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An archive of Jacob Nannie's Sermons & Teachings
Today's reading is Mark 9 verses 14 through 29.
"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?" (speaking to the boy's father)
"How long has this been happening to him?" And he said, "From childhood, and it has often cast him into the 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.'"
Let's pray together.
Lord, we know that you are sovereign, and that you are omnipotent, and that you see and know all things.
And so I pray right now that we would be helped by you in our own unbelief,
that you would prepare our hearts to receive this sermon today,
that you would give Jacob wisdom as he delivers the message that you have prepared.
I thank you for blessing us with this church, this congregation of people who are seeking to know you,
and love you, and share you. And I pray that you would just go before us today and be glorified by what happens here.
And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen.
Yeah, I didn't realize how long that passage was, so you're reading it out loud.
Good morning, everybody. I wanted to start out today's message with a story, and this story comes from
a book called "Miracles" by Craig Keener. It's a short little book of about 1,100 pages.
And he details many, many, many miracles in this book, ancient miracles and modern miracles as well.
And in this section, he's detailing miracles from the recent West, just in the past half century.
And he says this, "Billy Graham recounts that x-rays verified the severity of his sister-in-law's tuberculosis.
She was dying of the disease. Finding no hope in the treatment, she discontinued it and asked some believers to anoint her with oil and pray.
Afterward, the doctors at the sanitarium were shocked by further x-rays, which verified that no active tuberculosis remained.
God worked the healing, Graham contends, not through any special healing evangelist, but by the simple faith of believers."
So Billy Graham says it's not through--you know, Billy Graham is pretty popular. He draws major crowds, or did, and has led many to Christ.
And he says it's not through any special powers any one person has. It's through the faith of believers that this miracle and all miracles happen.
It's faith in the person and the power and the authority of Jesus that overcomes all obstacles,
things that get in the way of human flourishing. That's what Mark is teaching us in this passage,
is that faith in the person and authority of Jesus overcomes all obstacles to human flourishing.
Now, human flourishing is life with God. We're not talking about health, wealth, or prosperity.
We're talking about drinking deeply from the well of living water, having peace and trust and unity and joy and satisfaction in God.
And I want to kind of look at the statement that faith in the person and authority of Jesus overcomes obstacles
by looking at the faith of the disciples in this passage and also the faith of the Father in this passage.
So let's examine the faith of the disciples.
Now, the disciples, they had recently experienced great success in casting out demons and healing the sick.
In Mark chapter 6, it says, "Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits."
And in verse 13, "They cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them."
So Jesus gives them authority and they go out and they cast out demons and they have greats.
They cast out many demons and they heal many sick.
In Luke 10 17, it says, "The seventy-two returned with joy saying, 'Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.'"
So the disciples had gone out, Jesus gave them authority, and by His name they were doing miraculous things.
And put yourself in those shoes for a second.
Recently, you've been casting out many demons and healing many of the sick.
And so what do you think your mindset would be when this father and this boy come to see Jesus,
but Jesus is busy talking to Elijah and Moses,
and they bring him to you and you say, "Well, listen, sir, we've got this. We've cast out many demons and we've healed many sick."
If you're the disciples, you're probably pretty confident in your ability to help this man and his child.
But they fail. In this encounter, they fail.
The text actually says that they were unable, they were not able to help him.
And it kind of drilled down the wording there. They were, there was nothing within themselves.
They'd had no personal resources to accomplish this task.
They had no power in and of themselves to cast out demons or to heal the sick.
And so they asked Jesus, "Why were we not able to do this?"
And we've done it many, many, many times. How come now we're not able to cast out this demon?
And Jesus's answer, I find, is pretty interesting. It's a bit confusing.
He says, "This kind," just demons in general, "cannot be driven out by anything but prayer."
Now, it's not as if the disciples weren't praying, right?
I'm going to assume that they did pray when they were attempting to cast out this demon and to help this boy.
So what does Jesus mean?
Let's read it again. "Cannot be driven out by anything but prayer."
And some translations might say by anything, not by anything, but in prayer.
In prayer, it is an overflow of faith. It's an indicator of faith that's dependent on God.
We see this in other verses, I believe, such as Matthew 21, 22, where Jesus says,
"And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith."
And also in Luke 6, 12, Jesus models this for us.
"And these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God."
So when we, I'm trying to think through this, and I'm thinking, okay, well,
when we're talking in our Christian communities, someone might say,
"Well, I'm going to prayerfully consider what you're saying."
