We're in the Gospel of Matthew. We're in chapter 17. And I want to read for us the text this morning. I want to read a couple of verses that I wouldn't ordinarily read. We're going to be looking at verses 14 through 23 this morning, but I'm going to read a little bit from earlier on. Here's verse one. And after six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. Now, here's verse nine. And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, tell no one the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead. And now here's our passage this morning. 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's an epileptic and he suffers terribly, for he often 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 a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, the son of man is about to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him and he will be raised on the third day. And they were greatly distressed. Now, maybe it's because I've climbed all the 14ers in Colorado, all of them in Washington, which is only one, that I have got mountain fever in my blood flowing through my veins, and that I've been praying that you would listen and understand today's message. Maybe it's simply because I want you to savor and see the Lord Jesus Christ in a new way, or maybe it's both of those things put together. But today what I want to help you understand is the meaning of a very familiar but misunderstood saying of Jesus. I want to help you understand it by putting it within the context of Matthew's Gospel that we have just read today. My prayer is that your faith will be greatly strengthened as you come to a biblical and historic redemptive understanding of mountain moving faith. Matthew 17 20 has the famous saying, If you have faith like a grain of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. How many of you have ever heard that before? I think all of us. Now, I said that it is misunderstood. This misunderstanding has led it to be greatly misapplied. And in the process, I believe some have missed salvation itself. For example, this verse is a favorite of health and wealth preachers on TV. For them, it is a kind of incantation. It's like a magical formula. When you rub the bottle, out will pop the genie to grant you your three wishes, because that's what it's all about. You know, at the time of the Reformation, there was a popular saying, When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs. With this little jingle, John Tetzel went around selling indulgences and freeing souls. It worked like the sacraments of Rome, ex opera operato, by virtue of the thing performed. See, all you needed to do was to give money to the church, and instantly, out of purgatory, your mother or your best friend would pop. Just like rubbing the genie's body. You know, in fact, as I was thinking about it and reading a little bit about it, there is very little difference at all between selling indulgences and the faith movements, seed faith, where they always seem to be talking about sowing seed or money into their ministry in order to receive whatever you need. How convenient is that? In fact, following after Tetzel, they even have their own ditty as reported by Hank Hanegraaff, have a need, plant a seed. And you wonder, what is seed faith? According to Oral Roberts, I think he would be an expert, the seed of giving is the seed of faith. And the seed has to be planted before we can speak to our mountain of need to be removed. You see how he's using our passage today? As Hanegraaff says, simply stated, planting a seed is virtually synonymous with mail me the money. The seed faith gimmick is little more than a give to get gospel of greed." Can anyone in their right mind see the comparison between these two things and not think that we are in desperate need of reformation in the church today? After all, the selling of indulgences was probably the trigger issue for the Reformation in the first place. And it seems to me that in many respects the Church has now come full circle. What these people do not understand about this verse is that it has a context. Jesus does not promise anything and everything so long as you have faith. As Calvin says, there is nothing more contradictory to faith than the foolish and unconsidered wishes of our flesh. Where faith reigns, there is not asking for anything indiscriminately. I thought that was a great quote. The immediate context of Matthew And actually of Mark and Luke as well, who record the same story is about healing demon possession, not about getting rich. So moving mountains must have at least something to do with that. Now, the story goes that a man came up to Jesus. And he knelt before him and he 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. Now, as I was reading the different accounts, it was interesting to me that Matthew puts it this way. He records that the father believed that the boy was an epileptic. which is also interesting because it says that he was being thrown into the fire and into the water, which is not normally what epilepsy does. Epilepsy is a disorder of the natural world. Now this is different from how Mark and Luke both record their story. In their accounts, the father reports that the child is seized by a spirit. Now that is a disorder of the spiritual world. Mark is the most detailed, adding that the spirit has made the child mute. It has thrown him down. It makes him foam at the mouth and grind his teeth and become rigid like a corpse. Now, not all epilepsy is brought on by