We are continuing to study through the gospel of Mark on Sunday evenings here at First Presbyterian Church, and we’re thankful to have the privilege to do so again this evening. We come partway through the ninth chapter of this gospel, beginning in verse 14 tonight. You can find that on page 844 in the Bibles that are located in the pew in front of you.
A few weeks ago, my son sent me a couple of pictures from campus in Oxford to update me on the progress of the demolition of C.M. Tad Smith Coliseum – the Tad Pad! The Tad Pad was not great, the demolition was long overdue, but the way they chose to do it was a little bit disappointing because the university decided to take it apart gradually, piece by piece, instead of what we all know is the more exciting method of imploding it by explosives, which we have even seen and heard about today on I-55! Explosives would have been more dramatic, explosives would have been much more satisfying. As one of my friends wrote about it, he said that if they had given the opportunity to let someone push the “detonate” button that would have given them the ultimate satisfaction of destroying the symbol of decades of men’s basketball futility! Dynamite seems more appropriate. It seems more impressive.
Well, dynamite comes from the Greek word “dunamis,” which means “strength, power, ability.” It’s the “dunamis” or the power of Jesus that is once again on display in Mark chapter 9 in the verses that we come to tonight as Jesus is able, He is powerful to heal a boy with an unclean spirit, to help him. And He says in these verses in fact, in verse 23, “All things are possible.” It’s the same word for “power.” “All things are possible for one who believes.” You see, it’s the power of Jesus that is in contrast to the inability and the powerlessness of His disciples. Because in verse 18 we are told that the boy had been brought to Jesus’ disciples by his father for healing, “and they were not able.” In fact, this passage is bookended, as we often find Mark doing the bookending in his literary technique, it’s bookended by the statement of the boy’s father in verse 18 – “they were not able” – and the question that we find at the end of verse 28 – “why could we not cast it out?” In other words, “Why were we not able? Why were we so powerless?”
Maybe you’ve asked yourself a similar question from time to time in the Christian life. “Why does my faith seem so powerless? Why so little change? Why do I not experience more contentment and joy in following Jesus? Why the same-old, same-old all the time?” Well perhaps it would help us to see what we find and what unfolds here in these verses before us tonight. I want us to see three things as we look at this passage this evening. I want us to see, number one, brokenness, number two, faithlessness, and number three, help. Brokenness, faithlessness, and help. Before we read God’s Word, let’s pray and ask His blessing on our time this evening. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we do come before You and we ask for help even at this very moment, in the midst of our own brokenness and faithlessness. As we come to Your Word, we need nothing more than Your help – that You would help us to see Jesus, that You would help us to see His great salvation, that You would help us to see the power that He gives to those who believe, and that we would see that at work in all of our lives. We pray that You would help us to see Jesus, and we pray this in His name, amen.
Mark chapter 9, beginning in 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 he asked them, ‘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, ‘O 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 has 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.’ 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 mute and 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.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Number one – brokenness. Verse 19, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” Brokenness. And you see, it’s indicative of what we are dealing with here. The transfiguration, it never happened, at least as far as the rest of the disciples were concerned. They weren’t there; they hadn’t seen the radiance of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. They hadn’t heard the voice from heaven saying, “This is My beloved Son, listen to Him.” No, what they saw and what they heard were the needs of the crowd and the complaints of the scribes. And verse 14 says, “A great crowd was around them and the scribes were arguing with them.” It really was in many ways, the same-old, same-old, wasn’t it?
And it happens, doesn’t it? You drive around Jackson, and it just becomes easier not to notice, it becomes easier not to care about the blight and the human hardship. Or maybe it’s low-grade conflict and it’s something that you just learn to live with. There are certain anxieties, there’s fatigue, there’s frustrations and ailments that we can say, “Well, that’s just our new normal. This is just the way things are now. Things will always be this way. This is how it’s always going to be.” And we forget, we forget that something is really, really wrong.
I heard an interview recently with a man who was an ICU nurse and he talked about getting to the point where, when a patient died, instead of feeling something, instead of having a touch of grief, he immediately thought, “I have got to get this patient to the morgue because we need this room right now. We need a patient in here as soon as we can. There is a waitlist in the emergency room right now.” And he said when it dawned on him that that’s what he was thinking at this moment, he said, “I think it was at that moment that I said, ‘Something’s really wrong.’”
