SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/30/2022 7:59 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Intro to The Power of Faith”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
17:14-21
Message of the verses: “14 And when they
came to the multitude, a man came up to Him, falling on his knees before Him,
and saying, 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic, and is very
ill; for he often falls into the fire, and often into the water. 16 “And I
brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him." 17 And Jesus
answered and said, "O unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall
I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me." 18
And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at
once. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could
we not cast it out?" 20 And He said
to them, "Because of
the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith
as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’
and it shall move; and nothing shall be impossible to you. 21 “But this kind
does not go out except by prayer and fasting.’”
I want to begin by continuing the quotation from
John MacArthur’s commentary where we left off yesterday.
“From Hebrews 11 we learn that ‘by faith Able
offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain’ (v-4), that ‘by faith Enoch was
taken up so that he should not see death’ (v-5), that ‘by faith Noah…prepared
an ark…and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith’
(v-7), and that ‘by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed,…went out,…[and]
lived as an alien in the land of promise,…for he was looking for the city which
has foundations, whose architect and builder is God’ (vv. 8-10). The rest of that chapter names a host of
other Old Testament saints who ‘gained approval through their faith’
(v-39). In view of ‘so great a cloud of
witnesses surrounding us,’ the writer continues, ‘let us also lay aside every
encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with
endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author
and perfecter of faith’ (12:1-2).
We
mentioned that Jesus is beginning to teach His disciples and will continue this
theme for a number of chapters in Matthew’s gospel. The first lesson is about faith, and this
began right after Jesus, Peter, James, and John came down from the mountain of
transfiguration. These three disciples
just had a glimpse of the power and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt.
17:2), which the apostle Paul may have been referring to when he spoke of “the
glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Now we see that the other nine disciples were
brought face to face with their own lack of power, which was due directly,
Jesus told them to their lack of faith.
We
go from the great mountain-top experience to trouble in the valley as we begin
this section of Scripture, from seeing Moses, Elijah, and the glorified Lord, a
preview of His second coming to the reality of the sin-cursed world at its
worst.
MacArthur
concludes his introduction by writing “The Lord used the first tragic situation
He encountered after the transfiguration as a living illustration of a
principle He wanted to teach. Within
this story can be seen four key elements:
the pleading of the Father (Matt. 17:14-15), the powerlessness of the
followers (v. 16), the perversion of the faithless (vv. 17-18), and the power
of faith (vv. 19-21).”
I
look forward to studying these verses, as I know that I will be taught much more
about these verses than I have ever known in the past.
10/30/2022 8:20 AM
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