Quality vs Quantity of Faith

Coming Down from the Mountain

Welcome to The Well. I am thrilled that you came to join us today to worship with us. If you are new around here and maybe I haven’t had the great privilege of getting to know you yet, my name is Mike. I’ve been around here for a long time, and I get the privilege of opening God’s Word with you today.

If you have been journeying with us through the book of Matthew, you know that we find ourselves in the second half of a message that Brad, our senior pastor, started last week. If you were here for that, it was phenomenal. I don’t get paid to say that, but I thought it was truly amazing. He talked about the transfiguration in Matthew 17, where Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James, and John—three of his most intimate disciples—and he is transfigured before them. Jesus reveals to them who he is in all his glory. It is this breathtaking mountaintop moment. Today, we are picking up the second half of that story in Matthew chapter 17, beginning in verse 14.

As you turn there in your Bibles, thinking about these mountaintop experiences reminds me of a great privilege I had between sixth and seventh grade back in the late eighties: I got to go to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. The movie SpaceCamp had just come out in 1986. For those of you old enough to remember, these kids get accidentally launched into orbit and have to figure out how to get back down. I saw that movie and thought, I’m in. God wants me to be an astronaut. I’m going. So I went to Space Camp and had a ball. Honestly, I went mostly to try the zero-gravity room. It turns out that doesn’t exist on Earth, so I was utterly devastated! But it was still an incredible experience.

One of the things we did was climb into an actual space shuttle simulator. We simulated a full flight—taking off, navigating space, and landing. What we learned is that one of the most difficult parts of navigating a spacecraft is reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. It is an absolute marvel of physics. The space shuttle orbits the Earth at roughly 17,000 miles per hour, and the angle of entry into the atmosphere has to be absolutely precise. If you come in too shallow, you literally bounce off the atmosphere right back into space. If you come in too steep, gravity, friction, and extreme heat take over, and you burn up. It is literal rocket science. Well, during our simulation, our team’s reentry did not go so well. We did not reenter properly, and we crashed and burned upon landing. We learned very quickly that reentering normal orbit after a high-flying experience is extraordinarily difficult.

That is precisely what we see happening with the disciples. Three of them had just been on the mountain with Jesus, seeing Christ in all his radiant glory. Yet down the hill, ministry was waiting. As we continue in this series about “making ready,” Jesus is preparing the Twelve for the ministry they will carry on after he ascends. This story is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, and in every single one, it immediately follows the transfiguration because the two events are intimately linked.

The Cry of a Desperate Father

Let’s look at Matthew 17, starting in verse 14, to see what happens as they make their reentry down the mountain.

Matthew 17:14-15 (NASB)

When they came to the crowd, a man came up to Jesus, falling on his knees before Him and saying, ’Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic and is very ill; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.

As Jesus and the three disciples come down the mountain, a father steps out of the crowd in utter desperation. He falls on his knees before Jesus, pleading for mercy for his son who is suffering terribly. The older translation uses the word lunatic, which literally translates to “moonstruck.” In ancient Greek culture, people associated mysterious physical or neurological episodes with the moon goddess, Selene, believing darkness or lunar cycles caused these afflictions. Modern translations often render this as epilepsy or severe seizures, but the Gospel accounts make clear there is a severe spiritual oppression at work as well. Mark and Luke both explicitly state that the boy is possessed by an unclean spirit, which Matthew confirms in verse 18.

All three Gospels describe the horror of what this boy is enduring. Mark 9:18 tells us that whenever the spirit seized him, it slammed him to the ground; he would foam at the mouth, grind his teeth, and become completely rigid. The demon would throw him into open fire and into water to destroy him. In Mark’s account, the father reveals that his son has suffered this way since childhood. It had been a long, agonizing, heartbreaking ordeal.

