I want to show you how you can enter into a new reality of faith, until YOU can command the mountain to move.
I had quite a revelation as I was reading Matthew 17, though I’ve preached on this so many times. It starts off as you know, when Jesus takes three of His disciples up on the mountain. Jesus was transfigured. It was incredible. Moses and Elijah actually appeared, talking with Jesus. It’s very significant: these two, Moses and Elijah, don’t have an actual record of their death. Elijah was taken up into Heaven in a chariot, and Moses was taken up into the mountain and buried by the Hand of God – Deuteronomy 34:1-6. It was such a tremendous experience on the mountain that Peter said, “Lord, why don’t we stay here and build three tabernacles, one for You, one for Moses and one for Elijah?”
That was never the intention! Sometimes in our spiritual experiences, we need to stay on the mountain – but God needs us in the valley where the problems are! You cannot live forever on the mountain. You have to come down, as they did. Interestingly, somebody has just sent me a message of encouragement, referring to my prayer times on the mountains, and that I face the valleys with the strength that I receive on the mountain…
As Peter was still speaking about building the tabernacles, a bright cloud covered them and a Voice came out of the cloud saying, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased – hear Him!” The disciples were afraid and fell on their faces! As they came down from the mountain, Jesus absolutely charged them, “Don’t tell this vision you have seen to anyone until the Son of Man is risen again from the dead.” And the disciples get into a theological argument with Him! They had just had the most wonderful experience – only three of the twelve were allowed to experience it – Moses and Elijah, and Christ transfigured. But as they come down the mountain they get into a theological argument with Jesus, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”
Jesus replied, “Truly Elijah shall come first, but I tell you, he has already come, and they didn’t know him, they didn’t recognise him and they did to him as they liked. Likewise the Son of Man shall suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that Jesus was speaking to them about John the Baptist.
And so they got to the bottom of the mountain. The other disciples were there and a great crowd. And a man came to Jesus seeking healing for his son because the disciples couldn’t do it. People think that the ministry of miracles only followed Pentecost – they did, but this is the disciples before Pentecost. They had spent time with Jesus, and it is clear, Jesus already expected them to do what He did. But by the time Jesus and the other three get down in the valley, there’s a crisis. A man has come to Jesus and is kneeling before Him, “Lord, I’m asking You to heal my son, for he is lunatic and sore vexed, forever falling into the fire and sometimes in the water. I brought him to Your disciples – but they couldn’t cure him!”
I hadn’t seen this in its proper context before. And it’s this: Jesus’ disciples had been long enough with Him, that He already expected them to be part of and to fulfil His ministry! That’s why, whilst Jesus was up on the mountain, presumably for quite some considerable period of time, the crowd had come; and this poor man with his tragic son, had come for prayer to the disciples. But the disciples could not cure that young boy.
I want to show you how you, yourself, can receive power through faith to see miracles!
I want you, together with me, to look at this question of miracles and the question of the gift of faith and of healing in a very practical sense. Miracles will come, but it’s not always easy. I want to show you how you, yourselves, can receive power through faith to see miracles happen. Immediately Jesus is looking, not only at the disciples, but also at the multitude, and He rebukes them, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring the boy to Me!”
This is before His death, before His resurrection, before Pentecost – Jesus is rebuking His disciples, and calls them a faithless and perverse generation! In effect, Jesus is rebuking the whole Jewish generation, calling them faithless and perverse! And I want to challenge the Church today! We need the evidence of the miraculous in the Church! Is the challenge of God to the Church today to say that the generation we are living in now is faithless and perverse?!! Where is the revival, where is the moving of the Spirit of God? If Jesus were to come now, would He literally rebuke us and say, “YOU are a FAITHLESS and a PERVERSE generation?” We, I, face this as a challenge. I’m asking the question, is Jesus actually saying this to us today?!
Regarding the question of faith, looking at the ministry of the miraculous, I speak from experience. I don’t have to justify my position. I don’t personally know a living man who has seen so many miracles of such a diverse nature, from calming storms, to the raising of the dead. The miracles I’ve experienced are very unusual. With my throat cancer, the doctors actually said to me, someone has cut that cancer out with a knife and left a scar – who did it? It was the Hand of God!
So what did Jesus do? He said, “Bring the boy to Me!” He rebuked the devil and he departed out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour! That’s what we expect!!! And it’s what Jesus did!!! The boy was healed!!! But in the next verse, the disciples take Jesus on one side – they didn’t want anyone else to hear what they were saying… There has to come a time in your life and mine when we step aside with Jesus… That’s why I go the mountain to pray. All my life I have been so concerned to get away on my own with the Lord, because there are times when you and I have to ask Him some searching questions. Maybe you need to ask these questions? Because the disciples said, “Why couldn’t we do it?” Very blunt. Very straight. “Look, we couldn’t do it. Why?”
