Matthew 17:14-21: A Different Kind of Faith            
  by Rev. David McKinley

INTRODUCTION
More than a few of us might see coming to church as a bit of an escape from the events of your life.  It could be that some of you are feeling a bit helpless.  Maybe you are going through a difficult situation that seems a bit out of your control.  Things are running at a different pace that you are able to move. This may be the case at work.  Your business or your job is not going the way you’d hoped.  This economy is taking its toll on you.  I recently read where the Dow has been given a rather negative acrostic: Decimation of Wealth.  We are in what many believe is the worst economic times since the Great Depression. 
Or your situation may be in the home.  Your marriage might be meeting challenges.  You’re struggling with a child; or you’re struggling with a parent.  Take for instance in the case of parents.  Sometimes circumstances affect your child.  Or they do things that you do not approve of.  Their health comes into jeopardy.  Their safety is at risk.  Sometimes at their own bidding; other times beyond their choosing.  What would Jesus have us do?    
Is there an answer in these circumstances?  Is there a solution to these situations?  These are times when we might feel desperate.  The man in our text today was in a position of desperation.  He happened to be a father.  A physical condition was affecting his son and he could do nothing about it.  So he comes to Jesus.  The occurrence is found in Matthew 17.  Parallel passages are found in Mark 9 and Luke 9, of which we’ll be referring to off and on today.  The end product is that Jesus is calling us to “A Different Kind of Faith.”

          We begin our study by looking at Matthew 17:14: “And when they came to the multitude, a man came up to Him, falling on his knees before Him, and saying, 15 "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic, and is very ill; for he often falls into the fire, and often into the water. 16 "And I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him." 17 And Jesus answered and said, "O unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me."

The occasion is when Jesus and the three came down from the Mount of Transfiguration.  They notice a crowd surrounding the other disciples.  As they come upon it, they notice the nine arguing with some teachers of the law.  Jesus approaches the commotion and is met by a man in a predicament.  Note the Father’s request in verse 15:  "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic, and is very ill.” Luke 9:38 points out that this is the man’s only child.  The father describes his son’s condition as something like convulsions; threw himself the ground, in and out of fire and foaming at the mouth.  Other accounts recognize this as seizures.  The term for seizures is what we commonly refer to as “moonstruck.”  In the first century, epilepsy was thought to have been affected by the moon’s phases.  Mark 9:21 states that this condition was operating since he was small.  The father recognizes this as spirit possession.  This does not mean that epilepsy and demon possession are always equated in the Bible.  Rather, this was one instance when it was.  The father is helpless.  There was nothing he could do for the condition was destroying the boy.  So he brought the child to the disciples, but they could do nothing. 
Notice Jesus’ assessment of the generation:  He calls them unbelieving and perverted. Was He being insensitive?  What could He mean by this?  One explanation is that Jesus was addressing the father’s imperfect faith along with the ongoing antagonism of the Jewish religious leaders.  Thomas and Gundry note: “Coming as a response to the father, the expression probably indicates a connection between the man and the teachers of the law.  These may have used the man and his son to gather evidence against Jesus and His disciples.  The antagonism of the Lord’s enemies surfaced once again and was met with this sharp rebuke.”    Or he could have been addressing the controversy over the disciples’ inability to cast out the demon.  The disciples did have authority to cast out unclean spirits as we read in Mark 6:7.  Jesus gave them this power as part of their mission.  But on this occasion, the disciples may have taken this power for granted and tried to exercise it without prayer and submission to God. 

          The reason that the disciples could not do anything in this instance was because of the littleness of faith and the littleness of prayer.  This brings up the subject of the place of prayer in our lives.  One commentator noted: “The disciples’ shortage of faith was not that they lacked confidence or did not expect success.  Rather, they were apparently surprised by their failure because their expectation was not properly grounded in relationship to God.  A tiny grain of true faith, rooted in submissiveness to God is effective.”   Consider the place of prayer in your life.  Do you expect God to work without your depending upon Him?  We cannot expect great things from God without prayer.  With that I ask, what place does prayer have in your life? 
Verse 18 And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at once. Luke 9:42 gives a victorious statement concerning this incident: “Then Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the child, and gave him back to his father. 43 And they were all amazed at the majesty of God.”  What is the purpose of miracles?  Why did Jesus perform them?  Miracles in Matthew are often given to prove the authority of Jesus as the Son of God.  According to John 2:11, they are meant to manifest the glory of God and to invoke belief.  Can we give Jesus His proper recognition?  Moreover, can we see the need for a bold faith in this passage?  Mighty things require mighty faith.

Verse 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."  “Moving mountains” is not to be taken literally.  Rather, it was thought to be a proverbial expression at the time for doing the impossible, according to H.L. Ellison.  

Mark 9:29 reads: “So He said to them, "This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting."  This verse is not in the NIV translation of Matthew’s text because the earliest manuscripts of Matthew do not contain it.  On the other hand, the parallel passage of Mark 9 does, so we comfortably refer to it, although it is not in our text.  This does not jeopardize the Bible’s reliability.  Rather it presses us to get at the original text as best as we can.  This process is called text criticism.  Text criticism makes its aim to get at the original manuscript, which is without error. 
Consider the couple of “prayer and fasting.”  Fasting often goes with prayer.  Fasting is an intense expression of prayer.  Its purpose is to humble the soul and body, to complete dependence upon God.  It is spoken of in Isaiah 58:1-10, the passage that was read earlier.  It is to focus on the Lord and His purposes.  It also conveys seriousness to our prayers that would not otherwise be there. 

CONCLUSION
With this in mind, I’d like to bring up the story Jim Cymbala, the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle.  This was a church that went from 20 to thousands, because of the practice of prayer and God’s grace.  There came a point when the Cymbalas were busy doing ministry, yet their daughter Chrissy was going in a different direction.  She was wayward and there was nothing that Jim and Carol could do.  But God did the impossible one night at a prayer meeting, of all places.  Allow me to read of their account.  (Read pp. 63-66) . 

So this “Different Kind of Faith” asks us to seek God for the impossible.  Maybe you are facing desperate circumstances with your job.  Or maybe you doubt you’ll have a job in a month.  Or, you are out of work now.  Your desperate circumstances may be with your work, your family or with yourself.  Let me encourage you to do as the man did, bring your desperation to Jesus Christ.  He will both bring solution to your situation and grow your faith at the same time.  Remember what James 4:8 tells us: “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”  I want to give you that opportunity right now.  Let us pause for 2-3 minutes and draw near to Him in prayer.  Let us pray.