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5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. ~ Luke 17:5-6
The Lord Jesus, previous to today's text, had honed in on the greatest need and expression in the lives of all of mankind: LOVE. And, love is the key element in forgiveness. We would have expected the disciples to respond to the Lord Jesus teaching on forgiveness with the prayer, “Increase our love!” But they ask in v.5, "Lord, “Increase our faith."
The disciples asked Him to increase their faith because they knew it takes living faith to forgive. They naturally struggled with this new take on forgiveness and they were having a rough time processing it. Their request for more faith is their admission they did not think they could live that way.
The disciples were feeling the weight of this responsibility and they were honest about their weakness. They were not denying that they had faith, they were not sure they had what it took to be more forgiving.
True forgiveness always involves pain because somebody has been hurt and there is a price to pay in healing the wound. Love motivates us to forgive, but faith activates that forgiveness so that God can use it to work blessing in the lives of His people.
In v.6 we read, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you."
The mustard seed includes the idea of life and growth. The mustard seed is very small, but it has life in it and, therefore, it can grow and produce fruit. If our faith is a living faith, it will grow and enable us to realize God’s presence and power in our lives today. Forgiveness is a test of both our faith and our love.
Human nature, being what it is, will always be offensive. And, sin festers in such soil. God’s people must get into the habit of facing these offenses honestly and lovingly, and forgiving those who offend. George Herbert once wrote, “He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.”
Now, on other occasions, the Lord Jesus used the mustard seed and the mountain illustration. In today's text, there was no mountain nearby. Here, the Lord Jesus is standing by a mulberry tree, so He uses it. He affirms the fact the disciples needed a stronger type of faith. But, even a small amount of faith in the God of the Bible is enough to live a life that is different than anything we have ever known before. The key is not the amount but the object of said faith.
The mustard seed is an herb and it's been used in the ancient Middle East for centuries. And, it was the smallest seed in the land of Israel, at that time. And, as tiny as it was, it grew disproportionately.
A typical mustard bush or tree grew to be be twelve to fifteen feet in height and in width. And that's a lot coming from a tiny little seed. And so, the Lord Jesus is simply saying, "If you have mustard-seed kind of faith, growing faith, you could realize amazing things in your life." And, since the mulberry tree had roots that would survive for 600 years, to uproot it would be absolutely supernatural.
The point is simply this: When we trust the Lord Jesus, we will witness God doing things in and through us that is otherwise humanly impossible.
In 2 Corinthians 12:10 we read, "When I'm weak then He is strong." We discover the inertia to live the type of life the Lord Jesus died to give us when we tap into His strength. What prevents us from doing this is it is through our weakness that we access God's strength. Who values our weaknesses? Our weaknesses are precious because they alert us that we desperately need Him and this is the best place for us to live.
Notice the Lord Jesus does not tell the disciples how to get more faith. He doesn’t give the disciples a discipleship plan, or even assign them a faith journey partner. They didn’t need more faith, they had all the faith they needed. What they needed was to be more convinced they needed more of God. When we come to the end of us, we truly discover the depths of God.
