Faith

# 50 2015 Dev. Mt. 17:20The purpose of our devotionals is to grow closer to God by memorizing selected passages of Scripture. Further, to view the passage in context and grow spiritually by applying His Word to our daily living. All passages are taken from the NIV.

Matthew 17:20

20 “He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed,you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

This is an amazing and encouraging passage. From our perspective, chapter 17 is comprised of three miracles and a lack of faith by the Disciples but should build up our own faith. From the Disciples point of view the chapter is a confirmation that Jesus is the Messiah, He has come, he is with them and that assurance also increased their faith.

1. The first miracle is the transfiguration, Jesus is transformed into his heavenly appearance, Moses and Elijah come and talk to Him The Spirit must have informed the Disciple they would not have been able to recognize these two prophets. Obviously, this event was done to increase the faith of the Disciple and our faith as well.

Then there is the boy with an evil Spirit that the Disciple could not cast out. Jesus cast out the boy and when the Disciples asked why they could not Jesus points to their lack of faith. The Gospel Mark tells the same story but the father of the boy upon hearing about the possibility of faith “exclaims, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” The importance of that statement should not be lost on us.

The story of the fish with a four-dracma coin in it’s mouth is a most unusual miracle, not one to help someone but one so as not to cause offence. Can you imagine yourself going to fish and to expect money enough to pay a tax in it’s mouth? No, I would say that the faith of the Disciples is increasing. That certainly would have taken a lot of faith on Peter’s part.

We go back to the verse we are memorizing. Jesus tells us that if we have faith the size of a mustered seed we could move mountains, in-fact “nothing would be imposable for us”. This is unnerving information. Not many of us can move mountains but we do have faith, we believe the Word of God, We believe all the miracles in the Word, and we belive that Jesus is the Son of God and that by His death he saves us from all our sins and unrighteousness. We believe He gives us new life now and eternal life with Him. Along with the father in Marks Gospel we say: “ I do believe; help me (us) overcome my(our) unbelieve!

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