Chapter # 8 Paragraph # 5 Study # 1
April 5, 2009
Lincolnton, N.C.
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<518> Thesis:   In every sense, "faith" requires a legitimate content. Introduction:   In our studies of Luke 8, we have seen Jesus teaching His disciples and warning them of the dangers of letting someone other than Him set their agenda. This is no small matter. No one can be guided by more than one guide unless those guides are all on the same page, which would make all but one of them redundant. So, the issue of discipleship is the question of the "Who?" that is going to be the "God". And the question of the "Who?" is really a question of the nature of the Love that undergirds the whole and a question of the source and nature of the Truth that that Love sets forth. This morning we are going to begin to look more carefully into this second issue: the source and nature of the Truth that Love sets forth. We are going to do this for two reasons. The first is that the text before us focuses our attention upon Jesus' question in 8:25. The second is that there is so much confusion in our generation regarding the answer to that question. The reason for the confusion is very basic: God responds to faith with omnipotence so that anyone who exercises it is a serious danger to the adversaries who do not have omnipotence in their arsenal. We live in an adversarial universe at this present time and the opposing agendas are both real and have heavy and eternal consequences attached to them. Clearly, the agenda supported by omnipotence is going to win unless that omnipotence can be sidetracked. God's willingness to include the decisions and actions of others, including His opponents, appears to those opponents to be an opportunity to defeat Him; and it is ... at least in the lesser issues. So, the generation of people who are willing to love and believe is an agenda that raises the opposition to the greatest effort. Thus, confusion runs amuck and demands that we give serious thought to Jesus' question: Where is your faith?