Read Matthew 17:14–21
Questions from the Scripture text: To whom did they come in Matthew 17:14? Who came to Jesus? What posture did he take? Upon whom did he ask for mercy (Matthew 17:15)? Why? What had the man tried (Matthew 17:16)? With what effect? Who answers in Matthew 17:17? Whom does He accuse of what two things? What two rhetorical questions does He ask? What does He say to do? Whom does Jesus rebuke in Matthew 17:18? What does it do? With what result for the child? Who come to Jesus in Matthew 17:19? In what manner? What do they ask? What is Jesus’s first answer (Matthew 17:20)? What size faith does He say that they need? With such faith, to what would they be able to give commands? What would be impossible for them? But what does Jesus say about this demon—what is the only way that it goes out (Matthew 17:21)?
Why can’t we save? Matthew 17:14–21 prepares us for the sermon in the morning public worship on the coming Lord’s Day. In these eight verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that only Jesus can save, because Jesus is God.
Jesus can, and will, save you. What the boy’s father was so desperately searching for in the multitude below (Matthew 17:14), and what the other nine disciples were so desperately failing to give, was gloriously being displayed for sinners on the mountain above. The man has no doubt that Jesus is powerful. All that is needed is mercy, and he has hope for that as well, as he asks Jesus to have mercy upon him (Matthew 17:15).
No one else can, or will, save you. “they could not cure him” (Matthew 17:16) and “why could we not cast it out (Matthew 17:19) present the problem by use of the nominative pronouns “they” and “we.” The answer that Jesus gives (Matthew 17:20) has, sadly, been used by many to say that what is needed is more faith. So, people try to believe harder, but this is exactly opposite what Jesus’s answer actually means. The reason is: because they are not Jesus! This is what is behind Jesus’s agonized answer in Matthew 17:17. He has come to the generation for whom it will be worse for them than Sodom, Gomorrah, Tyre, and Sidon. Here is God the Son in the flesh, and they receive Him not, and hope in men instead. The apostles are His commissioned servants for taking the gospel to the world. But they are not to be trusted in, not the smallest bit. However great a blessing a man may be, and however much instrumentally assigned to be used by God in our life, we must not put our trust in him. Only, entirely, Jesus can save you!
Because Jesus is God. The reason that the smallest faith can do the largest thing is not because faith is powerful, but because its object is powerful. What percentage of God’s power is required to accomplish the greatest possible task in all of creation? This is why He attaches Matthew 17:21 to His answer about the mustard seed. It so poignantly makes the point. What is only possible to the disciples by prayer and fasting is available to Jesus, instantaneously, by His mere will and Word (Matthew 17:18). As a man, Jesus prays and fasts. But He is also God. He is the One unto Whom we pray and fast. What a wonderful thing prayer and fasting is! In it, we have a sweet fellowship with Jesus, Who did so in His own humanity, and through Whose intercession we come in our prayer and fasting. And, in it, we come to Jesus as our God and Savior, acknowledging that “we are not able” (prayer) and that He is all that we need (fasting).
What might you be trying to do in your own strength? How might you be treating faith as a work (trying to get it up to “mustard seed level”), rather than as the abandonment of any dependence at all upon work? What is your prayer life like? What is your fasting life like? What is your experience of the enjoyment of both sweet fellowship with Jesus, and secure dependence upon Jesus, in your prayer and fasting?
Sample prayer: Lord, thank You for giving Your own Son, Who is God with You and with the Spirit, to be our Savior. Give us to see His glory by faith, so that we will depend entirely upon Him for our deliverance from the enmity of devils and men, from the cursed condition of the world, and especially from our own sin, we ask in His Name, AMEN!
Suggested songs: ARP65A “Praise Awaits You, God” or TPH332 “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise”
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