Swallow No Camels

July 21, 2026 – Faith that can be Seen— Acts #48
Acts. 14:1-7

In Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas begin their first missionary journey.  They leave the home church in Antioch, Syria, and sail to the island of Cyprus, then from there to what is now Turkey. On this journey, they are in central Asia Minor, then called Galatia. So the book of Galatians is written to the churches he established on this journey.  Understanding the Jesus followers in these cities makes the book of Galatians much easier to understand.

In the first town in Galatia, Pisidian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas preach in the synagogue, and some of the Jews and God-fearers there believe.  Paul delivers one sermon, and the next week the whole town comes to hear what he has to say.  The whole town shows up, but it quickly turns for the worse. 

We tend to look back on these missionary journeys of Paul and friends as highly successful. And they were.  This is how the gospel spread and took a foothold in much of the known world.  But as you read through Acts, you see that these journeys were just one major problem after another.  But you don’t read much about Paul getting discouraged when things go wrong.  I mean, if your church decided to do an evangelistic program in your town, say they bring in some famous preacher and rent out the city auditorium or the stadium.  And you get some positive response to the revival, but the next week you find out that most of the town was so angry that the church leaders’ lives were being threatened and the city council voted to annex your church property and turn it into a garbage dump.  The uproar is so bad that the church staff and lay leaders have to move out of the county.   Now, would they call that evangelistic meeting a success?

But that is what happens in the first city they enter in Galatia.  The people of Antioch stir up the city leaders, and Paul and Barnabas are run out of town.  So they go to the next city, Iconium, where they share about Jesus, and again some believe, but they discover that a group of people has plotted to stone them to death.  So they leave Iconium, and they go to the next city, Lystra.

Acts 14:8-10   Now at Lystra a man was sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul speaking. And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And he sprang up and began walking.

There is a lot in these 3 verses.

There is a man who has paralysis, crippled from birth.  He had never walked in his life. And he is there with everyone else listening to Paul.  But he catches Paul’s attention.  The scripture says that Paul was looking intently at him.   The phrase “looking intently” (Greek: atenizō) is one Luke uses several times in Acts. It describes more than a casual glance. It is a focused, discerning gaze. Paul isn’t merely noticing the man’s physical condition; he is discerning something happening within him.  

How many other people had seen the man lying there, unable to move?  Some may have looked at him in disgust, seeing him as just another beggar.  Others may have seen him begging in the streets so often that they looked over him, not giving him another thought.  Some may have felt that he was taking away from this preaching event and just taking up space. But not Paul.  Paul, through the power of the Holy Spirit within him, saw something different in this man.  He saw not the inconvenience of a beggar, but a soul that desperately needed grace and desperately wanted grace. 

Let me tell you about one of my biggest failures.  We were living in Boston, and I was doing my Pediatric residency there.  And we had been struggling to find a church home there.  We tried several.  There was a church near where we lived that had a nice building, but the congregation had shrunk so much that they couldn’t afford to keep it up, so they shared it with 3 other churches.  So one week it was Presbyterian, the next Episcopal, and so on.  It was not for us.  I couldn’t get used to the hymnals that took out all the male references to God, so God was not our heavenly father but our heavenly parent.  Then we went to the nearby church, and everyone brought their pets.  There were lots of animals, but not much Jesus.  Then we found a church with a Baptist preacher from Mississippi. He had played football in the SEC!  A Southerner!  We thought we had found a place.  But it was at this church I experienced a major personal failure.  

It was mid-winter in Boston, and there was a foot of snow on the ground, and it was bitterly cold.  And in the middle of the service, a homeless man came into the church, of course carrying everything he owned.  He sat down on a pew behind everyone else, and he made a bit of noise as he settled in.   Right away, several deacons approached the man and made him leave the church.  They sent him back out in the snow.   And I was so shocked I just sat there.  I regret to this day that I didn’t stand up immediately, follow the homeless man out, and make sure he found a warm place and got something to eat.  I failed to be a neighbor.  I realize he likely just came in to warm up, but that didn’t matter.  This was a man created in God’s image who was run out of God’s house of worship because he didn’t look like them.  I had to repent of my inaction on that day.  I pray those deacons also find their way to repentance.   You see, it matters how we look at people.

