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 twisted 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 the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed 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. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” ~ (Matthew 17:14-20 ESV)
As I pondered the above scripture, the words “faithless and twisted generation” just began to grieve me. In this passage, these were men who forsook and left all to follow Christ. They traveled from village to town, river to sea, desert to forest and every place in between with him. His disciples observed and even participated in miracle after miracle, yet he calls them “faithless and twisted”.
A few verses later, Christ says to them, Matthew 18:18-20, “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Then in another passage, Luke 10:19, He gives them authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.
This same group of men would go on after Christ’s crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and ascension to become the catalyst for the Christian faith we hold dear and practice today. In Acts 17, they were referred to as “men who have turned the world upside down”. What changed? How did they go from faithless to faithful in a matter of days?
When Jesus was with them, they acted like they could do nothing without Him. However, after He is gone from them physically, they walk in the fullness of all He taught them when He walked the earth. How often do walk like the disciples, faithless and twisted, paralyzed and hobbled by our circumstances? I’m convinced that if Jesus himself was here today, we would be so enamored, in awe and perplexed by Him that we would fair no better than the very men who lived with Him for over three years.
Here’s the key to their faithfulness and power… John 14:10-17 says, believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
The Helper, the Spirit of Truth, Christ speaks of is the “Holy Spirit”. After his resurrection, in Acts 1, Jesus tells his disciples they will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon them, and they will be His witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. This is a mystery… they struggled to walk in faith and power while He walked the earth, but became our greatest examples of it after He went to be with the Father. This is our hope. Jesus, the Christ, is the living Lord and the living Savior who sent us the Holy Spirit to help us overcome faithlessness in our generation.
Hebrews 11:16 declares, it’s impossible to please God without faith. Therefore, it’s impossible to have faith without Christ, and without the power of the Holy Spirit, we too remain a “faithless and twisted generation”.
James Miller Jr
“Missionary to a Generation”
*Published in the November 6th, 2014 issue of the Port Aransas South Jetty newspaper.
via “Faithless Generation” – Grace Church of Port Aransas.
