February 4, 2024

 The following transcript has been electronically transcribed. Any errors in spelling, syntax, or grammar should be attributed to the electronic method of transcription and its inherent limitations.

We find ourselves this morning in a great transition. We are transitioning this morning from the story that we just recently spent three weeks on the most glorious experience in all of human experiences in which the three disciples experienced the deity of Christ on the mountain. And then they come down the mountain and they have that conversation about Elijah and the resurrection from the dead.

And now they transition from the most glorious of human experiences to the most lowly of human experiences. For they find waiting them at the bottom of the mountain, a passage that speaks to us of great disobedience, great failure, because the passage in front of us is a passage that is all about failure.

The passage will center upon the failure of the disciples at the beginning of the passage. It will come back to the failure of the disciples at the end of the passage, and in the middle of the passage will be about the failure of the Father. And so, with that being said, let's now turn our focus upon this passage.

Oftentimes, as I am teaching and preaching the Word of God, I often am asked the question, you know, I've read that passage a hundred times, I've never seen those sorts of things in there. How do you see what you see in the Scriptures? And there are two things really, primarily the Holy Spirit, but there are two things really that help in this regard.

Everyone probably here has heard me say That we stand on the shoulders of giants that there are Christians who have gone before us for centuries now and the Holy Spirit has blessed them by revealing to them deep and profound truths in his word, and they have been faithful to write those things down.

And so I encourage all Christians to avail yourself of those who have gone before us and seen these things in scripture and written them down. But secondly. The other aspect that I have always found incredibly helpful in searching the scriptures is to teach myself the habit of asking questions of the text, asking questions of the passage.

The Word of God is not a dead document. We don't study that. Just words on a page. This is a living document. This is the living word of God. And as a living word of God, it is God's means of communicating with his people. And in the way of communication, we just approach it as such and ask questions of the passage.

What does this mean? Why is this here? Why is the passage itself included in the, in the scriptures? What is this trying to say to me? And just. Cultivate that habit of asking questions. I say all that because this is a particularly good passage for us to place into our, thinking before we even begin the passage, place into our thinking a number of questions that if these questions are forefront in your mind, it will help the passage to open itself for us this morning.

Questions such as this. What is the biggest problem that the passage presents for us in the passage? There's going to be a problem. In fact, there's going to be more than one problem. What problem is most profound? What problem is most foundational? What problem concerns Jesus the most? What is Jesus most concerned about, about, correcting in the passage?

The passage will contain a rebuke from Jesus, perhaps more than one rebuke. Who does Jesus rebuke in the passage? Who are all the people that are the subject of Jesus's rebuke in the passage? What is Jesus considered to be the greatest danger that the passage presents? Questions such as this, and we could go on with other similar questions along the same line of thinking, but that will help.

To focus our thoughts as we begin the passage this morning. So let's begin by reading. It's a lengthy passage starting from verse 14 through verse 29. And it is not a passage that avails itself to being separated into two sittings. So we'll cover all 29 verses beginning from verse 14. And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and scribes arguing with them.

And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And asked him, what are you arguing about with them? And someone from the crowd answered him, Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.

So I asked your disciples to cast it out and they were not able and he answered them. Oh Faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you bring him to me and they brought the boy to him and when the spirit saw him? Immediately it convulsed the boy and he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth And Jesus asked his father, how long has this been happening to him?

And he said, from childhood. And it is often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus said to him, if you can, all things are possible for one who believes. And immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe, help my unbelief.

And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, You mutant, deaf spirit, I command you come out of him and never enter him again. And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse. So that most of them said, He is dead.

But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up. And he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. And so as we find ourself here now at the bottom of the mountain, cast back into the ugly reality.

Of what has occupied these other nine disciples while the three disciples were on the mountaintop and by that I mean certainly the mountaintop experiencing the premier human experience of Seeing the full deity of Christ even if just for a few moments as we find ourself here at the bottom of the mountain We find ourself faced with the ugly reality of what's taking place at the bottom.

And as we work our way through this, we will find that the reality of what's taking place at the bottom of the mountain is far uglier than perhaps we have realized. So, 14, And when they came to the disciples, meaning the three and Jesus coming down the mountain. When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes.

arguing with them. Now that word arguing we've run across it before. It's a very combative word. It has the sense of harassing or haranguing or, taunting. And so what we find here is we come to the bottom of the mountain. Here's these disciples and they're being taunted by the scribes who are arguing with them.

And as we'll see the story unfold, the argument is revolving around this boy who is demon possessed. And the disciples have been unable to cast out the demon. So they're tempting, they're taunting, and they're, they're throwing harassment at these disciples. And we, we are reminded here that chapters ago, back in chapter 3, we were told that the scribes and the Pharisees had made their judgment about Jesus and how it is that He's casting out demons, how it is that He's doing these miraculous works.

They never denied that he's able to cast out demons, but they ascribe that power to the power of Satan, to the power of Beelzebul. And that in their mind is the basis, is the foundation of his power to do these mighty works. But now that he is absent, and one thing that we'll see all throughout the Gospels is that when Jesus is absent, the disciples are powerless.

And here they are once again powerless. Jesus is absent from them, and in the midst of all this, the disciples have failed to cast out this particular demon, and the scribes are hurling insults at them. Aha! I told you this man was a fraud. We told you that this man was doing what he was doing by the power of Satan.

Now the power of the Almighty has surpassed his power, and you can see what he's all about now. You can see what his followers are all about. They're impotent. They can't even cast this demon out of the boy here. So this painfully obvious that the disciples are being harassed by these scribes. Also just as painfully obvious is the fact that the scribes themselves, though they are, though they are taunting the disciples, they themselves are not able to cast out the demon either.

So now they come to the disciples, they see this great argument taking place, verse 15, and immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up. So we often find in Mark's gospel that the crowds are amazed. We see that over and over, the amazement of the crowds, the astonishment of the crowds, but their amazement and their astonishment has always been an amazement at something that Jesus has done or something that Jesus has said.

