. It
don't cost you anything to forgive somebody. You know that? What
did it cost God to forgive us? It cost us the blood of His Son. Christ bare our sins in His own
body. He suffered for our sins. He
groaned for our sins. He was forsaken of God for our
sins. It cost Him everything to secure
our forgiveness. And could we dare withhold forgiveness
to those who repent? You can't do it. You can't do
it. I'll tell you two things and I'll stand on this and I
believe it's the truth. If you've sinned against somebody,
And that person, it comes to your mind. You understand what
you've done. You can't wait to get to that
person. You can't wait to say, I'm sorry. And if you're the person that's
been sinned against, you can't wait to say, brother, I forgive
you. I remember one time I preached the message. I don't know what
the message was, but we were going home and Joe said, I can't believe
you said that this morning. I said, said what? She said,
I can't believe you said that about the ladies of the church.
And I said, what did I say, sweetheart? And she told me what I said,
and I said, no, I didn't say that. And she said, well, call
some of them. I called Sue, I called Gail,
and they said, yeah, you said it. You know what I did? I started making some phone calls.
And some of you ladies probably remember it. I got up the very
next service, and I publicly confessed to you ladies, ladies,
forgive me. Please forgive me. And every
last one of you did. If you believe in Jesus Christ,
you know how much you owe, and you know what it costs God to
forgive you. And there's no way, there's no
way that somebody's going to come to you and tell you what
you've done, and you just get hard about it. There's no way
that could happen. There's no way that's going to
happen. You're a forgiven person if you've been forgiven yourself,
because you know the enormous price that was paid. That woman came to the Lord Jesus
and was weeping, anointed His feet and wept and washed His
feet with her tears. And He looked at her and said,
Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her, for she loved much. Forgiveness fills us with love,
doesn't it? It fills us with love. The Lord
responds. Let's look at that right quickly,
and I won't keep you much longer, I promise. The Lord responds.
He said here in verse 6, If you have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, you might say unto this sycamine tree, Be plucked up
by the root, and be thou planted in the seed, and it shall obey
you. Another place, he said, if you
have faith, you could say that this mountain be removed. Removing sycamine trees and removing
mountains. Now, this book, I know some places
we take it literally, but mainly we take places spiritually. This is not to be taken literally.
You don't go up to a tree and say, get out of my way, do you?
You go around it. You go to a mountain, you go
over it. It's not literally. You don't see trees and mountains
flying through the air. What the Lord Jesus is teaching
His disciples here, faith, true faith will remove obstacles that's
in your way. Little obstacles like a tree
are big obstacles like a mountain. Who is He that overcometh the
world? of trees and mountains and seas
and valleys. But he that believeth that Jesus
is the Christ. This is the faith that overcomes
the world. And this is what the Lord Jesus
is saying here. And what He's teaching here is
this. It's not the greatness of your
faith. It's not the greatness of your
faith. You know what's more important about the amount of faith that
you have? You know what's something more important than that? And
that's living in the exercise of what faith you have. The Lord Jesus told Peter a whole
year of little faith. But you know what little faith
made him do? Defy nature. He was walking on the water.
How much faith does it take to walk on the water? Just a little.
Just a little. If you live in the exercise of
it, he started down in the Lord wretched God and said, Oh, thou
little faith. Why did you doubt? You know what's the main thing
about little faith? It's object. It's object. That's where faith will remove
trees and mountains. It may be little faith, it may
be weak faith, but boy, if it's in the right object, if it's
in a mighty God, if it's in a mighty Savior, it will remove these
obstacles. When you've got your faith on
the living Lord, you can walk on water. But take your faith
off of Him, and I don't care how strong it was, you'll begin
to sink. The exercise of faith. Christ
was teaching His disciples here not to be overly concerned with
the degree of their faith, but learn to live in the exercise
of the faith which they already have. Little faith will do to live
by if you live in the exercise of it. You ever talk to any believer
and he said, I've got enough faith? I never have. Everybody wants more. Everybody
wants more faith. If you've got it, you do. But
that's not the real important thing. Live in the exercise of
what you have. We want enough to make our Christian
life easy, don't we? That's not the nature of faith.
Faith is what we have when we're between a rock and a hard place.
Faith is what we exercise when the Red Sea is in front of us
and Pharaoh's army is behind us. Faith is what enables us to swim
upstream. Faith enables us to go an extra
mile. Faith that enables us to utter,
though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. Though hell comes against
me and death, yet I will believe Him. I will rest in the Lord. That's faith. We're not always
given a degree of faith to make running the race easy. But we're
always given a degree of faith to enable us to run the race,
no matter how difficult it is. And that's what matters. If you've been given faith to
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then live daily upon Him. Live daily upon Him. Eating of Him and drinking of
Him. Following Him and praying to Him. Look to His love. Look to His promises. Look to
His faithfulness. Look to Christ in His offices.
Always live upon Jesus Christ. And if your faith is little,
yet you can say with Paul, I can do all things through Christ
who is strengthened of me. These trees and these mountains
will be removed. And it will be rather easy. All
you will have to do is say. Just say it. If you have faith
as a grain of mustard seed, say to that tree, say to that mountain,
be ye plucked up. You just say it. In verses 7 through verse 10,
we see something else about the nature of faith. It has to do
with humbly serving the Lord. He tells us you're about two
servants. You have a willing servant and you have an unwilling
servant in these verses. These apostles were having a
lot of trouble about humbly serving the Lord. And it has to do with faith.
The Lord increased our faith. You can't serve the Lord without
faith. You can't humbly be a willing servant without faith in Christ.
You'll be an unwilling servant. And these apostles were having
trouble at this. And I bet you when the Lord told
them about these two servants, one unwilling and one willing,
I bet you they left there thinking, Lord, I really need my faith
increased now. I want to serve you willingly.