How do you look at people?  Do you ever look intently?  Or do you just look over some people?  My precious wife has developed a built-in radar for seeing people in need.  She can spot a homeless person or a hurting person miles away.   That is a gift of God’s Holy Spirit.  And people in need are drawn to her.  We were in a crowded church lobby once, with 40-50 people there, and a stranger walked in the door, made her way past everyone else in the room right through the middle of the crowd, and headed straight to Shirley.  She needed help, and she was drawn to her.  It happens regularly.  She has eyes to see.  Do you see the needs of people around you?  Do you really see the people on the street and take the time to see their needs, or do you pass by?  

The Bible has a lot to say about helping people in need.  Jesus tells the story of the man who was robbed and left for dead on the road to Jericho, and how several just passed by him and did not offer to stop.  Specifically, he mentions a priest and a Levite who should have been compassionate and stopped to help this man.  And then a Samaritan, who at the time was a hated group of people, stopped and went out of his way to help him. 

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan, but how often do we reenact this story in our lives?  How many people have you passed by?  You may think that man with a sign that says he is hungry is just out to cheat people.  And he may be.  But like the man on the Jericho road, you really don’t know who he is, and you sure don’t know his intentions.  You might think you don’t have time to stop or that you don’t want to get involved.  Congratulations, you could be the priest or Levite in Jesus’ story.  Clearly, the point of Jesus’ parable there is to tell us that our default should be to help.  Everyone is our neighbor, and Jesus said the greatest command in the Bible included the one about loving your neighbor.  

So in our family, if we see someone in need, our default is to stop and help unless we have a clear message from God not to.  I am sure that some of the people we stop to help are not as needy as they say they are.   We met a lady downtown one day, and she needed clothes and some food.  So we went off to gather some clothes from home and Goodwill, and to meet her at a restaurant downtown.  She didn’t show, and the restaurant owner insinuated that she was taking advantage of people.  But we were obedient to what God called us to do, and that is all we can do.  She is responsible for being obedient to God for herself.  Of course, we try to avoid just giving cash to people unless God directs us to.  I don’t want to be responsible for supporting anyone’s drug or alcohol habit.  But unless we hear God telling us to pass by, we feel we have a responsibility to help.

Do you look intently at people, as Paul did, or do you look away?  Our God has created every person we meet in his very image.  That image may have been twisted by sin, but God loves them just the same.  Jesus died for that man that we pass by.   

Paul looks intently at this man, and we are told that he saw “that he had faith to be made well”.  Paul looks at this man and sees his faith.  This is an important point.  Faith is something you can see.   

We often talk about “faith” as if the word is simply a belief you have.  We say, “What faith are you?”  “Do you have faith?”  “Is your faith strong?”  But that is not the way the Bible talks about faith.  The Bible talks about faith as not a belief or idea in your mind, but an action you can see.  Faith is something you do, not something you think.

We see this same phrase in a story recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  And, interestingly, like our story today, it is a story about a man who is paralyzed and cannot walk, who one day drops in on Jesus.  And he literally drops in.  You know the story.  Jesus is preaching, and such a crowd has gathered that it was hard to get near to him.

And there are these friends of the paralyzed man who heard Jesus was there.  So they grabbed the four corners of the paralyzed man’s blanket and brought him to Jesus.  But they couldn’t get anywhere near him.  So one of them had the bright idea of tearing a hole in the roof and lowering their friend into the room where Jesus was.

Mark 2:1-12   And when Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home.  And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them.  And they came, bringing to him a person with paralysis carried by four men.   And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the person with paralysis lay.  

