preparing for the counter attack

Last Sunday we were looking at Matthew 17 in the passage dealing with the transfiguration. There were several theological applications to be learned from the event. For instance, the testimony of the law and the prophets were personified by the appearance of Moses and Elijah. The significance of God speaking through the cloud, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” being the second occasion of the Father’s verbal confirmation. And many other things were significant, not the least of which the conversation between Jesus and Moses and Elijah about His approaching exodus, or His crucifixion, revealing that everything was going according to plan.
For the disciples, this was the epitome of the mountain top experience. They saw Christ in all His glory as a preview of the second coming, dispelling all their doubts and fears. They heard God audibly speak from a shining cloud. When they finally were able to get their faces off the ground they must have been stoked out of their minds. They must have glowed like Moses at Mt. Sinai as they came down from the mountain.
But when they came to the disciples left behind at the bottom of the mountain the devil was there to meet them. That’s how it often is when we have a mountain top experience. Satan is waiting at the bottom of the hill, waiting to knock our legs out from under us, waiting to humiliate us, waiting to undermine all that we just learned. It’s a counter attack in a spiritual battle, and we need to be ready for it.
The scripture says the scribes and the Pharisees were there, the old enemies of Jesus and His disciples. They were gloating because the rest of the disciples had been shown to be impotent to cast out a powerful demon from a boy that was severely possessed. The Bible says that as the boy was brought to them, the demon cast him to the ground and began to throw him into convulsions. The disciples were confronted with the full power of Satan and were overwhelmed. Jesus didn’t seem to be around. They were left alone to deal with one of the most dreadful things they had ever faced. And their fear overwhelmed their faith.
The disciples are a good picture of us, aren’t they? We have a mountain top experience with God, we confirm our faith, and resolve to serve Him with all our strength, and then the next day or even a few hours later, Satan comes along with the old crowd, the old friends, some old temptation that you thought you had victory over, and down we go. Our faith was too weak. Our strength was too frail.
Jesus said, “Because of the littleness of your faith… if you have faith as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it shall move; and nothing is impossible with God. But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” A mustard seed may be small, but it grows into one of the largest plants in the garden. Faith grows. Yet the strength of our faith doesn’t come from our reliance upon the size of our faith, but on the size of our God. The God who made the mountains can move the mountains. What we can see and touch and feel is replaced through our spiritual strength: prayer and fasting. Fasting is reducing the dependence on the physical to increase the dependence of the spiritual. That’s the secret to all things being possible. Learning the principle that what we see isn’t as important as who we believe in. What we can do isn’t as important as what He can do. Knowing that greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world.