Faith in God is presented as the key to overcoming life's challenges, drawing parallels between physical and spiritual dependence on the Almighty. The sermon emphasizes that the object of our faith must be God Himself, not our own abilities or experiences, using the example of the Israelites at Kadesh Barnea to illustrate the consequences of doubt versus trust. When faced with seemingly insurmountable problems, referred to as 'mountains,' the sermon urges listeners to believe that God can and will act on their behalf, provided they maintain a forgiving heart. Ultimately, the message calls for a shift from walking by sight to walking by faith, trusting in God's omnipotence to navigate difficulties and achieve His purposes.
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Well, I can tell you about the speaker of next week. And the best is yet to come. So you'll be here. Support these dear folks. Now, I've got two requests for you. One is that you ask the Lord with our brother Willie for some help for him. You'll bury him on this ground if he keeps on going the way he's going. I'm serious. Have you watched him? Too much to do. This is not right. And so you folks who are wondering what to do with yourselves, you come up to Brother Willie after the service today and say, how can I help? And you pray for some permanent staff member to help him on the ground. So will you do that? Very, very earnestly that God will provide for him.
And pray with him. I know you are these days. All right, our text this morning is Mark chapter eleven. And then we want to turn to the Old Testament to see this illustrated. Mark chapter eleven. We've been speaking through the weekend on the subject of faith. And we want to see this in operation this morning. Faith. Let's begin reading with verse twenty-two of Mark eleven. Jesus answering, saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any, that your Father also, which is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses, But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. Let us pray. Our Father, we rejoice again in the Word of God. It's power. It's authority. We ask thee to be at work in our midst, in our hearts today, by thy spirit, through thy word.
Lift burdens today. Bring peace and joy to troubled hearts today. Let this be a day of triumph because we walk by faith and not by sight. Minister our Father through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. We saw on Saturday night together the great truth of walking in the Spirit. In the Spirit, Friday night it was. the great principle and the great privilege of moment by moment depending upon the Lord.
Let us be reminded that we are not put together this way in the human. We are quite independent people, aren't we? We find prayer rather difficult to get to because we can handle things pretty well ourselves. I suppose most of us here this morning at least would have to confess that On more than one occasion we've begun a day as believers without expressing our dependence upon the Lord. We are living a day now where even churches are shutting down. Their church is on prayer meeting night. Somehow we don't need this service anymore. They're shouting at God and saying we can handle all this by ourselves. Oh, they would never say it.
But this is what it means. In the physical realm, God... says to us in Him we live and move and have our being. The fact that you and I are alive today physically is only because of God's sustaining grace. Isn't that right? They say we're one heartbeat from heaven. That's all. That's all. God gives us the air to breathe. God gives us the strength we have day by day. God keeps this heart of ours ticking. Physically we are utterly dependent upon our maker. God says in the spiritual realm it is exactly the same principle.
We depend upon the Lord Jesus Christ and upon him alone to save us. Salvation is of the Lord. We look in faith to Calvary. We look to the Son of God who loved us and died for us on that cross. And we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We saw last night together from Ephesians chapter three that our Christian living is by faith. The Spirit of God is at work in our hearts that Christ might dwell down deep in our hearts by what? Faith. Paul in Galatians two twenty said, Not I but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith. The judge shall live by faith.
And when it comes to Christian service, the principle is identical, and the exercise of spiritual gifts Remember, I Corinthians twelve, it is the manifestation of the Spirit, is the operation of God. Philippians says, It is God that worketh in you both the will and to do of his good pleasure, and hence our exercise of our gifts from God are in response to faith. So whatever be the realm we live in, it is all independence upon God. Our Lord brings us to this principle in our text. excuse me, Mark chapter eleven. The context here is the disciples had seen the day before our Lord curse a fig tree and it's now withered and they express concern about this.
Here the Lord can just speak and a fig tree withers. In verse twenty two Jesus answering seven of them, have faith, have faith, have faith in God. Excuse me. Will you notice immediately that the object of our faith is God Himself? Some people put faith in themselves. Oh, I can handle this all right. You know, your children tell you this. You're trying to teach them. You're trying to help them. Dad, I don't need your help. I can do this all by myself. This is what we tell our Heavenly Father many, many, many times. The object of our faith is not ourselves.
The object of our faith is not to be our experience. The object of our faith is not to be our church, our denomination, our program. The object of our faith is the law. And that's a great place to begin on this subject of faith. My faith is in God Himself. The God who could just speak. Just speak. The worlds were framed by what? Word of God. Here a universe. Millions of galaxies, the scientists tell us, in our universe. Millions of them. galaxies, all created by a word.
