Lessons in Discipleship (Matthew 17:14-27)

What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? Many answers could be given to that question, but in a sense that is what Matthew is doing in his Gospel, and this explains why incidents that seem initially to have no connection are placed together by him in his account of the coming of Jesus. In this section of the Gospel, Matthew describes three instances in which the disciples learned several aspects of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

The healing of a boy (Matthew 17:14-21)

A man had brought his demon-possessed son to the nine disciples of Jesus at the bottom of the mountain in order for them to heal him. They had been unable to do so, yet when the man informed Jesus of their failure he healed him immediately (Mark tells us that the father asked Jesus to strengthen his faith from unbelief). Before he did so, Jesus spoke in general to the people and we should consider his response because it is a rebuke that they received when they were described as faithless and twisted.

The first point that we can observe is that Jesus rebukes the onlookers because they are part of a faithless generation. It is likely that the father took this rebuke to heart and admitted his own area of weakness. What was the fault of the crowd? They thought that the disciples could do a miracle through their own power without taking Jesus into consideration. In having this attitude, they were regarding Jesus as being on the same level as the disciples. They discovered that he was not when he chose to heal the boy.

The second detail from the words of Jesus to notice is that they reveal what was in his mind at that time. They reveal two subjects. The first is that he was aware that he was not going to be with them for much longer and the second is that he was aware that eventually his gracious forbearance of their wrong attitudes would come to an end. Perhaps we can see here that he knew that their greatest problem was not what the boy was doing under the influence of the demon, but what they were not doing. They were not exercising faith in him, but instead merely regarded him as someone who could provide cures to make life on earth better. Their confidence in him had nothing to do with saving faith.

A third point that we can observe from this incident is that we should not be surprised at the inabilities of the disciples of Jesus. The disciples here learned that without Jesus they could do nothing. Sometimes we imagine that somehow they had superior powers. But they had not. At times they failed because they were sinners and at other times they failed because they were not divine. We should not expect them to do something that they could not do.

A fourth point we should also consider is that Jesus invited the boy to come to him. It looks as if the boy was incapable of going by himself, but there could have been other reasons for this apart from the demonic possession. The Saviour was willing to have someone near him who had been damaged by the powers of darkness. Of course, this was true to some degree of anyone who ever came to Jesus for help. His words here are a graphic description of the gospel invitation to undeserving sinners.

A fifth detail to observe is that Jesus here did a double miracle. First, he healed the boy of his epilepsy. Second, he delivered the boy from the grip of a demon who was using the epilepsy to harm the boy even more. The crowds did not recognise the full situation and neither did the disciples. But Jesus knew what was needed in the situation and he gave to the distraught father more than he had asked for.

Faith that failed (Matthew 17:14-21)

Jesus showed to the crowd that he was much more capable than his disciples. We are not told by Matthew how many attempts were made by the disciples to release the boy, but we are told how many attempts were made by Jesus. The Saviour only needed to speak once and what he wanted took place. Here we have an example of his great power over the devil and his agents. Jesus had come into the world to destroy the works of the devil and here is an example of him doing so.

Later the disciples asked Jesus why they were unable to free the boy from the demon. The problem was their little faith. How little was it? We can see from the example Jesus mentions that it must have been very little because he says that even little faith like a small grain of mustard seed would have incredible results. This illustration highlights at least two things: one is that we don’t need strong or big faith to obtain something large and the other is that it looks as if the disciples almost had no faith when they attempted to heal the boy.

Their experience is a reminder that faith has different exercises. Just because someone is a believer in Jesus does not mean that he will believe that something can be done by God. An obvious example occurs when we give a tract to someone. We give it because we believe in Jesus, but that does not mean that we believe Jesus will use the tract. Many similar examples could be given.

The question here is not whether I have faith in Jesus for my salvation, but whether I have the aspect of faith that he will bring blessing into another person’s life. I suspect that is a very large problem today among Christians. It was obvious that the disciples, while they had faith in Jesus as the Messiah, did not have faith at that time that the boy could be healed.