Jesus has delivered a powerful teaching. Jesus has cleansed the leper. He's cast out a demon. He has committed some sort of healing. He has calmed the sea. Something has happened and the people are amazed to see or hear what Jesus has done. Now, this is the only occasion in all of Mark's gospel in which the crowd is amazed before Jesus does anything.

They're amazed to see Him. And in fact, the word that Mark uses here, amazed or greatly amazed, he only uses this word three times. It's a very, very strong word and it carries with it a strong sense, not of, of happy to see someone or, Oh, Jesus, we're just glad you're here because these disciples, they tried to do this, but so we're glad you're here.

Come on over here and take care of this. That's not the word. That's not what the word is describing. The word carries with it a strong sense of not just amazement or astonishment, but distress and disturbance and a great alarm. Mark will use this word only two more times. He'll use it in Chapter 14 to describe Jesus emotional state in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of His arrest.

He'll say that Jesus became greatly distressed or greatly disturbed. He'll use it finally in Chapter 16 to describe the reaction of the disciples when they see the angels in the empty tomb. They were alarmed to see the angels. So it carries with it a sense of of foreboding. And so Mark says that the crowd, upon seeing Jesus, were utterly amazed, utterly astonished.

They were disturbed. Why are they disturbed to see Jesus? They're disturbed to see Jesus because they've just been best blaspheming his name. You ever been there? You ever been talking about somebody behind their back? We've all done that. You shouldn't do that, of course. But we've all done that. Where we're talking about somebody behind their back and then you just look up to see that they're right over your shoulder listening.

They ever happened? That's what just happened. They were blaspheming the name of Jesus. And they look up to see He's right there, and He's heard what they're saying. And so they're greatly amazed, and they ran up to greet Him. So this is a picture that we see here of the Son of Man coming down the mountain, and what does He find at the bottom of the mountain?

Of course, the parallels that we talked about two weeks ago, the parallels between this mountain, and Jesus going up this mountain, and Moses going up the mountain to meet with God. One other parallel, Moses comes down the mountain. What does he find at the bottom of the mountain? Does he find faithfulness?

No, he finds idol worship, he finds golden calves. In a similar way, Jesus comes down the mountain and what does he find at the bottom of the mountain? Blasphemy. He finds Those who are blaspheming his name reminds me of Luke chapter 18 in verse 8, where Jesus says, When the Son of Man comes, what will he find?

Will he find faithfulness on the earth, or will he find blasphemy? So he's come down the mountain, and he's found that the crowd and the scribes are blaspheming his name. The disciples are completely apparently in, in, in, in impotent to, or unable to counter this attack because they couldn't do anything.

They couldn't cast the demon out. They sort of got egg all over, all over their face. They're unable to do anything. So now verse 16, and he asked them, what are you arguing with them about? So we got a lot of pronouns floating around there. We've got a lot of them’s and we've got three groups of people. So it's not entirely clear who Jesus said that to.

There's three groups of people. There's the crowd, there's the scribes and the disciples. So it's unlikely that Jesus speaks this to the crowd because he's asking, why are you arguing with them? So he either speaks this to the scribes or to the disciples. And it really doesn't matter, but it's not really possible to tell for sure which one he says it to.

But he probably says this. to the scribes because he's asking why are you doing the arguing? Why are you the ones arguing? Why are you arguing with him? Verse 17 and someone from the crowd answered him. So he asked this question, probably of the scribes and somebody out of the crowd steps out and says, I can answer that.

I can tell you what's been happening. Someone from the crowd answered him teacher. So notice here, the progression in titles that Jesus has been recently called. We've gone from the Christ. You are the Christ. To the rabbi, the anointed, or the, the, the revered, the respected rabbi, now to just, well, just teacher.

Teacher, I brought my son to you. I brought my son to you, and you weren't here. You were up on a mountain somewhere with these other three. We don't know what you're doing But I brought him to you and you weren't here for he has a spirit that makes him mute So he says I brought my son to you Luke tells us in his account that this was the the father's only Child his only son.

So there I'm reminded of a theme. It's a precious theme It is a it is a very intimate theme that we see in scripture. It's the theme of an only child. Here we're told that this is the Father's only child. We remember the daughter of Jairus that was the only child. We remember the son of the widow of Nain who was the only child.

We remember, of course, Abraham who was told to take his only child up the mountain. So we see this recurring theme in the Scriptures of an only child. And usually when we see that theme, it's in connection with something that's happened to the child or something that is threatening to be, to happen to the, to the child, such as the sacrifice of Isaac or the potential sacrifice of Isaac or the death of the widow and her only son, or the death of the only son of the widow in the Elijah story.

We could go on and on. But there always seems to be this connection of some pain, some loss, some sickness, a death in connection with an only child. And I think that the Lord there is just saying to us, He wants our hearts to connect, of course, to His only begotten Son. Because isn't, isn't there a special degree of, of attachment or preciousness?

to the only child. All Children, of course, are precious. But when there's an only child, isn't there a certain attentiveness, a certain connection, a certain preciousness there with that only child? And so I think that the Lord is calling us to that connection. His only son that he brought. And so he says, I brought my son to you, to you, but you weren't here.

Verse 18. And whenever the spirit seizes him, it seizes him and throws him down and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes. So what we have here is a description of something that we would recognize rather quickly as something that we've referred to as grand mal seizures or epileptic seizures. All the symptoms are there.

There's the, the, the, shaking of the body, the falling down on the ground, the rigidity, the foaming from the mouth, all these things, the unconsciousness that ensues, all these things. are in connection to or in, in agreement with what we would call grand mal seizures. And so the question then really arises, we really spent a little bit of time on this this past Wednesday, but we didn't completely exhaust the topic.

We saved some of it obviously for today. But let's revisit this idea, this idea of The natural and the supernatural. The intersection of the natural and the supernatural. And let's sort of face this head on. Because oftentimes what we encounter as we study our scriptures is we find descriptions of conditions that today we would attach some sort of medical diagnosis to that.

