SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/5/2022 10:07 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Power of Faith”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
17:19-21
Message of the verses: 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.’”
In this SD we will begin by
discussing what is the obvious answer to the disciples question as to why they
could not cast out the demon in the boy, and that obvious answer is "Because of the littleness of your faith.” Now Jesus
not saying that they did not have any faith but because of…littleness of…faith that
they were powerless. They had saving
faith, which they could not lose. They
also had trusting faith to some degree, or they would not have attempted to
heal the boy. But what they lacked was
sufficient faith to employ the power of Jesus which He had given them.
I
have to say a few things before we continue looking at this section which is
the last section in this whole section which was entitled “The Power of Faith”
which we began on 10-29. I believe that
this could be the most important section that we are looking at now as Jesus is
explaining to His disciples the kind of faith that the disciples, and us to
will need, and in the case of the disciples when Jesus goes back to
heaven. The sermon that I listened to
taught me some great things about faith, and I passed it on to a friend of mine
so that he and his wife could listen to it.
They were involved in a very bad motorcycle accident around July 4th
of this year, and the wife is still in the hospital undergoing therapy. I pray daily for them and I thought that the
sermon that goes along with this chapter in MacArthur’s commentary would be
some help to them. The husband is now
walking with a cane and able to once again drive. Their daughter and her husband have kind of
put their life on hold as they moved here with their two young children from
Alaska to help out her parents. Their
son who lives in Boston has also come here as much as he can to help out.
I
said all of this to say that I have decided to quote a couple of paragraphs
from MacArthur’s commentary so that we will get the best possible commentary on
this section. It will probably continue
tomorrow too.
“Having
littleness of…faith was a somewhat typical condition of the disciples. Soon after Jesus called them into His
service, they sat among the crowd on the mountainside whom He charged with being
anxious because of their little faith in God to provide for their physical
needs (Matt. 6:25-34). When during the
fierce storm on the Sea of Galilee they despaired of their lives, Jesus rebuked
them before He rebuked the waves, saying ‘Why are you timid, you men of little
faith?’ (8:26). When Peter started to walk on the water but became afraid and
began sinking, ‘Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to
him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’’ (14:31). Shortly before healing the demonized boy,
Jesus had again charged the disciples with having little faith in not expecting
Him to be able to feed the multitude near Magadan (16:8).
“Those
incidents illustrate that little faith is the kind of faith that believes in
God when you have something in your hand, when His provision is already
made. When things were going well with
the disciples and everything seemed under control, they found it easy to trust
their Lord. But as soon as circumstances
became uncertain or threatening, their faith withered. Their faith was like the faith of most
believers in all ages. When they are
healthy and have the necessities of life, their faith is great and strong, but
when they are in need, their faith is small and gives way to doubt.
“Great faith trusts God when
there is nothing in the cupboard to eat and no money to buy food. Great faith trusts in God when health is
gone, work is gone, reputation is gone, or family is gone. Great faith trusts God while the windstorm is
still howling and persecution continues.”
There
is more to this and I want to continue to quote some more from MacArthur’s
commentary in our next SD, but this is enough to get us all thinking about what
kind of faith we have, and what kind we need to have.
11/5/2022 10:43 AM
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