There are times when I am facing challenges so great that I have to say to the Lord, “Why can’t I do it?” I’m challenging your faith, those of you who are seeking to pray with the sick and see miracles… When it doesn’t happen, ask the question, get alone with Jesus…
There are times when I am facing challenges so great that I have to say to the Lord, “Why can’t I do it?” I’m challenging your faith, those of you who are seeking to pray with the sick and see miracles… When it doesn’t happen, ask the question, get alone with Jesus… Wherever your ‘place’ is where you go alone in prayer. I’m laughing at the joke that every man should have a ‘man cave’, a place where the husband can get away from his wife… But we need that equivalent with God. The Bible speaks of going into your ‘closet’, that’s simply somewhere where you can be alone with God in prayer…
So in this moment when the disciples are alone with Jesus, they ask, “Why can’t we work this miracle?” Jesus is very straight in His answer, “Because of your unbelief!” He’s already rebuked them as a faithless and perverse generation. Now He continues, “Truly I say unto you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will speak to this mountain” – perhaps He was looking up at the Mount of Transfiguration – “if you’ve got faith as a grain of mustard seed” – that’s a very small seed – “you will say to this mountain, remove from here to here, you will command the mountain to move, and it will remove and nothing shall be impossible to you.”
When I was in the communist prison all those years ago, the British Consul was bringing me books in English to read, but in the prison they already had a copy of Marco Polo’s Travels. I was fascinated by this. Marco Polo was a Christian from Italy, he’d gone to China as a Merchant Venturer with his father and his uncle who had a relationship with the Chinese Emperor. His father and uncle died, and Marco Polo was left alone, travelling with the Emperor. They came to one village where there was a small group of Christians. Remember, I’m reading this in the prison! The Emperor simply said, “Take those Christians out and kill them.” But he knew some Scripture. So he reminded the Christians, “In your Bible it says, if you’ve got faith as a mustard seed, you will see this mountain and command it to move. Outside your village is a mountain. I’m going to give you three days to move that mountain. If you don’t move it, then your Bible is a lie and I will kill you.”
So Marco Polo records in his book that the Emperor left and the Christians did what Christians do, they got together and they prayed – and nothing happened! Then they chose one man, a shoemaker, whom they thought was more spiritual than they, and they put the responsibility on him. So that man prayed – and nothing happened! On the third day the Emperor comes back, “Your mountain hasn’t moved!” This was a challenge to their faith!
When I had the throat cancer back in 1964, it was here, in the town where I live now. My church had seen so many miracles, it was founded on miracles. But do you know what they said about me? They said, “It’s alright when he’s praying for other people, but now he’s sick, he’ll be the first to go to the doctor and have an operation.” It was a challenge to me! I had to put my life on the line and say, I will not have an operation! I couldn’t have an operation, because everybody was looking to see the truth of my belief. I had to prove God in the test!
So what happened with the villagers and the Emperor? Because the mountain was still there, he lined the Christians up to kill them! At the last moment, in front of Marco Polo, the Emperor looked at the Christians and said, “I want you to die knowing that there is no God and that your faith is in vain. I want to watch you pray, then I’ll kill you!” Marco Polo records that under that extreme pressure, those Christians no longer prayed, “O God, we’re afraid, we’re going to die, move the mountain!” Marco Polo records very graphically that they took an authority over that mountain and commanded, “In the Name of Jesus, mountain move!” And he records, that mountain actually moved! The Christians were spared, and, as a result of that miracle, the Emperor told Marco Polo to go back to Italy and bring missionaries to convert China. Wow!
The reality of our faith is only when it is put to the test and we don’t back off.
So often, the reality of our faith is only when it is put to the test and we don’t back off. Somebody said to me recently about my throat cancer, “You put your life on the line! If your faith wasn’t going to work, you were going to die!” But God didn’t fail me. And when the doctors examined me, they said, “We can see the scar tissue where somebody has cut the cancer out with a knife. Who did it? Tell us the name of the doctor and the hospital!” His Name is Jesus! That was the reality and the evidence of my faith.
I want to show you how you can enter into the reality, until YOU can command the mountain. I don’t want to fail, I don’t want you to fail like these disciples did. We don’t need a faithless and perverse generation in the Church, we need men and women on fire with the Power of God, with faith to believe that we serve a God of miracles! I HAVE to see, I declare I WILL see – bigger miracles tomorrow than anything I have seen in the past! Why? Because we’re facing a world that looks at the Church as a failed entity. Put your faith to the test, prove it!