Receiving the Disappointment of God - January 7, 2022

 

Receiving the Disappointment of God - January 7, 2022

 

Today we resume our journey through the Gospel of Matthew that we started back in August after focusing on Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. 

 

Matthew 17:14-20, The Message - At the bottom of the mountain, they were met by a crowd of waiting people. As they approached, a man came out of the crowd and fell to his knees begging, “Master, have mercy on my son. He goes out of his mind and suffers terribly, falling into seizures. Frequently he is pitched into the fire, other times into the river. I brought him to your disciples, but they could do nothing for him.”

Jesus said, “What a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives! How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this? Bring the boy here.” He ordered the afflicting demon out—and it was out, gone. From that moment on the boy was well.

When the disciples had Jesus off to themselves, they asked, “Why couldn’t we throw it out?”

“Because you’re not yet taking God seriously,” said Jesus. “The simple truth is that if you had a mere kernel of faith, a poppy seed, say, you would tell this mountain, ‘Move!’ and it would move. There is nothing you wouldn’t be able to tackle.”

 

In today’s passage, it’s especially important to remember what has just happened in the passage leading up to this one.  Jesus and three of His disciples have just finished witnessing Jesus being transfigured before them up on the mountain and in addition to that, Moses and Elijah show up to confer with Jesus.  If ever there were a faith-building event for these disciples, they have just experienced it.  They have just seen with their own eyes proof that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and all of heaven’s power is behind him. Fresh from that experience, they come down off the mountain and a man brings his son to Jesus’s disciples to be healed.  They are unable to heal him.  Jesus shows some emotion as he hears this. 

 

                “How much longer do I have to put up with this?,” he asks in exasperation.

 

                Jesus is disheartened that His disciples haven’t enough faith to perform this healing.  If I’m honest, I feel Jesus’s impatience personally as if He had directed at me.  While I have not witnessed anything like the transfiguration, I have witnessed many miracles over the course of my life, some of them in my own family.  If anyone should have a mustard seed’s amount of faith, it is me.  But I have to confess that I have often come up short when my faith was called upon to move even little molehills, much less mountains.  I hear Jesus’s frustration in this encounter and it hits home in my heart.

 

                Part of Jesus’s urgency here concerns Him having knowledge that the others do not have; His time is growing short.  He knows the time is quickly approaching that he will be hanging on a Roman cross and He wants His disciples to be ready.  It frustrates Jesus that his cohorts are further along in their faith journey than they are.  Likewise, it often frustrates me that I am not further along in my faith journey than I am.  Perhaps some of you know what I’m talking about from your own experience. 

 

                There’s part of me that would like to think that God never gets frustrated with me and my bumbling faith.  But the larger part of me knows that it can’t be true.  To love someone means that you will get frustrated when they aren’t living at the level you know they could.  Loving parents know just when to express this frustration to kids who need a little kick in the pants to do better.  Jesus is giving His disciples one of those shoves.  And they will do better as a result.  These men will be the leaders of the movement Jesus starts after Jesus ascends into heaven.  They will perform much greater miracles than the miracle they failed to perform here.  They are no worse for wear after being the recipients of Jesus’s expressed disappointment; in fact, they will be better because Jesus didn’t hold back.

 

Question:  When has another’s disappointment with you been the catalyst for positive personal growth?

 

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, we long to have even a mustard’s seed amount of faith.  Do with us as you know best to move us to that faith-filled place.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for those who have experienced a discouraging failure recently.

 

Song:  Ain’t No Grave – Molly Skaggs (Bethel Music)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGncW_ueyHA

Matthew 13:31-35 - Mustard Seeds, Yeast, and the the Secrets of the Kingdom

 

Daily Devo w/ Pastor Eric November 2, 2021

Mustard Seeds, Yeast, and the Secrets of the Kingdom

 

Matthew 13:31-35, CEB - He told another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in his field.  It’s the smallest of all seeds. But when it’s grown, it’s the largest of all vegetable plants. It becomes a tree so that the birds in the sky come and nest in its branches.”

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through all the dough.”

Jesus said all these things to the crowds in parables, and he spoke to them only in parables. This was to fulfill what the prophet spoke:

“I’ll speak in parables;

        I’ll declare what has been hidden since the beginning of the world.” (quote of Psalm 78:2)

 

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed and it’s like yeast.  Both the mustard seed and yeast are indisputably small, but both lead to almost unbelievable results.  The mustard plant is one of the largest plants and the small amount of yeast transforms an entire bushel of flour.  It’s clear from this pair of short parables that Jesus wants us to see that the kingdom that starts out as an easily overlooked blip on the radar of humanity will eventually have a huge and transformative effect on the world.  And of course, two thousand years later, what seemed unlikely to the first hearers of these parables is so obvious to us; Christ and His kingdom have impacted and transformed the world in ways impossible to describe. That would be enough to perceive from these bite-sized parables.

But wait…there’s more.   The mustard seed eventually becomes an enormous mustard plant/tree which provides shelter to the birds in the sky.  Likewise, the smallest of nations, Israel, gives birth to Christianity, which becomes a “shelter” for all of humanity.  And then, there’s even more!  The feminine image of tucking yeast into flour becomes an image of the multiplying power of the kingdom of heaven.  There are other insights possible as well.  The nature of parables is that they have multiple layers of meaning.  They are able to speak on multiple levels to multiple audiences in multiple cultures and times.   The secrets of the kingdom continue to be revealed through these powerful nugget stories generation after generation.  That’s why Jesus used them.  And Matthew sees Jesus’s use of parables as a fulfillment of prophecy uttered in the seventy-eighth Psalm – yet another amazing development growing out of these pint-sized parables.

I love the parables.  I keep coming back to them and every time, I get something new.  And every time that happens, I am once again amazed by the wisdom and cleverness of Jesus.  My determination to continue to learn from Him for the rest of my life is deepened.  I don’t anticipate a time when I will have learned all that He can teach me.  I suppose that could instill a sense of futility, but for me, the opposite has happened.  The possibility that I will be learning the “secrets of the kingdom” until the day of my death is invigorating.  I’m thinking that just how Jesus wanted it.

 

Question:  What are you seeking to learn in your current season of life?

 

Prayer:  Teach us your secrets, Master Jesus.  Help us to see what we need to learn next.  Lead us on the path to deeper understanding.   Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for teachers of all kinds today.

 

Song:  I Love to Tell the Story – Alan Jackson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrCpKa_xOcE