What they don't mean is like, "I'm going to pray one time and then make a decision,"
or, "I'm just going to engage in the act of prayer and then get back to you."
What I believe people to be saying when they say prayerfully consider something in prayer
is this lifestyle of, "I need to seek God for this decision," or whatever the context might be.
In prayer is this life of dependence on God.
In prayer it is communing with God, talking with God, it's living in faith.
It's this indicator that you have reliance upon God alone.
And so the failure of the disciples was their misplaced faith.
A couple commentators say some things I think we should look at.
One says that Jesus explained to the disciples that such malign evil spirits can be expelled
only by a full reliance upon the unlimited power of God expressed through prayer.
The disciples had not acted in prayer and sincere faith.
Another commentator says the failure showed their lack of prayer, this life of prayer.
They didn't lack praying just one time, it's just this life of prayer and depending on God.
I like what this commentator has to say.
"The disciples' problem has been a loss of the sense of dependence on Jesus' unique authority,
which had undergirded their earlier exorcistic,"
it's kind of a nerdy way to say exorcisms, "their successes.
They've become blase and thought of themselves as now the natural experts in such a matter.
And they must learn that in spiritual conflict there is no such automatic power."
So again, place yourselves there.
You have a track record of casting out demons and healing the sick.
And I think our human tendency is to shift from our eyes on Jesus to,
let's say for now, the formula of things.
I think we all experience this.
For example, we have faith in the morning that our car is going to start, right?
I get in my car, throw my stuff in, put the key in the ignition,
and I'm not like on my knees before God saying, "Please," maybe today with the AC,
"but please, please God, start this car."
No, I have faith that it's going to start because of the track record of it starting.
Started yesterday, started the day before that, started a year ago.
Why wouldn't it start today?
And so my faith in that little example, which is sort of a silly, mundane example,
is not necessarily in God.
It's in past experience and past track records.
We also do this with spiritual things, very serious spiritual things.
Some of us might have a time where we're reading scripture and praying
and things are just clicking, right?
The Spirit is guiding us and understanding His word
and helping us minister to others and just really overwhelming us
with His presence in our life.
And those are spiritual mountaintops, right?
And we go on and we still read and pray, but if we don't keep our eyes on Jesus,
that sort of degrades into just the mere practice of scripture reading and prayer.
Andrew preached, I think it was months ago now,
the classic evangelical answer to communion with God is reading and praying.
But it's not just reading with a blank mind and praying as a habit
that leads to communion with God.
It's having faith expressed through prayer, through reading.
And so we have these habits that over time we start to have more faith in the formulas
and in the tactics or the, what am I trying to say?
The habits of things that have worked in the past and not on Jesus.
That's what the disciples did.
They cast out demons in Jesus's name.
They had authority to heal the sick, but they got caught up in the process
and the program of doing those things and they diverted their eyes away from Jesus.
So the application here is, is your faith in your own abilities,
in your own processes and programs, or is it in God's ability?
Our faith, in summary, must come from a full reliance on God and His power.
Now this failure of the disciples led to the father's lack of faith later on
in this very long passage that Elan tried to read.
Verses 22 to 24, let's read it again.
And it has often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him.
Jesus had just asked how long this had happened for.
But if you can do anything, 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 the one who believes.
Immediately, the father of the child cried out and said, I believe, help my unbelief.
The recent experience of the disciples failing to cast out this demon has led the father to say,
well, Jesus, if you can, help us, have compassion on us.
And I think we should contrast this response to Jesus with other responses in Mark and in Matthew.
In Mark chapter 1, verses 40 through 41, it says, "A leper came to Him, imploring Him,
and kneeling said to Him, if You will, You can make me clean.
Moved with pity, He stretched out His hand and touched Him and said to Him, I will be clean."
The father says, if You can, Jesus, the leper said, if You will, You can.
And in Matthew chapter 9, verses 28 to 29, "When He entered the house,
the blind men came to Him. And Jesus said to both of them, Do you believe that I am able?"
