Several years ago, I don't remember it here, but several
years ago, we did look at this passage. And I want to revisit
it this afternoon in Luke 17 and begin it in verse 1. Let
me read the first ten verses to us. Then said He unto His disciples,
It is impossible but that offenses will come, but warn to him through
whom they come. It were better for him that a
millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea,
than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed
to yourselves, if thy brother trespass against you, rebuke
him, and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against
you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again
to you saying, I repent, you shall forgive him. And the apostle
said unto him, Lord, increase our faith. And the Lord said,
if you had faith as of the grain of mustard seed, you might say
unto this sycamore tree, be thou plucked up by the root, and be
thou planted in the sea, and it should obey you. But which
of you having a servant plowing, or feeding cattle, will say unto
him by and by, when he is come out of the field, Go, and set
down to meet. And will not rather say unto
him, Make ready, wherewith I may sup, and gird yourself, and serve
me, till I have eaten and drunken, and afterwards you shall eat
and drink? Does he thank that servant because he did the things
that were commanded him? I truly not, I think not. So
likewise ye, when ye have done all those things which are commanded
you, say, We are unprofitable servants. We have done that which
is our duty to do. Now, I'm looking here in verse
5 at this request of the apostles. Lord, increase our faith. Lord, increase our faith. And I want to see four things
this afternoon from this passage. First of all, I want to see this
request itself. This request itself implies some
things that they knew and believed concerning their faith. And then,
secondly, I want to look at the reason that this request was
made. Why did they ask this? Lord,
increase our faith. And then, thirdly, I want to
look at the Lord's respond to this request, how he answered
it. Then, lastly, I want to look at the nature of true faith. The nature of true faith. Now,
sometimes we say of these apostles, and it's so. that they were so
ignorant in so many spiritual aspects. They either had no understanding,
or had little understanding, or they misunderstood the things
that the Lord Jesus was telling them of. The Lord Jesus said
to them, What I say unto you, you know not now, but you shall
know later. And it was said again, These
things were hid from their eyes. And it was said again, we cannot
understand what he said. What's he saying? So they had
little or no or misunderstood. How often they just blatantly
misunderstood what he told them. But in regards to this business
of faith, they weren't completely ignorant of that. And we see
some things here in this request. that implied that they knew something
about saving faith. They may not have knew much,
but they knew something about it. Lord, increase our faith. And what's the first thing that
we learn? That they knew. They had faith. They knew that they believed.
They weren't destitute of faith. They weren't lost and without
any faith in their hearts. Lord, increase our Now, I'll
be honest with you. There was a time when these apostles,
before the Lord called them, they were lost. I can't put my
finger on it. You can't find it in the Scriptures.
But there was a time there had to be when they, like every one
of us, were lost without the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ
and without saving faith in Him. They weren't born believing any
more than you and I are. There was a time when they did
not know Him and they did not savingly believe on the Son of
God. But they were brought to believe.
I don't know when that happened. I don't know exactly how it happened.
But here they said, we believe. And before the Lord Jesus asked
them who do men say that I am, Peter said, well, you're the
Son of God. I know who you are. The Father had revealed Christ
to Peter. And Peter said, Lord, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of life, and
I believe. I believe and I'm sure that you're
the Son of God. I don't know when they came to
faith, but they had faith, didn't they? They didn't say, give us
faith. They already had it. But they
hadn't always had it. He had brought them to faith,
and now They said, it's ours. Brothers and sisters, you may
be here this evening, and you may be ignorant about a lot of
things. Diane told us about her ready to seek for tongues not
long after the Lord saved her. Aren't we ignorant about things?
One dear man, a pastor friend of mine, he said, sometimes he
thinks when the Lord saves a person, he should lock him up until he
teaches him some But you know something? We may not know much
about spiritual things, but what a blessing if the Lord has taught
us in our heart, I do believe. I do believe. I don't know a
lot about everything else, but there's one thing about it. Lord,
I believe that you're the Son of God. Oh, that's a lot, ain't
it? What a wonderful blessing. And these apostles had that. They realized that they had this
faith. Increase our faith. And the second thing that this
request replies is this. They not only knew they had this
faith, they knew it was precious. They knew it was precious. Increase
it. Why did they want it increased?