Something is really wrong, and I think that part of the problem in this passage is that Jesus’ disciples are trying to operate out of their own strength, out of their own ability, when in fact the issue, the problem is much bigger than anything that they could handle. It is so much worse than they realize. And you see, that’s true for us too. And perhaps the thing that we need to recognize first of all when we are up against the effects of a broken and sinful world is that it is much more broken and sinful than we think it is. This is “the sinfulness of sin,” as previous generations would have put it. And the conflict, it is fierce, it is dangerous, it is deadly – probably more fierce, deadly and dangerous than we give it credit for. And here’s a sign of what Jesus’ disciples are up against here in this passage. This is an indication of the clash that we see here in these verses, the clash between the kingdom of God on the one hand and the sinful and broken world on the other. Because it’s four times – I wonder if you noticed – it’s four times the violence, the intensity of the struggle is described in graphic detail in these verses. This is the one story in this section of Mark’s gospel where the word “immediately” appears several times. And it gives a sense of urgency to this story and it moves the action along. But in reality, what Mark is doing here is he is slowing down and he is dwelling on what happened to this man’s son as a result of this unclean spirit.
Look again at some of the descriptive language in this passage. You know writing instructors will tell you, they will say to use active verbs to drive the action in sentences in vivid and colorful ways. Well that’s the same way that it is here. Verse 18, “it seizes him, it throws him down, he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.” And then when the man brought his son to Jesus, that’s just what happens to the boy. First it’s described and then it happens. Verse 20, “It convulsed the boy and he fell on the ground and rolled about and he was foaming at the mouth.” “How long? How long,” Jesus asks, “How long has this been happening with him?” And the man says it has been happening from childhood. Verse 21 and 22 he says, “from childhood. It has often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him.” And see, it’s described again.
And then even as Jesus heals the boy he is once again utterly beat down by this spiritual attack. He cries out in verse 26, he cries out with a loud scream, a moaning, and it convulses him terribly. And it says he became like – what? “A corpse.” You see, to everyone there it looked like he was dead. It looked like the cure was a lot worse than the disease. Of course, of course Jesus’ disciples were not able to cast it out. Of course it was beyond anything that they could handle. It was more than Jesus could handle. Or so it seemed. But then in verse 27, we read that Jesus “took him up by the hand and lifted him up and he arose.”
And you see, the repetition, those four different times where we read about what happens to this little boy or to this boy, it serves to emphasize the severity of the problem, the severity of the brokenness. It’s such a severe problem that it requires a drastic solution. Remember what Dr. John Stott says about true Christianity. He says that, “Authentic Christianity is supernatural Christianity. It is not a tame and harmless ethic consisting of a few moral platitudes spiced with a dash of religion. No, it is a resurrection religion. It is a life lived by the power of God.” And that’s what’s on display here in this passage. It’s resurrection power at work in healing this boy and raising him up. The disciples, they couldn’t do it on their own strength. They were overwhelmed by the enormity of the suffering. They were overwhelmed when they tried to do it their own way. They were overwhelmed when they tried to basically fight fire with fire, which is basically what they were doing when they were going up against the scribes here in this passage.
You see, the scribes’ ethic, the scribes’ ethic consisted of moral platitudes spiced with a dash of religion. But that wouldn’t work. That would not work with something so ingrained and aggressive as this spiritual opposition. That doesn’t work when what we’re actually fighting against is the sinfulness of sin and the utter brokenness of a fallen creation.
There was a recently published book of essays about the sport of football, and in one of the essays, the writer discusses some of the ways that coaches, players, sometimes make connections between football and war. And we all do that to some extent. We talk about the game “in the trenches” and a “blitz” and “gunners” on a punt team and a “border war” between two teams. Those are some of the things that we say. But here’s what he says. He says that it’s all historical warfare in an idealized kind of way. It’s all hypothetical warfare.
This is not. Spiritual opposition is a serious matter and the fight, you see, the fight starts with knowing what it is you are up against and exactly how strong it is. Jesus’ disciples, yes, they were not able, they were not able in part because they underestimated the stakes of what they were up against. And Jesus says to them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” What is it? What is it that evokes this kind of reaction from Jesus? Why does Jesus here rebuke their faithlessness?
Well first, brokenness. Second, faithlessness. And faithlessness leads to powerlessness. And here’s the thing. Jesus is not going to be with them much longer. In fact, He had just left them for a brief time. He had gone up the mountain; He had gone up there with Peter, James and John only. And what had happened? Nothing. That’s the point. That without Him, they could do nothing. They’re like Winnie the Pooh. “People say that nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” Those were Jesus’ disciples.
Well what’s that going to mean? What’s it going to mean when Jesus leaves them but then sends them out to carry on His mission? Well it doesn’t bode very well, does it? Because what they need is faith. If they want to go from “and they were not able” to “all things are possible” what they need is faith. They need faith. They need faith linking them to a power that is not their own. They need faith uniting them to Jesus even after His departure, a faith that will empower them by the power of the Holy Spirit. But as it is, as we find them here in these verses, they’re just like the scribes and they’re still struggling to see the danger of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. They’re still struggling with hearts that are hardened.
