Little Faith Yields Little Obedience
The people of Israel were begging the prophet to pray on behalf of them and even vowed to accept the responsibility for keeping God's advice...
Jeremiah 42:5
And they said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we don’t act according to every word the Lord your God sends you to tell us.
Ten days later the prophet of the Lord brings God's word for them and His perfect advice. And the answer they got didn't suit them...
Jeremiah 43:4
all the commanders of the armies, and all the people failed to obey the Lord’s command to stay in the land of Judah.
Jesus said anyone who does the WILL of my Father in heaven, is my brother, mother, and sister, they're my family. The consequences of the Jews disobedience and their decision to abandon the Promised Land will be disastrous for them. The Lord follows them and destroys everything about the place they were going because they were putting their hope in that place. They went there to find security and peace. They refused God's promise to protect them, even after vowing to obey Him. From God's perspective they were disobedient children. His family refused him. They couldn't love him enough to trust him and follow his lead. Imagine his disappointment. These people, his family refused his authority.
Similarly, when Jesus (God incarnate) walked among the Jews, his family struggled with obeying his mission. At this time Jesus is establishing his ministry, appointing his disciples and he's gaining a large following. News about his work is spreading throughout the region. His social media presence is getting a lot of clicks. And this disturbs the people who know him, his family.
Mark 3:20 Jesus entered a house, and the crowd gathered again so that they were not even able to eat. 21 When his family heard this, they set out to restrain him, because they said, “He’s out of his mind.”
Jesus hears about his family and their grief over what he's been doing...and he says:
"Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:35)
Conclusions:
Throughout the Bible we find a common theme runs through it. God's moves. He does something to create a family. The family fails to obey him. He works again to remake them. They disobey. He blazes a path in the wilderness for them. They have little faith. He gives his only Son to become their Savior. The people kill him.
Near as I can figure, the common thread in all these testaments is, when times get tough, the people get scared, and their faith gets weak. We saw this recently during the so called pandemic. When life threatens their security their impulse is to flee rather than to run towards the Lord. Goliath challenges, they shake in their armor. Life gets hard in the wilderness, they make plans to return into slavery. The Babylonians burn the city, they run off to Egypt. Rome occupies their city, the Lord sends a Savior, they kill him. The Chinese release a virus into the world and the people close the church doors.
The common factor in all of it is a small, myoptic faith. It's a spiritual shortsightedness. It's kind of sad this tendancy, because sometimes beautiful things come out of nowhere. We won't always understand them, but we have to trust in them. God knows you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith. Faith untried is faith, but it's of little good to anyone. Little Faith does little. If your faith is subjecting God's commandments to criticism, if you need to examine step one and then step two and everything that happens in between before you'll obey, ‘Oh ye of little faith.’
It's not going to go well for you. Your faith may bring your soul to heaven, but it will never bring heaven to your soul.