Life of Christ #8 – What Happens When Faith Touches Jesus? | The Power of Christ

They don’t know that He really is. They don’t know what Mary has in her blood. Why King David? They don’t know that He’s from the tribe of Judah. They know there’s a healer out there; they’ve heard all these stories, and they’re recognizing Him as their king.

I’ll go into little pieces of theological information here that are totally worthless. The most mentioned Old Testament person in the New Testament is David. The most quoted Old Testament book is…anybody know? In the New Testament? Isaiah. Just thought I’d throw that in.

Alright, I can’t say much more about this. David is the one person whom all Jews would know. He is the most respected person, along with Abraham, among all Jews everywhere. They don’t know much about this man. They haven’t gotten in on any of the theological stuff. They don’t even know He’s the Son of God, but they’re calling Him their King, their rightful King. I wonder how it felt for His humanity to hear that term being called out over the tumult of that crowd because He knew He was the Son of David.

David only had one son. He gave birth to His own Father. He’s the root, but He’s also the seed. I’m sorry. He’s David’s root and branch. He is that which came before him. He’s also that which came after him. David is the only one who had a Father and a Son who was the same person.

Well, anyhow, the Lord responds to them. He responds so differently. They come up to Him, and He says, ” Do you believe? Obviously, faith is very important. He doesn’t announce afterward that they have faith. He asks them to announce for themselves beforehand. Do you have faith? He says. A pattern is developing here, but I’ll tell you there is no pattern in Jesus Christ; there are times when He heals people with no pretense of faith being involved whatsoever.

So, He touched four eyes, and four eyes saw, and they went out everywhere announcing that He was in the land and what He was doing. Well, everybody was impressed, so much so that a dumb man now gets into the act. Well, if He can raise the dead, if He can make the blind see, let’s drag this dumb man over here and see what He could do. He has probably gotten no more than 200 yards from the shore, and all of this has been happening one after another.

So now we have a deaf man who cannot speak, and instead of healing him, He cast out demons. One is healed from blindness; another has a demon taken out of him, and the crowd says, ‘Never was such seen in all of Israel since its beginning.” And the theologians know better. They have a knowing. They have a knowing…born of their brain; they have a knowing. They know. They know what the dumb did not know. They know what the demon did not know. They know what the two blind men did not know. They knew what the dead girl did not know. They knew what the woman with the issue of blood did not know. They knew…that Jesus was of the devil.

If I could sit here and tell you that I really felt that was a spirit confined to the first century, I would love to share that with you right now, but I am telling you that that theological spirit exists, and I have observed it throughout my entire ministry. I don’t know anybody who is as quick to consign things to the work of the devil as are ministers in the Christian faith.

Nobody consigns so much to the work of the devil as do trained theological ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done, but I’ve seen it done on the basis that what they were hearing was contrary to their theological tenets. Did you understand what I just said? They saw something that did not agree with their doctrine; therefore, it was of the devil. They have a knowing…and that knowing is from their brain. It is from their theological training. It is above the Adam’s apple. Our ability, as professional ministers, our ability to consign things to the devil is absolutely appalling. I’m sorry, but I have sat in meetings when I have seen ministers of the gospel say, “Oh, that’s devilish (they won’t quite say it’s of the devil); it’s devilish…when I felt the blind, the deaf, and the dumb knew it was the work of God.

Your mental understanding of the ways of God, your theological training and your Bible, and what you’ve learned in Bible classes can blind your spirit. Brother, I beg you in Christ; sister, I implore you in the Lord; use the term “that was of the devil” with the most and greatest possible restraint throughout your life. We Christians have 1,500 unbroken years of killing one another. We can’t do that anymore; it’s against the law. For 1,500 years, you could do it. So now we only consign one another to the work of Satan. I beg you to give up so much of your theological, denominating and “secting” habits. I’ve never seen this; I don’t believe, perhaps if I thought I could remember, but to my knowledge, I’ve never seen consigning things to the work of the devil by Christian ministers, but what it was, something getting over on their territory. Either somebody was threatening the numbers of their group, or it was contrary to their doctrine. And when it is, are you so tied to your doctrine that you believe anything contrary to it is the devil?

I beg you to go back and learn what it means: I would have mercy, and not sacrifice. Brothers, be careful, please. I give you my own personal testimony. I have tried never to call anything of the devil in the Christian world. If I see somebody worshipping the devil and telling me he’s worshipping the devil, I may say that’s of the devil, but this side of that, I’m going to move very slowly. If I see somebody sacrificing to an idol, a dumb idol, physically doing it, I may say, that’s of darkness. Outside of the raunchiest, most objective things, which all Christians would more or less agree on, would you please not do that? Your nearest kinfolk, when you do that, is not another Christian. Your nearest kinfolk are Pharisees…and they killed your Lord…and I think you’d kill another Christian. Please don’t do that.

I would ask you to walk with a deep internal sense of things, not according to objective theological stuff that somebody older than you taught you at some point. If I were you, I’d give up that business. The New Testament is not primarily a doctrine; it’s the story of God, who is not like us in His internal workings.