But in the scriptures they're presented to us as the manifestations of demonic activity. And so how do we understand that? How do we wade through that? The first thing for me to point out is this. Despite what some would say, ancient people were not ignorant of medical maladies. Sometimes we just have this, this, perverse view of ancient people as though they were completely ignorant of all medical maladies.

And certainly the fact is that they did not understand what we understand in our modern world about the body and the mind. But that is not to say that ancient people were ignorant of certain medical maladies. And in fact, in this case, we find that ancient people were not ignorant of the phenomenon of seizures.

Because in Matthew's account of this, he uses the word seizures. He sees, he has these seizures that come upon him. And the ancient world, of course, had individuals that were unfortunately suffered from seizures, and it wasn't always ascribed to demonic activity. However, let's sort of press this a little bit further.

And really what we're thinking about is the intersection here of the natural and the supernatural. Because here is the critique that's often launched against the scriptures. The critique goes like this, ancient people, whenever they encountered something they didn't understand, they explained it by resorting to the supernatural.

So whatever it may be, whether it be the rising of the sun or whether it be the changing of the seasons or whether it be seizures that come over an individual like this. If they didn't understand it, they just explained it by referring to the supernatural. However, today we're much more refined. We're much more educated.

We're much more knowledgeable. And so we don't need to resort to the supernatural to explain that which has natural causes as if the two things never intersect. And that's the key. As if the natural world and the supernatural world never intersect one another. However, when we look to our scriptures, and we ask our scriptures, when we see demonic activity How does it manifest itself?

I would challenge anyone here to search the scriptures and find demonic activity in the scriptures that ever manifests itself in anything other than a natural mal malady, than some sort of affliction of the body or of the mind. And so it is often the case that we find in the scriptures that that which is specifically said to be demonic activity is is manifested in that which otherwise looks just like natural maladies.

Think of Job's boils. Or think of what happened to Job's family and his children and his flocks. All of that came about through natural maladies, natural means. And so, when we encounter someone in Scripture like this, who has such an incredible suffering under epileptic seizures as this, we would think about that and we would say, you know what?

Satan is not a creator. Satan does not have the power to create. He only has the ability to pervert. To take God's world and pervert it. And so when Satan wants to oppress an individual, what he seems to do in the pattern of Scripture is to use natural maladies. To afflict that person. So what seems likely is that this person has within his body this particular medical frailty and the demon seizes upon that and uses the natural malady to his own advantage.

Now, this is not to say that whenever an individual exhibits certain maladies such as this, that's demonic activity. Nor is it to say that we could conclusively say that whenever people exhibit natural maladies or sicknesses or, inflictions of the, of the brain or of the mind, that that's not demonic activity.

Either of those would be irresponsible to say. But it is to say this. When Satan wants to attack an individual or when a demon wants to attack an individual, he does it by inflicting or accentuating or using natural suffering, natural means to inflict suffering upon that individual. But scripture also shows us the pattern in which the writers of the scriptures are not so irresponsible as to say everything that afflicts people is a result of demonic activity.

Paul doesn't write to Timothy in 2 Timothy and say, Hey, Timothy, this malady of your stomach, where you're having these stomach issues, why don't you just come and cast that demon out? No, Paul says, take some wine with your water. That'll help your stomach affliction. Likewise, nothing is said about casting the demon out of Peter's mother in law when Jesus raises her up out of the bed.

Nothing is said about demonic activity with the woman with the flow of blood for 12 years or Jairus daughter who is on the point of death. Nothing is said about demons attacking them. However, the Scriptures will make distinction in certain cases like this to say here is a natural affliction that is being used to great effect.

By the demonic world, the intersection of the natural and the supernatural. So it is, it presents no problem to us to read in the pages of our scripture that there are natural afflictions that are being used by the demonic and natural afflictions that are not necessarily being used by the demonic.

So these, these afflictions that come upon him, these seizures. He says that he's also, he's, I'm sorry, he throws him down. It throws him down. That's the same word that Mark used in Chapter 3 to describe the, the old wineskins with the new wine put in them. And you remember what happens to the old wineskins?

They burst asunder. So literally, it bursts him. It throws him down. By that, we see that this is not, in the, in the, in the view of Scripture, in the view of the Father, this is not just the, the boy being overcome by the seizures. and falling. Instead, it's the demon taking the boy and throwing him down.

You get the image here, the picture of this demon bullying the boy, shoving him down, throwing him down to the ground, and he becomes rigid. That's the same word that Mark used there in Chapter 3. He uses it again in Chapter 4. He uses it to describe the man with the withered hand, the hand that was Withered, shriveled up, becomes rigid.

He uses it again in chapter 4 to describe the plant that springs forth from the rocky soil, and then it quickly dies and withers, or becomes rigid. So he becomes fixed, he becomes rigid. So he says, I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not Now, the tragedy of that, we might say, well, I mean, who can blame these disciples?

They're just humans. They're just people and they're going up against these supernatural demons. I mean, what could be expected of them until we remind ourself, did not Jesus give these men the authority to do just that? We are reminded from chapter six that Jesus specifically gave them the authority. To cast these demons out and furthermore, not only were they given the authority Jesus never took it back and not only has he not taken it back We also are told that they were successful in casting out these demons from chapter 6 and verse 13, they cast out many demons.

So having previously been able to cast demons out, they find themselves at this point unable to cast out this demon. So their inability to cast out this particular demon Now has had a great detrimental effect upon the father's faith. We'll see that as the story plays out. The father is coming to Jesus with a faith in Jesus that we'll explore in just a moment, but that faith that the father comes with has been greatly shaken by the fact that these disciples were unable to help his boy.

So as the father is describing to Jesus the symptoms of this boy, what Mark wants us to do, he wants us to have our hearts just. grasped by the plight of this boy and the father, because, you know, often when we read scripture, our natural reaction to things like this is just to be cold and distant. How many times have you read this story before and thought, Oh, another exorcism story.

