"The Gift of Faith" - Mark 9:14-29

This morning, we come to another familiar passage in Mark, maybe not a familiar

passage, but some familiar verses.

As I was studying for this, maybe this will give you a picture into how I get

ready for certain things.

I like to read commentaries that I don't agree with.

So people that I know that I wouldn't agree with, people that I know,

both historically and contemporarily that I would fall, we'll call,

outside of friendly cooperation with.

And I found myself, more often than not, I'm not going to say angry,

but upset at some of the commentary I read on this passage, and we're going to get into why,

but I can tell you on the outset, the main reason why is, I think a lot of times

when we look at demon possession and we look at Jesus talking about faith and

what faith is and what you accomplish through faith, it often becomes a bartering system.

That faith becomes, well, however much of it I have, I can cash in at the feet

of Jesus and he will give me what I want, when I want it, when I need it.

And I got to say, I think that kind of thought is at best misguided and at worst demonic.

When we think of faith as something that we we barter with God with,

like, God, I'll give you this much faith. I'll have this much faith.

And you in turn need to do X, Y, and Z for me.

This is no longer a relationship with a loving God.

It is a business transaction with the person who owns more than you.

And what can you get out of that person? What can you accomplish through that

person's means? What do you need to give that person, so they'll give you what you want, right?

Like a child trying to come to a parent that doesn't really love them,

but the child has learned, you know, if I clean my room, they'll give me ice cream.

You know, if I get good grades, they'll love me a little bit.

They'll take me out to eat.

And this is not the way that God loves his children. And I think,

again, when we look at a passage like this and come to that conclusion,

it leads to all kinds of, again, at best, it leads to a lot of,

I think, misconceptions.

At worst, it leads to a lot of heresy.

And so as we get into Mark, maybe the best way to do this, let me just read

the passage. We'll pray. We'll just jump right into it.

This is Mark chapter nine, starting in verse 14. If you remember last week,

we studied the transfiguration, God coming down to remind people,

his disciples specifically to listen to him, not Moses or Elijah.

Moses and Elijah serve Christ.

They were precursors to Christ. Christ is here now, listen to him.

So he's gonna come off the mountain. Here's what he's met with.

He says that 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.

This is pretty common for Jesus at this point. Everywhere he shows up,

he's got a crowd. People like seeing him coming.

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, 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 has often cast him into fire,

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 mutant deaf spirit, I command you,

come out of him and never enter him again.

After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out. That boy was like a corpse.

Most of them said he is dead, but Jesus took him by the hand,

lifted him up, and he rose.

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.

Would you pray with me? Fathers, we open your word.

Would you, from the very beginning, remind us in our hearts that we are unable

to understand what's in this book that you have given us without your help?

Spirit, would you soften our hearts? Would you open our eyes? Would you open our ears?

God, as we've come in here this morning, would you remind us that what we're

talking about this morning is life or death, that it should change the way we

view every single breath that we take. It should change the way we live and

talk and breathe and teach and act around others.

This is an all-encompassing thing. This isn't a Sunday morning moment that we've

come so we can feel better about ourselves.

This is a moment that we have set aside in the week to commune with you,

to set aside from work, school, family, all of those things.

God, in this moment, we open your word, we'll be reminded, God,

this is what we've come for.

To be with you, to hear from you. We thank you for that. You know, I pray, amen.

Okay, so we're up on the Mount of Transfiguration last week.

Jesus comes down the mountain and what does he find?

What he always finds when he leaves, right? Every time Jesus goes away to pray,

when he comes back, he finds some sort of chaos.

Whether it's his disciples in the boat who think they're gonna die, right?

Whether it's some massive crowd of people that find out he's at Peter's house.

Remember, he goes to Peter's house, his mom's house, and he's trying to get

some alone time. And what happens? People are busting down the door.

There's Pharisees sitting in there. They're arguing with him.

This is just Jesus's life at this point.

So he comes down the mountain and he's immediately met with his disciples and

scribes and Pharisees and demon possessed boy, chaos.

Absolute, utter chaos. One of the first things I want you to see here is Jesus' response.

