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Colin Smith: If the apostles asked Jesus to increase their faith, how much more should we be asking of the Lord Jesus that He would increase ours? Now here's the question that gives us the trajectory for the message today. What was it that caused the disciples to ask Jesus to increase their faith?

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I'm Steve Hiller. Glad you're with us today. And Colin, we've got to know the answer to that question. Why did the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith?

Colin Smith: Well, in the passage of the Bible where this question occurs, Jesus has been speaking to them about temptation. He's been speaking to them about the command to forgive. These things are big issues, and it's later in the same chapter that the disciples say, "Oh, Lord, increase our faith."

What we're going to look at particularly today is that the disciples experienced failure, as we do. And when you experience failure, you find yourself saying, "Lord, I need more faith here because I've not done well." And then sometimes we're put in a situation where we're battling our own unbelief and our own doubts and our own questions, and that's a great place to pray this prayer: "Lord, increase our faith." That's what we're looking at today.

Steve Hiller: And we're looking at that from the book of Luke. We're in chapter 17, so hope you'll open your Bible and meet us there as we continue our message, "Growing Faith." Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: God says, "You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him." Now, what is this saying? Well, when a brother or a sister wrongs you, you will often find that you are simply able to pass over it and to move on. And if that is the case, thank God for that.

But sometimes, if the wound is deep, you may find in your own heart that you're beginning to struggle with resentment towards the person who has hurt you. Now, notice the logic of this verse that speaks to that situation. God says, "You shall not hate your brother in your heart." You must not allow your heart to go there. That's not an option that is open for you as a believer.

So if you find resentment towards a brother rising in your heart, what should you do? Well, you should go and you should reason with him or with her frankly. Why? "Lest you incur sin because of him," or her. In other words, lest the wrong that he or she has done leads you into the sin of hating them.

Now, the aim then of this honest conversation, this confrontation that takes place here, is that help will come both to the person who has caused the offense and to the person who has been offended. And that surely is why Jesus tells us that this is something that, in these circumstances, we should do. "If your brother sins, rebuke him."

But then notice that Jesus says, giving a second charge to all who are his disciples, "And if he repents, forgive him." And then he says, "And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and turns to you seven times in the same day and says, 'I repent,' you must forgive him." And when the disciples heard these words, they said, "Lord, increase our faith."

You see the point? They realized that the life to which the Lord Jesus Christ is calling them is so far beyond them that they cannot do it in their own strength. They cannot do it in their own power. Lord, increase our faith. Lord, if this is what you are calling us to do, you are going to have to give us the strength to do it.

Now, here's the principle, and it's a very important one that we're learning from the Bible here today. When you see the sheer difficulty of the life that the Lord Jesus Christ calls you to, then you will ask Him to increase your faith. That's what we learn here. And I want you to think about this. What is the life to which we are called?

Brother, sister, Christ calls you to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Christ calls you to love your neighbor as yourself. Christ calls you to be holy as God Himself is holy. Christ calls you not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. Christ calls us to rejoice always. And Christ says to His disciples, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect."

Now, when you read these words, you hear these words of Jesus, you really take in the holy life to which you're called, well, then you're going to say, "Lord, increase my faith because I'm not going to be able even to pursue this kind of a life unless you give to me what I do not have."

C.S. Lewis expresses this wonderfully well in his book, *Mere Christianity*. He says there, "No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good." No one knows how bad he or she is until they have tried very hard to be good. Why does he underline this point about "very hard"? Well, he says a little later, "Unless we really try, well, it will always be in the back of our minds that if we tried harder next time, we could really be completely good."

Faith grows when you come to the place of seeing that a holy life is beyond the capacity of your flesh and of your nature, and you come to the place of saying, "Lord, increase my faith. Lord, give me what I do not have, because Lord, this is beyond me and I can only do this if you give to me what it's going to take."

And you know, that really is at the very heart of what brings us to Christ, what causes us to trust Christ and depend on Christ and to look to Christ, which is the very heart of the Christian life. So we're looking at how faith grows and we're looking at when we need to ask our Lord Jesus to increase our faith.