Here's a boy, poor boy, oppressed by this demon, possessed by the demon. Jesus casts him out. Yay, Jesus, go Jesus. And we just sort of read that with sort of a distance, sort of a coldness in our heart. But Mark wants us to connect with the Father. He wants us to hear in this Father's experience, the experience of a horrible life, of a wicked, vile, evil spirit from hell, who has entered into his only child.

And is inflicting upon his only child such a life of horror, such a life of pain, such a life of, of anxiety. Who knows when the next seizure attack is going to come? A little bit later, we were going to, we'll learn some more about this as the father will tell us that the demon often tries to. And so once again, the boy isn't overcome with a seizure and falls into a fire or falls into a body of water.

We don't know what this exactly looks like, but perhaps if we were watching this to happen, we might think, did the boy just go and jump into the river? Did the boy just go and run over and jump into that fire? Perhaps that's how the father knows. The demon is taking my boy and he's throwing him into this fire.

This demon is seeking to do Precisely what Jesus said the demon's father does, which is he came to kill, destroy, and to steal. And so that's precisely what the demon is doing. He's seeking to kill him. He's seeking to destroy him. That's what the father says. He throws him into the fire. He throws him into the water to try to destroy him.

And he's stolen. We'll find out his voice, his ability to speak. A little bit later, Jesus will refer to the demon. He will talk to the demon and say, you deaf and mute spirit. So apparently the demon has stolen from the boy, not only his ability to speak, but his ability to hear. So on top of all of this, the boy lives in a silent world, unable to communicate anything in any real degree to anyone around him.

Living in this silent hell of one person, being attacked, being inhibited. Being the host for evil living directly in him that is seeking to hurt him as much as it can and seeking to destroy him. How many times have perhaps the father has to, has said to pull the boy out of the fire and put the fire out, roll the boy on the ground.

And then put salve on the burn wounds or how many times has the father or perhaps the mother or perhaps some friends had to go in and pull the boy out of the water as he was not only in the water but had gone under and wasn't coming up as though something was holding him down on the bottom. How many times has that happened?

And this is the description of a life of absolute misery in hell. God wants us to connect. He wants us to have empathy with this man and with this boy and with their struggle. So verse 19, verse 18, they were not able, verse 19. And he answered them, Oh, faithless generation. How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?

So Jesus utters this groan from, from his spirit, this groan from his soul. Oh, faithless generation. The word in the Greek for faith is pistis. And so this is the word apistis, a-pistis, a, without faith, no faith, faithless ones. Oh, faithless ones. How long am I to bear with you? How long am I to be with you?

So Jesus is not lamenting here the lack of power on the part of his disciples. He's lamenting the lack of faith He's lamenting the absence of faith. We should begin contrasting this with Nazareth comparing and contrasting this with what happened at Nazareth remember Nazareth where they refused to believe And because of their refusal to believe, it was not in the will of the Father for Jesus to do any mighty works there, and so He did none.

And so this, in comparison, is something like Nazareth, where Jesus just says, Oh, the faithlessness. Oh, how long. The heart of the struggle, you should begin seeing right now, the heart of the struggle is not a struggle against the demonic. Throughout the passage, the demonic is pictured as utterly powerless against Jesus.

Jesus effortlessly, effortlessly casts out the demon. Instead, this is not a struggle against the demonic, this is a struggle against unbelief. And this is what this passage is all about, the struggle against unbelief. So Jesus says, Oh, this faithful generation, faithless generation, How long am I to be here?

How long am I to bear with you? What is Jesus saying here? Is Jesus just saying, I'm just so sick of all these people. When, Father, when can I be done with these people down here and get back up there with the angels? What is Jesus saying? What Jesus is communicating to us is a longing, a deep longing in His Spirit to be back in a context, in a place, or to be in a time in which unbelief is done.

Unbelief among God's people is done because what he's experiencing here, he is not lamenting the unbelief of the curious crowds or the scribes. He's lamenting the unbelief of his people. His disciples and this father whom we will see is one of his sheep. He's lamenting the fact that their hearts are a mixture of belief and unbelief, and he's saying, oh, father, when will this mixture of belief and unbelief be over?

How long must I bear with this context, with this life of where your people have hearts that are double-minded, have hearts that are a mixture of faith and unfaith of belief and disbelief. Father, this is a burden for me to bear. You see, Jesus sees unbelief as a burden. Jesus sees unbelief as something wicked.

That's what we read in Matthew's account in Matthew 17, where Jesus says, Oh, faithless and twisted, or we could say perverse generation. You see, Jesus sees unbelief as perversity. And that is quite the opposite of what we see it today, isn't it? Our modern view of unbelief, we tend to look upon unbelief as well.

This person made a choice not to believe, or this person just is not a believing person, and that's their, that's their right, that's their choice. Jesus sees it as pure wickedness. As pure perversity. In the view of Jesus, to disbelieve that which is most believable, or to distrust that who is most trustable, That's perversity.

In Jesus's view, it is irrational not to believe. And haven't we just flipped that on its head today? Don't we as moderns, don't we like to say, oh, faith is the irrational thing? To believe in something you've never seen, that's irrational. In Jesus's view, it's irrational It's illogical to disbelieve, it's illogical to not trust the being who is most trustworthy in all the universe.

The one being who is perfectly trustable, to not trust that one being? And Jesus's view is perverse and weakened to live in a world in which all around us is evidence of a creator God. We say this quite frequently, and we're right to say this, we can't prove the existence of God. God didn't intend it that way.

He didn't create a world in which. Evidence for his, for his existence is this tangible thing that can be offered. He didn't want that. But nevertheless, to live in a world in which we have these bodies that are just incredible creations that are capable of feeling and hearing and seeing, capable of thinking higher thoughts, capable of reasoning, self-aware of ourself and others, Capable of knowing great realities of the world around us.

And then we look at this world and we see the creation. And how, you know, all you have to do is just watch some of the nature documentaries to be just amazed at the complexity of the creation. Or the scale of the universe. The hundreds of billions of light years that are the diameter of the universe, supposedly.

Or the hundreds of billions of stars, or your body's ability to heal itself, or reproduce itself. All of those things would lend the rational person to say it is irrational to disbelieve in a higher being. It is illogical to distrust the most trustworthy being. It is wicked and perverse. To disbelieve that which is most trustable and most believable.

