The Power of Faith
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 26 January 2014
Faith is the cornerstone of Christianity, and the bible teaches that faith moves mountains. Faith accomplishes great things. We have heard that many, many times. But I wonder if we really understand what it means. Let us look at Matthew 17:14-21 where we need to look at a lesson taught by the Lord Jesus Christ on the power of faith.
“14 And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.” 17 Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your little faith; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. 21 However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
Let’s look what faith has accomplished in the Old Testament. It was faith in God's care that enabled Job to say in the midst of personal disaster in Job 13:15, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." It was faith in God's protection that enabled Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to stand on the edge of the fiery furnace and say, "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king," Daniel 3:17.
It was also faith in God's Word that enabled Daniel to survive the lion's den, as it says in Daniel 6:23, “So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no injury whatever was found on him, because he believed in his God.” It was faith that saved the sinful woman who washed Jesus feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head, as it tells us in Luke 7:50.
And as you look at Hebrews 11, the Bible tells us it was faith that enabled Abel to offer a better sacrifice. It was faith that caused Enoch to be moved to heaven without death. It was faith that allowed Noah to build a great ark and preach righteousness. It was faith that caused Abraham to follow the call of God. It was faith that caused Sarah to have a child. It was faith that caused Joseph to hope in the future.
It was faith that called Moses to reject the pleasures of sin for the reproach of Christ. It was faith that caused Rahab to receive the spies. And it was faith that came in the time of crisis to Gideon and Barak and Samson and David and Samuel and many, many others. And so we have throughout Holy Scripture, the testimony to the life of faith and to the power of faith.
Now in our text tonight, Jesus makes a great statement about faith when He says that faith moves mountains and that it makes nothing impossible. The point that Jesus makes in many ways is a summary of the testimony of the people of God through all of history that God moves powerfully when we believe the power of faith.
Now in Matthew 17:14 we start a special section because here the Lord begins an instructional period for His disciples that runs through Matthew 20. This is their final preparation for the ministry. He has given them a revelation of His person as King. He is giving them His program for the Kingdom. And now He gives them the principles for living in that Kingdom.
Jesus begins by teaching them in Matthew 17 about faith. And then He teaches them about citizenship, how to live in this world. In Matthew 18, He teaches them about humility and about offending, and then about discipline and about forgiveness. In Matthew 19, Jesus teaches them about marriage and about divorce and about children and about wealth and about rewards. And then in Matthew 20 about position and compassion.
So now the whole scene takes place as the disciples--Peter, James and John--with the Lord Jesus are coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration. They have just seen the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ and as they descend they are met by a large crowd. And in verse 14 we read, "And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him.”
Mark tells us it included scribes, Jewish legal experts, and many other people from around the northern Galilee area and also the nine other disciples who weren't there at the Mount of Transfiguration. So you have the disciples, the scribes and the multitude of people. And they are all here waiting to meet Jesus and the three disciples who came down from the mountain.
Now let us look at the first element in this text: the pleading of the father. There was a man kneeling down before Jesus Christ. Here is a man in a posture of reverence and humility. And then you hear what he says, "Lord...," you can see he revered Jesus. So, though we may not know the full quality of his reverence, we know the man believed that Jesus could heal. This man believed He had divine power.
And so he has a request, "Have mercy on my son." The word "mercy" basically means to show compassion. The father is pleading for his son. And when you add the narrative of Mark and Luke that parallels it, it becomes obvious why the father was so desperate about his son, he is epileptic. In the Greek language, it means to be ‘moonstruck’, believing that this was caused by the moon. It is used to describe behavior that includes epilepsy, convulsions and seizures. And it says he suffers severely.
Now in Mark 9:17, it says that the child was also dumb, that is he couldn't speak. And Mark also adds in chapter 9: 25 that he couldn't hear either. This child was deaf and dumb. And in Matthew we find this out in verse 15, "He often falls into the fire and often into the water." And so he was always in danger of being burned or being drowned.
Mark and Luke added other symptoms; Mark says that there was a demon in him who caused all that. And so in the fit that would go on, the demon would thrash the boy’s body. Luke says the demon causes him to cry out and slams him down. Mark says that he foams at the mouth, he convulses, and he wallows and rolls in the dirt.
And in Mark 9:21, the question is asked of the father, "How long has this been happening?" And he answers, "From childhood." Now we understand why the father is pleading. And this is his only son. Here is the only beloved son of his father and he is facing the only beloved Son of God. Jesus can identify with him. Jesus can understand the heart of this father.
You might say, "How do people get demons in them like this?" If you are not a Christian, according to Ephesians 2:2, you are ruled by the prince of the power of the air who can dispatch his demons to do anything to you that they want to do. And this is not to say that this child was evil, it was the choice of the demon and God allowed it. So we come from the mountain top of the Second Coming right back down to reality of sickness and demon possession.
That leads us to a second point. The pleading of the father brings us to the powerlessness of the disciples. Verse 16, "So I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him." Does that seem strange to you? Look at Matthew 10:1, “And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease.”
