SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/1/2022 10:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“The Powerlessness of the Followers”
Bible Reading & Meditation
Reference: Matthew 17:16
Message of the verses: “And I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him” (17:16).
The father of the boy who is demon possessed brought
him to the disciples of Jesus while Jesus was on the mountain with Peter,
James, and John, and they could not cure him.
We can take a look at the previous
chapter from different gospel accounts and find out that Jesus had given power
to do a number of things as He sent out the disciples on what we may call
missions trips, short term as they may be.
The point is that the power that he had given to them included casting
out demons, and so one wonders why it is that they were not able to cast out
the demon of this boy. I remember one of
the times when the disciples came back after one of the times that Jesus sent
them out and He told them that He saw Satan falling from the sky, so they
certainly had the power at that time but the question is what happened to it here?
John MacArthur writes “The failure
now was not due to the fact that Jesus was not with them, because He was not
with them on those earlier occasions, either.
They still had Jesus’ promise and His power, yet they could not cure the
boy. The explanation for their failure
is therefore obvious. They failed to
appropriate the power available to them.”
We can see that the father had
increasing frustration and anguish as he was understandably despaired of help
from the disciples and turned to Jesus for help.
What happened here has happened
countless times throughout the history of the church, that is the
faithlessness, weakness, and indifference of Christians has caused many seeking
unbelievers to despair of help from God’s people. Sometimes, like the father in this story,
they turn to the Lord Himself, and that is the thing to do as He will always
listen.
11/1/2022
11:04 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment