Have a Little Faith 2021 05 01
Matthew 17:14 – 20
There is the familiar account in the Bible of the man who went away on a trip and left some money with his employees to take care of while he was gone. The first two invested wisely and doubled the money left in their care, but the third one hid the money for fear of losing it, and it gained nothing. The first two were commended for investing what they had, but the third one was reprimanded for doing nothing. It’s not about how much you have to work with, but where you put it to work. This is also how faith works. It’s not how much you have but where you put it.
Matthew 17:14 – 20
Jesus and three of the disciples had been up on a high mountain, where Jesus was transfigured. What an experience that was for those disciples, Peter, James, and John! But when they arrived back where the others were, there was a situation going on. A man had brought his son who was possessed by a devil that continuously drove him insane to the disciples for healing, but they were not able to cure him.
The dad was desperate for his son to be healed. He often fell into the fire and into water and was very troubled. What man wouldn’t want his son liberated from such things? But the disciples couldn’t cure him.
What did Jesus say? Did He commend the disciples for trying? Did He offer them some special instruction in driving out demons? Did He lay His hands on them giving them special power to do exorcisms? No!
I He Called Them Faithless
- Jesus was exasperated with them. He called them a “faithless and perverse generation.” He asked them rhetorically how long he should put up with them.
- Jesus words showed that the problem that prevented the disciples from driving out the devil and thus healing the young man from his afflictions was their lack of faith.
II A Tiny Seed
- A mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds known. Yet the mustard plant grows into a tree, up to 25 feet tall.
- The seeds of the mustard tree are very tiny and take a bit of work to collect in the first place. You can’t simply take a mustard tree’s fruit, open it, take out a few seeds, and stick them in the ground.
- The fruit has to be soaked for up to three days until the pulp is reduced to a runny texture. Then the pulp has to be strained through fine cheesecloth to collect the tiny brown seeds. Then the damp seeds are scattered in a container filled with damp sand and pressed in.
- The seeds will only sprout if all the pulp has been removed because it contains germination inhibitors. So, just like a careless presentation of the Gospel followed by a quick “pray-after-me” prayer is unlikely to produce real faith, a careless handling of mustard seeds will produce no mustard plant! Jesus had a good reason to pick the mustard seed for His parable!
- But just planting a mustard seed properly does not guarantee it will produce a healthy mustard tree. After it sprouts, it often needs up to three years indoors before it’s ready to be planted outside, and even then, it must be planted in the right place to flourish.
- This brings us to our next point:
III Placement
- You often hear about how you need to have great faith to do great things. You may believe that the reason you can’t accomplish something, or get something, or recover from an illness, is because you don’t have enough faith. Certainly, this is what we’ve all heard.
- It’s common for this parable to be cited as proof that you don’t have enough faith.
- But what is often missed is that the size of your faith is not even close to as important as where your faith is placed. If the amount of faith you have is what brings results, then the results come from human effort.
- Just as a mustard seed must be carefully prepared and planted in the correct medium in order to grow, the preparation and the placement of our faith is critical.
IV Trusting in Self
- The disciples had faith, but their faith was in themselves.
- Previously, as recorded in Matthew 10 and also in Luke 9, Jesus called His twelve disciples and given them power to cast out devils and to cure diseases. Then we read in Luke 10 that He sent out another seventy disciples, also giving them power to heal.
- These seventy returned, we are told in Luke 10:17, “with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.”
- Jesus first of all rejoiced with them, telling them He saw Satan fall from heaven.
- But then we see in verse 20 of that passage in Luke, where Jesus hints at the problem in their hearts and also so often in our own. He said, “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”
- Another way this could be put is, “Don’t glory in yourselves because you see amazing things happening through you, but glory in the One from whom that power comes, the One who has written your names in heaven!”
- Don’t keep putting your faith in your faith, but put your faith in God!
V Preaching of the Gospel
- The Gospel must be preached carefully, not carelessly. Neither Paul nor Jesus preached a shallow message, quickly getting people on the “Romans Road,” then coercing them into “praying the prayer.”
- Jesus preached to the two men, on the road Emmaus, beginning at Moses and all the prophets! These were likely men who had been among His followers before He was crucified, yet He didn’t give them a cheap five-minute gospel presentation! He preached the Gospel on a sound foundation, built on all the prophecies about Him from the Old Testament.
- Paul preached that the Gospel is this, “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:” 1 Corinthians 15:3, 4
- Those scriptures Paul spoke of were what we now call the Old Testament. Specifically, he was speaking of all the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, who is Jesus Christ.
- The preaching of the Gospel needs to be with care. A cheap gospel leads to a cheap faith, which so often is not really in Jesus Christ, but in a event that happened at some point during a person’s life, where he or she made a profession of faith. Instead of the faith really being in God, it is in that profession of faith!
VI A Little Faith
- Jesus did not teach that you must have great faith to do great things. He taught that a little faith in a great God is what makes all the difference.
- To the disciples trying to drive out the devil in the man’s son, He called them faithless and perverse! They were twisted, mixed up, puffed up, trusting in themselves, rather than in God.
- Then Jesus showed that what is impossible for man is nothing for God. He rebuked the devil, and the child was cured immediately.
- Great faith is not what you need. What you need is to put your little faith in a great God!
VII A Growing Faith
- Jesus used the mustard seed as an example of what a tiny little bit of faith place in an infinitely awesome God can do. The power is not in our faith, but in our God!
- But Jesus used the mustard seed as example of how unimportant the size of our faith is if it is placed in almighty God.
- But a mustard seed, placed in the right medium, doesn’t stay tiny. Of a grain of mustard seed, Jesus said it “is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.” Matthew 13:32
- A tiny bit of real faith placed in the medium of almighty God is a growing faith that can become a great faith over time. But faith in faith alone is a worthless faith that withers and dies.
Conclusion
- Have a little faith. Put that faith in God. The tiniest bit of faith put in almighty God taps into the power that can life up entire mountains and move them to a whole new location. But again, the power is never in the faith, not even if it is a very great faith, but it is in almighty God. Trust in Him and HE will do great things!