demon possession. But apparently some kinds of demon possession look like epilepsy. And so the two were sometimes confused. Now, while I haven't seen all of these symptoms before, I have seen, I believe, something like this one time. We were having a Bible study down on the Pearl Street Mall. This was about 15 years ago. And we would have this Bible study out on the courthouse lawn. And if you've ever walked on the mall, it was different back then. There was a much bigger lawn and there was a tree on the southwest corner of the lawn. Well, as we were reading the book of John, just kind of out loud in a circle, I looked over my shoulder and I saw the weirdest sight I've ever seen. There was this man who was jumping up and down, around in a circle, inscribing something into the ground. He looked like a wild animal. And he was brushing his teeth over and over and over. But there was no toothpaste. Yet some kind of foam was coming out of his mouth. He was jumping up and down in a circle, and the whole thing was just shocking to all of us. He finally left, and we decided to go over and look at the spot where he was, and we found that he had been etching a pentagram, which is a satanic symbol, into the ground over and over and over. And since that day, I believe that I witnessed demon possession. with some of the symptoms that are described by Mark and Luke. I'm telling you, it was one of the strangest experiences of my life. And you ask me, what are the ten most strangest experiences, and I would say, nine of them have happened on Pearl Street Mall. The key here is not the epilepsy, it's the demon possession. It is not the natural, but the spiritual reality that seems to be a stumbling block for everyone who's involved in this story. Lack of faith is obviously very significant when you read it, isn't it? Mark records the man as saying to Jesus, if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus said to him, if you can, All things are possible for one who believes. And immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe, help my unbelief. So that's how Mark records it. The faith that the father placed in the disciples has now been challenged, and he isn't even sure if Jesus can do anything about the problem. That's the man. The father is not alone in the story, though. Mark records that the scribes are arguing with the disciples. And I think we all know about the faithlessness of the scribes is nothing new. The crowds are recorded as being absolutely astonished when Jesus cast this demon out of this boy. Their faithlessness is obvious, too. But I think it's probably the nine disciples left at the bottom of the mountain that is the most remarkable thing here. Remember, Peter, James and John have gone up the high mountain with Jesus, the transfiguration, and the rest of them remained behind below. And it says that they tried to heal the boy, but that they couldn't do it. Now, this is really very remarkable, given the fact that they had been casting out demons many times before this. They are perplexed about this, and they ask Jesus a little bit later, they say, why couldn't we cast it out? And Jesus says that they didn't have enough faith. That's the context of the faith here, you see. It has nothing to do with getting whatever you want. And what I want you to see is how Jesus reprimands not just the nine, but the entire group of people. He says in verse 17, O faithless and twisted generation, The whole group. How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Now, in thinking about the transfiguration that I preached about last week and how Jesus is the greater Moses, the greater of Elijah, the whole scene here reminds me of the time that Moses comes down off of the mountain and sees the rebellion of Israel at the bottom. I didn't print this up for you. I thought about it. Raphael, who is the famous Renaissance painter from Italy, has this scene, the Transfiguration, and the scene at the bottom of the mountain depicted in one painting called the Transfiguration. He's got Christ brilliantly clothed in a cloud and shining on top of the mountain and it's contrasted with the bottom where the people are all in shadows and you can't quite tell what they're doing and they're flawed and they're faithless men. You just look at the picture and you see it's very clear that he's getting this entire painting from the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus has talked about this faithless generation many times in this book already. For example, he says of himself back in chapter 11, as well as of John the Baptist, he says that one played the flute but no one danced, and one sang a dirge and no one mourned. In other words, No matter what the message was, the whole group refused to listen. So they said that John had a demon because he didn't eat and drink. And they said that Jesus was a glutton and a drunkard because he did. The next chapter, chapter 12, the people asked Jesus for a sign. And Jesus says, wicked, a wicked generation asks for a sign. Why did he say this? It's because the signs were everywhere in front of them, and they wouldn't take notice to any of them. One more sign isn't going to do a thing. It is evil people who refuse to read the signs that are already posted, and yet want more signs from God. Well, Jesus then compares that generation to a spirit that is passed out, but returns with seven spirits, more evil in itself, to take up residence in the host. Now that story is very similar to the one today, isn't it? In