THE CURE FOR UNBELIEF

Thursday 9 January

Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. Mark 6:5 (NKJV)

teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. Matthew 28:20 (NKJV)

Have you ever heard the story where Jesus went to Nazareth? This was his old hometown and He went and taught in the synagogue and then they said in Mark 6 verse 3 “Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.’ Because of this He could not do any mighty works, except heal a few sick people of minor ailments. I’m guessing it was headaches and sore backs!

Verse 6 says something remarkable. ‘And He marveled because of their unbelief. Then He went about the villages in a circuit, teaching.’ Jesus knew that their unbelief had limited the miracles that was able to perform so the very next thing we read is He went through all the villages teaching. Jesus recognised that the only cure for unbelief in the people was the teaching of the scriptures.

It is the same in our day. There are unbelievers who have not had the gospel adequately explained to accept or reject it. Then there are unbelieving believers. People that claim to believe in Jesus but deny certain spiritual realities which is all too common in the Body of Christ today. Just like it was back in the gospels in Jesus’ time, teaching is the only way to destroy unbelief and cause people to believe what God has said.

In some of Jesus’ last words recorded by Matthew He tells his disciples to make students or pupils of the nations. He then instructs them to teach others to observe all that He commanded. To teach who? Every believer. In the ascension gift ministries Pastor and teacher are Pastor/Teacher. What does this tell us? Every Pastor is supposed to be an accurate Teacher of the Word. Furthermore the Bible says ‘the lips of a priest shall preserve knowledge’ and Revelation 1:6 says God has made every believer a king and a priest. So every priest or member of Christ should also be able to teach the Word also shouldn’t they?

Many ‘churches’ today have become entertainment centres and the focus is more emotionally driven praise and worship and motivational speaking rather than the doctrine of grace and the finished work of Christ. Others have gone down the line of telling their congregants that healing finished with the Apostles, that speaking in tongues is devilish or gibberish and being sinful is still a reality even though Jesus paid for it and we are called saints in the epistles. Most still believe in tithing, water baptism and communion which no denomination has any business teaching in the New Testament.

The reason we have such extremes of bad theology on both ends of the spectrum is because the teaching of the Word has been relegated to 15 minutes rather than being the majority of the focus when we come together. Most sermons don’t even have a doctrinal or scriptural basis. Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 2:2 said ‘teaching others who will teach others. The challenge we face in our era is who is even teaching the Word anymore? Psychology, philosophy intellectualism, eisegesis, personal experiences, etc. should never replace the pure and unadulterated teaching of the Word.

The level of unbelief in the minds of believers is proportionate to the deficiency of sound teaching. The good news is we can turn this around and see the accuracy of the Word and the demonstration of the Spirit working together in every congregation. All we need to do is get back to teaching Christ and the word of His grace.

APPLICATION

Always go back and check what you have been taught and see if it lines up with what the Bible says. If you don’t know, find someone who can rightly divide the scriptures for you.