DATE: – SUNDAY 22ND NOVEMBER, 2020
TOPIC: – BELIEVING GOD FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE (Part 1)
BIBLE PASSAGE: – Mark 9: 14 – 29
MEMORY VERSE: – “Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that beleiveth” (Mark 9:23)
INTRODUCTION: – The reason God requires our absolute trust is very plain. The ruin of the human race came by discrediting and doubting God’s Word to our first parents. “Hath God said?” was the fountain of all sins (Gen.3:1). “God hath said” is the foundation, therefore, of our restoration. As unbelief stands in the foreground in the picture of our fallen race, so it leads the procession of the lost, in the closing scene in the tragedy of mankind (Rev.21:8). So let us take heed (Heb.3:12-13).
LESSON OUTLINES
1) Making Impossibility Possible
Pray for the impossible! These Words belong to the language of faith and the kingdom if heaven. God loves hard things. God combines the little and the great. It is His glory to treat the hardest and mightiest things as mere titles.
When Jesus was about to heal and save the poor paralytic, His words were very strange and striking, “Whether it easier ….?” (Mk.2:9). But man would have said, “Whether is it harder?” But the greatest thing was very easy for Him.
All God’s greatest acts have been things impossible for any but God. Creation was making a universe out of nothing. Redemption was overcoming a difficulty that was absolutely impossible for any human wisdom or power, to be just and yet the justifier of this ungodly. Of the salvation of the rich, Christ Himself says “With men, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt.19:16-26).
The sanctification of an unholy soul is simply impossible (Job 14:4).
The promise to Abraham, the father of faith, was something impossible. It was when his body was as good as dead-that God called him to believe in the birth of a son, and then fulfilled that promise by giving him Isaac when he was past age (Heb.11:8-12).
Israel’s deliverance did not come until they had until they had reached the lowest depths of despair and all human hope was dead. God’s hour is the impossible, and God’s opportunity is man’s emergency. The support of Israel, as a nation in the wilderness for half a century, was a miracle of providence.
David could not have his Kingdom until he was reduced to such a helpless condition that it had to be a miracle of divine power.
Jehoshaphat’s mightiest victory came in the hour when baffled, perplexed and helpless, he could only say “….we have no might against this great company …..” (it our eyes are upon Thee” (2Chr.20:12).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
His Word is always “….. according to your faith be it unto you” (Matt.9:29). God always works in response to faith, although sometimes there is a delay while He allows our faith to mature.
QUESTIONS
- When does God normally step in?
Why are our salvation and sanctification seemed impossible?