They had been given the power to do this and now they can't do it, even though they had already been healing. So they had the promise and they had the power, what was missing? Well, they didn't appropriate the power. They couldn't do in Matthew 17 what they were promised to do in chapter 10. Now let's leave that for a moment, we will come back to that.
This father doesn't have a lot of faith in the disciples of Jesus but he still has faith in Jesus. That leads us to what is called the perversion of the faithless. And now it's time for Jesus to speak in verse 17, "Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.”
We are seeing the heart of Christ, the pain of His heart, the disappointment that comes out of His lips. The whole generation was faithless and perverse, but who were the specific ones who weren't exercising faith? His disciples. So the Lord is saying, "Oh, you disciples are symbolic of a whole generation of faithless people." And if you don't trust God, you get twisted, and that's what perverse means.
At this point Matthew doesn't tell us what happened, but Mark does. The father brought the boy. And as he brought the boy, Mark says, the demon in the boy saw Jesus and when he saw Jesus he threw the boy into convulsions. The boy began wallow in the dirt and foam at the mouth. And to be deaf and dumb in addition to that, oh what horror.
Well, the demon knew Christ. Remember Acts 19:15 when the demon said, "Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you?" Those demons know Jesus. And this one knew Him, just like the demons in the maniac of Gadara knew Him (Matthew 8:28-33). When he saw Jesus, this fallen angel of Satan threw him into convulsions.
Now verse 18, "And Jesus rebuked the demon and he departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour." Wow, the child was cured from that very moment. He could speak, he could hear, he could think, no more seizures, no more wallowing, no more foaming at the mouth, no more foul language. Amazing, miraculous!
Luke adds a wonderful footnote, "And all were astonished at the majesty of God." Do you know why Luke uses that phrase? It reminded him of the transfiguration. On the mountain, the majesty of God was seen in Christ and here was it seen in His power over the demonic world. And Luke uses that word majesty of God the very same way Peter uses it in 2 Peter 1:16, “we were eyewitnesses of His majesty on the holy mount.”
Now that brings us to the main point, the power of faith. And we are going to find out what all this teaches. The whole incident is merely an illustration of a lesson in verse 19, “Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” They didn't ask, "How did You do that?" They knew how He did it, they wanted to know why they couldn't. So, Jesus teaches them a great lesson.
Verse 20, “ So Jesus said to them, “Because of your little faith (in the original text not unbelief); for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” You know, their main problem was little faith. Have you heard Jesus say to them four times, “O you of little faith.”
What is Jesus really saying? Little faith is the kind of faith that believes in God only when you have something in your hand. Oh yes, I believe God. Oh yes, the Lord provides. But little faith can't believe God when we do not have in hand what we want. Great faith says I believe God without anything in my hand. I believe God in the middle of the storm of life. I believe God though there's nothing in my cupboard. I believe God though I don't have any money.
And sometimes we fall into that same category. We can believe God, "Oh yes, I trust and believe the Lord." And then we hit the storm and we cannot see our way out, our faith comes to a halt and we enter into despair. You see, when faith stops, despair begins. When faith stops, worry begins. When faith stops, doubt begins.
And now Jesus begins to let them go on their own, He starts to teach them a profound lesson that everything you want, everything you need isn't necessarily going to come the first time you ask God. That's the lesson. You know what little faith is? It's the kind of faith that doesn't know how to persist in prayer. And have you noticed that that very often happens with new Christians?
But the Lord is strengthening us. The longer you have been a Christian, the tougher the test has to be to strengthen you. Like when you start lifting weights, you start with a little bit and you see it right away. But the longer you do it, the more weight you have to add to see any progress. And so the trials and tribulations that God gives us get longer and harder as we grow because that's how He continues to strengthen us.
And then He says in verse 20, “for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” Now you say, “Wait a minute, You just said we had little faith and that's why we couldn't do it, but now You tell us even if we have little faith we could do it." No. The principle of the mustard seed is not that it's little, no, it is that it starts small but then grows big.
Matthew 13:31-32, “Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, 32 which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.” So the parable of the mustard seed is about something that starts very small and grows very large.
There are many things that God desires for you to experience in your life that God desires to accomplish in your life that are available to you only through the exercise of His divine power. But that power will never be tapped until you have the faith that starts small. And when it meets with resistance and when you don't see it happen right away, that faith doesn't die small, but it gets larger. And you need to continue persistently in prayer.
Now this is not saying that if we have little tiny faith the size of a grain of mustard seed that we could move a mountain. It's not talking about literal mountains. It's talking about mountains of difficulty. It's figurative. Jesus never meant this to be taken physically and literally. What He meant was, if you have faith enough, all difficulties can be solved and even the hardest task can be accomplished.
What the disciples should have done when they didn't heal the man the first, second or third time, was to keep on praying and keep on believing God till their persistent prayer broke through and reached its point where God wanted them to learn, and then God would have responded. He withheld it in order that they might continue to stretch their faith.
And listen carefully, the antidote to little faith is persistent prayer. Listen, James says, “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” The passionate continuous persistent prayer gets results. You may never know the full rewards that God wants to bestow upon you until you learn persistent prayer. Let us pray.