that you have a wicked generation together in the story about demon possession. Now, back there in chapter 12, the end of that generation, the idea is that it's going to be worse for them than it was before Jesus came. Because they refused to believe in the Messiah. Their time is coming quickly to an end. That is the point of Jesus saying here as well in verse 17. How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Now that is important for you to understand that it is messianic language when he talks like this. Imagine what Jesus is claiming here. I was thinking, how long am I to bear with you? How arrogant is that? What makes Jesus so special? Well, I'll tell you the stunning news to the people of that day. The stunning news is that when he says something like that, he's claiming to be the long-awaited Messiah, as he's done so many times in this book. So Jesus, who is making another remarkable claim as being the Messiah by casting out a demon and relating this to faith, becomes the most important part of the context in trying to understand the meaning of this difficult and abused and misunderstood saying. You simply must tie the saying in with what Jesus is doing. You see, it must not be used as a proof text for doing anything that you feel like doing 2000 years later by just having faith. That is a terrible, terrible abuse of the Holy Scripture. When you look at what Jesus is doing, it becomes clear immediately that mountain-moving faith is faith that trusts in God and in His Messiah, and that it is able to manifest itself in replicating the works of Christ in the spiritual realm. There's another important context you need to see here. Those who replicate the works of Christ here are who? The disciples. And this is also very important. Jesus is talking to them. 1600 years ago, Chrysostom, one of the church fathers, commented on this. And he said, if you say, where did they move a mountain? I will say that they did things much greater than that in raising up innumerable dead. For moving a mountain and moving death from a body are not at all comparable. After them, other saints far inferior to the disciples are said to have moved mountains when necessity demanded. It is clear that the disciples would also have done so had necessity demanded." I think that this church father is referring to episodes like when Peter raises little Tabitha from the dead in Acts 9 or when Paul raises Eutychus back to life in one of the funniest stories in the Bible because he falls asleep because Paul has been preaching all night long. Now that's a warning to you. Fall asleep during a sermon. You might die. In many ways, Chrysostom was the forerunner of contemporary biblical interpretation. He did not run quickly to allegorizing the scripture like so many of his contemporaries did. So what Chrysostom says is really along the lines of what most evangelical interpreters say today. For example, let's give you one. Leon Morris gives this understanding, and he's definitely not a word-of-faith He says, the moving of mountains was proverbial among the Jews for accomplishing something of very great difficulty. The expression should, of course, be understood metaphorically. Jesus sets no limit to what can be done by the person of faith. We should perhaps reflect that if there is no limit to the power of the person of faith can exercise, Jesus has nothing about that person's knowledge. It is possible to misunderstand the will of God and try to move a mountain that should not be moved. In that case, the believer will be disappointed. So that's how, generally speaking, people interpret this text. Now I want to use that quote as a springboard for a little historic survey of the use of sayings about moving mountains that as they occurred in the ancient world. He says that moving mountains was proverbial among the Jews for accomplishing something of great difficulty. And you should know that Jesus did not make this saying up out of nothing. The idea was popular in both ancient Jewish and Greek worlds. As far back as Homer's Odyssey, the Cyclops hurls a mountain into the sea in order to attack men in a ship. That takes the expression quite literally. No one in their right mind thinks Jesus is referring to something like, I got a lot of faith. I'm hiking up Long's Peak. I think I'm going to tell that Longs Peak to go over to Pikes Peak and crush it because I think Longs Peak is cooler. Nobody thinks that way. Obviously, Morris is correct. It's metaphorical. Now, you may have thought when you think of this saying about First Corinthians 13 2, Paul says something very similar to Jesus. In fact, I want you to turn to this because in doing so, I want to point out a couple of very important differences between Paul and Jesus. This is 1 Corinthians 13, 2. If I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Now, Paul is one of only three texts in the first century or earlier that also relates faith to moving mountains, as Jesus does. The others are Zechariah and, interestingly enough, Josephus, when he's commenting on Exodus 14, verse 31. What is Paul's point? Well, it's similar to what Jesus says, but it's different. The similarity is obviously that both compare the impossible task of moving a mountain to faith. The differences are important, however. Paul refers to a fully developed, large faith, while Jesus refers to faith the size of a mustard seed, which is about one millimeter in diameter. More importantly, Paul refers to mountains, plural. Jesus talks about this mountain. which