It is true that exercised faith should be informed. What was missing from the faith of the disciples? After all, the Bible nowhere says that believers should expect that everyone with an illness can be healed immediately by a command. If that was the case, we would not need hospitals. When we compare Matthew’s account of the incident with that of Mark, we see where the disciples’ faith failed because Jesus in Mark tells the disciples that prayer is needed for such an issue to be resolved. So it looks as if the disciples had not prayed about the matter when they attempted to exorcise the boy.

The fact of the matter is that genuine faith, whether it is weak or strong, must be based on divine promises. If God has not promised something it is presumption to assume that a prayer will bring what we want. God may give us the answer we want, but he also may not. The lesson for us from this incident is to know what God has promised in the Bible and use these promises as arguments in our prayers. God is faithful to his promises, and living faith anticipates his answers.

Repetition (Matthew 17:22-23)

Once again, Jesus informs his disciples about the certainty of his death and resurrection. He did not mention only his violent death at the hands of men – if that was all that he had stated we would understand why the disciples would be very upset. Yet since he stressed the certainty of his resurrection they should have realised that he was predicting something unusual and something spectacular.

The disciples would have believed in a general resurrection at the end of history. Jesus did not predict that he would be part of that event. Instead, his resurrection would occur three days later, and the disciples should have observed how specific he was about it. His prediction in this regard indicated that he was certain about what was going to happen to him.

It is interesting to observe that the disciples asked questions of Jesus in the previous two incidents about issues they could not understand. The three with him on the Mount of Transfiguration asked about the role of Elijah and the nine at the foot of the mountain asked about why they could not heal the boy. Yet with regard to his death and resurrection, which were far bigger activities, they did not ask.

In failing here, they lost out on a great deal of personal comfort and because they did not do so, here and at other times, they spent the most important weekend in history without faith, and greatly distressed.

The Temple Tax (Matthew 17:24-27)

As we can see, Jesus used the matter of paying the temple tax as an occasion for teaching the disciples about his ability to provide for their needs. This tax was used for the upkeep of the temple and the priests and most Jews would not have objected to paying it. A drachma was about the equivalent of a day’s wage at that time. This tax is a bit like an offering we make at a church service when we give money for the Lord’s work. At one level, the demand to pay the tax was easily understood, but if a person thought deeper about it he would see that there could be dilemmas for Jesus and paying the tax.

Peter was asked about the payment of the tax and he confirmed that Jesus did pay it. It looks as if Jesus was not present when Peter was asked about the matter, so he must have been astonished to discover that Jesus knew about the conversation. Peter was reminded once again about the unique abilities of Jesus.

The temple was the equivalent of God’s palace on earth. Usually, monarchs did not provide the money to look after their palaces, but instead required their subjects to pay through tax. People would have been surprised if they had seen their ruler pay a tax connected to their own palace. When we apply this to the temple tax, since Jesus as God was the King of the temple, why would he have to pay it? What would we have expected Jesus to do?

We can see that he chose to pay it, but he did not go about it in the usual way. Instead, he showed that not only was he the Lord of the temple he also showed that he was the Lord of creation. Of course, he did this only for the benefit of Peter. He knew that the money had not come from their common purse, but instead it came through Jesus’ ability to provide miraculously.

Paying the tax would also avoid the possibility of creating a public issue. Jesus did not have to pay the tax, yet he chose to pay it in order to prevent a wrong deduction being made by others. For example, people would have assumed that Jesus did not care about the temple if he did not pay the tax. It was not a denial of spiritual freedom to pay it, and paying it ensured that no fault was found with Jesus and his disciples on this occasions. This action is the sign of a person who understands Christian liberty.

So there are four lessons at least for the disciples from this passage. First, a disciple should exercise faith appropriate to the occasion. The disciples had failed to pray and that revealed it was not sufficient merely to command the demon to leave. Second, a disciple should listen carefully to the words of Jesus about his plans and doing so will prevent despondency about what will happen. Third, a disciple should learn that it is not wrong to go without your rights in order to avoid a misrepresentation of who Jesus is. Fourth, Jesus is very great – here he is the Son of man, the Lord of the temple and the controller of creation.