Today we're looking at this verse in the context of Matthew 17:14-21. In this section, we find Jesus and three of His disciples returning from the Mount of Transfiguration, where they find a crowd gathered around the remaining 9 disciples. It's in this crowd that a desperate father is pleading to the disciples on behalf of his demon-afflicted son. As seen as well in Mark 9:14-19, the disciples could not cast out the demon.

The disciples' public failure prompted both an argument from some Jewish scribes, as well as an exasperated response from Jesus about their "faithless and twisted" generation.

"...I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.' And Jesus answered, 'O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.'"

Matthew 17:16-17 ESV

After Jesus heals the boy, we see in the two verses immediately preceding today's verse that the disciples want to understand what went wrong. When they asked Him privately, away from crowds, Jesus responded to them directly, but in this verse, we see that it was relatively kindly. The heart of their failure was having "little faith." This answer from Jesus indicates one of two things:

1. They did not trust the power previously given to them by Jesus (Matthew 10:8).
2. They did not believe such power could be exercised through them.

So what can we learn from this lesson?

Well, part of what we need to take away from this is the potency of genuine faith. Christ once again mentions the mustard seed as a metaphor for having a living, active faith (Matthew 13:31-32). With even a sliver of faith in His power and authority, nothing is impossible for them. Jesus says that with the faith of a mustard seed, that the disciples will be able to tell a mountain to move and it will do so.

This is an incredibly important lesson for the disciples, as they will eventually come to perform miracles that could easily seem impossible. It's this lesson with Jesus that they understand that the power to do these things will never come from their own ability or goodness or status with God - but rather it will only and always come through what was granted them by Jesus (Matthew 10:8), which is enabled by their faith in Jesus.

As you go about your day, think about this promise from God for those with the faith of even a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20): "nothing will be impossible for you."

How did you respond? Was there lightning-quick and loud unbelief? I'm not talking about the word-of-faith movement, as it can be tempting for this verse to be twisted. But rather, recognize that if we aren't exercising our faith on the promises from the Lord, then we're living beneath our means.

"The faith of Christians is the channel through which God chooses to manifest much of his glory that results in the conversion of unbelievers. If we have little faith, then little glory is seen through us. We must not be content with this."

Jon Bloom