is not only singular, but I believe, demonstrative. That is, Jesus has a particular mountain in his mind, and Paul doesn't. Now, this is a subtle fact that almost all interpreters of this verse miss, which is actually quite ironic, because Jesus has another phrase that's very similar to this, that comes up in chapter 21, and the commentaries don't miss it when it comes to chapter 21, but for whatever reason here in chapter 17, they miss it. I'm going to come back to this point in a moment because I think it's critical to a correct understanding of what Jesus is saying. Now, I want you to think first of other ways that the Old Testament uses the expression. Isaiah says, for example, For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed. In that text and in many others, the idea of moving mountains is eschatological and salvific. You hear that? For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed. That's eschatology, talking about the end. But my steadfast love shall not depart from you and my covenant of peace shall not be removed. That's the salvation part of it. Well, Jeremiah 51, 25 is similar to this. Behold, I am against you. Oh, destroying mountain, declares the Lord, which destroys the whole earth. I will stretch out my hand against you and roll you down from the crags and make you a burnt mountain. That's eschatological. And when he says, oh, destroying mountain, he has Babylon in his mind. I read several old commentaries this week on this. I was really quite intrigued by this saying and what in the world it actually means. Jeremiah's idea that the mountain is personified by evil is what I think leads Origen to the interesting interpretation that Jesus is talking about demonic spirits, which actually happens to fit the context very nicely. Think about Jesus' saying, faith that moves the mountains. Here's what Origen says, the mountains here spoken of, in my opinion, are the hostile powers that have their being in a flood of great wickedness, such as are settled down, so to speak, in some souls of men. Whenever, then, anyone has all faith, so that he no longer disbelieves in any things which are contained in the Holy Scripture, he has faith such as was that of Abraham, who believed in God to such a degree that his faith was counted for righteousness. He has all faith as a grain of mustard seed. Then will such a one say to this mountain, I mean the dumb and deaf spirit in him who is called lunatic, be gone, clearly from the man who is suffering, perhaps to the abyss, and it shall be gone." So you see, Origen is saying that this mountain is actually a demon. He's actually talking about demon possession. Now, for the record, I think Chrysostom Morris and Origen are all correct, even though they have differing interpretations. Jesus is clearly talking metaphorically. As the saying is used elsewhere, it clearly alludes to doing impossible things in the spiritual realm. And it also has the context of casting out demons. But what I think, however, is that none of these great men goes far enough in helping us understand the full implications of this answer. That is, they do not frame the eschatology behind the saying well enough to give us a big picture of what Jesus is trying to say. J. Jeremiah writes this about our passage. He says, the decisive feature for understanding Jesus is saying about moving faith, about faith moving mountains, is that the disappearance of mountains in the Old Testament and their reappearance to support the mountain of God in the Old Testament was expected as an eschatological event. Even the weakest kind of faith, as tiny as a grain of mustard seed, will, so Jesus promises, not primarily perform spectacular miracles, so much as have a share in the eschatological consummation. It's not about miracles, it's about sharing in what Jesus is bringing. That's what Jeremiah writes. So in other words, to give you my conclusion early, Jesus' saying helps you understand. That by faith you enter into kingdom realities, into heavenly realities, into eternal, lasting, peaceful, blissful, wonderful realities. And that this is displayed in various ways in different stages in church history. But all of those ways are proofs of the incredible inauguration, the hope of the prophets, the glorious land has been entered into by Christians through faith. So the miracles support the more important thing, which is that you have come into something amazing here. What Origen and the rest need to explain is how the coming of Christ The transfiguration and his prediction of his own death and resurrection all play into the saying about moving the mountains. In other words, what I want you to understand is it's not just the near context of demon possession that's important, it's the greater context that goes all the way back to the transfiguration and probably a little bit even before that. All of these things are key to interpreting this verse. If you want to know what it means to have faith that moves mountains, if you want to know what that really means and not what you wish it means. You have to see this saying in light of the rest of the context of the chapter. You have to see it in the context of the coming of Messiah. You have to see it in the context of Pentecost and what occurred in the days of the early church. You especially have to see it how the Mount of Transfiguration is related here to this sermon, to this saying. Now let me show you a couple of ancient commentaries from the Jews that show how their expectation of