This doesn't deter Jesus. Now he's gonna get frustrated, but he's not frustrated at the scene.

He's not frustrated or deterred from what's going on.

We've seen over and over again in the gospels that Jesus is drawn into the chaos.

And then maybe just as we begin this morning to invite you into being okay with

that, that if you have chaos in your life and you look back at the last week

and you think, man, my life has been chaotic.

If you're young in here and you started back school and you're thinking,

listen, I hate school and I think it's the worst thing.

And my summer was going great, I was waking up late, I was chilling,

I was having fun, I was going to the creek, I was walking around with axes,

whatever it was you were allowed to do and then school starts and you go,

well, this really kind of ruined my whole life now,

and it feels chaotic to you, now you've got homework and you've got things you're working on.

Or if your week was worse than that and you've had something happen that maybe

you've not told anybody about or maybe you're just reeling, work is hard,

family situation, whatever it is, Is something heavy on your heart?

Know that Jesus is not deterred by those things. And if you come in here this

morning, putting on a face of, you know, everything's fine, don't.

Don't. Jesus is not coming into this scene going, you know, if y'all would calm

down, if y'all would calm down, if y'all would just kind of cut this out, I'll do something.

Right. He's not a substitute teacher that's going, I'll wait when you guys calm down.

You know, not saying you shouldn't do that, by the way, but I am saying that's

how I think that's how we feel about Jesus. Sometimes, like I've got to get

my life together a little bit before Jesus is going to do anything.

That's not how Jesus works. I love this. It's from Matthew Henry.

He says, Jesus laid aside his robes of glory and came to look after his family,

and to inquire what was to become of them.

Christ's glory above does not make him forget the concerns of his church below,

which he visits in great humility. That's who Jesus is.

That's the first thing I wanted to see. Second, maybe just have a moment here

to talk about demon possession. In this story.

You have a boy who's demon possessed, but when we read the symptoms,

and if you read a lot of commentaries, they'll talk about this,

but if you read the symptoms, it's like, well, that sounds like a disease.

And that's what we would do. We would immediately look at that in our day and

age and go, well, he has this disease. He has this problem. He has epilepsy

or he has an issue, whatever.

I read like four different diagnoses about this.

I'm like, I don't know if theology degrees should be giving me all of these things.

I should have called Mike. is what I should have done. But we want to think in those terms.

Let me say that's a ditch you can fall into where everything is materialistic.

Everything has a reason. Everything has a scientific thing that we can do.

We can treat it with a pill or a program.

The flip side is also true though. If every time you have something happen to

you, every time you run into a situation that isn't what you think it should

be, we shouldn't throw up our hands and go, So demons, every time, demons, right?

I was at Walmart the other day, half the milk was expired. The demons were on

the milk, like I could feel their presence, right? We can fall into both ditches.

And so I think maybe an easy way to think about this is it's not necessarily

our job to diagnose everything we come in contact with. We're not Christ.

Now, is there a spiritual element to every single thing in our lives?

Of course there is. Of course there is.

But is every single hard thing that comes into our life demonic? No.

You live in a sinful world. There are sinful things that you're going to come across.

But there is demonic things that you will come across. Both of those realities

are true. I don't think Jesus would have a hard time either way.

When Jesus heals blind and deaf and mute, sometimes he doesn't say that it's

a demon. He says, well, they've been blind since birth. This is part of the fall.

This is part of marred creation.

In this specific instance, it's very clearly a demon, very clearly.

But I always want to caution against saying, well, it's always naturalistic. It's always demonic.

In some ways, you've got to trust the Lord when you come into those situations.

Trust his discernment. Trust his wisdom.

We're going to see that the disciples did not do that, which is why their predicament we're in.

But that's more of a general note as we get into the passage.

I didn't want to spend a ton of time on that.

But we have this demon possession. What do we also have? We've got the Pharisees are back.

It says when he comes down, the scribes were arguing with his disciples.

Now, this is the most religious thing that could ever happen.

You've got a genuine problem, a father who is crying out, trying to find help for his son.

