JULY 23 JQ#20-4 “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17) The Jesus Questions

LIVING FOR JESUS --- Daily Devotional

JULY 23   JQ#20-4  “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17) 

365 Prayers to JESUS 

Jesus,  You Lord are to be praised and You are Worthy of the praise that is now coming from the lips of men and You are Worthy of the Glory and Honor that every tongue will profess belongs to the Son of God, Jesus the Christ for the Father has declared  that every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, and I praise You for completing God’s Plan of Salvation by becoming flesh, dwelling among us and then becoming the very Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the earth, the Only Holy and Acceptable Sacrifice to pay in full the penalty for the sin of all mankind. Lord Jesus, my prayer is for this sinner to decrease and let the Savior increase in every aspect of my daily life as I move towards my eternal destination  in and with the Power of the Holy Spirit.     AMEN

The Jesus Questions

JULY 23   JQ#20-4  “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17)   Jesus started JQ#19 announcing to His disciples that He would suffer and die in Jerusalem and that the ones responsible would be “the elders and chief priests and scribes” (Matthew 16:21) which were the teachers and leaders of Israel. Jesus never leaves a problem without introducing the solution and as soon as Jesus said that He would “be killed” by men that He immediately resolved the issue by stating that He would be “raised” from the dead on the “third day” but the disciples had not yet believed in the True Power of God because when the disciples witnessed Jesus doing all the miracles they had seen previously, that they saw the “man” Jesus and failed to see Jesus as God! Jesus addressed their wrong thinking by telling them their mistake came because they were “not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men” and then added that if we are to “follow [Jesus]” that we must take up our “cross” as He was going to take up His in Jerusalem. Then after Jesus teaches the eternal significance of our “souls” Jesus turns to the next lesson with JQ#20 as He had to “rebuke” a demon possessed boy that the disciples were unable to cast out. Because the disciples could not cast out the demon, the father of the boy took him to Jesus and said the disciples “could not cure him”.(Matthew 17:16) Jesus immediately rebuked the demon from the boy but only after Jesus used the circumstance to point out the reason for the disciples failure as Jesus declared “O faithless and perverse generation” (Matthew 17:17) which  was directed not only at the disciples but to the father of the demon possessed boy as well. Failure to cast out the demon was identified as “faithlessness” and since Jesus added the term “perverse” to accompany “faithless” that it would be reasonable to assume that Jesus is teaching that our faith is futile if we build it on the wrong foundation — and since Jesus has been teaching that our faith is misdirected because we trust the things of men more than we trust the things of God, that if our “faith” is in the power of men and not in the Power of God Himself that we will fail in our attempts to use our “faith” to help others. Jesus is using the question “How long” (JQ#20  Matthew 17:17) to illustrate that He will not always be here on earth for us to bring our demon possessed children to and that the Truth of God is that we must develop our “faith” in His Ultimate Power in order that we shall be able to perform those things Jesus did, this working of the Power of God through us only comes when we realize that it is not the things of men that give us that Power, Only the things of God working through men will bring the Power of God to our worldly problems. Like the disciples we see Jesus as a man doing miracles and fail to see that Jesus was the Son of God who came to reveal the Power of God and witness to the Glory of God and yet once Jesus had completed His earthly mission He would return to the Father.  His Legacy would be to teach us how to connect to God and His Ultimate Power!  Our ability to be like God is through our “Faith in God”. Jesus was sent by God to “suffer” and to “die” but because Jesus had “FAITH IN GOD” and that Jesus knew that God has Power over Death and the Grave and that God would demonstrate His Power to give life by raising Jesus the “third day”, we must see the death of Jesus not as a man being killed but as God completing His Plan of Salvation and then we will no longer be a “faithless and perverse generation” — sounds kind of like “tough love” does it not?