Messiah and mountain moving was connected. Think about this. They're reading these passages in Isaiah and Micah and Zechariah and they're trying to understand what's the point of this. They're connecting the moving of mountains to the coming of Messiah. Now these are different sources from the Jews around the time of Jesus, a little bit before. In Jewish legend, mountains did not belong originally to the earth. According to the Apocalypse of Moses 40, the earth was originally level. It became mountainous as a result of punishment from God because it received Abel's blood. Therefore, the earth will not become level again until Messianic times, which means that when Messiah comes, mountains will be removed. Other rabbinical sources say that when Messiah comes, he will prove his identity by doing seven wonders, one of which is to grind the mountains of the Holy Land into powder like straw. Another interesting one says that Samson was so strong that he uprooted two mountains and rubbed them each together, and this caused the people to think that he was the Messiah. It was only when God showed that the final demise of Samson that it was understood that the Messianic era would not come during Samson's time. All of these things simply show you that Jewish biblical tradition contained a host of stories that link mountain removal to the last days, as well as to salvation and judgment in the coming of the Messiah. Now, we do this even ourselves with the Second Coming, don't we? When we read Revelation, and we see that the mountains will fall away, like in Revelation 16-20, we go, that's the coming of Messiah. What I want you to see is that the coming of Messiah has already come in its first stage, and the mountains have been removed. So in light of that, remember the fuller context of this story. The story has Jesus coming off the Mount of Transfiguration. What most commentaries miss about this well-known verse is that this mountain must be the Mount of Transfiguration. Think about this. Jesus doesn't say, have faith like a mustard seed, and you will move any mountain. He doesn't say, faith like a mustard seed will remove a mountain. He doesn't even say what Paul says, which is that it will remove mountains. He says this mountain, and he just came off a mountain. When you learn to read the scriptures carefully like this, brothers and sisters, noting that even pronouns are important to God, I believe that it begins to put strange sayings within much easier reach for those of us who have struggled for years with what in the world Jesus is talking about here. What would it mean if Jesus were not just giving us a maxim or a proverb? or life, but we're specifically talking about faith moving the mount of transfiguration. Well, I think it means that Jesus himself will move from place to place because the transfiguration was not about a mountain, but about Christ. This is kind of the background of all that I preached last week on this story of the transfiguration. Think of all those things that were associated with that mountain. There is the glory of God, the cloud, the voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. That surely points us to Jesus. There is the command, listen to him, which comes from Deuteronomy, the prophecy about the prophet. You are to listen to Christ. That's the point of Mt. Transfiguration. As Peter said when he was thinking about this very episode, he says, you do well to pay attention to him as a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. You do well to pay attention to him. The whole story of the Transfiguration is teaching you that the prophecies of the old are now coming true in Christ. It's all about him. Now, we read Micah 4. It's interesting that Isaiah 2 is almost exactly the same thing. Isaiah 2 predicts that Jesus is the high mountain that people stream uphill to listen to. Listen to Isaiah 2. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains. And it shall be lifted up above the hills and all the nations will flow to it. And many peoples will come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. How is that not exactly fulfilled when God says, listen to my son on the top of Mount Transfiguration that Jesus has just brought these three disciples up to? Add to this the reference in chapter 16, verse 23 in Matthew that says where Jesus says, Be gone, Satan. And when I told you about that, I showed you the illusion of that when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness by the devil and he was led up a mountain to see all the kingdoms of the world. In the wilderness, Jesus was able to cast away Satan himself. And in my understanding, this is the beginning of the binding of Satan. After this, Jesus sends his disciples out two by two. It says in Matthew 10, Jesus gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out, to heal every disease and every affliction. In other words, the same binding authority that Jesus held is being transferred now to his disciples. We know from the record that there was a time during Jesus' ministry when the disciples began exercising that authority. The problem is, now they can't do it. And what the nine lack here is much more than a sufficient faith to exercise demons. Theirs is a failure to appreciate the coming of Messiah. Theirs is an eschatology problem, a salvation problem, not just a miracle problem. As Maureen Jung says, their failure to heal the boy with a demon indicates their failure to exercise their prerogatives as disciples of Jesus. Jesus