It's precious. It's precious. Peter wrote a lot in his epistle. This was one of his favorite
words, was precious. He talked about the precious
blood of Christ. He talked about Christ being
precious to God the Father. He said Christ was precious to
those that believe. God has given to us exceeding
great and precious promises. And when he was talking about
this faith, here's what he said about it. You have obtained like
precious faith with us. It's precious. I tell you, if
you're here this evening and you have this faith, It's rare,
ain't it? You may have not understood this
when the Lord first saved you and you come to believe in Christ,
but I tell you, it wasn't long that you realized how precious
this faith is. And you realize how rare it is.
What makes gold so rare? Have you been keeping up with
the price of gold? It's skyrocketing. And it's because it's a precious
metal. And ain't nobody here got much
of it, except maybe Billy or Bob. They've got their drawers
loaded with it. You know, that's why I don't
have any of it. It's precious. It's precious. That's what faith
is. And one thing that makes it precious,
it's rare. It's rare. There may have been
a time when you and I thought, everybody believes. until the
Lord brings us to believe. Then we begin to see, no, they
don't believe. They don't believe. Not with
this faith. Not with this saving faith. And I tell you, you come
to realize it's precious. And you say, Lord, increase it.
I want more of it. Thirdly, they come to realize
this, and this request implies that. They come to realize, indeed,
that this faith was a grace. It's a grace. It's not something
you can muster up. As I said, it's not something
you're born with. You don't have the ability to
believe. They come to understand that.
This is why they made this request. Lord, you increase our faith. If they had the ability to increase
it, if they could have mustered it up, they'd have never made
this request. They knew that he who gave this
faith was the only one that could increase it. So they come to
him and said, Lord, we see now that you gave it. Would you increase
it? And he's the only one that can.
The one who gave the faith is the only one who can increase
it. I never will forget when I first
came to see that verse over, I think it's in Acts chapter
19, when Barnabas, or when Apollos came to Ephesians to preach to
those people. And it said, He helped them much
who had believed through grace. It's grace. And they realized
this. increase our faith. So they knew
three things about it. They knew they had it, they knew
it was precious, and they knew it was a grace. And he who gave
it could increase it. That's the first thing. Secondly,
I want us to look now quickly at the reason they ask this request. Lord, increase our faith. And
it takes us back up here to verse 3. The Lord Jesus was dealing
with a very, very solemn subject. He was talking about here forgiveness
of sins. If somebody has so sinned against
you that they have offended you, then you must forgive them. And
he says here, and this is the way he says it, and I want you
to notice how strange this is. Look, he says this in verse 3.
The first thing he says, take heed to yourselves. Now, what's so strange about
that? Well, listen to the way he says this. If your brother
have trespassed against you. Now, ain't that strange? Take
heed to yourself. If somebody has sinned against
you, you take heed. You would think it would be the
other way around, wouldn't you? If you sinned against somebody,
take heed. But he doesn't say that. He says
if somebody has so sinned against you that they've offended you,
take heed to yourself. I tell you, if somebody has offended
you, They put you in an awful predicament. Did you notice that?
You're in a way, in a sense, in a more dreadful predicament
than they are. They may not even know they've
offended you. But you know it. And it's eating
away at you. And what do you do? He tells you. Go rebuke him.
Go rebuke him. Go confront him with it. And
tell him what he's done. And he says you're not if, not
when your brother sins against you, but if. If he'd have said when, then
we would have just been waiting for us to sin against one another.