And what does Jesus say?  I have to say my first impulse would be to say, “Hey, you’re going to have to pay for fixing that roof you tore up.”  But Jesus ignores the hole in the roof and instead focuses on the people.  It is not that Jesus doesn’t care about property or someone’s home, but Jesus cares a whole lot more about people than buildings.  

God rescued his people from Egypt, a land with a religion that was all about buildings more than people.  Unless you were pharaoh or one of his nobles, people were disposable.  Egypt was famous for sacrificing workers and slaves to build great temples, working them literally to death so they could build these magnificent temples and statues.  They worked thousands of enslaved people to death to mine copper, disposing of their bodies in a great heap like the slag that is the leftover worthless rock you get when you remove the copper from the ore.  Now I have seen some amazing, beautiful houses of worship all over the world.  But let me tell you, our God is more interested in building people than buildings.

So in this Bible story of the paralytic lowered through the roof, the Bible says this:  “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” Jesus doesn’t see a hole in the roof; he sees faith.

These four friends went to great trouble to get their paralytic friend to Jesus.  They tore a hole in the roof and dropped him in, knowing they would be responsible for repairing it.  They would not have gone through this trouble if there had been any doubt in their minds that Jesus could heal their friend.  They were certain that Jesus could heal, and this certainty was expressed in their actions.  Faith is what they did for their friend.

Let’s look at this differently.  Say these friends only had a ‘little bit of faith’ in Jesus.  Suppose they thought there was a possibility that Jesus could heal the man, but they weren’t quite sure.  I would imagine they went back home when they approached the house and saw it was impossible to reach the door.  So, this ‘little bit of faith’ would lead to inaction.  Is that really any faith at all?  No action, no faith — no faith, no healing.

In Matthew 17, there is a story about a boy possessed by a demon. The disciples are unable to help him. Jesus rebukes the demon, and the boy is healed. This leaves the disciples wondering and gives Jesus a chance to teach a lesson about what faith is.

Matthew 17:19-20   Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Here, “little faith” (Greek oligopistia) means having faith less than a mustard seed.  The black mustard plant in Israel grows wild all over.  I have seen it on the banks of the Jordan and along highways outside of Jerusalem.  This mustard seed is even smaller than your local grocery store’s 1 mm mustard seeds. It is like a grain of ground pepper.  Jesus is saying that any faith less than that tiny size is, in effect, no faith at all. Little faith in the Bible means zero faith.  Jesus tells them they failed because they had no faith.

R.T. France, in The New International Commentary on the New Testament, says it this way:

“Faith is not a measurable commodity, but a relationship, and what achieves results through prayer is not a superior “quantity” of faith but the unlimited power of God on which faith, any faith, can draw. The disciples, Jesus implies, had failed to bring any faith at all to bear on this situation.”¹

Results are not based on the measure of your faith, but the power of God.  You either have confidence that God can do what He says or you do not.  There is no in-between.  There is faith and no faith.  You have faith, or you do not. 

“Faith is a relationship,” France said.  You can think of it as trustworthiness. You may have heard people talk about “blind faith.”   But our faith in God is never blind.  It is the result of built-up trust over the years.  This is one reason it is so important to study your Bible.  Throughout the Bible, we see God’s faithfulness in keeping his promises and being a reliable covenant partner. Trust builds in the relationship as one repeatedly proves himself true to his word. Our faith is not blind but is based on a long history of God always keeping His promises in the Bible and our relationship with Him, in which we likewise experience the reliability of His word and covenant with us.  Your trust in God, your faith, grows with every day you experience God’s reliability in keeping promises to you.  

And every time you step out to do something for God, and you watch Him show up and do God things, then your faith grows.   Conversely, if you don’t step out and do bold things for God, if you don’t attempt things that are impossible for you, then you never give God room to do any work, and you don’t get to see God show up, and so your trust in God never grows.  Let me say that again.  If you only do things you are capable of doing, if you only do things you are comfortable doing, if you only do things you can accomplish without God’s intervention, then you never get to see God work.  You never see His miracles.  And you have no faith.

