Sermons on Luke 17:5

Luke 17:5 Interpretation:

Growing Faith Amidst Temptations and Challenges(Open the Bible) reads Luke 17:5 as a realistic, pastoral response by the apostles to the concrete difficulties Jesus has just described, interpreting their plea "Increase our faith" not as naïve optimism but as a sober request born of encountering temptations, scandal (scandala), repeated interpersonal sin, the demand of holiness, encounters with great evil, and the weakness of unbelief; the sermon foregrounds the Greek technical term scandala (translated “temptations” or “stumbling blocks”) to show that the request arises from the inevitability of offenses that can make disciples stumble, ties the mustard-seed/mulberry-tree image to earlier Gospel settings (linking Luke’s wording with the mountain/mustard-seed saying in Matthew/Mark) to show Jesus’ pedagogical repetition, and treats the verse as an invitation to ask Jesus for growth in faith as a practical strategy (faith grows as we ask) rather than merely as a doctrinal abstraction.

Growing Faith Through Dreams and Life's Challenges(Pastor Rick) uses Luke 17:5 as a launching premise—“Lord, increase our faith”—and interprets that petition practically: increasing faith is what enables believers to please God and see God act (citing Hebrews 11:6 and Matthew 9:29), and God cultivates that increased faith mostly by two broad means (the “easy” way of the Word and the “hard” way of tested circumstances), so the apostles’ request is best answered by God through both Bible-rooted nourishment and by allowing dreams and delays that stretch faith like a muscle.

Growing Faith: Trusting in Jesus for Strength (TMAC Media) reads Luke 17:5 as a candid, pastoral moment in which even the apostles — despite long exposure to Jesus’ teaching and miracles — recognize their need for spiritual growth, and the preacher uses that to argue that faith is dynamic rather than all-or-nothing, highlighting Jesus’ mustard-seed reply to show that minute faith focused on Christ can overcome great obstacles; distinctive moves in this sermon include treating verse 5 as the hinge that leads into practical steps for growth (pray for increased faith, remember gospel truths, “fan into flame” the gifts given at ordination and in the sacraments, then step out in obedience), the mustard-seed remark reframed as Jesus saying “you are not even there yet” (an unexpectedly sober diagnosis of the apostles), and the sermon ties the textual image to lived practices (laying on of hands, sacraments, campfire fanning) so that Luke 17:5 functions as both a request and a commissioning to faith-formation in community and service.

Faith in Action: Embracing Love and Justice (Christ Church UCC Des Plaines) interprets Luke 17:5 as Jesus redirecting the disciples from craving bigger, certitudinal faith to practicing a faith whose worth is shown in humble, justice-oriented acts — the preacher emphasizes the mustard-seed metaphor not merely as potential power but as the model for small, concrete commitments (a can of food, a dollar gift) that, when lived out, produce large social consequences; the sermon’s unique thrust is to read “increase our faith” as a call to convert private belief into public practice, judging the value of faith by its service, courage, and willingness to confront injustice rather than by subjective feelings of certainty.

Choosing the Path of Forgiveness: A Spiritual Journey (Florence Dunavant) locates Luke 17:5 immediately as the disciples’ exhausted response to Jesus’ radical command to forgive “seven times” — the sermon insists verse 5 must be read as their plea for supernatural strength to do what seems impossible, and it foregrounds a linguistic and pastoral reading that reframes the verse: the apostles’ request is not abstract but precisely about empowering them to obey the hard ethic of forgiveness, with the preacher using the Greek concept of scandalon (bait/trap) to clarify why forgiveness feels so difficult and why increased faith is necessary to refuse the bait and keep the flow of grace moving.

Luke 17:5 Theological Themes:

Growing Faith Amidst Temptations and Challenges(Open the Bible) develops a distinct pastoral-theological theme that asking for increased faith is a necessary moral responsibility for those in ministry and community life: faith is not merely personal assurance but the enabling power to avoid causing others to stumble, to rebuke and forgive rightly, and to persevere in holiness; thus the prayer “Increase our faith” is framed as a communal safeguard (leaders especially must pray it) and as the appropriate response when one recognizes the holiness the gospel demands is beyond unaided human strength.