We need to ask Him for this because we ourselves are tempted. We need to ask Him because we are called to a holy life. And then thirdly, ask the Lord to increase your faith because you will encounter great evil. Now, I want you to notice here that in Luke 17, we have a record of the words of Jesus.

But Luke does not tell us here when and where these words were spoken. In fact, if you look at this whole section of Luke's Gospel, you'll see that these verses are part of a long section in which Luke has really gathered together teaching of Jesus that would have been given on several different occasions.

Now, of course, God has given to us in the Bible four Gospels. And sometimes when you put the different Gospels side-by-side, you can see some connections that at least suggest where and when the various words of Jesus were spoken. Now, notice that Luke tells us that when the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, our Lord responded in verse six by saying, "If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you."

Now, you may recognize that these words are almost identical to the words that the Lord Jesus spoke in the story we looked at last week, the story about the boy who was oppressed by an evil spirit and Jesus wonderfully delivered him. You remember Jesus had gone up the mountain with Peter and James and John. The other disciples were at the bottom of the mountain.

The father of the boy asked the disciples to help. They tried, and they failed. And then we read in Matthew's Gospel that Jesus came down the mountain and He delivered the boy from the evil power that had afflicted him. And then the disciples asked Him privately, "Why could we not cast it out?" And then Jesus said, "Oh, you of little faith. That's the problem."

And then He said, "For truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you." So these words are so similar that it is very reasonable to think that the disciples would have responded to Jesus on this occasion by saying, "Lord, increase our faith."

And because Jesus was the master teacher, it would have been very natural for Him at that point to then change the analogy and repeat the same point again in the words that we have in Luke in chapter 17. Having spoken about the mountain and then the disciples saying, "Oh, increase our faith," it's very reasonable to think that Jesus would then say, "If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you."

Now, it seems to me very likely, then, that the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith when they had been confronted by this great darkness at the bottom of the mountain and found themselves absolutely powerless to face it. And Jesus said to them, "You couldn't cast it out because of your little faith. That's the problem." And they feel their need to grow in faith.

When you encounter great evil, when you find yourself facing great darkness, ask the Lord to increase your faith. The apostle writes, "We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, which of course includes the shield of faith, that you may be able to withstand the evil day."

When you face a struggle that seems beyond you, when you're confronted by your own failure, when you find yourself surrounded by great darkness and evil, ask the Lord to increase your faith. We ask the Lord to increase our faith because we're tempted. We ask Him to increase our faith because we're called to holy lives.

We ask our Lord to increase our faith because we do encounter great evil and we often fail. And we ask the Lord to increase our faith fourthly because we all battle with unbelief. Now, it's Mark who tells us in his account of this same story of the father who brought the afflicted boy to Jesus, that he said to the Lord, "If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us."

The man had been disappointed by the disciples' inability to help him. But notice this, that though the man had been disappointed by the disciples, he was still drawn to Jesus. "If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." Don't let the failure of other Christians keep you from discovering what the Lord can do for you. That's what we learn here from this man in the story.

Don't let the discouragement of what you may have been disappointed in in other Christians keep you from discovering what Jesus Christ is able to do for you. When this man came and asked Jesus directly for help, Jesus said to him—this is Mark chapter nine and verse 23—"All things are possible for one who believes." And then this man said to Jesus some very famous words: "I believe; help my unbelief."

And for 2,000 years, Christians have been deeply grateful to this man who spoke these words. We relate to them. Lord, I believe. Help me with my unbelief. And then we're told that Jesus delivered the afflicted boy from the evil spirit. The disciples saw Jesus do what they had been unable to do. And seeing the miracle, they say, "Increase our faith. Lord, we believe, but like the father of this boy, what he just said is also true of us. We also battle unbelief ourselves. Lord, increase our faith."

Faith lives with unanswered questions. Faith is often afflicted by many doubts. No one has a perfect faith. However much we grow in the Christian life, we struggle with doubt and unbelief, and many fears remain. I've been greatly helped on this by some words from John Calvin that I want to quote to you.

