The Making of a Disciple- Part VIII- The Disciple's Correction

Introduction

Last Sunday we examined the warning which Jesus gave to His disciples to “beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

We saw that the Pharisees were marked by their hypocrisy and the Sadducees by their short-sightedness, and that both were guilty of demeaning Christ causing many to reject Him.

We must continue to vigilantly guard against hypocrisy, short-sightedness, and any attitude or behavior which would demean Jesus Christ.

As the time of Jesus’s death draws nearer, He continues to interact with His disciples, preparing them to carry on the work which He had begun.

Today we will take a look at Matthew 17:14-21 and see Jesus’s correction of His disciples.

The fact is that even the most devoted disciples of Christ still require correction from time to time. Our natural tendency is to grow complacent, self-reliant, and undisciplined.

This interaction between Jesus and His disciples begins with a...

Failure (Vs. 14-16)

As we follow Christ and engage in the work that He has called us to do, there will undoubtedly be times when we face failure as well.

There are many great successes in the service of the Lord, but there will also be times when we fail at the task which the Lord has given us to accomplish.

The disciples had apparently tried to help the man’s son and yet were unable to cure him.

We too must realize that failure is a reality and that we shall not always be successful. The disciples were surely well intentioned and certainly it can be assumed that they put forth their best effort and yet in spite of this the son remained unchanged.

We may also put forth great effort, we may be sincere and well-intentioned, and yet at times we may find that we are simply unable to achieve success.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill

We must recognize that our failure does not have to mark the end of our ministry, rather we must learn from the failure and purpose to correct that which was the cause.

This is exactly what Jesus does now as He engages His disciples in order to correct that which led to their failure.

The failure of the disciples is followed by a....

Rebuke from the Master (Vs. 17-18)

When Jesus saw that His disciples had failed, His answer was a strong rebuke directed towards them because of their lack of faith.

Jesus knew exactly what it was that had led to their ineffectiveness, even though the disciples were apparently unaware. (Vs. 19)

It was their unbelief which caused them to be rendered unable to help the man’s son to be cured. It is not as though His disciples had not done this type of thing before, for Jesus had expressly given them power to do such things and had sent them out to exercise this power.

Matthew 10:1 & Matthew 10:5 & Matthew 10:8-Jesus empowered His disciples and then sent them out to carry out the work that He had commanded them to do.

Something had apparently changed in the lives of the disciples that led to their powerlessness in this moment, for it is obvious that Jesus’s power had not ceased to be effective. Jesus now instructs them to bring the child to Him.

After rebuking the disciples and the bystanders, Jesus immediately rebuked the devil that was causing the child so much distress and the child was immediately cured.

Jesus’s power was just as effective as it ever had been to cast out the devil and to cure the boy and yet His disciples who had likely performed similar miracles at other times were left wondering why they had failed.

Surely the Lord’s rebuke before all must have stung their pride and caused them to examine themselves and this was exactly Jesus’s intent.

How many times might this same sobering statement be made regarding our own lack of faith and the perversity of the present generation?

Once he had rebuked them, Jesus then moves to...

Correction (Vs. 19-21)

This moment of failure, as embarrassing as it may have been, was an opportunity for the disciples to learn a valuable spiritual lesson which would be of great benefit to their future ministry.

Once they had left the crowd behind and found themselves alone with Jesus once again, they immediately sought to understand the reason for their failure.

Jesus begins with the fact that their failure was directly tied to their unbelief. It may have been their lack of faith that God’s power was sufficient but likely it was the fact that they had less faith in Christ because they had allowed their faith to shift to themselves, believing they were now capable of accomplishing the task.

This is an all too common problem for many devoted disciples of Christ. Those who have served in ministry are likely all too aware of the tendency to become self-reliant and to attempt to do ministry in the flesh rather than in the power of the Spirit of God.

Jesus assures them that if they will but have faith in Him there is nothing which cannot be accomplished. We must never allow our faith to become concentrated upon what we can do, but rather it must be in what the power of God can accomplish through us.

Jesus then concludes the correction by directing them to the spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting. It seems their lack of faith was directly related to their lack of spiritual discipline.

This again is a far too common problem among those who have devoted themselves to serving the savior. So many times we become so busy so encumbered with serving that we fail to discipline ourselves to pray and to fast and we fail in the cultivation of our relationship with the Lord.

We can become so accustomed to serving and even to success in service to the Lord that we become complacent and we allow these spiritual disciplines to slip.

Illustration- Samson- was totally unaware that the power had been lost

Judges 16:20–21 KJV 1900

And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him. But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.

We must never forget where the power comes from. It is now we ourselves who can successfully carry out the work that God has called us to do, but it is the power of God that works in and through us.

We must discipline ourselves to maintain a strong connection with our power source, the Lord Jesus Christ. We must never assume that we shall be successful because of our own skill, intellect, or ability. We must remember always that we are utterly reliant upon God.

This discipline of fasting and prayer would become a regular part of the lives of the disciples as they continued to carry on the work which Jesus had delegated to them.

Acts 13:3 KJV 1900

And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

Acts 14:23 KJV 1900

And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.

Conclusion

For the devoted disciple of Christ there will be moments of failure along the way. We shall often find great success in ministry, but there will undoubtedly be times when we fail to accomplish what God has called us to do.

In these moments, we must return to the Lord and seek to understand the cause of our failure. We must not quit or give up, but rather we must seek to learn from the experience such that we do not again repeat it.

Maybe you, like the disciples, have grown complacent, cold, indifferent, self-reliant and undisciplined. Maybe you have failed.

It may be that, like these disciples, you have neglected spiritual disciplines and it is time that you correct this error so that you can once again enjoy the opportunity to labor in the strength of the power of God.