Growing Faith Through Dreams and Life's Challenges(Pastor Rick) advances the theme that faith’s primary theology is formative—God intentionally gives dreams and permits delays as means to build dependence on him, so increased faith is less a spiritual commodity to be procured than a muscle to be strengthened by God-ordained stretching; dreams are portrayed theologically as divine prompts that are intentionally too large for the individual so faith—and thus dependence on God—must grow.

Growing Faith: Trusting in Jesus for Strength (TMAC Media) presents the theological theme that faith is a gift that can and should be cultivated through communal, sacramental, and ordained means — the preacher argues that God gives spiritual graces visibly (laying on of hands, sacraments) and that part of “increasing faith” is receiving and fanning into flame those gifts, so faith-growth is both an interior reliance on Christ and a corporate, liturgical process rather than merely a private moral effort.

Faith in Action: Embracing Love and Justice (Christ Church UCC Des Plaines) advances a distinctive theological theme that the measure of faith is its social fruit: authentic faith is essentially missional and justice-oriented, so theologically one cannot separate “increase our faith” from an expanded practice of compassion and civic responsibility; the sermon reframes faith not as doctrinal assurance but as a posture that compels systemic engagement with suffering.

Choosing the Path of Forgiveness: A Spiritual Journey (Florence Dunavant) emphasizes the theological principle that forgiveness is not optional if one lives under the economy of divine forgiveness: because God’s pardon toward us is the ground of Christian identity, the preacher insists theologically that withholding forgiveness blocks the flow of God’s mercy and that “increase our faith” points directly to the need for empowered pardon — forgiveness as spiritual discipline and litmus test of being in right relation with God.

Luke 17:5 Historical and Contextual Insights:

Growing Faith Amidst Temptations and Challenges(Open the Bible) supplies contextual detail about first-century and biblical background: it highlights Luke’s editorial practice (that Luke gathers teachings from different occasions) to explain why related sayings (mustard seed/mountain/mulberry tree) appear across the Gospels; it explicates the Greek term scandala to recover the sense of “offenses” or stumbling-blocks that make people fall away; it reads Jesus’ “little ones” in the light of synagogue/church practice and Matthew Henry’s tri-fold categories (persecutors, seducers, and hypocrites who live scandalously) to locate the social gravity of causing another believer to stumble, and it cites Leviticus 19:17’s cultural-ethical obligation to “reason frankly” with a neighbor to place Jesus’ rebuke-and-forgiveness instructions within longstanding Israelite moral teaching.

Choosing the Path of Forgiveness: A Spiritual Journey (Florence Dunavant) calls attention to the original-language and cultural texture behind Jesus’ teaching by unpacking the Greek term scandalon (translated “offense” or “stumbling block”) as literally the bait in a trap, and she uses that lexical insight to argue that Jesus was guaranteeing that occasions to be offended would be inevitable in human communities of his time (and ours), so Luke 17:5 must be read against a first-century world where social and moral entanglements would regularly create “bait” that tempts retaliation rather than forgiveness.

Luke 17:5 Cross-References in the Bible:

Growing Faith Amidst Temptations and Challenges(Open the Bible) connects Luke 17:5 to a web of biblical texts: it compares the “little faith” motifs in Matthew’s five occurrences (where Jesus says “O you of little faith”) to show a recurring pastoral diagnosis; it links the mustard-seed/mountain wording to the deliverance story in Mark 9/Matthew 17 (the father’s “I believe; help my unbelief” in Mark 9:24 and Jesus’ mustard-seed/mountain sayings) to explain why the disciples then ask for more faith; it draws on Leviticus 19:17 to shape Jesus’ instructions about rebuke (the Old Testament ethic of frank reconciliation), cites Matthew 18:15 on confrontation, and brings in Ephesians 6:12–17 (wrestling against spiritual forces; take up the armor of God and the shield of faith) to read the apostles’ request as a response to spiritual warfare; finally it catalogues Pauline and pastoral exhortations (2 Timothy 2:22 on pursuing faith, Colossians 2:7 on being rooted and growing in faith, 1 Thessalonians 5:10 and 1 Thessalonians 3:2 on faith’s protective and encouraging role, 2 Thessalonians 1:3 on faith growing) to show scriptural precedent for both asking God to increase faith and for practices that foster it.