Do you believe that I am able to do this? "They said to Him, Yes, Lord. Then He touched their
eyes, saying, According to Your faith be it done to You." The response of the father is an honest
response. We have to commend him for his honest faith, but it misses the point. See, the disciples
that were with Jesus could not do this for him. They were unable, they were powerless, and that
has him doubting Jesus's ability. We could probably assume he's seen Jesus do mighty works before,
but since in his recent mind, this desperate father has seen failure, he's like, I don't know,
Jesus, if You can, help us. And my fear is this, as we read stories like this in the Gospels,
or even if we hear about them in today's world, that we think these are not really things for
today. And here's why I have that fear. We become like the father in this story, doubting Jesus's
ability, because it's not in our past experience for some of us. Some of us have maybe never
experienced a miracle, maybe never seen a miracle. I'm sure some of us have never seen demon-possessed
people or witness exorcisms. And so it's not in our experience to see these things. And so in our
Western, you know, Greek-thinking minds, we start to rationalize, like, oh, this probably doesn't
happen today. But that's you having faith in your own experiences, in your own patterns of life,
and not in the power and the ability of Jesus. Not to mention that these things do happen today,
like, really happen. The 1100-page book, if you type in the word "deaf," 163 stories of deafness
being healed come up. And I was reading this yesterday, almost never is it one mention of
deafness when the word comes up. It's like many people were healed of deafness, muteness, seizures,
and there's a laundry list of healings. We, through the internet, through worldwide travel,
we have no excuse but to see that these things do happen today. So we can't even go off of,
well, maybe they don't happen. They do. They really do. And not only do they happen,
and we can read about them and know about them, you yourselves experience the power and ability
of God all the time. But because we have shifted our eyes off Jesus, or sometimes we do,
we miss out on that. I'm sure you have maybe never seen a miracle, but you might know someone
who has, or you might know someone who has received a miracle. Maybe you've never seen
demon possession. I'm sure you know someone who has or who has seen exorcisms. But forget the
supernatural, physical, miraculous stuff. You have the testimony of other believers.
You've seen, I'm sure, radical change in others, maybe a radical change in yourself
that's a result of God miraculously working in you. So I don't want us to come to texts like this
and say that it just doesn't really happen today because that's a way that we start to shift our
eyes off of Jesus and doubt his ability. Our doubt and disbelief does need help, though.
And that's what the Father asked for in this story.
Jesus says in verse 23, "If you can, all things are possible for the one who believes."
One commentator said that verse 23 can be paraphrased, "As regards to your remark
about my ability to help your son, I tell you, everything depends upon your ability to believe,
not on mine, to act. It's also the leper. Jesus, if you will, you can do it." Jesus makes him well.
The blind men, they confess their belief in Jesus's ability. And the blind men,
because they were blind, had no past experiences with being healed. It's not like they're like,
"Oh yeah, I've been healed of blindness before, so Jesus can do it." They are blind. They need
Jesus's help. And they confess that belief, and he helps them. "In its struggle with temptation,"
one commentator writes, "faith must always free itself from the disastrous presumption of doubt,
in the certainty that with God nothing is impossible and that His majesty becomes most
visible when human resources become exhausted." Faith and doubt mix together. I was talking with
Andrew this morning, and I'm very skeptical of Christians who say, "Oh, I never doubt. I never
doubt anything about the Bible, about Jesus, about signs and wonders." That's very strange to me,
and concerning, really. Because you have, at the end of Matthew, the disciples,
they're with the resurrected Jesus, they're poking their fingers in his sides, and it says,
"And some doubted." And I think D.A. Carson, it was D.A. Carson who said, "This doubt is mixed with
belief, though." These things, they interact, and God is helping through signs and wonders,
through miracles and supernatural activity, our unbelief.
The Father needs help in His unbelief, and so do we. Jesus can expel demonic forces at a word,
but the evoking of faith is much harder than that. Disbelief of Jesus, whether from scribes
or crowds or disciples or desperate fathers, is both a greater opposition and more serious
obstacle than all the hosts of, this guy says, pandemonium. It's not physical healing or demons
or spiritual warfare that's the biggest obstacle. It wasn't, Jesus didn't come and say, "Man,
your boy's really sick." He says, "No, you have no faith. You have little faith. You don't believe,
you're not trusting that I can do what you're asking me to do."
The question is not if Jesus is able, rather it is if you believe.
Let's look at some further applications here. There are things in your life and my life too
that are somewhat like what this boy was experiencing. Maybe you have decades-long
struggles. It could be health struggles, it could be spiritual struggles,
sin struggles, relationship struggles. Maybe this has afflicted you from childhood
and it's seeking to destroy you. That's what spiritual warfare is. It is seeking to remove
the image of God within you. And we are like this boy who is just afflicted.
What is he going to do? He can't do anything. We need help in our unbelief.
And so we turn to Jesus and we often need visible demonstrations to help our unbelief.
In verse 19, let me read it actually, Jesus asks why they're arguing. The Father speaks up and says,
"Here's why they're arguing. The disciples could not cast out the demon." And he says in verse 19,
"O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?