In the Garden of Eden, God was pleased to take dust, form a man, breathe into him the breath of life. This became a living soul. God did this. I don't care what the intellectuals say. God did it. He said it in his word. And then he made a woman out of the river man. She came out from under the arm of man and she's not content until she gets back there. That's about right, isn't it? God created woman out of a rim. God wanted to judge a world. Waters come down from heaven.
Waters come up from beneath. And the world is destroyed by the power of God. He wants to move the children of Israel to a Red Sea. So he just parts the water. That's right. Don't accept the liberal interpretation of the water is only six inches deep. That's a harder problem for me than believing the Lord part of the waters. How in the world did Pharaoh and all his hosts drown in six inches of water? That's a real problem for me. They want to go to Jordan? God parts the waters again. In the process you remember, manna comes down from heaven, water comes out of a rock, bitter waters are made sweet.
What a God. And then he wants a Redeemer and a virgin conceives. A virgin. That's what the book says. A virgin conceives. Here's a God-man in Mary's arms. Then he goes about and does good and he cleanses the lepers and heals the sick and gives sight to the blind and hearing to the death and raises the dead to life. And then announces, I'm going to die and on the third day I'm going to be raised again. And he was put to the cross. He was nailed there. He did die. And on the third day there was an empty tomb. The greatest single proof of Christianity.
The empty tomb. Now beloved, this is our God. This is our God. Have faith in God. No wonder the psalmist said in Psalm forty-six ten, Be still and know what? That I am God. Be still. Open your Bibles. Look at God's handiwork in creation. Be still and know that I am God. So we're talking then about the Lord God omnipotent. We're saying, put your faith in him.
That's what the Savior is telling his disciples and us in turn this morning. Trust him. Trust him. In verse twenty three, he gives us the occasion for faith. For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be now removed. and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. A mountain. Literal mountain? Yes, sir. He made them. There's nothing in the context that says it isn't. I conclude that the Lord talks about a literal mountain because he realizes that our problems look like that to us.
Great, gigantic, huge mountain. I have yet to find a family without a problem, without a burden. Unless you're the exception, every one of us here this morning has an unsolved problem, has an unanswered prayer, has a burden. It may be help. It may be an unsaved loved one, a husband, a wife, mother or father, son or daughter. Maybe a wayward teenager going through the struggles of growing up and the problems of that special year.
It may be a son or daughter in college not walking with God. Maybe the business problems back home. Maybe the income and outgo don't meet. Problem. Problem. Problem. Maybe it's a neighbor. Maybe it's a friend you're out of sorts with at the moment. Problem. I've simply suggested these for your minds to turn. What's your problem this morning? What's your mountain this morning? You believe that chorus God specializes in things impossible? You believe that? I was in a management meeting with missionaries last week. I was in America's Keswick in New Jersey.
And they said, we don't have problems, we just have opportunities. So we'll call it a mountain's opportunities this morning. Opportunities to trust God. Opportunities to believe God. Have a mountain? Here's an occasion for faith. Now look at the promise of faith. Verse twenty-four. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, and all our hearts are filled with desire this morning, and I trust holy desires. What things soever ye desire when ye pray?
What's the next word? Believe. Believe that ye receive them, and what? Ye shall have them. Say, that's wonderful news. Hmm? That's just what he says. So he says there's a difference between desire and faith. Desire and faith. I had a friend who worked with child evangelism back in Dallas, Texas when we were there and he said, pray, Terry. He said, I don't have any trouble believing that God's able. He said, my problem is will he? Will he do it? I know he can. Will he do it? He was having financial problems at the time.
God says, It's more than praying about it. It's more than repeatedly mentioning it to God. It's more than weeping before the Lord in agony of soul. I must believe him. When I do, he says, it's mine. It's mine. Never forgotten experience in London, Ontario, and we have folks from Canada here this morning, and some from London. We were there at the London Bible Institute, which was then called, and I remember so well my Dean, Percy Harris, now with the Lord.
We needed fifteen thousand dollars to pay off a note, and that was a lot of money to LBI, as we called it, that day, and I guess it still is. The chairman, Brother Alloway, Knowed to some of you here, now with the Lord, whose son I saw last week up in Keswick. Brother Alloy was in Florida. I don't know if he was here or someplace else that time. We had a board meeting and the board decided that we'd trust God for the fifteen thousand dollars by graduation time in May. When Brother Alloy got back, he said, you fellas are out of your mind. He thought we had to pay our bills, current bills. Mortgage could wait if necessary. But he joined with us.
