Peter and James may talk about faith in general, but not about the size or strength of our faith. Paul may not directly bring this subject up, because it isn’t as important to him as other things. “The Lord Jesus is concerned when His disciples have little or no faith.” He may be the only one who really is concerned – John may not be as concerned as he ought to be. I’m going to make an assumption based on Jesus’ statement – but I’ll guarantee its accuracy. It is a single Greek word, not a series of words or a phrase. The Greek word, is used only five times – four times in Matthew and once in a parallel scripture in Luke. I would have expected “O ye of little faith,“ to be far more common than it actually is. His rebuke came in the form of one of His own unique phrases – “O ye of little faith.” He then followed that with some exhortation and more instruction.īefore we get into this scripture, I wonder if any of us know how many times this term is used in the Bible? Last week, if I had to guess, my answer would have been wrong, and I’ll assume that you’d be wrong as well. So the Lord firmly, but gently rebuked them – and then exhorted them. They were more worried about their lack of bread than they were about the leaven of the Pharisees. Here He was doing some of teaching – literally “indoctrinating.” But on this occasion, as often today, His disciples, weren’t very focused on the lesson. The life of the Lord Jesus often gives us examples of this sort of thing, including here in this chapter. “Reproving,” “rebuking” and “exhorting“ refer to different ways of applying God’s Word.

Paul spoke to all pastors when he exhorted Timothy – “Preach the word be instant in season, out of season reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” The word “doctrine” refers to “teaching” – exposing and illuminating the Word of the Lord. A second purpose ought to be to find ways to apply those things to our hearts. One ought to be to teach and explain the Word of God – so that we all might understand what God says. The preaching ministry should have a variety of purposes.

Ye of little faith