17:14-16
Only three of the disciples, Peter, James and John, had gone up the mountain with Jesus. The rest were down in the village, facing the realities of life. So when Jesus and the three came down a man came to Jesus and knelt before Him. His son was suffering from seizures. The ESV says he was an epileptic. This even caused him to sometimes fall into the water or fire. The man had asked the remaining disciples to help, but they had failed to make any progress.
17:17,18
“You unbelieving ...” Jesus is in despair, and seems to rebuke everyone here, a few verses later He will rebuke the disciples. Jesus describes this generation as “unbelieving and perverse”. Jesus took the boy, rebuked the demon and the boy was healed from that moment. Simples! There are at least a couple of points to note. The first is that the illness was associated with a demon. Some illnesses are demon related, but note also that this was no big deal! We make a big deal of it. We consider that if someone is demon possessed then they must either have done something really bad, or they under a terrible curse of some all powerful demonic force, and that it is a major problem. Jesus did not do this. He did not have an inquest into how the boy had got this demon in the first place,, and casting the demon out was a very straightforward matter. The second point is that Jesus seems to indicate that the normal state of affairs is that we believe and if a health issue arises then we can deal with it through faith.
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