And what happens? Two religious groups go, you know what needs to happen?

We need to fight right now.

Like there's literally this little boy that his dad has brought right here.

And I can just picture like this little, this dad looking back and forth and

the disciples are arguing and they're arguing. and the dad's going,

I'm just looking for some help. I just need some help from my boy.

I came here to get help. And you guys are sitting here bickering and arguing.

And so Jesus comes down and he asks, well, what's going on?

What's going on here? And it's interesting that the person who answers is not his disciples.

It's not the Pharisees and the scribes. It's the man.

It seems as I read this, that the Pharisees and the disciples are so caught

up and their own religious arguing,

and their own theological battles that they've completely missed,

both of them, the Pharisees to no surprise, the disciples to Jesus' chagrin,

that the issue is there is a man who has brought his son who has a problem.

And he is the one that speaks up when Jesus asks the question,

what are you arguing about?

And this real issue has become not an issue, but a point to fight about.

And he says, teacher, I brought to you my son, for he has a spirit that makes

him mute. Now, interestingly, whoever this man is, he understands that what's

going on with his son is spiritual.

He has not diagnosed him with a natural disease. Now, part of that could be

the culture he lives in, right? They believed everything was spiritual.

I'm not saying that's wrong.

Maybe he does know. Maybe he's aware that this is a spiritual thing.

Maybe he's come to that understanding. We don't know.

What we do know is the dad has an understanding here that what needs to happen

cannot be fixed by a doctor, right? There's not a medication that someone can

give my son that's going to fix him.

So he comes to Jesus. Why does he come to Jesus? Because he's heard the stories at this point.

He's heard stories of Jesus calming the water. He's heard stories of Jesus healing

people and feeding 5,000, 10,000 people.

He's heard stories of Jesus raising Jairus' daughter. He knows that this Jesus,

has done some incredible things.

And like we would all do for any of our kids, he's going, who knows how far

he traveled, but he's going to find this Jesus guy.

He's going to put his son at Jesus' feet. That's what he wants to do.

But he says, your disciples were unable to cast this demon out.

Now that's an interesting statement because Jesus has given his disciples authority to do just that.

Remember when Jesus has sent them out two by two. and what does he give them the authority to do?

To cast, that's one of the main things that they're going to,

we're gonna cast out demons.

But for whatever reason, they can't do it here. Listen to Jesus' frustration in verse 19.

Oh, faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?

Bring him to me. Now, Jesus' frustration on a human level is completely justified.

How many things must Jesus do for them to recognize who he is,

what he's come to do, right? For them to get, you could say, get with the program.

Does he need to feed 30,000 people? Does he need to raise 100 people from the dead?

Does he need to heal 20, 30, 50? How many things? What must he do for this faithless generation?

Now, I said earlier, when we think about faith, it's so important how you understand that.

This is the first place we see this in the passage. Oh, faithless generation.

What Jesus is upset with is not his disciples' inability to do something.

It's his disciples' willingness to not trust him.

What I mean by that is, if you go to the end of this passage,

which we'll talk about, and he's talking to his disciples, he says,

this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.

What's he saying to his disciples? You didn't even consult the Father.

You didn't stop to pray. You didn't stop to think.

You literally have come to a place, and we all do this.

You've cast out a few demons. You've done a few things. You've been there for

a few miracles. So you came upon this demon-possessed void. You know what you

thought, disciples? You thought, no problem.

I got it. This is no big deal for me.

We are all guilty of this at one time or another, pridefully thinking,

I don't need to consult with God. God, I know what I'm doing.

I've got it, right? It's easy to fall into this. If you teach or you preach,

you know this is true. If you do it for a while, you begin to think,

you know, I used to pray for 30 minutes before I got ready, but I am just running

a little low on time. I really want to catch the end of this game.

And so I'm just going to push that back. I'll cut the prayer part out because

I've done this enough. Now I can put something together.

I'm sure Travis could give us the same example about leading worship.

But think about just being a father, being a mother, being a child,

being a church member, all the things that we do that we're trying to do faithfully.

It is easy to fall into a sense of, I've been doing this long enough.