Parents, you know this feeling. If you have ever watched your child suffer, you know there is no greater pain this side of heaven. I remember shortly after we moved to Fresno around 2004 or 2005, one of our kids spiked a fever. It hit 103, then 104. We thought, Okay, we can manage this. Then it hit 105, and then 106. My wife and I began to panic. We did everything we knew to do and started calling our doctor and nurse friends, asking, “What do we do?” Watching that thermometer climb, a wave of helplessness washed over us: Lord, are we going to lose our child? In those moments, as a parent, you would gladly say, “Lord, take my arm. Cut off whatever you want—just heal my kid.”

That was the desperate posture of this father coming before the King of kings. But what made his situation even more agonizing was that the disciples had completely failed to help him.

Matthew 17:16 (NASB)

‘I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him.’

The father brought his boy to the other nine disciples who were waiting at the base of the mountain, but they could not cast it out. Now, what makes this baffling is that earlier in Matthew, Jesus had explicitly given these men authority over unclean spirits and diseases.

Matthew 10:1 (NASB)

Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.

Matthew 10:8 (NASB)

’Heal [the] sick, raise [the] dead, cleanse [the] lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.

Jesus had already commissioned them. They had gone out on mission trips and seen demons flee and sick people healed through the power Jesus gave them. They had done this before! So why couldn’t they do it now? Why were these men, whom Jesus had authorized, powerless in this moment? Keep that question in mind, because it is the central issue of the text.

The Rebuke and the Deliverance

Seeing their failure, the father turns directly to Jesus. Look at how Jesus responds in verse 17.

Matthew 17:17 (NASB)

And Jesus answered and said, ‘You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.’

That sounds like a very stern rebuke from Jesus. He isn’t merely addressing the father; he is addressing the entire Jewish crowd, including the scribes and his own disciples. He calls them an “unbelieving and perverted generation.” The word unbelieving means faithless. Despite witnessing countless miracles, hearing the Sermon on the Mount, and seeing fulfillment of prophecy, the people broadly rejected Jesus as Messiah. The word perverted or twisted speaks to a distorted, depraved way of thinking. Their hearts were warped away from God. Jesus expresses righteous grief over their persistent spiritual blindness.

Yet in the midst of this faithless environment, Jesus immediately acts with compassion and supreme authority.

Matthew 17:18 (NASB)

And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at once.

With a single word of rebuke from Jesus, the demon leaves, and the boy is healed instantly. This is now the fourth distinct time in Matthew’s Gospel that we see Jesus effortlessly cast out demons. It demonstrates once again that Jesus possesses absolute authority over the spiritual realm. In one moment, what the disciples wrestled with in vain is resolved completely by the power of Christ.

Why Couldn’t We Drive It Out?

Once the crowds disperse and the commotion settles down, the Twelve have the exact same question we do. They pull Jesus aside privately.

Matthew 17:19 (NASB)

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not drive it out?’

Notice they don’t say, “Why weren’t we willing?” They had tried. They had stepped up, probably reciting commands and trying various techniques, but nothing happened. Mark’s Gospel notes that the scribes were even arguing with them about it. So in private, they ask, “Lord, why couldn’t we do it?”

Jesus gives them a direct and searching answer.

Matthew 17:20 (NASB)

And He said to them, ’Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

Jesus tells them plainly: “Because of the littleness of your faith.” This is now the fourth time in Matthew that Jesus addresses his disciples as having “little faith.” Think about how humbling that must have been for Matthew to record. The disciples had just seen Jesus transfigured in glory, yet their practical faith was frail and weak.

Now, depending on which translation of the Bible you are holding, you might notice something about verse 21. In translations like the NASB, verse 21 appears in brackets, saying, “But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” In modern translations like the ESV or NIV, that verse is often placed in a footnote. The reason is simple: the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts of Matthew do not contain verse 21. However, we know with 100 percent certainty that Jesus said these words because they are preserved in Mark 9:29.