So, Jesus says, Oh, faithless generation, how long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me. So the Father said earlier, I brought him to you. You weren't here. You weren't available. Jesus now says, Bring him to me. And in bring the, bring him to me, those words, bring him to me. We see absolute certainty. There is not a shred of doubt that this boy, when he is brought to Jesus, this will be nothing that Jesus will encounter that in any way presents a problem to him.

The healing of the boy is absolutely certain when they bring him to Jesus. Now, verse 20, And so they brought the boy to him, and when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth. So we see here that the initial result for the boy is that things don't get better, things get a whole lot worse, don't they?

In fact, we're going to see a little bit later in the next verse or two that things are going to get much worse for the boy. We'll explore that in just a moment. But the initial reaction for the boy is that things don't just get immediately better, they get a whole lot worse. The boy here is a picture for us of the process of conversion.

The boy is possessed. of evil, he is a slave to evil, and he encounters Jesus, and the evil is driven from him, and so he, he is then a picture of new life in Christ. But this new life in Christ begins not on this happy go lucky, joyful sort of, kick where he just goes skipping about. He has the experience of the worst seizure yet, the worst attack of the demonic yet.

And all this comes as this demon sees him, when the spirit saw him. So here we're reminded of a theme that I found to be an unbreakable theme. I know of no instance in scripture in which this theme is not held up. And that's the theme that when the demonic comes into the proximity of the Christ, when the demonic comes into his proximity.

Their attacks accentuate. They ramp up. So think with me, for example, the demoniac who was in the synagogue in Chapter 1. This demoniac had been attending the synagogue probably for years and nobody really knew anything. Nobody suspected anything. Oh yeah, he was a little weird. He was a little off. Some of his jokes were kind of off color, but I mean, they never really suspected he was demon possessed.

Until the Christ comes for one of the services. And Jesus teaches from the Scriptures, and then is when the demon makes the man stand up and uses the man's voice to say, I know who you are. You are the Holy One of God. Or think of, for example, the demon known as Legion. As Jesus approaches, it's then that the demon unleashes his most ferocious attack.

All of this points us to Revelation 12. 12. In Revelation 12. 12 we're told that the, that, the heavens who, the heavens and you who dwell in them but woe to you, it reads, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath Because he knows that his time is short. So that's pointing us to the end of the age in which Satan has this awareness that his time is short and he unleashes the fiercest wrath that he has.

Likewise, the boy, the demon that's possessing the boy, Sees Jesus, knows that His time is short, and He unleashes upon the boy His fiercest attack yet. He convulses Him, He falls down, and we're going to see in just a moment, it's as though He's dead. So all that should be, I think, maybe a little bit of a comfort to us.

We, of course, do not know the timing of the Lord. We do not know His return. His return is imminent. But we do know that the Scriptures teach us that as the time of Christ draws near, The demons and Satan, their anger and their fury will grow to a fever pitch. Now, verse 21, And Jesus asked his father, how long has this been happening to him?

And he said, From childhood,

from childhood. In my mind, I've got this picture. Most of us in the parent in the room are parents. And so you can maybe if you've got an older parent or older children or adult children, maybe you can think back to those earlier days. In my mind, I have this picture. Of those days, you know, when they're just learning to walk and they're just sort of teetering around and pulling up and just starting to walk.

And here's this little boy, just, he's only been walking a week. And then all of a sudden, he's walking across the room and he falls. And at first they think he maybe just tripped or he's just, just getting his legs under him. But then they look and he's convulsing. And he's foaming. And his teeth, his mouth is clenched shut.

And his eyes are rolled back in his head and he's shaking and he's trembling. And from that point, this demon has attacked the boy and attacked him and attacked him and attacked him. The word that Mark uses often gives us the sense that this is something that happens with regularity from childhood. But notice Jesus question.

How long? I'm not aware of another instance in which Jesus needs background information. And of course, Jesus doesn't need background information. The Son of God knows exactly how long this demon has attacked the boy. Furthermore, Jesus doesn't need that information in order to cast the demon out. Why do you think Jesus asks?

I think for the same reason we mentioned earlier. Jesus wants those watching to be drawn into this saga. To be drawn into this horrid existence that is the father's and the mother's and the boy's existence by saying how long and having the people around him hear from childhood. Now, what's going on with the boy right now?

Did you notice? The boy is convulsing and Jesus is asking the father about his medical history. Isn't that odd? Isn't that odd that Jesus is conversing with the father? While the boy is still writhing on the ground. So imagine those who are watching. There's this boy, maybe a teenage boy, maybe older teen boy, writhing on the ground.

And they hear, the bystanders hear the father say, from childhood, this has gone on now, a decade and a half. But if you can do anything. Now. Look at verse 22. And it is often cast him into the fire and the water to destroy him. So there, once again, we see the activity of the demon. The word there below, to cast, to throw him.

He didn't fall in the water. This is the demon attempting to destroy, to kill, to harm this boy in any way possible. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us. Back in the passage of the Syrophoenician woman whose daughter was possessed of demon, there in that passage we saw her as a model of intercessory prayer.

And one of the aspects of her request to Jesus, remember, was her identification with her daughter. She says to Jesus, help us have mercy on us. It's as though her daughter's struggle is hers. And that's a foundational element of intercessory prayer is identification with those for whom you are intercessing.

And so here the father says, have mercy on us. Help us if you can do anything. So you do remember the three aspects that Mark has shown us of saving faith. Time and again, we have seen those come to Jesus. who possess saving faith. And we've noticed that there's three commonalities in the faith that they have.

And those three commonalities are, one, they believe that Jesus is able to help them. Two, they believe Jesus is willing to help them. And three, they believe that Jesus will make himself accessible to them. Those are the three elements of saving faith in Mark's Gospel. Jesus is able, He's willing, He'll make Himself available.