I just don't need to go to the Father and ask him anything.

Now, the irony of this is, what had Jesus just been doing? Praying.

What does Jesus do constantly? Pray. I think this is the root of what Jesus

is getting at with his disciples.

Not that he's asking them to conjure up faithfulness.

He's saying, you didn't go to the giver of faith.

You didn't go to the Father and say, Father, we need your help.

This man has come to us and we would love to help him. But Father,

we know in and of ourselves, we are not able to do this.

God, we need you to do this through us. Use us as a conduit to do that.

This is Jesus's problem.

He's not asking his disciples to conjure up something they can't.

He's asking them to admit that they can't.

You can't do this on your own.

It's one of the hardest things in your Christian life is to constantly remind

yourself, no matter how much knowledge you have or how much experience you have or

how long you've been in church or how much you've done, how much you've accomplished, you need God.

You need the Father every second of every day. You need to be in communication with Him.

You need to be humbly coming before Him to be reminded of his goodness and grace

and grace and love in your life and his forgiveness of your sins.

And for him to come to you, to

remind you, hey, that's okay that you can't because I can. I can do that.

Jesus says, oh, faithless generation. He's not talking about something inherent

in these people that they can do.

He's talking about a pride that they have to think that they can.

That's what faithlessness is. Faithlessness is, I can do it.

I can do it on my own. I know what the Bible says about church.

I know what the Bible says about family. I know what it says about sexuality.

I know what it says about all of these things. I know what it says,

but I mean, come on, I've got it. I've figured it out.

So he says, oh, faithless generation. It as 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 they bring this boy to Jesus. And what happens? There's a reaction from this

demon to even being in the presence of Jesus. Now, again, we've seen this before.

When Jesus gets in the boat and goes across the water and where does he go?

He finds this man who's possessed and the demon says, we are legion.

Right before Jesus cast them into the pigs. But the demons are scared.

They ask Jesus, are you here to get us before it's time? The demons know who Jesus is.

Calvin commenting on this, I thought was really great because it's part of this

story that I don't think we talk about enough,

where it's like, man, this guy, this demon walks up in front of Jesus and it

begins to violently convulse this boy as if he knows this is the end.

So I'm about to get what I can get out of this kid.

Calvin says, the presence of Christ awakens this demon like the sound of a trumpet.

He raises as violent a storm as he can and contends with all his might.

We ought to be prepared beforehand with such meditations that our faith may

not be disturbed when the approach of the grace of Christ is met with more than

ordinary violence on the part of our enemy.

This is essentially Calvin saying we should not be surprised when we are trying

to be faithful that the enemy will do everything it can to throw that off. That this demon is.

Violently going after this boy. Why the boy? Well, why any person?

If humans are made in the image of God, the easiest way for Satan to demean

those things is to mar that image.

I think we see this in our culture all the time. If you've ever been to a place

that's just riddled with a drug problem, riddled with things that you would

look at and go, man, this is disgusting.

How can people live like this? How can people act this way?

Again, I'm not making the claim that that is purely demonic.

What I am saying is the devil loves nothing more than marring the image of God in people.

And you look at so many of the cultural things that go on right now that are

just out in the open, things like the trans issue.

I think Satan loves nothing more than that.

Nothing more than getting people to believe that they are not who God created them to be.

And as angry as that should make us at times, it should cause us to weep more than that.

Abortion issue. What could make Satan happier than the murder of infants?

These image bearers of God, unable to protect themselves, unable to do anything

for themselves that we would applaud their murder.

That's what's going on when you see this demon possession in this boy,

is Satan has indwelled an image bearer.

And when Christ, who is God in the flesh, comes face to face with this demon,

this demon convulses in such a way that says, I know that he's about to get rid of me.

I'm gonna do everything I can to this boy in this moment.

I'm going to mar this image of God as much as I can.

And we should not be surprised if we go out into the world and we preach the

way that Jesus has called us to preach and we say what Jesus has called us to

say, that we shouldn't be met with the same violence and the same anger and the same

kind of storm that comes out of this boy.

