[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 17:14–21. Delivered 27 July 1980, Montreal.]
We have now been studying systematically through the Gospel of Matthew for over four years, and today we reach chapter 17, verses 14 to 21. This passage immediately follows the account of the transfiguration on Mount Hermon, and the connection between the two events is essential to understanding what the Lord Jesus means by "a faithless and perverse generation." Let me read the passage: "And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and kneeling before him said, 'Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; for often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.' And Jesus answered, 'O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.' And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, 'Why could we not cast it out?' He said to them, 'Because of your little faith.'"
The path from Matthew 16 to Matthew 17 is deliberate and instructive. In Matthew 16, the Lord Jesus had told his disciples: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." He had rebuked Peter with the words "Get behind me, Satan" precisely because Peter's refusal to accept the cross was satanic in its nature. And then — immediately, in Matthew 17 — the Lord is transfigured. The light of his divine glory shines through him on the mountain, and a voice from heaven says: "This is my beloved Son." Luke 9:43 records the reaction when they descended: "All were astonished at the majesty of God." The cross and the glory are inseparable. The way to glory passes through the cross. And the path of the cross is the path of power — this is the central lesson of Matthew 17.
Notice that at the transfiguration, the Lord Jesus did not grasp his glory back for himself. He had set it aside when he became a man, as Philippians 2 tells us — he "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." And on the mountain, the glory was given back to him — not seized but received. It came from the Father; God glorified him. Luke 9:31 tells us that Moses and Elijah, appearing with Jesus in glory on the mountain, were speaking with him of his "exodus" — his departure, his death — which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. The subject of the transfiguration conversation was the cross. Glory and cross are not opposites; they are two aspects of the same reality. He was being glorified precisely as he was preparing to die. Those who do not seek their own glory — who take the path of self-giving — receive it.
So the disciples come down from the mountain into this scene: a father kneeling before Jesus with a demon-possessed, epileptic son, saying "I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him." The disciples had been given authority over unclean spirits; they had cast out demons before. But this time they had failed. And the response of the Lord Jesus is remarkable: "O faithless and perverse generation." The language is striking — and deliberate. In Deuteronomy 32, Moses, nearing the end of his life, speaks of a "faithless and perverse generation" in Israel. The Lord Jesus is applying the same words to his own disciples. They were not strangers or enemies; they were his closest companions. But in this moment, at this test, they had shown themselves to belong to a faithless and perverse generation.
Why had they failed? The disciples come to him privately with the question: "Why could we not cast it out?" His answer is: "Because of your little faith." And then he adds: "This kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting." Both answers need to be understood carefully. "Little faith" does not mean quantity of faith — Jesus later says that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains. Little faith means weak, diluted, mixed faith — faith that is not undivided and whole. The disciples had faith, but it was contaminated by something that made it ineffective against this particular kind of demon.
"This kind comes out only by prayer and fasting" — and here many people go astray, treating prayer and fasting as techniques or rituals. The Catholic school system had children reciting five Hail Marys as penance. That is not prayer. The point is not the ritual but the quality of the life behind the prayer. Prayer and fasting of this kind indicate a life of self-denial, of crucifying the flesh, of directing all one's capacity toward God without distraction. Two minutes of total, undivided concentration before God is worth more than twenty hours of distracted mumbling. The disciples lacked not technique but consecration — they had not been walking the path of the cross that the Lord had just described in chapter 16, and therefore they lacked the quality of life from which real spiritual power flows.
And this is the key point: you cannot defeat spiritual powers with knowledge alone. Satan knows the Bible better than any theologian. At the temptation in the wilderness, Satan quoted Scripture accurately — he knew every word of it. He was not defeated by someone who could outquote him; he was defeated by the Lord Jesus who lived every word of it. The disciples had knowledge. They had seen miracles. They had heard the greatest preacher who ever lived for three years. But knowledge does not cast out demons. Knowledge without a life of self-denial — without the cross — is impotent against spiritual opposition. And this is as true today as it was then.
# The Way of Power Is the Path of the Cross — Matthew 17:14–21 (Part B) — Self-Giving Love as the Path to Power; It Takes Great Faith to Love
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 17:14–21, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 27 July 1980, Montreal.]
The Lord says, "How long am I to be with you?" There is a weight behind those words that we must not miss. He is about to go to the cross. He will not be with them much longer in the bodily, visible way he has been. And the implication is unmistakable: who will do this work when I am gone? If the disciples cannot cast out this demon while the Lord himself is standing beside them, what will happen when he is no longer physically present? The Lord expected them to do these things. He had given them authority; he had trained them; he had shown them by example. The failure was a failure of consecration, not of capacity.
And this is even more sobering for us. The disciples had an excuse that we do not have: they had not yet received the Holy Spirit; the full gift of Pentecost had not come. We have the Spirit of the living God dwelling within us. If the disciples are rebuked for their failure, how much more inexcusable is the failure of the Spirit-filled church? And yet the church today is largely powerless before the very forces that the disciples failed to overcome. We know more Bible than they did at that stage; we have two thousand years of theological development; we have seminaries and commentaries and concordances in abundance. And we cannot cast out demons. The problem is not knowledge. The problem is the same: we are not living the path of the cross.
"He who would save his life will lose it" — this applies even in the spiritual realm. The Christian who uses the gospel as a means of self-preservation, who approaches faith as a safe investment with a guaranteed return, has misunderstood it entirely. I find myself revolted by the attitude — sometimes expressed openly, sometimes merely implied — of Christians who consider themselves spiritually elected, superior, secure, while showing no concern whatsoever for the suffering of others. That is not Christianity; that is a privatised religion of personal benefit. The path of power is the path of the cross: no longer living for yourself, but living for others, as Christ went to the cross for others.
Now let me be honest about something, because I believe in speaking plainly. I can say that I have, by God's grace, faith for healing and for the supply of needs. I have proved God in these areas many times, and I have faith that he will continue to provide and to heal. But the area where I confess weakness and failure — where I continue to struggle and must ask God's forgiveness — is self-giving love. Love is the hardest thing in the Christian life. It is easy to say the words. It is an entirely different matter to actually give yourself — to pour yourself out for another person, without reservation, without calculation of return, without keeping score. That is where I find the real cost of discipleship, and that is where I most need grace.
It takes enormous faith to love in the way Christ loved. Let me say that again: it takes faith to love. When you give yourself to someone, you are, in a real sense, losing yourself. There is no guarantee that the gift will be received, that the sacrifice will be appreciated, that anything will come back to you. You are giving into what may seem like a void. Loving like this is not natural to the flesh — the flesh always calculates the return. And so loving as Christ loved requires the same kind of faith that walking on water requires: you step out onto something that doesn't feel solid, trusting that God will sustain you. This is why in 1 Corinthians 12, after listing all the gifts of the Spirit, Paul says "and I will show you a still more excellent way" — and then gives 1 Corinthians 13, the great chapter on love. And note the context: he is not talking about weddings and anniversaries. He is talking about the functioning of the church, the exercise of spiritual power, the body operating as God intended. Love is not a sentiment for special occasions; it is the very medium through which spiritual power flows.
The two are inseparable. Faith that moves mountains, and faith that loves — these are not different kinds of faith. They are the same faith applied in different directions. You cannot have the power to move spiritual mountains while living a life of spiritual selfishness. The path to power is the path of self-giving love. The disciples who failed with the demon had not yet walked sufficiently far down that path. And we who have the Spirit of God within us are called to walk it further than they did. Next time we will address more specifically what the mountains actually are — what it is, concretely, that this kind of faith is called to move.