So, you remember the story of the leper back in Chapter 1. He had faith that Jesus could heal him, but he wasn't quite convinced that Jesus was willing. If you are willing, you can cleanse me. And Jesus said, Oh, I am willing. Here we see something of the opposite. He doesn't doubt Jesus's willingness, but he does seem to doubt his ability.

Why does he doubt his ability? His disciples just failed. So if you're able, if you can, if this is not too hard of a demon for you, will you help us? Will you have compassion on us? Again, consider what their life was like. Consider the hell that is their existence. Now verse 23, And Jesus said to him, If you can, all things are possible for one who believes.

So Jesus turns the tables on him. The problem is not Jesus's ability. The problem is the man's ability to believe. That's why Jesus turns the tables back around to him. He says, The issue is not my ability. The issue is not my power. The issue is not my, my, my power to cast this demon out. The issue is your ability to believe in that power.

That's the issue that he turns back on. If you can, all things are possible for one who believes. Now that is a verse that perhaps more so than any other single verse has been ripped right out of its context and made to say what it doesn't say. All things are possible for the one who believes. So what do we make that verse to say?

We make that verse to say, all you have to do is believe hard enough. and anything's possible. So this is the seed of the things like word of faith, speak it into existence, just speak it and it'll be, that sort of thing. This is the seed of that. That's the root of that. All you have to do is believe hard enough and it can be.

You can believe it into existence. You can believe it into creation. So that's how this has been twisted among Christian circles, but even outside of Christian circles, this has been twisted to mean something quite perverse compared to how Jesus meant it when he spoke it. Because outside of Christian circles, it's been mean, it's been taken to mean some sort of magic ability, some sort of magical talisman sort of thing that if you just believe something hard enough, you can affect it.

How many of us have had the experience of maybe there's a sports team that you follow and that sports team was sort of a Cinderella team, wasn't supposed to make the playoffs, but they made the playoffs, wasn't supposed to make it to the end, to the finals, but they make it to the finals, now they're going to the championship game.

And what's the mantra? What's the slogan? Believe. As though your belief has anything to do with the outcome of that sports game. Has anything even in the same universe to do with the outcome of something such as a sports competition? And so we've taken this to mean something that Jesus didn't say.

Anything is possible for the one who believes. Jesus is not saying that all you have to do is have enough faith and anything becomes possible for you. Instead, Jesus is saying that those who come to the Father With true and genuine faith, place no limits on what the Father can do. That's what Jesus is saying.

Look at the context. Because the Father lacked the faith, the belief, the ability to believe that Jesus was God. That's what he said. If you are able. So his faith is teetering on the brink of failure over the aspect of Jesus's ability. And Jesus answers that by saying, those who come to me with genuine faith, place no limits on what I'm able to do.

If I can. No, no, no, no. That's not a limit to place on me. Your faith in me must be a faith that believes that anything that can be done with strength or power that is within the will of God, I can do. And so that's what he says. Anything is possible for the one who believes. So Jesus is not affirming that our faith can somehow change or shape or direct the will of God.

He is saying that genuine, true, saving faith

So Mark wants us to see there that the faith of the Father acts in an immediate way. It doesn't wait. It doesn't hesitate. Immediately, the father of child cried out and said, I believe, help my unbelief. True faith, listen to this closely. True faith is always aware of how small and frail it is. That is a characteristic of true and genuine faith.

True and genuine faith always has, as a component of it, an awareness of its own frailty, of its own smallness, of its own weakness. The Father comes to Jesus and He confesses, I believe, and He is a person who is a Sheep, he has heard the voice of the shepherd and he has answered the voice of the shepherd and he has faith and he confesses that faith, yet at the same time he says, listen, within my heart is this battle between belief and non-belief.

Within my heart is this, is this faith that is there, but it is weak and it is frail. And he asked Jesus, help my unbelief. So, unlike the people of Nazareth, remember we're comparing this to Nazareth. In Nazareth, they refused to believe and they were unrepentant about it. He has a weakness of faith, he has an absence of faith in a way of speaking, but he is repentant, and he asked Jesus to help his unbelief, to help his doubting heart.

Help my unbelief. So, this help my unbelief, it's in the present imperative, so it could actually be translated. Help my unbelief and continue helping my unbelief. Help me not just this one time, it's not like this speed bump I have got to get over or this one little hump that I get over and then I'm fine.

Instead, help my unbelief and continue helping my unbelief. Every Christian is the same. Every Christian in this room is the same in this sense. Every Christian has a heart that is a mixture of true belief and unbelief, of faith and unfaith. The Christian life is not as we would like to picture it as this sort of climbing crescendo as this upwardly mobile graph that the longer that we know Christ, the stronger our faith grows and we just grow and grow and grow and grow.

That is not the Christian experience. The Christian experience is a heart that is a mixture of belief and unbelief. And that belief waxes, and it wanes, it grows, and it diminishes, it strengthens, and it weakens. And that is the experience of the Christian. And the Father confesses that. He confesses this to Jesus.

I've got a heart that's mixed. I've got a heart that's mixed up. I believe, but I ask you to help my unbelief. So this is the central goal. This is the goal of the passage. In fact, this is the goal of all of Mark's gospel, and I would say it's the goal of all of Scripture. Mark's purpose statement, that you may believe, that you may see that Jesus is the Christ and He has come.

And that's the purpose of all of Scripture, that we would see Him and believe, and the unbelief in our heart would grow weaker and smaller, and the belief would grow stronger and more vibrant. And so he says, help my unbelief, verse 25. And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, you mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.

So when Jesus saw the crowd running together or growing, getting larger, that's when he rebukes the demon. What's going on here is that Jesus never wanted to make a spectacle of himself. There is not an instance in which Jesus tried to gather a crowd. Jesus was always seem to always have crowds following Him and pressing in upon Him.

But He was not going around with a megaphone saying, let me attract a crowd. Jesus does not want to be perceived as primarily a miracle worker. And so as the crowd begins to gather, as people are starting to take notice, What, what's going on over there? As people are starting to come over, Jesus says, all right, let's get this over with.

