The adventure continues

Beginning March 2nd I will have another opportunity to teach the adult Sunday School class. The pastor graciously asked me if I wanted to teach the Spring Quarter, but I know how this really went down. He spoke to the other brother first. (Just in cased you didn’t get it, that means he asked me second!) And that brother said, “I don’t want to teach the Spring Quarter. Ask Jeff. He’ll teach any quarter.” Well, he is right about that!

As I already posted on fb, I will teaching The Kingdom Principle of Faith. We will be taking a look at faith in the gospels: What Jesus taught about and How He responded to it. It is exciting to read through the Gospels and see Jesus ministering and teaching. I would like to be able to teach through the Gospel of Matthew, but I only have 13 weeks. And it took me 13 weeks just to teach the Sermon on the Mount!

The Gospels tell us about Jesus. The record of his works is a testimony to who he is. But, in the Gospels, Jesus is preaching and teaching about the kingdom of God. This means they are also a record of kingdom principles. And faith is clearly an important principle in the kingdom of God. So we will examine various encounters in the Gospels where faith is explicitly mentioned and see what we can learn about it.

There is one thing about faith that has intrigued me for some time. Faith is a noun. Faithful the adjective. Faithfully the adverb. Faithfulness is also a noun. But there is no verb form for faith. For that we use a different word in English, Believe. The Greek word has a noun/verb/adjective form, but this one Greek word requires two English words. Isn’t that interesting?

They are both old words, but believe seems to be the older English word.
Believe - Middle English bileven, from Old English belȳfan, belēfan, gelēfan;
Faith - Middle English, from Anglo-Norman fed, from Latin fidēs

Fidēs has a verb form, fidere, and I’m pretty sure fed did as well, yet neither seems to have survived into modern English. I find this fascinating.

To believe is to accept something as true. Faith (belief) is the content of what is believed. So, when we come across expressions like, When Jesus saw their faith… we will be inquiring, “What was it they believed? How would this apply to me today?” Inquiring minds want to know!

As I have gone through the Gospels preparing for this study I have come to the conclusion that there is a distinct possibility that we will not have time to examine every encounter marked by faith. And John! We will probably only look at two there, maybe three. But it is my prayer that what we do consider will encourage, strengthen, and stimulate us to believe Jesus to do great things in us and for us.

Y’know, Jesus is said to have marveled twice, both concerning faith:
When Jesus heard [it], he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

And he marvelled because of their unbelief

We certainly don’t want Jesus marveling at our unbelief, because in that case, he could there do no mighty work. May the Lord grant us grace to have great faith in him!