Well, if my faith was stronger, would I be healthier? If my faith was deeper, would I be more financially secure? And would I be happier and more comfortable? In other words, does Jesus say that our sorrow is traced back to a lack of faith on our part? Today's question is from a podcast listener named Scott.

"Hello Pastor John. A question always arises for me when I read about Jesus' exorcism of the epileptic boy possessed by a demon in Matthew 17 verses 14 to 20, Mark 9, 17 to 29, and Luke 9, 37 to 43. What does Jesus mean by 'because of your little faith'?

What is it exactly that the disciples lacked? It seems like Jesus' answer gives easy fuel to suffering Christians who might be told that Jesus suggested if they just had enough faith, they could be healed. How is that not the takeaway?" Well, I'm going to try to deal with these words of Jesus, even though I do not fully understand them and find them in part baffling.

And I choose to go ahead and try to answer this just so that our listeners will know that there are passages in the Bible that are baffling, at least there are to me. They leave me with questions, and I thought it might be helpful to just struggle out loud and invite others to join me and maybe go further than I can.

And I should say here at the beginning that bumping into things like this doesn't undermine my faith, because Jesus has done so much and said so much that the glory of God in him has won me over to trust him and treasure him because of what I do see and I do understand, even if there are aspects of what he says that sometimes I don't understand.

So that's how it works with my faith, in case anybody wonders, "Well, how do you even sleep at night if you can't understand Jesus?" Well, it's just one little part that baffles me. So here we go. Let's focus on Matthew 17. I can't deal with all these texts. Let's just take one, Matthew 17, verses 17 to 20.

Jesus comes down off the Mount of Transfiguration. He finds that the disciples were unable to heal a boy and cast out a demon that the Father had brought to the disciples, and Jesus' response to their inability in the Father's statement they couldn't do it, he says, verse 17, "Oh, 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 I think that that's a reference not just to the crowds, but to the disciples, because they're the ones who couldn't do it. They're the ones who didn't have the faith. So he's saying some pretty strong things.

"Oh, faithless and twisted generation," keeps going. Verse 18, "Jesus rebuked the demon. It came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. And then the disciples came to Jesus and said privately, 'Why couldn't we cast it out?' And he said to them, 'Because of your little face. For truly I say to you, if you have face like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.'" Now, here's what's baffling to me about these words.

First, in verse 17, Jesus says to the disciples that they are faithless, apistea, they're faithless. That is, have no faith, at least no faith for this healing. And then in verse 20, when the disciples say, "Why couldn't we cast it out?" He says, "You have little faith. That's because of your little faith." I was like, scratching my head.

Okay, no faith, little faith? Why does he say both? And then, to make matters even more perplexing, he says, "If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could move mountains." Well, now, back in chapter 13, verse 32, he had said that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds.

So clearly, the point here is, if you just had a mustard seed faith, you could move mountains. Well, if that's true, why is it that their small faith was the reason they couldn't cast out the demon? I mean, how small faith is what a mustard seed-sized faith is. And yet he's accusing them of having small faith, and that's why you can't cast out the demons.

And then he turns around and says, "If you had a mustard seed faith, you could move a mountain." You see why I'm confused? I'm baffled by what Jesus is saying here. So, here's my stab to try to make some sense out of this and how it relates to the question.

First, in saying that we all need a mustard seed of faith to move mountains, it seems to me that Jesus is saying quantity of faith is not the issue. Why else would he refer to mustard seed faith if quantity were the issue? So size of faith is not the issue.

That's the point of mustard seed. Number two, second observation. In describing their little faith as virtually the same as faithlessness, he is saying that whatever little faith they're trying to have to heal this boy, it was the wrong kind of faith, not just the wrong size of faith, because size is not the issue anymore.

It's the wrong kind. Faith as a grain of mustard seed seems to be not just an issue of size, but kind, something about this seed. Since they had small faith, but it was useless. It was as good as faithlessness, so it wasn't like this mustard seed of faith. Third observation, when we ponder not just how faith differs in quantity but kind, that starts to bring up issues like the condition of their hearts when they pray, and the discernment of God's will when they pray.

There are other parts of Jesus' teaching and the other parts of Scripture that make answered prayer depend on the condition of the heart, like James 4, you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions, that's why you don't get answers to your prayer, and sovereign purposes of God in whether our prayers are answered.

Like in 1 John 5, you have to pray according to God's will. So conclusion, but not a big solution. I would say to Scott, be sure to take into account all the teachings of the Bible regarding answered prayer, both in relation to the condition of the heart of the one who's praying or trying to do a work for God, and in relation to the sovereign will of God, rather than assuming that in every case of unanswered prayer, for healing's sake, the problem lies with defective faith.

That was the case here. But given the way Jesus answers and the other things he says about prayer, I would not assume that's always the case. Well I love watching you sweat through hard text. Such an encourager to every amateur exegete like me. Thank you Pastor John, and thanks for listening and supporting the podcast.

You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive, and send us an email of your own, even hard Bible questions, just to watch John Piper squirm a bit. You can do all that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well we Protestants don't use confessionals.

Martin Luther apparently thought the confessional booth was a good idea, although he was very careful to make the practice voluntary, not binding. More recently it was John Stott who commended the regular practice of confessing our sins to a trusted pastor. There may be a rare Anglican church here or there that has a confessional, but on the whole Protestants don't practice auricular confession of our sins to a minister.

So what place should private confession of our personal sins to others, fellow Christians, play? That is still a very open question, and it's on the table on Wednesday. Till then, I'm your host Tony Reinke, we'll see you then. 1. Desiring God's Confessional 1. Desiring God's Confessional 2. Desiring God's Confessional 3.

Desiring God's Confessional 4. Desiring God's Confessional 5. Desiring God's Confessional 6. Desiring God's Confessional 7. Desiring God's Confessional