Let's do this now before the crowd gets any bigger. So he sees this crowd running together and he rebuked the unclean spirit. Now there are two words in the Greek that are translated rebuke. There is one word in the Greek that's translated rebuke. That means. to rebuke a person, and it comes with it, it has the, the sense of the rebuke being successful, or the rebuke producing repentance.

This is the word that Paul uses in 2 Timothy 3 in verse 16 and 17, that the word of God is living, active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and it is useful for the man of God that we may Rebuke. And, and that, in that, the meaning is rebuke a person and rebuke a person successfully so that the person sees the error and repents.

That's one of the words that's translated rebuke. There's another word that's translated rebuke. That re that means more often than not to rebuke a non-person. And it carries no meaning of effectiveness of the rebuke. It carries no sense that the rebuke was carried out into repentance. It's the word that is used to describe what Jesus does to the storm.

He rebukes the storm. Now the storm doesn't repent. The storm doesn't say, oh, we're sorry. Forgive us Jesus. The storm is a, a non-person, so Jesus rebukes the storm by the way. It's also the word used of Peter, what Peter said to Jesus when Peter rebuked Jesus. So the word for rebuke, meaning to rebuke a non-person, and not expecting a repentance, is the word that's used here.

You see how precise the writers of the scriptures are, how theologically precise. Jesus is not rebuking the demon, hoping the demon will repent and be saved. The demon won't repent, but Jesus instead is rebuking the demon just as though he's rebuking a storm. So he rebukes, he commands him, come out. So here we see once again another, another theme of Mark and that's the theme of the strongman.

Jesus is the strongman who has come to oust the lesser strongman, the false strongman, to set the captives free. And he also says never enter him again. To my knowledge that's the only instance in which Jesus gives that requirement or that command. Never enter him again. It reminds us of what Matthew said or what Jesus says in Matthew 12 When Jesus talks about the spirit who the demon who leaves the person and then goes and gets seven others and comes back So Jesus is prohibiting that as though Jesus is saying He has suffered enough.

This father has suffered enough. This mother has suffered enough. Never enter them again. And after crying out, verse 26, after crying out and convulsing him, here we see it, terribly. This is the strongest seizure yet. Convulsing him terribly. One last fit of anger. One last display of rage. Terribly convulsing him.

It came out and the boy was like a corpse. So that most of them said, In other words, the intervention of Jesus produced at least a short term effect for the boy that was worse than it was before. So once again, this is a picture of salvation. Conversion doesn't come to the sinner, and then life just becomes a bed of roses.

Instead, conversion comes to the sinner, and in the short term, in earthly means, life gets worse. Likewise, Jesus cast the demon out, and in casting him out, the boy's life Gets in the short term even worse. So he falls down the, he falls down. He, he, commands the demon to leave and the demon leaves, but he leaves after this one last awful fit, this one last awful convulsion, and he falls down and everyone thinks that he's dead.

Now the question I would ask is this, is the boy dead or is the boy appearing to be dead? We don't know, but just a couple things here that are, I find very interesting. Look at verse 27, But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up, and he arose. Mark is using strong resurrection language. Literally, Mark says Jesus took him by the hand, and raised him up, and he arose.

That's strong resurrection language there. So that's one thing, the strong use of resurrection language. Secondly, what were the disciples just talking about? Don't say a word until the Son of Man rises from the dead. Resurrection? What is this resurrection he's talking about? That just happened. What's the next episode?

Look at your Bible. What's the next episode? Jesus, once again, the Son of Man is going to be killed and rise from the dead. Resurrection? What is this resurrection thing? You know how Mark likes to sandwich things? They're talking about the resurrection, they're talking about the resurrection, right in the middle we find resurrection language.

That's spoken about somebody that appears to be dead. I think that there's a strong possibility the boy actually died and Jesus, this is another resurrection, Jesus rose him back up to life. Either way, the boy is given new life. Whether he physically died or not, he's given new life as Jesus takes him by the hand.

Raises him up. Think of all the times that Jesus takes someone by the hand. He took Peter's mother in law by the hand, raised her up. He took the little girl, Talitha Kumai, and raised her up. He, He took the, the, the son of the widow of Nain by the hand, raised him up. We think of, him raising him up and then giving him back to his father.

Luke tells us that after this he gave him back to his father just like the little girl gave him back to his parents. The, boy, the widow boy, the widow's boy, he raised back and gave back to her mother. Or we think of Elijah as Elijah goes upstairs, raises the boy back to life, brings him down and gives him back to the mother.

So we see consistent themes here. Gives him back, he lifts him up and he arose and the, and. Verse 28. Before we go to verse 28, let me just ask this question. What did the Father ask Jesus to do? This is wonderful. What did the Father ask Jesus to do? The Father actually asked Jesus to do two things, didn't he?

He says, I brought my boy to you. I brought my son to you. He is possessed of the spirit, and the spirit is horrible. This is evil. But he asked Jesus to do something else, didn't he? I believe. Help my unbelief. Do you think what Jesus did helped his unbelief? Do you think that Jesus answered his every prayer far greater than he even hoped for?

Do you think that not only is the demon cast out, which is what the Father wanted, but even on a deeper level, on a more spiritual level, the Father wanted to believe resolutely in this man, Jesus, and what Jesus has done has just granted that request. So, verse 28, when he entered the house. His disciples asked him privately.

Why could we not cast it out? So this is the third out of four times in Mark's gospel in which the disciples and Jesus go into a private location, usually a house, and within that context greater revelation is shown. So here they go into the house and they ask him privately. Why could we not cast him out?

Notice the focus there. Why could we not cast him out? As though the problem was there's some sort of hang up with them. We, we did this, but we couldn't do it here. Why could we not cast it out? Verse 29, And he said to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. So the implication here is that the reason that they couldn't cast him out was because of a lack of prayer or a prayerlessness.

So what is Jesus saying to them? In Matthew's Gospel, they ask him the same question and he answers it differently. He says, you couldn't cast him out because of your faithlessness. Because you were not faith, you didn't believe, you didn't faith. Here he says, because you didn't pray. Actually though, there's the same thing.