He didn't bow out at all. We organized our student body to pray. It had a prayer chain. Pray. Every day. Money started coming in. Money started coming in. About one-third of the way through, Percy Harris stood up on the college platform and said, I know God's going to send us fifteen thousand dollars by graduation. I know. That's faith, brother. He stuck his neck out with that student body. His Christian integrity was at stake with that student body. He said, I know God's going to send it in.
Make a long story short, on commencement night, we now only burned a fifteen thousand dollar note. We had a thousand dollars left over. It was more than desire. We prayed until God gave us the faith to trust Him. I remember so well out in Kansas City, Some years ago at the close of a meeting, such as this we've been having, a dear mother came up and she said, I've got a wayward teenager and I'm brokenhearted about him and I'd like to talk to you about him. And at that moment a dear white-haired lady standing beside me, she said, Brother Gannett, may I answer the dear lady's question? And she said, what can I do? And the dear white lady stood up and she said, my dear mother, I had the same problem exactly.
And she said, I just just kept him before the Lord until God answered prayer and what he did for my boy he can do for yours so my precious God's able I think probably the greatest the greatest experience of faith and answer to prayer that I've ever witnessed let's say the most spectacular was when I was at Houghton College, the student, and there was a boy on that campus, a preacher's son, unsaved. Somehow preacher's sons that don't get saved are pretty tough nuts to crack when they resist and resist and resist all the way to college age.
This was in a Wesleyan Methodist school, Houghton College, and he was the son of a Wesleyan Methodist pastor. We had revivals, as they called them there, Houghton for two weeks at the beginning of every semester, and this was the last semester before this young man was going off to the service. This was in the context of World War II. And I remember so well we were burdened as a campus for this boy, because we knew that in the middle of the semester he was going to have to leave campus and go off to war, not knowing he'd come back. And so we earnestly prayed for God to save him, for God to save him. The meetings came. He didn't attend the meetings. He wasn't interested in the meetings. on the Friday night before the closing Sunday night.
He said in the barber shop at the college, I don't care if I go to hell or not. Yet we prayed. Sunday came. God just had to save him. God didn't have a choice. We prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed that God would save him. The Wesleyan Methodist Conference back in Michigan called the Michigan Conference was so exercised about this boy that they disbanded all Sunday evening services instead had fasting and prayer for the salvation of this pastor's boy. Oh, they were aware of the circumstances and aware this was the last special meeting he'd be in before going off to the service. So they prayed that evening. Sunday night service came.
I was there and I looked around and he wasn't in the church. And our heart sank. Lord, you just got to answer prayer. We expected him to do it. We expected him to save that boy Sunday. When I say we, I'm talking about the whole campus. Service went on. Time for the invitation came. And the front door of that church opened and in walked that boy, went straight to the altar to get saved. I couldn't stand it, standing there. So I ran down there with him and out beside him. And had the joy of seeing the boy, trust the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior.
And I said, tell me what happened. Well, he said a few minutes ago, I was back in my room in the dormitory. And he said, I was thinking back for two years. And he said, I realized what trouble I was in two years ago at home. And he said, unconsciously, I took off my pajamas and got dressed and came to the church to get saved. God can do that for somebody's boy can do it for yours, for mine. God big enough to do that can certainly resolve your problems and mine. But he says in verse twenty-four, What things do ever ye desire when ye pray?
What? Believe. Believe. Where do I get saved? That's my problem. Where do I get saved? So we ask the question next. What's the source of faith? I remind you of the text to which we turned last night in Galatians five, twenty-three. The fruit of the Spirit is love and included in that love. You remember is the word faith. So that when I am a spiritually minded person, when I am controlled by God the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God begets faith in my heart. He uses a means. And that means is Romans ten, seventeen quoted with me. Faith cometh by hearing.
and hearing by the Word of God. Though when my heart is filled with unbelief, when I'm doubting, when I'm hesitating, when I'm questioning, that God's going to answer prayer and do something for my loved one, my friend, my church, my need, whatever it is, I fleece to the book and ask God to beget faith in my heart by His Spirit through His Word. That's the way it works, beloved. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Now there's a hindrance to faith. Jesus gives us in verses twenty-five and twenty-six of our text.
And when ye stand praying, forgive if ye have on against any, that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. Did you ever try to pray when you had something against a brother? It doesn't work, does it? When all is well, not well with your soul, you can't pray except to confess sin. Isn't that right? The only thing that works. I've tried it. I've tried it. It doesn't work. Our Lord lets us know here by a gracious reminder that there's something in your heart, unfinished business, things not right. You can't pray in faith. You can't see God answer prayer. You can't see the mountains move until first you get your own heart right with God and your brother.