Growing Faith Through Dreams and Life's Challenges(Pastor Rick) uses Luke 17:5 as the trigger for a faith-growth theology supported by multiple biblical citations: Hebrews 11:6 (without faith it is impossible to please God) is used to argue why increasing faith matters; Matthew 9:29 (“According to your faith be it done to you”) is appealed to show God responds proportionally to faith; Colossians 2:7 (“rooted and built up, established in the faith”) supports the “word as nourishment” route; Jeremiah 29:11 is used to ground the notion of God-given dreams and future purpose; Habakkuk 2:3 is quoted to teach patience in delays (“the vision waits for its appointed time”); and Isaiah 64:4 / Ephesians 3:20 are invoked to expand confidence that God acts beyond imagination—together these references frame Luke 17:5’s plea as both a doctrinal principle (God honors faith) and a practical posture (expectation + patience).

Growing Faith: Trusting in Jesus for Strength (TMAC Media) weaves Luke 17:5 into multiple scriptural references: Habakkuk’s “the righteous shall live by faith” is cited to show faith’s foundational role in salvation and life before God; Paul’s quotation and exposition of that line in Romans is invoked to connect faith’s theological centrality to Christian identity; Luke 17:6 (the mustard-seed/upright-tree image) is used concretely to underscore Jesus’ paradoxical teaching that minute faith focused on Christ can accomplish what looks impossible; 2 Timothy and 1 Timothy are appealed to for the “fan into flame” metaphor and for the practice of laying on of hands (ordination) as a means by which God gives gifts to be cultivated; Psalm 37 (“trust in the Lord and he will act”) is used pastoral-therapeutically to encourage stepping out in obedient action so faith can be strengthened by seeing God act.

Faith in Action: Embracing Love and Justice (Christ Church UCC Des Plaines) groups Luke 17:5 with Luke 17:10 (the parable about servants not expecting praise) and the mustard-seed image: the sermon argues Jesus’ teaching about the servant’s duty and the mustard seed together teach that discipleship’s ethic is faithful service without entitlement, and that “increase our faith” is answered by small, faithful acts (the seeds) which demonstrate faith’s authenticity in ways Scripture’s parables model.

Choosing the Path of Forgiveness: A Spiritual Journey (Florence Dunavant) references the Lord’s Prayer (“forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”) to show Jesus’ expectation that our relationship with God is bound up with our willingness to forgive others, cites the parable of the forgiven debtor (the unforgiving servant) to demonstrate the ethical logic connecting divine pardon and human forgiveness, and appeals to Galatians 5:1’s proclamation of Christian freedom to argue that God’s liberating forgiveness is not given so we hoard it but so we pass it on, thereby grounding Luke 17:5 in the wider New Testament teaching that forgiveness is constitutive of Christian liberty.

Luke 17:5 Christian References outside the Bible:

Growing Faith Amidst Temptations and Challenges(Open the Bible) explicitly draws on several Christian writers to shape interpretation: Matthew Henry’s commentary is used to classify the kinds of people who “cause scandals” (persecutors, seducers, and professing Christians who live scandalously), Dale Ralph Davis is cited to nuance Jesus’ command to “rebuke” (Davis stresses that rebuke is a frank disclosure, not a rage-filled reaming, and must include hearing the offender’s side), C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity) is quoted to underscore the insight that trying to be good reveals our moral weakness and thereby drives us to ask for increased faith, and John Calvin is quoted at length to describe the divided condition of the “godly heart” that partly rests on gospel promises and partly trembles at its own sin—these authors are used to deepen pastoral and psychological understanding of why the apostles ask “Increase our faith” and what such a prayer presumes about human weakness and divine help.