When Jesus says, this kind can only be cast out by prayer. Let's understand what he said and what he didn't say. When Jesus then goes on to cast the demon out, did he stop and pray? Is there any record that Jesus said, bring the boy to me, they bring him to Jesus, and Jesus says, Father, help me do this. I'm about to, this is a really strong demon.

Help me, Father. And then he commands him. No, no, there's no record of that. So Jesus didn't stop and pray before commanding the demon to leave. So Jesus cannot mean that, oh, you didn't cast him out because you didn't pray first. That can't be what Jesus means because He didn't do that Himself. Instead, when He says this can only be cast out by prayer, implying your prayerlessness was the problem, what He's getting at is not that you didn't pray before you did it, like praying before a meal.

What He's saying is that you have started to exhibit a life of prayerlessness. In fact, that your communion with the Father has grown cold, and not that you didn't stop and pray right before this, but instead, your prayerlessness has rendered you incapable of doing this thing, which is the same thing as Matthew says when he says, because of your little faith.

Because you know that prayer is simply vocalized faith. Prayer is putting words to faith. And the two are connected so closely and so intimately that prayerlessness and faithlessness are the same thing. Faithlessness is evidenced in prayerlessness. You know, there are three ways that the New Testament shows us.

That we can assess our own belief, you know, we talked earlier about I believe but help my unbelief and all of us have this heart That's a mixture of belief and unbelief. Do you know how you assess whether your unbelief is strong or whether your belief is strong? There's three ways the New Testament tells you to do this in your notes.

It says to that's because That sort of thing happens when somebody prints the notes too early before the sermons done But there are three ways that the New Testament tells us that you can assess your level of belief Number one, in fear. The greater fear, the less faith. Jesus says to the disciples in the boat, Why were you afraid?

Have you no faith? So the presence of fear also means the presence of unbelief. Number two, your giving. Because the scriptures say to us that giving is evidence of faith. So assess your giving. That also is a representation of faith. Number three, is the present passage, prayerlessness. The scriptures teach us that the prayerless Christian is the faithless Christian.

The prayerless Christian is the Christian who has succumbed to the sin of self-reliance. And that's what's happened to the disciples. Jesus gave them this authority to cast out demons, and they experienced success. And now their faith has been transitioned more onto their past success than the one who gave them that authority.

And so now they are approaching this demon with this cavalier sort of attitude that says, well, we got this one. We've done this before. So they in their prayerlessness, Jesus says, because of your prayerlessness is why you couldn't. Now, I do need to address something. That really comes to light in the King James and we don't often do this, but this I need to address this one If you're looking at a King James this morning Then your passage says this kind only comes out by prayer and fasting none of the oldest manuscripts Have fasting none of the best manuscripts have fasting only the Only the younger manuscripts and only the inferior manuscripts have fasting.

So fasting and fasting is something that, that virtually certain, there's a virtual certainty that Mark didn't write that, that Mark just wrote prayer. But why would fasting be included if Mark didn't write it? How would it have gotten added on? The reason I bring this about, you'll see in just a moment why I bring this about, but the reason is very important to see.

Throughout many millennia, through centuries, the scriptures were preserved for us by those that we would refer to today as monks, who would, in a monastery type of setting, would copy the scriptures. What is the practice that those people are most known for? Fasting.

And so very evidently, at some point, some monk decided it's not just prayer. Because all this fasting we do, that's got to be part of it. You know, this is one of three places in the New Testament that that got added. Here, Acts, and a place in 1 Corinthians. They're in your notes. But the reason I point that out is because doesn't that destroy the whole point?

If it then becomes something that you do, some sort of formula, well I have got to fast for four days, I have got to fast for eight days, and then I can cast out demons. This is a really strong one. Maybe I need to fast twelve days, then I can cast out this demon. You just destroyed Jesus point. Because His point is, this can only be done in reliance upon me.

And it is your self-reliance that has caused you to fall flat. The father heard their pleas. Cast this demon out. I command you, demon, to leave this. And the father, looking upon their hearts, seeing the self-reliance in their hearts, threw them under the bus. And said, I will do nothing, I will do nothing in response to the, to the heart that thinks you've got this covered, that you don't need me, that you know the formula, Jesus gave you the authority some months ago, and he never took it back, so you're all good to go, you can just sort of go about it as you wish, and so the father says, uh not this time, and it is the son who then comes and says, Father, how long, how long will your people Be crippled by their unbelief.

How long, Oh, Father, will your people fall back into the unbelief of thinking that they just got to have the right formula, that they just got to know the right name, like the seven sons of Sceva in Acts chapter 19, where these, these Jewish would be exorcists. They hear Paul casting out demons in the name of Jesus.

And they say, Oh, that sounds like a good name, a pretty powerful name. We'll use that name to no effect. How long, Father? How long will we, will this unbelief grip the hearts of your people? When will your people be set free from their self-reliance? You see, Jesus was not, I used to think this for years, Jesus was not saying, Oh, don't worry about this.

This was a particularly hard one. There's no shame here. This was a really, really stubborn demon. This was a really hard, particularly evil demon. Don't feel bad, guys. I'll take care of this one. That's not what Jesus was saying. Jesus was saying, all things are possible for the one who believes. For the one whose heart is not a mixture of belief and unbelief, but the one whose heart has totally left The sin of self reliance and relies totally on the Father for all things.

It is that heart that sees no limit in what God can do. So our takeaway is simply this. Prayerlessness is a red flag in your life. Any area of your life in which you find yourself prayerless over that area is an area in which unbelief has a stronghold. And so the takeaway here is simply this, to search your life, to search your heart, ask the Father to show you areas of your life in which you just think no matter how simple or mundane a routine it may be, I don't particularly need to ask God for help in this area.

I don't particularly need God to help me here. I've got this. I've done this a hundred times before. It is those areas in which we most need God. It is those areas in which we most need to take them. Ask the Lord to show you your areas of self-reliance. Confess them, flee from them, and commit them to the Lord in prayer.