You see, the same thing is happening with the disciples and it happened with Jesus back in Mark chapter 8. And I think that is really a key to understanding these verses because chapter 8 verse 11, it says, “The Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus and they were seeking a sign from Him, a sign from heaven, to test Him.” And what did Jesus do? How did Jesus respond? Jesus, He sighed. He “sighed deeply” and He said, “Why does this generation” – same word that’s used here in these verses, verse 19 – “Why does this generation seek a sign?” He said, “Truly I say to you, no sign, no sign will be given to this generation.” And He went away.
Now what happens between Jesus’ disciples and the scribes here in these verses? Well, the scribes are arguing with the disciples. Again, it seems like it has something to do with seeking a sign. And that’s what the disciples tried to do. They tried to work a sign. And they couldn’t do it. And Jesus sighed. Literally, it’s just a single Greek letter – the letter omega – “O.” “O faithless generation.”
And maybe it’s a rebuke, another rebuke of the scribes and the religious leaders, but it’s also one for the disciples as well because He’s not going to be with them much longer; He is not going to bear with them much longer. What are they going to do if they try to subject themselves to the demands and the standards of the scribes? What are they going to do if they essentially try to put God to the test by their unbelief? The answer is, as demonstrated by this text, is that they will be powerless to do what Jesus calls them to do.
Someone told me a story last week about a prominent and a quirky Jackson artist from years past, and she was part of a denomination, part of a sect that didn’t believe in going to the doctor. Whether they explicitly forbid it or just discouraged it, it was frowned upon to go visit a doctor. But there was a doctor in this congregation who would basically let her in the back door. And he provided the treatment that she needed, but in a way that others would not find out about it. And so what she said, she said, “What I want to do to show you my appreciation, I want to paint you a painting out of appreciation.” And so when it was time to pick it up, he went to get the painting from her and she handed him the painting, along with a bill for how much he needed to pay for it! He didn’t realize that was part of the deal!
All that to say, there are some groups that will say that all you need is faith – more faith, better faith, stronger faith. But that’s too simplistic. And oftentimes, it’s dismissive of a person’s faith to say that the reason for a trial, to say that the reason you’re not getting better or that all you need to get better is to believe better. Because God does provide means like doctors, and He works through secondary causes. He works through the gifts of His common grace.
But we also need to hear this. We also need to hear what Jesus says in these verses. In verse 23 He says, “All things are possible for one who believes.” And again, that word translated as “possible” is the word that translates to “dynamite” or “power.” In other words, there is power to the one believing. All power available to them that believe. That we are united to Christ by faith. “By grace you have been saved through faith.” We have been justified by faith. “The righteous shall live by faith.” “We walk by faith and not by sight.” And yet, and yet how often do we walk by sight and not by faith? And how often do we walk by fear? How often do we walk by, “I want to do it by myself and not by faith”? We walk by what everyone else is doing and not by faith. We walk by forgetting God’s promises and forgetting God’s goodness and not by faith. We walk by grumbling and ingratitude and not by faith. And it’s no wonder, it’s no wonder that we struggle with powerlessness in the Christian life. It’s no wonder that so often we are not able.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, over sixty years ago, preached a series of sermons on the topic of spiritual depression. Now in that term he’s not thinking about what we would call clinical depression, but it’s something that still looks like what he says “a need for a revived and joyful church,” something that he saw as “Christians in the doldrums” to use his words – living with a lack of freedom, living with an absence of bold witness in the world around them. And what he said is that the ultimate cause of all spiritual depression is unbelief, unbelief, and what it means to be in Christ. Unbelief in what a Christian really is. And Dr. Lloyd-Jones says it’s this. “This is what a Christian really is. It’s not a philosophy, it’s not a point of view, it’s not a teaching and it’s not a theory. No, it is a life. It is a power. It’s the life of God in the soul of man and it comes to us, this power, this life, comes to us by faith.”
Just listen to the way someone describes the role of faith in the Christian life, especially as we find it in the gospel of Mark. He says, “In Mark, faith is the power of those without power and it is experienced as power only in relation to human powerlessness.” Did you get that? Faith is power, but only for those who recognize their own powerlessness. And this man, these disciples, they are powerless on their own. And so are we. “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing. Were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing.” Who is that? It’s Christ Jesus. And this father is powerless against the spiritual forces that inflict his son. What’s he called to do? He’s called to believe. And Jesus says to him, verse 23, “All things are possible for the one who believes.” And it’s faith. Faith is what opens the way for a believer to receive divine power and to put it to use. Not in signs and wonders as we will see the apostles able to do, but in real ways – in cultivating holiness, in cultivating fruit, spiritual fruit in our lives, in ministering to others in powerful and effective ways, and having power and effectiveness in our witness and evangelism in telling others about Jesus. That’s the power we need.
