SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/6/2022 8:11 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “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.’”
MacArthur continues: “The Lord was giving the disciples a sample
of what their lives would be like once He had returned to heaven, when they
could no longer see Him or touch Him or talk with Him in the way they were used
to doing. He was also teaching them
persistence. We do not know how often
they tried to cast the demon out of the boy, but at some point they gave
up. When Jesus first sent the disciples
out, their success at healing and casting out demons was immediate. But Jesus had not promised that that would
always be the case. The twelve had to
learn that, unlike the Lord’s power, theirs was not inherent in
themselves. It came only from Him, by
His divine provision and will.
“It is encouraging to realize that
even the apostles, with their unique calling and miraculous gifts, always had
to rely on Jesus to minister effectively.
To strengthen their faith and sense of dependence, the Lord sometimes
made them wait—just as He often does with believers today. To strengthen our faith, He may sometimes
make us wait a long time for an answer to prayer. Just as an athlete grows stronger by
gradually lifting heavier weights or by running longer distances, so a believer
grows stronger in faith by facing even-increasing challenges that expose his
own weakness and drive him to the Lord.
“Continuing the lesson on faith,
Jesus said, ‘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.’’
Jesus seems to contradict Himself,
first rebuking the disciples for having small faith and then telling them that
even the smallest faith can move mountains.
But as He made clear in the parable of the mustard seed, the seed does
not represent littleness as such but rather littleness that grows into
greatness. ‘When it is full grown,’ He
explained, ‘it is larger than the garden plants, and becomes a tree (Matt.
13:32). Small faith can accomplish great
things only if, like a mustard seed it grows into something greater than it
was. Only when small faith grows into
great faith can it move a mountain.
“Mustard seed faith is persistent
faith. It continues to grow and become
productive because it never gives up. It
is the sort of faith exercised by the importunate man who kept knocking on his
neighbor’s door late at night until he got a response. ‘I tell you,’ Jesus said, that ‘even though
he would not get up and give him anything because he is a his friend, yet
because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs’
(Luke 11:8). Jesus also illustrated mustard
seed faith in the parable of the oppressed widow, a parable He gave
specifically ‘to show that at all times [the disciples] ought to pray and not
to lose heart’ (Luke 18:1). When the
widow would not take no for an answer, the godless, indifferent judge finally
gave her ‘legal protection, lest,’ the said, ‘by continually coming she wear me
out’ (v-5). ‘Hear what the unrighteous judge
said, ‘Jesus’ went on to explain ‘now shall not God bring about justice for His
elect, who cry to Him day and night and will He delay long over them? I tell
you that He will bring about justice for them speedily’ (vv. 6-8).
“It must also be clearly understood
that Jesus was not talking about moving a literal mountain. Neither the apostles nor the Lord Himself
ever performed such a feat—nor has anyone else in the nearly 2,000-year history
of the church. That would have been the
sort of grand but pointless miracle the scribes and Pharisees expected of the
Messiah but which Jesus refused to perform (Matt. 12:38-39).”
Lord willing we will finish this
section in our next SD.
11/6/2022
8:37 AM
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