He says this: "The godly heart"—and I want to underline that, the godly heart, the heart of a godly person—"the godly heart feels in itself a division because it is partly imbued with sweetness from the recognition of the divine goodness, that is, it has a comfort of believing that God is good, and yet partly grieves in bitterness from its own calamity."

The godly heart looks at itself and says, "Oh, there's so much here that's not as it needs to be." It partly rests on the promise of the Gospel, partly trembles at the evidence of its own iniquity, partly rejoices in the expectation of life, and partly shudders at the thought of death. Now, says Calvin, this variation arises from the imperfection of faith since in the course of this present life, it never goes so well with us that we are wholly cured from the disease of unbelief and entirely filled and possessed by faith.

Now, you see, that is why the Scriptures repeatedly use language that calls us to grow in faith. We're always in need of our faith growing. We're always in the place of saying, "Lord, increase our faith." Listen to the language of Scripture. We are to pursue faith. That's Second Timothy chapter two and verse 22.

Scripture speaks about us being strengthened in faith. That's Colossians chapter two and verse seven. It speaks about putting on faith as a breastplate. First Thessalonians chapter five and verse eight. It speaks about faith growing more and more. That's Second Thessalonians chapter one and verse three.

It speaks about being encouraged in faith. That's First Thessalonians chapter three and verse two. And Paul speaks on one occasion about supplying what is lacking in your faith. That is First Thessalonians chapter three and verse 10. So we have every reason to join unashamedly with the disciples in saying to our Lord, "Increase our faith." And faith grows as we ask of Jesus.

So ask the Lord to increase your faith. Are you tempted? Do you feel the weakness and the vulnerability of your own flesh? Ask Jesus to increase your faith. Have you seen that the life to which you're called, the holy life to which Jesus calls you, is beyond the range of what you can do? Ask Jesus to increase your faith.

Do you find yourself surrounded by great darkness? Do you find yourself grieving over your own failure? Do you find yourself confronting some great evil? Ask the Lord Jesus Christ to increase your faith. Do you find yourself struggling with doubts, with fears? Do you find yourself in a battle sometimes with unbelief? Ask the Lord Jesus to increase your faith.

And pursue all the things that we've seen in this series already that are the means by which faith grows, and we'll be coming back to more, God willing, in the weeks that lie ahead. Listen to the promise of Jesus: "All things are possible for one who believes." In Christ, you will have all that you need for all that you face in every circumstance of your life. Grow in faith, and by God's grace, you will be able to say with the apostle Paul, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

Steve Hiller: Pastor Colin Smith here on Open the Bible, wrapping up our message called "Growing Faith," part of our series, "Grow in Faith." Really a look today at Luke 17, verses one to six. And we're going to continue this series on our next broadcast. I hope you'll make it a point to listen.

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Open the Bible depends on your generosity to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching, and we're grateful for your support. As you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Pastor Colin's new 30-day devotional book called *Grow in Faith*. And Colin, what is one thing that you want people to take away from this book?

Colin Smith: Well, this is a book for ordinary Christians. You talk about growing in faith, someone might think, "Well, you know, I'm no giant of the faith, so that's probably not for me." Well, you know, Jesus spoke on five occasions about people with little faith. "Oh, you of little faith." And that's where we start in this book, *Grow in Faith*.

If you feel that your faith is small, this is exactly for you. It's a place from which you can begin to grow. And you know, there are two wonderful things about little faith. One is that little faith is saving faith if it is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the other is that little faith, because faith is a living thing, is faith that really can grow. And I think that this book will help people to grow in faith. That's our hope and our prayer as we've been working on it and preparing it, and I hope that it's going to be a real blessing to you.

Steve Hiller: Well, we'd love to send you a copy of this new book from Pastor Colin. Again, it's called *Grow in Faith*, and it's our thank-you for your financial support this month. You can give when you call 1-877-OPEN-365, or online at openthebible.org.

Again, our phone number is 1-877-673-6365, and the website is openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

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