But he didn't say when, he said if. Brothers and sisters, we
don't have to sin against one another. We just don't have to
do it. We don't have to have evil thoughts
against our brothers and sisters. We don't have to be hateful and
unkind to them, do we? We just don't. It's not wind,
but ill. If somebody has sinned against
us, though, here's the only thing we can do. Rebuke him. In another
place, the Lord Jesus said, you go to him and tell him his fault
between you and him. And if he hears you, then that's
well. You've gained your brother. Now,
here's the problem that you and I face. Here's the problem that
we face. First of all is this. By nature,
we're a sulky, pouty bunch of people. And if somebody stands
against me, what's the first thing I want to do? Is just pucker
up and get all stubbed up about it. And just pull back within
myself and say, I ain't going to it. No. I'm not going to him. Then you get down, and if you're
not careful, you'll get full of bitterness and you'll carry
this in your heart. Why? Because that's the people
we are by nature. The second thing, here's the
second problem we have, is this. If we're not careful, we'll go
confide in somebody else. Instead of saying, brother, here's
what you did to me, and I resent it. We'll go say, Clarence, here's
what Glenn did to me. You don't know what Glenn did
to me. And then what happens? If you are not careful, these
things get spread all over the church, don't they? Here is why
the Lord gives us this advice. The first thing you have to do
is go to Him. And then we have this problem,
embarrassment. We are so timid, we won't go.
How long has it been since somebody has offended you and you went
to them and talked to them about it? It is a tough thing to do,
ain't it? This is why you and I shouldn't
wear our filling on our sleeves. If we're going to wear our filling
on our sleeves, I'm telling you, we're going to be in trouble
all the time. Every little look that somebody
makes, we're going to be offended. Every word that somebody speaks,
it's going to offend me. They're offending me. Well, quit
wearing your fillings on your sleeves. Great peace have they
that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. But if we
have been offended, here's what we must do. We must go to them
and say, Brother, Sister, here's what you've done to me. You've
offended me. And then, here is what we're to do. When they repent,
if they repent, forgive them. Upon their acknowledgment of
their sin, forgive them. Forgive them just as the Father
in heaven has forgiven you. How did He forgive you? Freely. Unconditionally for Christ's
sake. And He'll never remember it against you again. That's
the way we're to forgive. And the Lord takes an extreme
case here, and I've never known this to happen, but here in verse
4, He's stressing the importance of having a forgiven heart, and
He says, if they sin against you seven times in one day, another
place He said 490 times in a day. But if they turn again and say,
I repent, then forgive them. Forgive them. But here is the
problem. We don't have an option. This
is not optional. You can't say, well, I'll think
about it. I'll try it. Let me pray about it. We forgive. And the Lord Jesus stressed the
importance of this by saying this. He said, when you stand
praying, If you have ought against your brother, forgive him that
your Father in heaven will forgive your trespasses. If you forgive
not them their trespasses that have sinned against you, your
Father won't forgive you your trespasses. It's not optional,
is it? If someone has offended me and
they repent, no matter what the nature of that sin is, I forgive
them. I forgive them freely. I don't
wait. We mustn't wait, brothers and
sisters, to see how sincere that apology is. To see if they're
earnest in it. We don't wait and say, when they've
done it again, I knew you weren't honest. I was waiting to see. It has to be freely, doesn't
it? Forgiven. From your heart. From your heart. Forgiven. It's not optional. Now, Lord, increase our faith."
See why they made that request? Here the Son of God is pressing
upon them to have a tender, gracious, forgiving heart. And these were
men that were going to be abused by saint and sinner. These poor
men were going to be Don't you imagine there were some of those,
maybe the Sanhedrin and those priests that cursed these apostles,
that abused them everywhere in the world? And then the Lord
saved them, and you and these same men came back to them and
said, Brother Peter, I'm so sorry. Oh, I hated you, I cursed you,
I could have killed you. I'm so sorry. They had conflicts
in the early church among Christians. And some of these dear apostles
suffered for it. Then they turned and said, Oh,
Peter, forgive me. What did he do? He had no choice
but to forgive. Forgive. A kind, tender, forgiving
heart. Lord, increase our faith. Increase our faith. They recognized
there was something about faith that would enable them to do
what the Lord required them to do. I bet you could have went
to these apostles at this time and asked them to distinguish
between law and faith. I bet you they couldn't. I bet
you they couldn't. But one of the things they recognized
about faith was this, that this faith would give them grace and
would give them strength to do what the law could only command
them to do, and that was to love. Faith works by love. Lord, increase our faith. I can't do this. I can pretend
to. I can forgive with my lips. But
you said the heart. Lord, increase my faith. Give
me faith. Increase this faith. And here in verse 6, the Lord
answers this, and as He often does, He answers it in a very
peculiar way. Here is the way he answers this.