If you're going to say the things that Jesus says and do the things that Jesus

does and boldly proclaim the truth that he says, you are going to come in contact with this.

You will get called all sorts of names. You will get treated all sorts of ways.

You'll be one of those weird religious fundamentalist people. That's fine.

That's fine. We should not be surprised by that.

That Jesus doesn't come and point his finger at everybody and throw a big fit.

He's not going to start a podcast and talk about how awful everybody else is.

His concern is for the father and his son. That's Jesus's concern.

So he asked this father, how long has this been happening? And his father said from childhood.

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.

This is the exact opposite question that we saw in Mark 5.

If you remember in Mark 5, in fact, I'm just going to turn there real quick.

If you would like to join me, you can.

It says Mark 5, 21 says, when Jesus had crossed again in the boat on the other

side. A great crowd gathered about him and he was beside the sea.

Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name,

and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly,

saying, my little daughter is at the point of death.

Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.

Jairus comes to Jesus and says, if you put your hands on her,

she'll live. You can do anything.

That's what faith does. You can do anything.

Jesus' issue with this question, and I'm going to say issue in a loose way,

because I don't think what he's doing to this man is, again,

he's not pointing his finger in this man's face and saying, if I can, are you an idiot?

Don't you know who I am? Don't you know what this is about?

He's trying to draw out of this man what this man actually needs.

And so he says, if you can, if you can.

Faithful people know that Jesus can do anything.

The question is never, can God or can Jesus, but will. Will you?

This is a faithful prayer. God, if you will, if you will, would you heal them?

If you will, would you be with us? If you will, would you give us wisdom?

If you will, that's a faithful prayer.

A faithless prayer is if you can, if you can, because that prayer reveals a

heart that does not know who God is.

God can do anything. God is capable of fixing any problem in your life right now.

Any health issue, any family issue, any work issue, any school issue,

any sin issue, anything in your life, God could fix it in an instant.

It would not cost him anything. It would not be hard for him to do.

That is not the issue. Can is never the issue.

Will is the issue. How does Jesus draw this out of this man?

It says, immediately, the father of the child cried out and said,

I believe, help my unbelief.

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.

I believe, help my unbelief. That is the most faithful prayer.

It's as if this man realizes in the face of Jesus Christ, there's no hiding who he is anymore.

He doesn't try to make an excuse and go, well, Jesus, obviously I believe.

I mean, you know, it's like when you get in trouble as a kid and it's like,

well, you know, you shouldn't do that. Well, obviously, you know,

like I knew I shouldn't do that.

No, he owns the situation.

Obviously, he believes he's brought his kid to him, But he also knows that there's

a huge part of him that goes, I don't really know if this is going to work.

I don't really know if Jesus will do this. I don't really know if Jesus can

do this. His disciples showed up. They couldn't do it.

And they've casted out other demons. And so what makes me think that Jesus can

do it? So there's this duality inside of this man that, again, is inside of all of us.

All of us have this issue. All of us faithfully believe that Jesus is who he

says he is, that he's going to do what he says he's going to do,

that he did do what he said he would do.

And yet at the same token, there's times in our life, moments in our life,

maybe even right now, where you know he's calling you to do something and you go, ah, I don't know.

I don't think I can do that. I don't wanna give that up.

I don't wanna have that conversation. I don't wanna confess that sin.

I don't wanna do those things. I don't wanna commit myself in that way.

I've been burned before Jesus. You don't know, like I just, this is gonna be really hard.

Believe that you rose from the dead and that you sit at the right hand of the

father and that you will come back one day.

And he says, forgive him. And you go, I can't do that. I can't do that.

This man in this story believes that Jesus has done everything that he has heard about him doing.

How do you know he believes that? Because he brought the kid.

If he didn't think Jesus could do it, he wouldn't bring it.

But even in the face of Jesus standing right there, there's parts of him that don't trust him.

Father, I believe. Jesus, I believe. Would you help my unbelief?

What a simple prayer that includes both two things that you need,

confession, confession, and a prayer.

You're right, Jesus. I don't trust you fully. You're right, Jesus.