Why does Jesus point to prayer and fasting? What are prayer and fasting at their core? They are physical and spiritual postures of total, desperate dependence upon God. When you fast and pray, you are saying, “Lord, I am completely powerless. I have no strength in myself. If you do not move, nothing will happen.” Jesus was exposing the disciples’ fatal mistake: they had begun to treat their spiritual authority as an independent power or technique of their own, rather than operating in moment-by-moment, humble dependence on the living God.

Quality vs. Quantity of Faith

This brings us to the crucial distinction of this entire passage: Jesus is not talking about the quantity of faith; he is talking about the quality and object of faith.

When Jesus says that faith the size of a tiny mustard seed can move a mountain, he is illustrating that the power does not reside in the size of the faith itself, but in the God in whom that faith is placed.

Back when I was in college, my Bible study leader was a guy you might know named Brad Bell. Brad had the wild idea that our entire men’s life group should go skydiving. It sounded completely terrifying, but we were in. We scrounged change out of the couch cushions, worked extra shifts, valeted cars, and pulled together $200 each. We drove out to the middle of nowhere in East Texas to jump out of a plane.

I remember going through the ground school, listening intently, trying to memorize every instruction. Then the moment came. We strapped into tandem harnesses with professional jumpers and climbed into this small aircraft. The plane ascended slowly to 10,000 feet, circling the drop zone. The pilot pulled back the throttle, and the side door flew open.

I looked down and thought, What am I doing? Why on earth would anyone step out of a perfectly functional airplane? The instructor tapped my shoulder, and we moved to the edge. We stepped onto the wing strut, holding onto a bar, with 10,000 feet of empty air beneath our shoes. In that terrifying second, I was thinking only one thing: Who packed this parachute? I really hope this thing works!

Here is the reality: in that moment, it did not matter whether I had giant, heroic, boastful faith or tiny, trembling, terrified faith. What mattered was the integrity of the parachute. If the parachute failed, all the positive thinking and massive “faith” in the world would not save me. If the parachute was solid, even my tiny, trembling faith—just enough to step out of that plane—was sufficient to bring me safely to the ground.

Consider another illustration. Imagine a frozen pond in the dead of winter. Two people want to cross it. One person walks out onto the ice with a massive amount of self-confidence and great “faith” that the ice will hold. The other person steps out with immense fear, trembling with just a tiny shred of faith. Which person makes it safely across?

It has nothing to do with the amount of faith they possess; it depends entirely on the thickness of the ice.

That is what Jesus is teaching his disciples. They had placed their confidence in their own past successes, their own methods, and their own spiritual resumes. Jesus calls them back to a mustard-seed faith that is rested 100 percent upon the power and authority of Christ alone.

Understanding Miracles and Suffering Today

When we read a passage like this where Jesus says, “Nothing will be impossible for you,” an important question naturally arises: How does this apply to us today?

Is this a proof text guaranteeing that every follower of Jesus should routinely perform miracles, heal every sickness, and raise the dead on command? Some teachers claim precisely that. You may have encountered the “Word of Faith” or the “Prosperity Gospel” movement, which teaches that God guarantees physical health and material wealth to every believer right now if they just muster enough faith. They claim that if you are not healed, or if your circumstances don’t improve, it is exclusively your fault because your faith is deficient.

I have seen the devastating wreckage this false theology leaves behind. Back in 1999, my wife and I were on a mission trip in Costa Rica with a group of college students. One of the young women on our team, Mary Anne, had been almost entirely deaf since birth. One evening, we visited a village church service. The local pastor brought our team forward and prayed over us. When he got to Mary Anne, he declared publicly, “God told me that tonight He is restoring your hearing, and you will walk out of here fully healed.” He prayed passionately over her. And when the prayer ended… nothing had changed. She still could not hear. That sweet girl was utterly devastated, left wondering what was wrong with her.

I have a dear friend whose buddy tragically lost his infant son to SIDS. On the day the child passed away, two people from a hyper-faith background walked into the family’s garage where they were mourning and said, “The reason your son is dead is because you lacked faith. If you truly believe, God will raise him from the dead right now.” The spiritual and emotional trauma inflicted on that grieving family was unimaginable.