If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say to
this sycamine tree, be plucked up by the roots and be planted
in the sea, and it would obey you. is his reply. Now, when he says here, if you
had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could speak to this
sycamine tree. In another place, he said you
could speak to the mountains. Now, that's not literally, is
it? Faith is not foolish. It doesn't
go out there and talk to trees and mountains. If that were so,
we'd have trees flying through the air and mountains flying
through the air. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking
about Things that stand in our way. It may be something as small
as a tree. It may be something as big as
a mountain. But those things that we can't
get through, and we can't get around, faith will move them. Faith will move them. This is
the victory that overcomes the world. Even our faith. This is the victory that overcomes
resentment. This is the victory that overcomes
grudges. and offenses and hard feelings.
Boy, sometimes those are mountains, aren't they? When you can't sleep
for the night, you wrestle and struggle with this business of
resentment and hurt feelings, this faith will remove it. If
you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, it don't have to be great
faith. It's not the greatness of faith,
brothers and sisters. It's the greatness of faith's
object. Faith has a great God. It has a great Savior. Abraham's faith was great, we're
told, but I'll tell you what was greater than his faith. And
that was the object of it. Abraham believed God. And it
was counted to him for righteousness. Paul said, Brethren, I believe
God. It's not the greatness of the
faith, but it's the object. Little faith, if it be true faith,
Exercised in a mighty object can obtain great things and can
remove great obstacles out of our way in our Christian walk. And that's what the Lord Jesus
is telling His disciples here. Don't be concerned about how
much faith you have. Live in the exercise of what
faith you do have. You know what Peter done? The
Lord said, O ye of little faith. So he didn't have much. But you
know what he did when he exercised that little faith? Upon Christ,
the object of it? He did something that was impossible
to do. He did something that was supernatural.
He walked on the water, didn't he? And the Lord said, he began
to sink, and the Lord said, O ye of little faith. Little faith. Yes, he had a little faith. And
if he'd have kept that little faith on his great object, he'd
have never sunk, would he? No, it's not the greatness. We
shouldn't be concerned about the greatness, but we should
live in the exercise of the faith that we have upon this mighty
object. I've never run into a single
Christian that thought he had enough faith. Everybody that's
got this, they want it increased because they see they don't have
much of it. I tell you the kind of faith
we want. We want enough faith to make life easy. That's not
the nature of faith. The nature of faith, brothers
and sisters, is when you've got the Red Sea in front of you and
Pharaoh's army behind you, and the Lord speaks and says, Stand
still, Bill. You stand still. That's when
you're going to need faith. When God hides his face, the little article in the bulletin
today, Who are you that walks in darkness and has no light?
That's God hiding his face. Let him trust in the Lord. I
tell you, it's tough to trust when he hides his face, ain't
it? It's not easy. Faith doesn't look for the easy
route. It swims upstream all the time. Faith puts you between a rock
and a hard place. That's where faith comes in.
It's not to make life easy. It's not to make the race easy
to run. But it's made to run the race
with, no matter how difficult it is. Faith. Faith. If you had faith as a
grain of mustard seed. So quit worrying about your little
faith. Look to the object of it. Believe
on Him that gave this faith. Keep your eyes upon Him. Stay
your heart upon Him. And it may be little faith, but
I'm telling you, it will do great things. It will remove the obstacles
that keep you from obeying the Lord Jesus Christ. And lastly,
in verses 7 and 10, he tells us something about the true nature
of faith and how it affects our attitude. Here in verses 7 through 10,
he tells us about two servants, two slaves. He tells us about a willing slave
and an unwilling slave. He gives us this picture. Here's
a man that comes in from the field, and he's been feeding
the cattle. And you can get a picture of
this slave, and he comes in. He's been out in the field working.