Do you want your faith to grow?  Then, today, ask God to lead you to do something too hard for you —something that makes you uncomfortable—something that is impossible for you to do unless God steps in to help.  Then when you are struggling through that task, watch God do God things.  And as you build a lifetime of experiences, seeing God show up over and over, your trust in God grows, and your faith grows.

And just as we see God’s faithfulness in His actions in the past, He sees our faith in our past actions. Back to verse 9: “He listened to Paul speaking.  And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well.” What Did Paul See?

Luke doesn’t tell us exactly what Paul observed, but we can make several reasonable observations. First, he saw a Man Who Was Completely Engaged.  Verse 9 begins: “He listened to Paul speaking.” The Greek tense implies continuous listening. A crowd has gathered.  Imagine the scene. It is not hard for me to imagine.  I speak in a church.  I look out at people, and sometimes some are distracted, some are skeptical. Some in the back are whispering.  Some are on their cell phones.  Some are just too tired to pay attention. 

But this disabled man is locked onto every word Paul says.  Why?  Because he has a need, and Paul is offering him what no one else can — hope.  He has been disabled all of his life.  He has never walked.  No doctors can help him.  He has lost hope that he would ever be able to walk.  He is deeply aware of his need.  Every day, he relies on someone to help him with everything, and he is forced to beg for food to live.  He knows his need. 

If you are about to purchase a vehicle, then you pay attention to the commercials about the deals currently being offered.   If you don’t need to buy a car, then you probably ignore them.  If you are thinking of taking a family vacation and someone is telling you about the great place they went to and what a good deal it was, then you are listening.  You are writing down the website; you are asking questions because you need this information.

In the same way, some people who come to church are more tuned in to what is being said because they know they have a need. It is like the beatitudes. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount,

Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Blessed are the people who realize they are spiritually destitute.  The people who know they need the forgiveness that Jesus offers.  People who realize that they are sinners and there is no way outside of God’s grace and mercy that they can ever gain forgiveness.  People who know that their righteousness is as filthy rags.  People who realize that they have nothing to bring to the table.  Jesus says these people are the fortunate ones.  They are the blessed ones.  Why?  Because it is only when you realize your need that you can accept God’s answer for sin in Jesus.

People who think they are perfect do not need Jesus’ forgiveness.  Jesus can’t help them.  Another Beatitude says:

Matthew 5:6  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

This man, who could not move his legs, could not work and earn a living.  He was a beggar.  Every day, his only hope of being able to eat was that people would have mercy on him and give him some coins. He knew his status.  He was desperate for hope, for healing.

So let me ask you, how do you encounter God this morning?  Do you come to church feeling good about yourself?  Do you come knowing that you are doing pretty good? Hey, you are doing better than most of the people where you work or where you live?  Do you see yourself as good? Or do you come before God like this man in Acts 14? He hears about Jesus, and he desperately needs what Jesus has for him, so he is all in.   Or like Isaiah in the temple in Isaiah 6.  Isaiah sees God and realizes the amazing glory of God and his sinlessness, and then he looks at himself and says, “Woe is me. I am unclean.”

What is your attitude as you come to worship?  How do you enter God’s presence? It is like the example Jesus gave of the two men praying in the temple.  

Luke 18:10-14  Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

You have to know your own spiritual poverty before you can know the riches of His grace.  But when you accept Jesus as your lord and king, then he imparts to us His righteousness.  He wipes away our sin-debt.  And we stand before God righteous.  

I understand Paul.  I can look out across a congregation and see faith.  Faith listens; sometimes it takes notes; faith leans in. This man in Lystra in Acts 14 had never walked.  Not once. There was no medical treatment for him, no physical therapy, no hope. Then Paul begins preaching Jesus.  Perhaps Paul’s message included Jesus healing the lame. Perhaps he quoted Isaiah 35:  “Then shall the lame man leap like a deer.” Maybe the man’s face changed.  Maybe his eyes widened.  Maybe tears formed. Maybe Paul saw someone thinking, “Could this be for me?” And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And he sprang up and began walking.