When you stand praying, forgive if ye have ought against any. Then when all is well, then when I'm controlled by God the Holy Spirit, then he can beget faith in my heart to trust him for the problems which are mine. Now in the moment that remains, let's turn back to a very familiar illustration in the book of Numbers. Numbers, chapters thirteen and fourteen, the experience of Israel at Kadesh Barney. Numbers thirteen and fourteen, the story of the children of Israel sending the spies into the land. You remember it well. To begin our story here, we must turn back to Deuteronomy chapter one, because the truth is shared here that's not given to us by Moses in Numbers.
Deuteronomy one, nineteen and following. Moses is rehearsing now the children of Israel moving through the wilderness to this new generation just before crossing Jordan into Canaan. Deuteronomy one, nineteen. And when we departed from Horeb, that's Sinai, we went through all that great and terrible wilderness which he saw by the way of the mountains of the Amorites as the Lord our God commanded us, and we came to Cades Barnea. And I said unto you, ye are come unto the mountain of the Amorites which the Lord our God doth give unto us. Behold the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee. Go up and possess it as the Lord God of thy fathers hath set unto thee. Hear not me to be discouraged.
You remember that Canaan was the will of God for the children of Israel. The place of blessing for that nation that had come from Egypt. Verse twenty-two. And ye came near unto me every one of you and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land. and bring us word again by what way we must go up and into what cities we shall come. So the Israel have an idea. Let's send some spies. Let's send them in and survey the land. Verse twenty-three in the saying, Please me well, said Moses, and I took twelve men of you, one of the tribes. Now why did they need spies? They hadn't needed them coming out of Egypt.
They hadn't needed them walking through the wilderness. They had the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Or what use are spies to faith? Now there are two problems in the story. First of all, the children of Israel wanted spies. And secondly, Moses thought it was a good idea. And that causes me to search my own heart as a leader. on our campus in Birmingham, Alabama, that I shall lead my people in faith, not in unbelief. Here now, back to Numbers thirteen. We read that verse one, the Lord spake to Moses, saying, Send thou men and they may search the land of Canaan.
What? The Lord says, Send them. What's he doing? Hear it. He's accommodating himself to the level of faith of his people. It does not turn out for their good. They said we want spies. Later on, you remember, they said we want a king. God says you can't have a king. They said we want to be like the nations round about. Give us a king. God said, alright, I'll give you a king, the kind of king you want. And then you will take the consequences. Here, spies. Send thou men, verse two, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel. Of every tribe of their fathers, shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them.
And then in verse three and following, the spies are named. In verse six of the tribe of Judah, Caleb. And in verse eight of the tribe of Ephraim, Joshua. These two, among the others, went to spy the land. Verse seventeen, directions are given. And Moses sent them to spy off the land of Canaan and said unto them, Go you up this way southward and go up into the mountain and see. Ah, that's the language of spies. See. This is the language of sight. Go see. You've got to see first. We walk by sight, not by faith, you know. Why trust when you can worry, you know? Go send spies.
See the land, what it is. And the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many, and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad, and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strongholds. And what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood thereon or not, and be ye of good courage and bring of the fruit of the land. Now the time was the time of the first-right Greeks. Why was all this necessary? They had the seed. They had the seed. They had the seed. Verse twenty-one, they go in and explore. And they, so they went up and searched the land.
Verse twenty-five, they returned from searching the land after forty days. Forty long days are up there in Canaan, searching out the land, seeing, searching, looking, so they can walk by sight. Now verse twenty-six. Here's the report. and the recommendations. This is our point this morning. And they went and came to Moses and to Aaron and to all the congregation of the children of Israel and to the wilderness of Peron, to Cainish, and brought back word unto them and unto all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Here's sight, and this is what they wanted.
Here's the report. They saw, they searched, they showed them the land, all the language of sight. And they told him and said, We came unto the land where thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey. And this is the fruit of this. And God told them this way back in Exodus chapter three, when he called Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt to Canaan, to a land flowing with milk and honey. The report is not news. So stop. They heard this while they ever left Egypt. Hmm? Why, it was just exactly as God said it was.
And the basis for faith is the Word of God. So they come back with their report. Wonderful land, just as God has said. Verse twenty-eight. Nevertheless. Whoops. Problem. Problem. The people be strong that dwell in the land. And the cities are walls. and very great. And moreover, we saw the children of Enoch there, these giants. And the Amalekites dwell in the land of the south, and of the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan. Boy, there are awful problems up there.