Faith is much more powerful than we could ever know, but even in faith this man, we, need help. And so we’ve seen brokenness and faithlessness; finally, help. Verse 24. The father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’”
David Strain and I have matching hats. That’s not a metaphor, but we don’t have to worry about wearing them in the same place at the same time because they were given to us as a joke. And on the front of the hat it says, “Pastor Warning – Anything You Say or Do Could Be Used in a Sermon!” You can see why it’s not in my regular hat rotation! But it is true, and in some ways you have been warned! But even in doing that, I want to be respectful to people’s privacy and sensitive to difficult situations in people’s lives. But with that being said, with that in mind, I had a conversation recently with someone in our congregation and it matched up in many ways almost step for step with the events and the sequence that we find in these verses in Mark chapter 9. A physical condition. Spiritual conflict. A sense of being overwhelmed. And he said, “Sometimes, sometimes I can only muster up short prayers. Just a few words. ‘Help.’” Which is what we have here in verse 24. “Help. Help my unbelief. I believe; help my unbelief!”
This is an honest prayer and it’s a simple prayer. But I think that’s the point. This is not the prayer of great faith; it’s not the prayer of even wholehearted faith. But it’s faith. Faith in Jesus. Faith in what Jesus can do. Faith in His compassion. Faith that He can help even if sometimes we’re not so sure. And towards the end of these verses, Jesus’ disciples ask Him a question. They say in verse 28, “Would could we not cast it out?” And Jesus says, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” And maybe Jesus is talking about casting our demons, but that word that He uses for “this kind” is the same word that He uses back in verse 19 for “generation.” And the real problem in this passage is faithlessness.
Well what are we to do about that? What are we to do about faithlessness? Well, prayer. Prayer like the one we find in verse 24. “I believe; help, help my unbelief.” And it almost seems too simple, doesn’t it? But do you not think that God would be pleased to answer such a prayer when we pray it to Him? I don’t know what it is that you’re up against. I don’t know what it is that you’re trying to go through on your own strength, by your own ability. We all do it. We all have something. We all try to do it that way. But what we need is God’s power – “dunamis.” And what these verses are telling us is that the problem, the brokenness is even bigger than we think it is, but that faith, in opposition to faithlessness, is much more powerful than we know. And the help? The access to the power of faith – it’s simple. It’s much simpler than it seems. Almost like it’s too good to be true. It’s prayer. It’s honest, sincere, repentant and expectant dependence upon God in everything.
And what this man’s prayer shows us is that even the faith that we need to give us the life of God in the soul of man, the faith that we need to enjoy the blessings of God in our life, it has to be given to us. It’s a gift. In other words, it’s all of God’s grace. How much grace? Grace enough for this faithless generation. That Jesus would bear with them, in fact, that Jesus would bear with them all the way to the point of bearing their sin on the cross, their faithlessness He bore on the cross so that they would, so that His own disciples would receive the power of the Holy Spirit – the same power, as Paul prayed, that raised Jesus from the dead. And you see, the good news is that it is grace enough for our faithless generation because Jesus died and was raised knowing that His disciples would struggle with unbelief. He was the one who called them, and He went all the way to the cross and was raised again for them, for those who believe.
You see, Jesus died and was raised knowing that we would struggle with unbelief. That’s why He came. That’s why He went to the cross. Because He would pay the penalty, pay the price for even the sin of unbelief. It’s all grace. It’s all grace. And if you know, if you have any sense of how amazing that grace is and how tightly He has you in His grip, then you can pray honest prayers like this man who says, “I believe; help my unbelief!” In fact, you can pray that tonight. You can pray it right now.
I’ll close with this. We were, a group of us were at Care Center Ministries on Friday evening, enjoying a time of worship and fellowship. And we closed our time of worship by singing, “Amazing Grace.” And the plan was to sing just the first verse, but nobody stopped. We were going to sing the first verse because there was ice cream melting in the other room, but that didn’t matter! We sang the second verse and the third verse, all the way to the end of the song. But here’s the second verse – “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.” “I believe; help my unbelief.”
Let’s pray.
Father, would You hear this prayer in all of our hearts and the longing that we all have to know You better and to trust You in deeper ways, that we would know the beauty of Your grace, that it is amazing grace, and yet even more amazing than we could ever imagine. Would You give us the faith to believe? And would You give us the faith to continue to walk with You and to persevere and to run our races with endurance, that You would help us in our unbelief and that You would fill us with Your power, the power of the Holy Spirit, and that You would send us out into our own lives and in our families and in our relationships and in those who we run into in the day to day, that You would give us a bold and effective witness, that You would receive all the glory for it. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.