These apostles, Brother Larry told us in Matthew chapter 18,
they were They were fussing over who was the greatest in the kingdom
of heaven. And they all wanted to be the
greatest. And can you blame them? Here they were serving the king
of Israel. And he was telling them about
this kingdom he was going to set up. And these were poor fishermen. They were uneducated men. And
he said, You're going to serve me in my kingdom. I've got a
kingdom. Well, if you're a poor, ignorant man up in Galilee and
you knew the King of Israel, wouldn't you say, Lord, let me
sit on your right hand. Let me sit on the left. Let me
reign with you. Wouldn't you think that? I ain't
going to be poor anymore. They ain't going to boss me around
anymore. You'd think that. And finally, they got to arguing
one day. Well, who's going to be the greatest? James said,
I'm going to sit on his right hand. John said, I'm going to
sit on his left hand. And the rest of them got mad. They got
mad. And the Lord Jesus told them,
said, that's not the nature of my kingdom. Here's the nature
of my kingdom. Until you're converted and become
as little children, you cannot enter into my kingdom. My kingdom
is about serving one another in humility. Serving God in humility. And you can't do it without faith. You serve Him by faith. And so
the Lord gives us these two examples. Yours are these two servants.
First, He gives us this unwilling servant. See it? Verse 7, Which
of you having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto
him by and by, when he comes in from the field, Go and set
down to me, and will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith
I am made, and you gird and serve me, and after I have been served,
then you can eat yourselves. Does he thank him? Does he say,
well, I thank you. You've been a good servant. And
you go ahead and sit down and let me serve you. That's not
the way it works, is it? But you've got this servant.
He's an unwilling servant. He don't love his master. He's
one of these self-righteous legalists. He's serving out of mere fear
of hell if he don't serve. Or he's serving out of reward.
He wants rewards. That's why he's doing what he's
doing. But he don't like it. He comes in from the field, and
his master says, make ready that I may sit down and eat. And boy,
he makes the food ready, and all along he's hating it. He's
peeling the potatoes so his master can eat. He's breaking the beans,
and he's fixing the milk, and he's saying all along, I hate
this. I've worked till my back's killing me, and look at these
blisters on my hands. And I come out from the field,
and once he do, he wants me to serve him. He's never thanked
me. He's never promoted me. He don't
pay me sufficient wages. I don't like his service. I don't
like his cows, his field, his harvest. I don't like him. And
he stands there with a locked jaw. He's a servant. But boy,
he don't like it. He just don't like it. You know
there's people serving the Lord that way? Yeah, they serve the
Lord that way. They're afraid not to. They're
afraid they'll go to hell. You've got Catholics all over the world
this morning, they went to Mass because they got drunk last night.
They went to Mass last Sunday because they got drunk that Saturday
night. But they're afraid if they don't go to Mass, they're
going to hell. They're serving the Lord out of a mere fear of
going to hell, an awful slavish fear. And you've got fundamentalists
all over this world, they're giving and serving because they
think, man, I'm earning my reward in heaven. There are people like that. The
Bible teaches there are people like that. And then you have
this man in verse 10. Look at this servant. And likewise
ye, when you shall have done all those things which are commanded
you, say in your heart of hearts, and mean it to, we are unprofitable
servants. We are unfit servants. We have
done that which is our duty to do. That is a faithful servant. That's a willing servant. That's
a loving servant. That's his attitude. He puts
his ear to the post and says, bore a hole in my ear. I love
my Master and I'm staying with Him. I'm going to serve Him. He don't lock his jaw and serve
the Lord out of mere slavish fear. He serves the Lord because
he loves Him and because he believes Him. A man asked Walter Gruber
one time when he went to Mexico, struggling, trying to feed his
family, living in a little small apartment. They said, Walter,
are you happy? I ain't going to tell you all
of what he said, but he said, what's happiness got to do with
it? He says, this is the will of my master. That's all that
matters. That's all that matters. What
matters to us this morning? What matters if I'm not always
comfortable in serving the Lord? What matters if it costs me something
as long as He's honored and served? That's what matters, isn't it?
We should stand in utter amazement that He would let us carry water
to His children out in the field. That He would let us feed His
sheep. That He'd keep us around. That we'd get a glimpse of His
face on occasion. I'm amazed that He's called me
to serve Him. And when I serve Him, I see sin
mixed with everything I do. What do you think about your
Master this morning? What do you really think about your Master?
Do you really love Him? Is it a burden for you to serve
Him? Does it grieve you to come to public worship? Does it grieve
you to sit down and read His Word and seek His face? Does
it grieve you to take His Gospel to your neighbors and other people?
Are you grieved to serve Him? How do you feel about serving?
Do you love your Master? Aren't you just amazed that He
lets you serve Him? Boy, when I leave here this morning,
you know what I'm going to be saying? Lord, increase my faith.
Lord, increase my faith. Oh, let me serve You like this,
to serve You willingly and lovingly and fully. with all my heart. And then when I've done all of
that, before I go to bed, sit down and say, Lord, I'm so wretched.
I'm so unprofitable. Forgive me for my sins and give
me grace to serve you again tomorrow. Lord, increase our faith. I didn't
lose anybody today, did I? Everybody understand what I said? I don't know if it's just the
way I talk or what I'm saying, but sometimes people just don't
understand me. I was talking with, especially
with young people, 10, 12, young teenagers. I sit down to talk
with teenagers and sometimes they get this strange look on
their face. And I realize it's not what I'm saying, it's how
I'm saying it. They can't understand what I'm saying, this hillbilly
slang. I was talking with a young lady this week and she looked
at her mother and said, what did he say? What did he say? Did I make myself plain? Did
everybody understand? Alright then. Alright. As long
as you got it.