Yes, there's the land flowing with milk and honey, but my, oh my, the gigantic problems that are before us. Well, about this time, Caleb had heard all he could stand. In verse thirty says, Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, Let us go up that once and possess it. For we are what? Well able to possess it. But the men that went up with him said, We be not able. Here's a majority report and a minority report. The majority says we be not able. This is a majority. We be not able. The minority says we be well able. Same city, same walls, same giants, same problems.
One crowd says we'd be not able. The other crowd says we'd be well able. What's the matter? Well, let's go on and we'll see. Verse thirty-one. The men said we'd be not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we. Notice the arguments they raised. Why they can't go up. Why they can't walk by faith. People are stronger. And they brought us up an evil report of the land which they had searched, and the children of Israel saying, The land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof. Boy, I wonder what they had. Boy, what ground.
Did you ever see ground like this in America? Just gobbles up the people. I wonder if they had traps in the ground or whatever. What's this? A bold-faced lie. And all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. All of them? Well, the son of Enoch were there. But see how sight had to exaggerate with our evil hearts of unbelief? All the people. All the people are of great stature. And then we saw the giants, the son of Enoch, which came of the giants. And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers. Did you hear it? In our own sight. sight, grasshoppers.
And so we were there, sir. We've got an impossible situation on our knees. They said. But this isn't the end of the story. And all the congregation lifted up their voice, chapter fourteen, and they cried and the people wept that night. What in the world are weeping about? Did you hear the report? How horrible it is? How great the people are? How the land just devours inhabitants? Think of our dear children. Think of our future. Think of all of this. Wept all night. That's what I'm going to read, John. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron and the whole congregation said to them, Would God we had died in the land of Egypt?
Or would God we had died in the wilderness? Oh, remember how wonderful it was back there in Egypt? Remember how one of all the onions and the leeks and the guys remember? Mmm, boy. And remember how wonderful it was to be a slave to Pharaoh? Boy, it was great. Remember how we served with rigor and with bitterness and hard bondage? Remember that? Remember they made us make the same tale of bricks without straw? Remember what a great time we had back down there? Oh, something's a matter here. And wherefore hath the Lord brought us into this land to fall by the sword? Where'd you get that idea? That our wives and our children should be a prey.
Who said the Lord brought us here to devour us in this land? It's not better for us to return to Egypt. And they said one to another, if we got a great idea, let's make us a captain and let us return into Egypt. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jefna, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes. And they spake unto all the congregation, the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land which we pass through to search it is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land.
and give it us, a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land, for they are what? Bread for us. Their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Fear them not. Fear down them. All the congregation bads, stone them with stones. And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel. Oh, look at it.
Same mountains, same problems, same walled cities, same giants, same armed enemies, same strange lands. One group of people said, We be not able, the land of ours, left all night, murmured, make us a captain, back to Egypt we go. Another crowd said, We be very well. If our Lord be with us, no problems, and they're bred for us. The Lord's taken away their power to devour.
Let's go up at once. and possess. Same set of circumstances. Two different vantage points. Unbelief. Shut God out. They brought God in. Unbelief looked at their problems. in terms of their own resources. They looked at their problems in terms of an omnipotent God.
They're giants. Their bread fall out. We can't go in. We are well able. Let's go up at once and pose a question. Where do you stand this morning? Where do I stand this morning? With the majority report or the minority report? With those who look at their problems in terms of themselves, in our own sight? Or do we look at our burdens, our problems, our heartaches today in terms of an omnipotent God, the Creator of heaven in us?
Beloved, I am persuaded that here is God's way. of approaching our province. You and I can worry, we can lose sleep at night, we can shed tears, we can murmur, we can complain, we can do all these folks' sadness, go back to carnal Egypt. Or we can reckon with our mountains in terms of an omnipotent God and with a psalmist lift up our eyes into the hills from whence cometh our help, knowing that our help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. Lord, we believe. Help thou our unbelief. Let's go up and push us.
Beloved, this will work for you and for me every day till Jesus comes. We walk by faith and not by sight. Will you trust him? Will you trust? Shall we pray? Precious Father, encourage our hearts this morning, strengthen our faith this morning by thy word. Causes to face today's problems and tomorrow's problems in the light of the Lord God omnipotent.
Lord, we would trust thee. Lord, we would believe thee. Lord, we would expect thee to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask for thee. Let us be men and women of faith who walk by faith and not by faith. We claim this grace in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Shall we conclude our service singing, number two hundred seventy-seven. Great is thy faithfulness. We've seen the thickenness of man, but we certainly can see the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus and our Heavenly Father.