He is doing exactly what the disciples will not do.

This father who's meeting Jesus for the first time is doing what the disciples will not do.

Jesus, we can't do this without you. Every time they are met with a situation,

with an issue over and over again, they look at Jesus like, well,

guess we can't. How are we going to feed these people?

What are we going to do with this water coming into the boat?

What are we going to do with these Pharisees that keep winning these arguments again?

What's going to happen? How are we going to go? What are we going to do?

And Jesus is going, faithless, faithless.

What is Jesus' response to this man's faith? As weak as it is,

he says, you mutant, deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.

Verse 25 gives us the detail. And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together,

it's like once he saw the crowd coming, he's like, I'm gonna knock this out.

You and me, I'm about to do this right now.

Spurgeon says of this passage, this man's faith was not perfect faith,

though it obtained for him the healing of his son.

It was weak faith. And for its weakness, he was blamable.

But the faultiness of his faith was not the destruction of his faith.

A feeble faith can receive a mighty savior.

Again, you don't need to clean your house up.

You don't need to do something so that Christ will work in your life.

When Jesus comes to this situation, his frustration is with his disciples because

his disciples failed to trust him.

How do you know they failed to trust him? Because he says at the end,

he didn't even pray. He didn't even pray.

And then he's met with this man whose faith is half-hearted,

and he knows it. The man knows it, right?

Does Jesus do? He responds. What does Jesus do with his disciples?

Does he just blow them off and say, you know what? I've done everything I can do for you.

You're still not getting it. I got to find some different guys.

Again, there's only one hero of the story, and that is Christ Jesus.

Going back to where we began, when I read some of these other sermons and commentaries

about this passage, one of the things that, again, I'm going to say nicely frustrated

me was so many of them, the conclusion was See, if you'll have enough faith,

if you can muster up enough faith, Jesus will do for you what he's done for this guy.

Jesus never once, never once in this passage, asks people to do something he knows they cannot do.

It's not what he does. In fact, the exact opposite happens.

He exposes their faithlessness. and in both situations, he drives the father

to pray and he tells his disciples they should have.

Why? Why would he say faithlessness is directly tied to prayer,

to communication with the father because faith is a gift given by the father.

Do you wanna be more faithful?

Ask for faith. Do you wanna have more trust? Ask God to give you that.

The Bible is so clear on this.

A verse that everyone always knows that we've talked about here before.

Ephesians 2. What does it say?

Faith is a gift. It's a gift. It's been given to you.

Paul even goes on to say in Corinthians that people have different levels of faith.

Certain people have been given more faith than others.

Paul saying some people are better than others. That's Paul saying,

this is just a fact of life.

We all know this. Like we can play dumb and say like, well, you know,

anybody can have more faith.

No, you have met people that you know, if you're honest, you're like,

man, that person has an incredible amount of faith.

And again, if you're even more honest, you can go, no matter how hard I tried

in my own will, in my own, of my own volition, I could never have the faith

like that person has. Couldn't do it.

But what you can do is what this father does and what Jesus asked his disciples to do, which is pray.

Ask God to do it. You see, the issue for the disciples, we've covered the father

and his son. The issue for the disciples is they had just gotten cocky.

Around with their chest out, man. Jesus is this famous guy.

He's doing all these wonderful things and they're associated with him.

And so everywhere they go, people are like, hey, are y'all Jesus' disciples?

And they kind of look like, yeah, yeah. We're kind of a big deal.

Like I casted out some demons a few days ago. I don't know if you've heard of

me. I'm Andrew. How's it going?

I was actually one of the ones that was handing out the food when Jesus fed

the 5,000. I know it's a big deal.

They're signing autographs. I don't know, but they've gotten cocky.

They've gotten full of themselves and they had forgotten that the only reason

they were who they were is because first of all, Christ called them.

Not one of the disciples went looking for Jesus to ask him, can I follow you? Not one.

He came up to all of them. He found all of them and said, hey, come and follow me.

And then he walks with them to the point where he says, okay,

I'm going to send you out two by two, and I am going to give you the ability to cast out demons.