Growing Faith Through Dreams and Life's Challenges(Pastor Rick) explicitly appeals to Hudson Taylor (a noted missionary) as an illustrative maxim for process—Taylor’s three-stage formulation (“impossible, possible, done”) is used to interpret delays and the faith-testing process as stages in God’s work so that Luke 17:5’s petition for increased faith is fitted into a missionary/evangelistic pattern of God enlarging possibility through time and dependence; Rick uses Taylor’s aphorism to reassure hearers that the “impossible” stage of a God-sized dream will move to completed fulfillment as faith is strengthened.

Luke 17:5 Illustrations from Secular Sources:

Growing Faith Through Dreams and Life's Challenges(Pastor Rick) uses extended secular and autobiographical illustrations to make the Luke 17:5 emphasis concrete: he recounts the founding story of Saddleback (studying census data, choosing a growth area, writing a letter to a denominational director, crossing letters in the mail, moving with no money, a realtor finding a condo with first month free, an Episcopalian priest phoning to pay the first two months’ salary, hand-addressing 15,000 invitation letters, and a dress-rehearsal service where five people unexpectedly came to faith) to demonstrate how God-given dreams are typically larger than one’s capacity and require faith tested by real-world risk; he also uses the muscle/weightlifting analogy (faith grows by resistance, like muscle grows by stress) and numerous pragmatic metaphors (mushroom vs. oak-tree growth, “how to eat an elephant one bite at a time,” and the X-ACTO-knife joke about cutting the word “impossible” from his dictionary) to illustrate that delays and repeated testing are the normal, even providential, means God uses to answer the prayer “Increase our faith.”

Growing Faith: Trusting in Jesus for Strength (TMAC Media) peppers the Luke 17:5 exposition with secular cultural and biographical analogies to make the point that even exceptional human examples are subordinate to Christ-centered faith: the preacher opens by naming athletic and artistic exemplars (Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee) and two famed preachers (Benjamin Franklin’s anecdote of hearing George Whitefield and Billy Graham’s elevator humility) to show human admiration and excellence, then connects those illustrations to the observation that even leaders need spiritual boosts — he also uses a camping campfire/“fanning into flame” image as a gritty, tactile secular metaphor for how one must nurture a small spark of faith, and recounts his personal story of vocational risk (losing denominational support) to show how stepping out in faith produced providential provision and thus increased trust.

Faith in Action: Embracing Love and Justice (Christ Church UCC Des Plaines) draws on contemporary civic and activist examples to illustrate what a mustard-seed faith that moves toward justice looks like: the sermon cites the recurring social response of “thoughts and prayers” after mass shootings to criticize inaction and then marshals the public witness of Greta Thunberg and her involvement with humanitarian flotillas as a vivid example of a young activist translating a small but resolute commitment into global, risky action for the vulnerable, and it recalls the Pulse nightclub massacre and the Latino community’s solidarity afterward as a secular example of communal resilience and justice-seeking that the preacher believes faith should fuel.

Choosing the Path of Forgiveness: A Spiritual Journey (Florence Dunavant) uses vivid everyday and scientific secular illustrations to make the psychological and physiological stakes of forgiveness concrete: she explicates the Greek scandalon with the image of bait in a mousetrap to explain how offense entices us, cites a Johns Hopkins study identifying “bitterness” as a serious health risk to argue unforgiveness harms the body, and relies on commonplace metaphors — splinters that obsess us, a hurting dog that lashes out when wounded — to portray how unresolved pain distorts behavior and why forgiving is a practical, healthful spiritual discipline rather than naïve acquiescence.