therefore tells them that if they have faith, they can work wonders as He does. The emphasis is on the power of the disciples to work miracles now that the eschatological kingdom has dawned. I want you to imagine, beloved, this is what you enter into by faith. That is the point of the saying. This is infinitely greater than receiving money in the mail because you gave to Benny Hinn. Please remember, faith has an object. Faith is not some force that surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the universe together. like Luke Skywalker was told. Obi-Wan was wrong. You don't close your eyes and use your emotions and feel it, like he kept telling Anakin to do. No, faith is faith in God and in his Messiah. The power to move mountains is first and foremost the power to be saved, to be raised from the dead, like Chrysostom compared it. Jesus says that with faith all things are possible, and without faith nothing is possible. Now transfer this into a special kind of power possibility, the moving of the Mount of Transfiguration. Now you've come to the precipice of the understanding of this same. To move the mountain from here to there is to have the power of Christ move from here to there. It is to have the glory of Christ move from here to there. It is like the moving of the tabernacle in the wilderness as the glory of God followed it. This manifested itself outwardly in the apostolic age in great miracles which duplicated and even exceeded the miracles of Christ. And this was a sign for you. You say, I don't understand how to read the book of Acts. I'll tell you how to read the book of Acts. It was a sign for you that all of the things that Jesus had promised has come true. It's not some normative book that you say, OK, this is how I'm supposed to live my life. It's a sign. Miracles are only a sign of the spiritual reality, which is much greater than the miracles. I think there's a couple of things that will help you understand and see the application of this today. First, Jesus' use of a similar phrase, this temple, compared to this mountain, when he talks about his death and resurrection. I don't know why I got thinking about it. The more I thought about it, the more I thought the parallels of this are astonishing. John 2.19, destroy this temple. What did they think he was talking about? Well, the temple that was right behind him. John says he was talking about his body. He was using it metaphorically. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again. He's got the sanctuary, the temple and the death and resurrection right there together. He's talking about his body. Now in Matthew, immediately after saying that faith will move mountains, and this is really important for you to understand. You have your Bibles? Look at verse 21. A lot of your verses will have something along the lines of... I don't even know what it says. It comes from Mark. I bet he got it with him. I forget what it says. Verse 21 in some of your Bibles isn't there. That's because it's a transfer from Mark over to Matthew. And I think this is really interesting to look at, because Jesus talks about this mountain and then he goes straight into a discussion about his death and resurrection. It's the same thing that he does in John 2. Verse 22 says, As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus says to them, The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day. And they were greatly distressed. You see how these two things are very similar? Mountains are temples when God comes near them like he did on the Mount of Transfiguration. Moving mountains followed by death and resurrection. destroying temples followed by rebuilding them. It's a very similar idea, isn't it? The point is that you must see the death and resurrection of Christ as central to the whole saying. The transfiguration points you to Jesus' death and resurrection. The healing of the demon-possessed boy points you to the death and resurrection. That is no minor point in the text. It is your very life. The nine disciples and the rest of the people at the bottom of the mountain were greatly chastised by Christ because of their lack of faith in Him. In wanting just the miracles, they missed the salvation. In not being able to cast out the demon, they had missed the very meaning of Jesus' coming. The Kingdom of God has changed everything. It is very curious to see how Mark and Luke deal with the complete bafflement of the disciples when Jesus talks to them about his death and resurrection for this, the umpteenth time. Listen to this very carefully. When you turn this saying into merely a proverb, you are very close to missing the meaning of the coming of Christ. This is especially true when you think that Jesus says this so that you can get anything you want, like health and wealth teachers say. Luke records it this way. While they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, let these words sink into your ears. The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men. But they didn't understand this thing, and it was concealed from them so that they might not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about saying. Now, do you think it's an accident that the Gospels tell us about the lack of understanding of Jesus death and resurrection immediately after chastising them for the lack of faith of the demon possessed boy? No, friends, look for the clues in the text and understand and understanding will come clearly to you. Do you remember on the road to Emmaus, Jesus opened