The Power of Faith

The Faith of a Mustard Seed

Jesus, Peter, James, and John finally arrived at the foot of the mountain. Some sort of commotion was in progress. It didn’t take Jesus long to find out what was going on. A man approached Him and knelt down in front of Him. “Lord, have mercy on my son, because he has seizures and suffers severely. He often falls into the fire and often into the water. I brought him to Your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”

Jesus rebuked His disciples for their lack of faith. He told them they were unable to drive the demon out of the man’s son “because of your little faith.” In fact, He addresses them rather brusquely as an “unbelieving and rebellious generation.” They probably got this tongue lashing for two reasons: 1) they relied on their own strength rather than God’s, and 2) their faith was not yet directed toward the will of God to the degree it should have been.

Jesus said that if they had faith the size of a mustard see, they could tell the mountain to move from here to there and it would move, that nothing would be impossible for them. Jesus is obviously speaking metaphorically rather than literally, since neither He nor the Father had ever told a mountain to be moved from one place to another. The point is not mountains but seeing the impossible happen as the result of God’s power in response to faith.