And this has come full circle where they go, well, Jesus obviously chose us

because we're really special, and we can cast out demons because we're really

awesome, and so we have no need to consult the Lord.

In fact, we're just going to consult ourselves and argue with the Pharisees,

and then we're just going to work this out.

How guilty are we of the same thing at times in our lives to think that we do not need the Lord?

I pray that that is not your reality this morning, but I also pray that if it

is, that God would use a passage like this to humble you.

Mind you, hey, if you've got bitterness and anger and forgiveness needs to be

doled out, listen, you need faith to do that.

You need faith to be humble. You need faith to be gracious. You need faith to

have mercy. You know why you need those things?

Because if I spend my life thinking that, well, if I forgive them,

they're just going to get away with it.

If I show them mercy, they're just going to keep getting away with it.

If I'm slow to anger, if I'm not hard on these people, man, they're just going

to do whatever they want. They're going to get away with it.

What you're saying really is, God, I don't think that you are actually going

to make all things right.

I don't think you will deal out justice in the way that I think you should.

I don't think that you'll actually make things the way that you said you will

make them and handle things the way. So I need to be the one that doles out judgment.

I need to be the one that decides who gets forgiven and who doesn't.

I need to be the one to decide who I let out of my sight and who I let into

my good gracious, right? I become the God of my own life.

You need faith to do anything that God has asked you to do, anything.

As simple as considering others greater than yourself.

That takes a lot of faith because doing that means you're going to get treated pretty poorly at times.

You're willingly going to get taken advantage of.

You are over and over again going to be the one that most people don't notice,

that doesn't get the credit, that doesn't get the check, that doesn't have the plaque.

But do you have the faith that says, God will make this right?

God sees everything I'm doing. God knows what's happening. God will work all of this out.

Listen, that is an incredible amount of faith. So don't downplay the small things

in your life that need faith.

Let me summarize this real quick. We'll close. Again, Jesus comes off the mountain.

The first thing I want you to remember, first thing I want you to take away, as always in Mark,

Jesus is drawn towards the chaos He's drawn towards the chaos He is drawn towards

the messiness that life can be,

Anger Lust Divorce Murder Whatever it is He doesn't care,

He is never intimidated by a situation In the same way that he's not intimidated by yours He's not,

It's the first thing Second thing,

Jesus comes in contact with a demon, Satan will do anything he can do to get,

the last bit of convulsions and all of the things out of this boy.

We should expect the same.

We should expect the same. We talked about this morning in Bible study.

Things are easy for us most of the time. We kind of have to force ourselves into hard situations.

If you faithfully believe and teach what's in this book, you'll find some hard situations.

You'll find hard conversations. You'll find hard relationships,

maybe with even your own family, your own friends, certain opinions that you're

going to have, certain ways that you live your life are going to be controversial. They will.

Expect that. Don't freak out when things don't go your way, when people look

at you and go, yeah, it's kind of weird, man.

I don't really want to take it that seriously. I go to church.

I've been baptized maybe nine times, but I've been baptized.

I've done all these things. I've done what I need to do.

Why are you making a big deal about this?

Expect the enemy to act like the enemy when you're trying to be faithful.

Thing. Pray that God would help your unbelief.

Now, again, in this story, this specific instance, what's going on as a demon-possessed

boy and his father, that God has compassion on him through Christ.

But in your own life, there's a million different things that could be going

on, a million different things.

Uniquely, in our church, we talked about this before. I don't know if I ever

talked about this from the pulpit, but like all of us that I've met have some

story being at some church where things didn't go well for you.

It's just that you, I don't know what it is about our church.

I don't know if we have a sign on the door that's like, hey,

if you've been screwed by a church, dude, come on. Like we are cool.

We're all the same. We're going to hold hands, talk about how awful they were.

It's just unique to our place. I don't know that it's really that unique.

I think if you went to any church, you could probably find a huge number of

people because you live in East Texas that would have the same story.

Oh yeah. I used to go to that church. You don't believe what they did.

You don't believe what they said. Man, we were doing this. They did that. Man, I get it. I do.