Bring him to me." And I almost imagine Jesus being like, "Oh my gosh, okay, you guys aren't getting
it. Let me show you what faithfulness looks like." I've been extremely into golf lately,
like really into golf. I've been playing like two or three times a week. My wife hates it.
And I imagine like, imagine taking a golf lesson and the guys across from you, I never have golf
lessons because I'm that good, but the guys across from you, he's teaching you and he's like, you
know, swing the club this way, keep your feet this way, do this and that, and you're just not getting
it. And he gets frustrated. He's like, "Oh my gosh, let me just show you." And he takes the club
and shows you how to do it. Sometimes Jesus is doing that with us. I was reading and it's like
the disciples, they don't need further teaching. The crowd doesn't need more teaching. I think he
said all he can about his own authority. So now he's just showing them visible demonstrations of
what it looks like to have faith. And it's interesting that he's showing them through
the faith of the Father. It's not the faith of Jesus that's accomplishing
this supernatural activity. He's showing, it's almost demonstrating, it's almost like he brought
the Father in to say, "Come on, admit your unbelief so I can help you. You don't believe,
let me show you and help you in your unbelief."
As God acts miraculously, I am convinced that he is helping us not necessarily in the physical
or in the mental or in the spiritual, but helping us in our lack of belief, in our unbelief.
Despite our experiences, we must also remain in awe of Christ. Look at verse 15.
It says, "And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, he hadn't done anything yet, nothing.
They see Jesus, they were greatly amazed and run up to him and greeted him."
I don't know if you've seen miracles or not or supernatural things or things that are just like
miraculous, mighty acts of God, but if you didn't, would you still be enthralled with Jesus, amazed
at him? That's the type of faith that is required for these things to happen. Like, Jesus, you're
just walking down a mountain and I am amazed, shocked. I want to run to greet you. The crowd
seems to have a little more faith than the disciples did. We have to maintain that amazement
and I think that happens through an in prayer, a life dependent on God, doing things that helps
us rely on him more and commune with him more. And lastly, we must be faithful in sharing that
testimony. I think oftentimes, I know I've experienced recently a couple miracles
personally and I talked to Andrew and I'm like, "Man, I feel like I should pray
more for people to be healed or maybe ask for them if they need healing." But I'm really
scared. I don't want to look like a fool. I don't want to be wrong. I don't want to pray and fail.
And that fear of foolishness is a tactic of spiritual warfare. If I can be afraid of being
a fool, and sometimes I am a fool, don't get me wrong, but if I can be afraid of being that when
talking about these experiences, I can feel in my mind starting to be like, "Did I really experience
that?" And a little bit of doubt creeps in and before I know it, I'll be like, "I don't know if
Jesus can do that stuff today. I don't know if he's able," which is a shocking statement if you're
a Christian. And so I think we need to be sharing our testimony of the mighty acts of God and be
honest that we want to see them more. I wonder if we would be so deprived of spiritual experiences
and miraculous experiences if we didn't hide it so much. Like, what if none of us here were
afraid of being foolish and said, "Hey, here's what I think God did in my life. I think he healed me
of this. I think he arranged this meeting. I think he did this in my life." Well, then stories like
this wouldn't be so foreign to us. And they're certainly not in other countries because I think
in other countries, they're so dependent on God that they always see him coming through
and sharing that testimony. Fear leads to uncertainty, which leads to doubt, the person
and the authority of Jesus. And so my prayer is that as we look to the example of the disciples
and replace our faith in Christ, not in our circumstances and not in our programs and
processes, as we ask the Lord to help our unbelief, my prayer is that he would do literal, miraculous
works here. Some of us, again, some of us might be struggling for decades with sin, health issues,
mental issues. Maybe it's just today. God, through your faith in his power and authority, can meet
those needs. Our faith, in conclusion, our faith and unbelief needs help. We must place our faith,
not in past experiences, but Jesus himself, because faith in the person and authority of Jesus
overcomes all obstacles that get in the way of human flourishing. Let's pray.
God, I thank you for examples like this of, well, let's just say unbelief, God, that you,
when someone expresses doubt and unbelief in the scriptures, you don't meet that with disdain or
just leaving the person behind. You make them well. God, you're patient with us and helping
us. And I ask God that even this moment you would do miraculous things. God, help us to become a
community that experiences the mighty works of God and has no shame or fear and sharing them
with others. Lord, we want our unbelief helped so that we might glorify you, we might be with you,
and we might spread your good news to the rest of the world. Pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.