His faith became evident to everyone when he sprang up.  Again, this is a man who had never stood on his own before.  If he didn’t have faith, he would have just told Paul, “I can’t stand up. I have never been able to stand up.”  Just believing what Paul said about Jesus would not have been enough.  He had more than just an acceptance that Jesus was who Paul said he was.  He had confidence and trust that God would do what He said He would.  He was so sure that he didn’t hesitate to do something that seconds ago would have been impossible for him.    This is the difference between faith and belief.   

You may have heard someone say before that all you have to do is believe in Jesus.  Sorry, but that is not enough.  The Bible tells us the demons believe.  That gets you nowhere.  You need more than belief.  You need to have enough trust, confidence, and faith in God that you are willing to go wherever God says to go and do whatever God says to do.  If you have no obedience, you have no faith.

Look at the characters in the Bible to learn about faith. How about Noah? Before a drop of rain fell, Noah spent decades building an ark.  Noah could have said, “Hey God, I believe you about the rain, I guess, but building a boat?  I don’t think so.” People saw and heard his faith because they heard him hammering, day after day, building a boat where there was no water.  Faith makes noise

Take Abraham.  His faith became visible when he packed his belongings and left Ur without knowing where he was going.    Faith always leaves footprints.

And Moses.  By faith he kept leading the children of Israel through the wilderness despite all the difficulties.  They faced armies, they walked through a sea, they overcame hunger and thirst in the desert.  Faith keeps going when the way seems impossible.

How about Blind Bartimaeus in the New Testament?  Remember, he heard Jesus was passing by, and he kept calling out for mercy over and over.   Even though the crowd rebuked him, they told him to stop bothering Jesus.  But he refused to stop crying out.  When everyone else wanted silence, faith kept shouting.  Faith doesn’t shut up.

Belief is never enough.  You must have faith, and faith has actions. James would later write:

James 2:17-18  So also faith by itself, if it does not have actions, is dead. Show me your faith apart from your actions, and I will show you my faith by my actions.”

Faith is invisible like the wind. You cannot see the wind itself, but you can certainly see the trees moving. Do people see your faith? Imagine if someone watched us during worship, Bible study, or prayer. Would they see faith? Would they see people expecting God to speak?

How about the way you live your life? People are watching you.  Do they see your faith?  Do they see your confidence in God’s promises in the way you live? Do they see your hope in times of suffering? Do they see obedience that doesn’t make sense apart from trust in Christ? Do they see your faith?  Because the things you do reveal your faith, or your lack of faith

Hebrews 11 is called the roll call of faith; it talks about the people of the Old Testament, what they believed, and what they did as a result.  It tells us how we see their faith.  And then it says this:

Hebrews 11:6  And without faith it is impossible to please God.

I told you at the beginning how Paul, the guy we see as the most successful missionary of all time, was asked to leave Antioch, and then he quickly left Iconium because they were about to stone him to death.  Well, spoiler alert: next week we will see that in this town with the person with paralysis, Lystra, Paul is stoned by a mob and dragged outside the city and left for dead.  But Paul is a man of faith. So what does Paul do after he almost dies?  We’ll see next week.

If Paul were preaching today and looked intently at us, what evidence of faith would he see? Would he see a person merely hearing God’s Word, or someone expecting God to act? Would he see comfortable religion, or courageous trust?  Would he see passive belief, or active obedience?

The world cannot see Jesus with its physical eyes, but it can see the faith of those who belong to Him. Genuine faith is not merely something we profess with our lips; it is something that shapes our faces, our choices, our prayers, our generosity, our perseverance, and our hope. When faith takes hold of the heart, it always becomes visible in your life.

1. France, R.T. New International Commentary of the New Testament – Matthew.