Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Striving for Perfection? | New Testament | Matthew 17

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Who do you put in your trust in? Do you have ultimate faith in yourself or in God? How can you be worthy of God? If you believe and pray hard enough, will God bless you? In today's episode, Tanya looks at Matthew 17 to discuss the reason why God is already pleased with you. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in 2023. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Matthew 17

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Have you tried to completely overhaul your diet or your exercise for a few days or weeks and then gone back to your same old habits? I once made it through two days of a whole 30 before submitting to a package of sour punch straws at a baseball game, followed by popcorn and then a Reese's cup. Now, those who can relate to my experience might find a softer spot to land

in the kind of newish 1% better trend. So in this trend, instead of completely overhauling your diet, you eat 1% better than you did yesterday. And instead of a 70-day fitness challenge where you throw tires and take cold showers while eating tree bark, while you raise your intensity level by 1% each day. Tired of a bad attitude,

be 1% more grateful today than you were yesterday. There's pretty good wisdom here. When we take these kinds of approaches, we're more on a growth mindset instead of a change, crash, burn mindset. But what about our faith? The one thing about us that affects everything else. Is it biblical to add a line item to your planner called Grow My Faith 1% each day? What would Jesus have to say about the mindset we have toward our faith? In Matthew 17, we get to hear what it was like to be with Jesus from the disciples' point of view.

And it's pretty incredible how honest they are about themselves. It would be really cool if we have the same kind of experience as we go through our life with Jesus. And there are two experiences as the disciples have with Jesus in this chapter, they reveal who Jesus is and what they believe about him. And they're incredibly opposite by nature. One is the transfiguration of Jesus with just a select view on top of a mountain, and the other occurs in a crowd of people when Jesus cast out a demon. These might not sound like experiences you're going to have with Jesus as you contemplate your calendar or your plans for the day. But they do show us there's a bigger spiritual world around us all the time. And as we live in the presence of Jesus, we are

constantly in situations where we can learn who he really is and show who he really is to others. The morning of this chapter begins on the sixth day, and this is important because the narrator wants us to know that it has been six days since Jesus delivered the very sobering news to the disciples that the son of man would die and rise again on the third day. They were probably trying to process this and even do whatever they could to prevent it from happening, because they didn't yet really understand all that Jesus meant. So as they were thinking about this news and how it would probably affect them, Jesus took James, John, and Peter up to the top of a mountain. And this was the location of the transfiguration.

So describe what happened. Matthew says that Jesus' face looked like the sun and his clothes were bright as light. The Greek word used here is metamorpho, and it means changed or transformed. Now, while Jesus was transfigured, also the Old Testament prophets, a light of and Moses appeared, and Jesus was talking with them. Now, of course, Moses and Elijah had been dead for hundreds of years, or Moses had. Elijah was taken to heaven and a chariot of fire, but according to prophecy, their appearance with Jesus would signal the coming age of the Messiah. So the disciples were beginning to really understand who Jesus was. Now, I love a good story, and when Peter's involved, he almost never disappoints. So I wonder how many of us can relate to the way

Peter responded to this experience. While all this was happening, Peter started talking about how it was a good thing that he was there because he was going to build three tents, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. But even while he was talking, a cloud appeared and a voice from heaven said about Jesus, this is my son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. Now, not surprising, all of this terrified the disciples. They were probably overwhelmed with the transcendence of the experience and the weight of the message. But Jesus bent to them and told them to arise and not be afraid. And then when they lifted their eyes, all they could see was Jesus.

I love that line. Now, in revealing his son of the Messiah, God allowed the disciples to see the bigger story. We know what it's like to feel like Peter and have those thoughts like, wow, they're so lucky I'm here because I'm going to take care of this. what can I do? We also know what it's like to feel the weight and the responsibility of believing that we're so necessary and important. Maybe that's what Peter was feeling there. But Jesus was preparing his disciples for a time following his death and its resurrection, where they're going to be teaching people about him and showing people what his kingdom was like. And how would they do that if their

faith was in themselves? So as they came down from the mountain, Jesus told them to keep quiet about what it just happened until after he was raised from the dead. Probably he didn't want them to get it wrong, and probably it's not yet time for others to know just what happened. But then he walked them into the second kind of learning situation. So after coming down from the mountain, they came into a crowd where a father was begging for healing for his son. And the disciples have apparently been unable to help him. So Jesus answered the man's request and cast the demon out of the son.

And the disciples wondered why Jesus was able to do it when they could They actually asked him, why were we not able to heal this man's son? And Jesus answered with something like a rebuke, he said, Because of your little faith, for truly I say to you, if you have faith 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, we might have heard this verse quoted and represented in a way that puts the emphasis

on us instead of Jesus. Prosperity gospel would have you believe that if you pray hard enough and believe hard enough you can receive or do anything. But let's remember what else Jesus has been teaching on this day. What did he do when Peter wanted to build three tents on top of the mountain? Did he reward Peter for his effort and his desire to do something so amazing? Well, no. God interrupted Peter with a message about Jesus. God said, he is my son, with whom I am well pleased.

Listen to him. And so there are two really important things we can understand about this passage. The first is about God's pleasure. God is not pleased with us because we are try-hards. He is not pleased with us because of our efforts. He is pleased with us when we are united with his son, when his son lives in us. Because he is pleased with his son,

because his son took our place on the cross, he is pleased with us. That is the basis. and source of God's pleasure. Everything else we do for him is a response to his mercy and his love that he has already poured out on us. The second thing we can learn from this is that it is who we place our faith in that matters. So when Jesus had faith as small as the mustard seed would move mountains, he was talking about the power of the one in whom our faith is placed. When our faith is placed in Jesus, we receive his power to glorify him. To be his light to others, to be his light to

to make His kingdom known. We don't live in the disappointment of our circumstances or our performance because we receive our security and our joy from His perfection. It is possible to become 1% better while still missing out on Jesus. But I really appreciate the way David prayed about this in Psalm 27. He says, one thing I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after. That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire at his temple. David's priority is a steady and a sustained

focus on the Lord. It's a lifetime of finding God to be better than anything else so you could put your hope and your trust in, and finding so much pleasure in knowing him that your heart is content. The cool thing about David's prayer is how very unlike our resolutions and goals it is. That kind of a prayer places us on our knees at the throne instead of on the throne. And from that point, we get to receive all that the king has to offer. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus.

Thanks for listening.