He's been feeding the cattle. He's been plowing. And why is
he doing that? Why did he get up that morning
and go out to work to plow the field and feed his master's cattle?
He was afraid not to. He was afraid of the whip. He
didn't do it because he loved his master. He did it because
he was afraid his master would beat him. And he comes home that
evening after working all day, and his master doesn't say to
him, sit down to eat now and rest yourself. The master says
to him, you stand behind me while I sit and eat, and then you can
feed yourself. And can't you see that unwilling
slave standing there, and boy, he's so upset. He's gritting
his teeth and his countenance, you can see the anger on his
countenance. Boy, he begins to think within himself, who does
he think he is? Here I've worked all day, and
I've worked hard, and he's not thanked me. He's not commended
me. I deserve more than what he's
given me. And you know what his whole problem
is? He's an unwilling slave. That's his whole problem. You
know what his problem is? He don't have this faith. He
doesn't have this faith. What does this faith do? It makes
us willing slaves. We don't serve out of a spirit
of legalism or self-righteousness. Faith, if we have it, makes us
serve the Lord Jesus Christ out of thankfulness and because we
love Him. Unwilling slave is working for
reward in some fashion or another, and he grows tired after a while
if the reward is delayed. He grows resentful. He's not
appreciated, he says. But faith, what does it do? It
doesn't work for a blessing. Faith works because it is blessed
already. Faith doesn't work for reward.
Its master is its reward. This is the nature of true faith.
Faith understands this. It's not just doing something,
but it's the attitude in which you do it in. I'm a servant of
Christ, but what kind of attitude do I have when I serve Him? Am
I a willing servant? Do I serve Him because I love
Him and respect Him and reverence Him? You ask this willing slave, what
do you think of your master? Oh, I love my master. He's such
a wonderful master. He is such a good master. He's
so precious. What do you think about his rule
and what he asks you and tells you to do? Oh, I delight in what
he asks me to do. I delight in what he tells me
to do. I don't resent it at all. What do you think about yourself?
Here he tells us in verse 10, doesn't he? And likewise ye,
when ye have done all this commanded, ye say, We are useless servants."
We're useless. See the difference in those who
have faith and those who don't? Those who don't have this faith,
they may serve, but they don't love the Master. All of theirs
is outward. It's just show. They're wanting
a reward. They want to be saved from hell,
and they think they deserve it, too. And if the reward is delayed,
they become very resentful, because they're so proud. But here's
the willing servant. Here's the man who has this faith
in his heart. And he says, you know, I don't
know why my Master keeps me around. I'm amazed that He lets me serve
Him. I'm amazed at it. I'm amazed
that He lets me untie His shoes. I'm amazed that He lets me into
His presence. Oh, I just love to carry Him
a cold glass of water. I love to sit and serve Him what
He eats. I'm willing to wait. All that
matters is this, the good pleasure of my Master. I will not work
my soul to save, that my Lord has done, but I will work like
a willing slave for Christ the Lord." He is ready to send these disciples
out into a tough world. And I am telling you there were
going to be times when they were thrown into jail with stripes
on their back. They would be abused and cursed.
And when all this was going on, our Lord would have hid His face
from them. And it seemed like it was tough to pray. You opened
up the scroll, the Bible, and it was all empty pages. And you know what's the difference
between them and men like Demas who finally left, and Judas who
betrayed the Lord Jesus? It was this business of faith.
Faith. Even the faith of a grain of
mustard seed will have you looking through those dark clouds. Faith
is a grain of mustard seed. It don't matter if I'm in prison.
It don't matter if they put stripes upon my back. It don't matter
if they hate the gospel that I preach. All that matters is
am I serving the Lord? Am I pleasing Him? That's all
that matters. That's real faith. That's the
nature of faith. Please in the Master and not
yourself. Nothing else matters. May God
bless His words. Let's pray.