Matthew 17:14-21

Rachel Workman: ¹⁴ At the foot of the mountain, a large crowd was waiting for them. A man came and knelt before Jesus and said, ¹⁵ “Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. ¹⁶ So I brought him to your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”

¹⁷ Jesus said, “You faithless and corrupt people! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” ¹⁸ Then Jesus rebuked the demon in the boy, and it left him. From that moment the boy was well.
¹⁹ Afterward the disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that demon?”
²⁰ “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” Faith is so vital to the Christian life that Scripture tells us that, without it, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Yet faith is such a powerful gift from God (Ephesians 2:8–9) Christ told His disciples that, with just a tiny measure of it, the size of a mustard seed, they could move mountains. We know that this statement about moving mountains and uprooting trees by faith is not to be taken literally. The key to understanding the passages is the nature of faith, which is a gift from God. The power of faith reflects the omnipotent nature of the God who bestows faith on His own.