Perhaps some of you here today have carried that same heavy, false guilt. You have wondered, Is my mom still sick because I didn’t pray right? Did my marriage fall apart because my faith was too small? Did my loved one die of cancer because of my spiritual failure?

We need to correct this unbiblical thinking. Pastor Stephen Tan, in an excellent article for The Gospel Coalition, outlines two unhelpful extremes regarding miracles that we must avoid:

1. Cynical Cessationism: This is the belief that God categorically no longer performs miracles today—that the supernatural closed entirely with the apostolic age. The danger of this view is that it puts God in a box and fails to leave room for Him to act sovereignly and supernaturally in response to prayer. God is still God, and Scripture reminds us He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.

2. Hyper-Pentecostalism (or Prosperity Theology): This is the belief that every Christian is guaranteed miraculous power to heal every disease and avoid suffering if they just have enough faith. The fatal flaw here is that it completely ignores the biblical reality of suffering, turns God into a cosmic vending machine, and places a crushing burden of guilt on those who suffer.

How do we hold this in biblical balance?

First, we believe that God can and does heal today. When we pray for the sick, we come with bold confidence that our God is fully able to heal. We see this beautiful posture in Daniel 3, when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood before the blazing furnace of King Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel 3:17-18 (NASB)

’If it be [so], our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. ‘But [even] if [He does] not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.’

They declared: God is able to deliver us, He will deliver us, but even if He does not, we will still trust and obey Him. That is the posture of biblical faith: praying with absolute confidence in God’s power, while holding the outcome in humble surrender to His sovereign will.

Second, we must maintain a robust biblical theology of suffering. We live in a fallen, broken world groaning under the effects of sin. The Apostle Paul was given a “thorn in the flesh” that God chose not to remove, telling him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul instructed young Timothy to drink a little wine for his frequent stomach ailments rather than simply commanding a miraculous healing. Peter wrote extensively to believers about enduring unjust suffering for the glory of God.

Most supremely, our Lord Jesus knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion and prayed, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” God did not remove the suffering of the cross, because through that very suffering, He accomplished the eternal salvation of our souls.

Ministry in the Valley

When we step back and look at Matthew 17 from a high-level view, we see a profound picture. At the top of the mountain, there is the divine Son of God bathed in heavenly light. At the bottom of the valley, there is an earthly son trapped in demonic darkness and torment.

The calling of the disciples was to step into that valley, bringing the light of Christ into the darkness of human brokenness. But to do that, they could not rely on their own strength, their own pride, or their own cleverness. They needed absolute, desperate dependence upon Jesus.

Church, the most significant ministry rarely happens on the mountaintop. Mountaintop experiences—retreats, conferences, powerful worship moments—are wonderful gifts that encourage our souls. But real, kingdom ministry happens down in the valley. It happens when we get our hands dirty in the messy, broken, painful realities of everyday life.

Jesus did not save us merely to make us comfortable, secure, or happy. He saved us and called us to a mission. Before He ascended, He gave us the Great Commission.

Matthew 28:19 (NASB)

’Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

We hold the baton passed down from the Twelve. We are called into our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our city to minister to broken people, not as self-made heroes, but as broken people who have been redeemed by a gracious Savior.

Let us be a church that steps boldly into the valley. Let us pray with faith, believing God can heal and restore, while trusting His sovereign wisdom when He calls us to endure. May we place our faith—even if it feels as small as a mustard seed—fully and completely in the King of kings.

Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for your incredible grace and goodness to us. Thank you for displaying your supreme authority through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Forgive us for the times we rely on our own strength, our own intellect, and our own methods rather than resting in utter dependence upon you. Teach us what it means to pray and seek your face with humble hearts. As we step into the valleys of our city, use our lives to bring the light and hope of the gospel to a broken world. We cast our cares upon you and anchor our faith in Christ alone. In His precious and mighty name we pray. Amen.