Things like that, if you are not careful, will ruin your life.

Ruin your life. Not just your church life, your life.

It is amazing how many people I meet that either don't go to church,

keep the church at arm's length, or feel like they have to control it.

If I don't, I'm going to get hurt. Can I tell you a secret? You are going to

get hurt no matter what you do.

You are going to get hurt no matter what you do. Can I tell you another secret?

You are going to hurt people no matter what you do. You will.

You will fail people. You will mess up. Right? And a lot of times when we push

away church or people or relationships, whatever it is, what God's calling us

to, what we're really saying is, I don't want to blow it.

And we project that onto other people and say, well, if they're the problem,

when in actuality, what we're saying is, you know, that's a lot of pressure.

I don't really want to do that. I don't really want to commit to those things. I've been hurt before.

I only use this example because I've talked to pretty much everyone in the room

and we all have this, every one of us.

And it takes faith to be able to say, God, I just, I trust you.

And I'm going to do what you've asked me to do. I'm going to love the way you've asked me to love.

I'm gonna forgive the way you've asked me to forgive. I'm not gonna carry this

bitterness even though I'm fully justified in doing it. I'm not gonna do that.

I'm gonna trust that you will work all things for the good of those that love

you. I'm gonna trust that.

And God, when I don't, when I don't trust that, would you help me? Would you help me?

Again, the point of this story is not that you need to go home and conjure up

something within yourself to appease God so that he'll act on your behalf.

What you need to do is go home and pray to the God of mercy and grace that he

would grant to you something that you can't conjure up on your own and watch

him work in your life in such a way that you will never be able to explain it to people.

Providence of his hand move in your life in such a way that when you tell the

story to future generations that are around you, all you can say is,

I don't know what I did. I went home and prayed and everything just happened.

God just moved and he just worked.

That's the point of this story. Not that you would all of a sudden become this

picture of faithfulness, but that you would trust the one who is faithful to you,

faithful to love you, faithful to care for you, faithful to walk in the chaos,

faithful to walk into the faithlessness that is your life, that God is able to do those things.

Let me close just by reading Jesus's words here. This kind cannot be driven

out by anything but prayer.

Let me just say that about your life. whatever it is that you're struggling

with, whatever area of your life is that you lack faith in, can I just tell

you, that can only be driven out by prayer.

You need to pray. You need to ask God for faith. You need to trust him.

East Texas and the world is full. We do not need any more self-reliant religious people. We're full.

We need humble people to come before God and say, God, I believe you. I trust you.

I love you. But man, I'm not doing that in every area of my life.

I don't actually think you can get rid of this in my life. I actually don't

think you can help me get rid of this sin that I've been struggling with for

as long as I can remember.

This family situation that I don't see any way that this can be said.

I just don't see any way it can happen, God.

Would you pray? Let's close with a prayer. Father, thank you as always for your

word, for who you are, for your graciousness, your kindness,

and your mercy towards us.

Read a passage like this this morning, will we not walk away simply thinking,

well, I just need to be more faithful.

God, I know for me personally, if there's anything that my life has taught me

is that I am fully incapable of conjuring up the kind of faith that you have called me to.

But what I am convinced of is that you are a loving father who loves giving

good gifts to your kids, first and foremost, faith. God, would you give us that?

Would you make us faithful? Would you cause us to trust you in the areas of our life that we are not?

If there are areas of our life that we're blind to, areas that we need to be faithful,

but we've put that off, God, not that we would just leave here and white knuckle

ourselves into doing things, but that we would humble ourselves before you and

entrust our lives to you in such a way that says, God, I don't trust you right now.

And I know I should, I need to. you.

Will we not fall into the trap of the disciples and think that because we've

been in this for a while and we know how this works and we've picked up a few

things along the way, that we don't need you as much anymore.

But God, would you remind us that the person that's been a Christian for 60

years is just as much your child as the person who's been a Christian for six minutes.

That we never stop being your children and children need their fathers.

God we need you We need you to do things for us That we cannot do ourselves.

Pray that we would do that Amen.