their hearts so that they burn within them as he taught them how all of the scripture points to himself. Then at Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out upon them and the glory of the Lord enveloped them in tongues of fire. And they understood and they prophesied and they performed miracles. And the Mount of Transfiguration was moved from one place to another. To move a mountain from here to there sounds very similar to what he tells the woman at the well. The time is coming when you will not worship on this mountain or on that mountain, but in spirit and in truth. The mountain has moved from a physical place to a spirit-filled place, so that now wherever believers are, the glory of God has come upon them too. Do you believe this by faith? Does your faith allow you to see the moving of the mountain of God from Sinai to Zion to Christ and to his church? Do you understand that the church is the mountain of God in Hebrews? This is because the Spirit has resided in us now, no longer just on top of a mountain or in the most holy place of the cavern. Don't think I'm spiritualizing away the truth. I mean, Jesus is not thinking about moving Long's Peak over to Pike's Peak. You have to understand this metaphorically. This is a spiritual saying, isn't it? And this is the hope of the prophets. Zechariah says, Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, you shall become a plain. In the context there, and I don't have time to go into Zechariah 4, but the context is clearly that by faith, Zerubbabel will establish the temple of God and the mountain shall not stand in its way. Christ is the greater Zerubbabel who established the temple and moved the mountain. He is that mountain and we are his body. In my heart of hearts, I believe this is the meaning of this passage. This saying is an eschatological fulfillment, even as the transfiguration was an eschatological event, and the casting out of the demon was an eschatological sign that the kingdom of Christ had come. It all comes back then to Jesus and faith in Him. That's what the saying is about. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Sixteen hundred years ago, Augustine said, if the apostles were unbelievers, who is the believer? What must the lambs do if the rams totter? Realize, friends, that if giants were weak, how much more are those like us who are average in smallest stature to believe the things of the Scripture? If you are weak, what then are you to do? Are you to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps? Are you to sharpen your faith by your own dull heart? Are you to send money to a TV preacher in order to buy your way into heaven? Is that the purpose of the saying in verse 20? No. But Augustine said, The mercy of the Lord did not stain them in their unbelief, but reproved, nourished, perfected, crowned them. Do you think, brothers, that God does not know what is needful for you? So what then are you needful of? Of getting anything you want? Is that what you're needful of? No, but of getting Christ. You are needful of more of him. In him, all the promises are yes and amen. And so, therefore, anything outside of him is no. This is what the saying means. By faith, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. I hope and pray you will think deeply upon these things and reflect upon this passage of the scripture. Because herein lies the truth concealed to those who do not have the spirit. But by God's grace, may He grant you an understanding of the centrality of Jesus, of the unparalleled significance of the coming of Messiah in His Kingdom, and of what it truly means to have mountain-moving faith. I'd like for you to spend a moment in prayer with me as we think about these things. Lord, you've given us Matthew 17, the whole thing, to strengthen us, to encourage us, to teach us about what in the world happened 2,000 years ago when this man from Galilee walked around the world and healed people. Lord, it wasn't just about healing people. It was about the ushering in of the new age of Christ and of his kingdom. I pray that you would help your people here today to understand these marvelous truths and of the significance and the transfer of citizenship that they have through faith in the Lord Jesus. That they no longer belong to this world, but they belong to the heavenly realm. That they belong to the eternal realm. That they are changed people, even if we do not have the power to raise the dead like Paul and Peter did. Today, but those were signs for us that something amazing had happened Lord the language when he came off of the mountain of Transfiguration and looked at that mountain said you have the faith to move this mountain. I pray that that that word might seep into our consciousness and that our minds might think over and over and over again about this saying that so many people are using to deceive people for their own gratification and for their own selfishness and greed and help this passage to be one that would help us to understand all of the good things that you have given to us, including even the faith that we have to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I would ask, Lord, that as we come now to the Lord's table, that you would strengthen and nourish and feed us with more of the truth of the Word and of what Jesus has done for us, so that we might leave this place encouraged and strengthened and emboldened in our faith and in our witness of you in the world. And it's for Jesus' sake that I pray these things. Amen.