Big Idea: Jesus invites faith, even in our failure.
Jesus and his closest disciples were confronted by a troubling situation immediately after a mountaintop experience. (Mark 9:14)
--Can you identify a mountaintop experience in your life? And can you describe any challenges that might have come afterwards?
The disciples failed to cast out the demon by relying on their own power instead of depending on God’s. (Mark 9:15-21; 29 [reference Mark 6:7b; 13])
-Prayer is how we best stay dependent on God and live into the Dream Disciple role of a Savvy Follower. Where I discern God’s voice and follow His lead at the right time in the right way.
--What does prayer look like for you? How do you best connect with God?
--Ask yourself the Discipleship Failure question: What’s holding me back from looking more like Jesus?
The father responded to Jesus with a desperate faith, and Jesus healed his son. (Mark 9:22-28)
“Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
Three Types of Faith:
1) Struggling Faith
2) Clinging Faith
3) Resting Faith
--Which type of faith have you most often experienced? Which type are you experiencing now?
--Ask yourself the Ordinary Heroes question: What is my next small step of obedience today?
Next Steps: Do you need to be encouraged in your faith, or do you need to redirect your faith?
Find more series resources at whoisgrace.com/mark.
[MUSIC] Who is Jesus? What is his mission? As the story moves and Jesus moves beyond the region of Galilee, the miraculous signs all point to his identity as the promised Messiah and King of God's kingdom. What miracle will happen next? What do the miracles mean? Will the disciples understand where all of this is leading? Let's pick up where we left off in this story. Church, good morning. My name is Mike, and I'm one of the pastors here at Grace Church. And we are continuing today in Mark, specifically chapter 9, verses 14 through 29, with a story that many are probably familiar with. Here, we'll find Jesus conducting his fourth and last exorcism recorded in Mark's gospel. Now, one thing we've noted in Mark is that he often gets straight to the point with fewer details than the other gospel accounts give, less is more for him. But this story is curious because Mark actually gives greater detail than a version of the story recorded in Matthew's or Luke's accounts. Each of the other gospels only gives seven verses a piece while Mark gives 16, more than twice as much parchment and much greater detail. So we're going to explore why that is this morning. And I titled this message, faith and failure, because we get to see both of them demonstrate in our passage. And when I think about those two concepts, faith and failure, it reminds me of my training as an artillery officer in the Marines. For those who don't know, artillery is basically shooting 100-pound bombs 10-plus miles away. And as you can imagine, there are quite a few variables that go into putting that bomb on target. There's wind speed, humidity, atmospheric pressure. The weight of the round itself, this specific lot of propellant being used and exactly how many grains of gunpowder in there. The calculations, they even get so detailed as include the measurement of the diameter of the artillery gun's bore. Even a micrometer of difference can put the round off target. I remember while in training learning about these concepts and how to put them all together. And for those of us in my class, we would ask question after question to our instructor trying to understand everything, which honestly is impossible. And every time at some point my instructor would always stop us and say, "Enough, now is the time to press the I believe button." Even if we couldn't quite connect everything in our heads, at some point we had to trust the process and believe that those who had done the calculations before had done them correctly. Which is hard enough to do when you're just taking a test and the worst possible outcome with some red pen and remediation. It's much harder to do when the rubber meets the road and you have to own that round going down range and the potentially disastrous results that might come from it. Being at the intersection of faith and failure is a fascinating place to be. And in our story this morning, we get to see Jesus' disciples and a father make different decisions when sitting at that crossroads. So as you get out your physical Bible or device and you turn to Mark 9, I want to ask each of you a question before we get going. When you fail, how do you view God? Because we've all failed at one time or another. Failing is a part of human nature, whether at work, at home, at school, or in our faith. In those moments of failure, what picture of God are you tempted to see? Or maybe when you're on the brink of failure, how do you approach God? Do you approach him at all? Let's get started in verse 14. And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and scribes arguing with them. Now, let's pause right here. Remember, Jesus and His closest disciples, John and Peter and James, they're all coming down from the event we learned about last week called the Transfiguration. These three disciples had just witnessed Jesus and the prophet Elijah and Moses talking in person. What an amazing sight and they even heard God's audible voice. What an absolutely life-changing experience. But then, as they come down the mountain, they're immediately confronted with a sticky situation. They see the other disciples arguing with the religious scribes in front of an entire crowd. What a contrast. Church, mountaintop experiences are great. I'm sure many of you would agree that few things can ever match the feeling you had when you finally put your faith in Jesus. Or when you're baptized, or maybe the experience of a mission trip to the Dominican Republic or Japan or Haiti, heck, even a powerful worship night. These are all moments of God's grace giving us an experience of Himself in a unique and powerful way. But don't ever forget, the vast majority of your ministry, the ministry that God has called you to wherever you live, work, learn and play, most ministry happens off the mountain. Those special experiences are partially meant to fuel you for the tougher moments of ministry in your life. Tough moments like when you reach out to your neighbor to build a relationship and get rejected. Or when you're trying to be faithful in the spiritual discipline of generosity and your car breaks down. Or maybe when you're walking alongside a family member or close friend going through a health crisis and the bad news just keeps coming. Part of the reason that God gives us those special moments with Himself is to keep us going when things get tough. So don't be surprised when you come off that mountain and you get sucked back into the grime of the day to day where you slam with a bunch of difficult situations and start feeling dejected. Satan is probably trying to sap your momentum. If anything, a tough time after a mountaintop experience is likely an affirmation that you had a special moment with God. Here's a painting of the transfiguration done by the famous artist Rafael. The miraculous exorcism in our passage today is in the bottom right and it puts a picture to that contrast that we're talking about. The amazing experience on the mountain and all the crap waiting for them when they get down from it. Side note, can I gently call out the fact that we as the American church don't do a great job of leaning into the arts as a form of worship aside from maybe certain styles of music. My wife and I visited the Notre Dame Basilica Montreal this spring and it was absolutely breathtaking with all of its sculptures, paintings, beautiful architecture and the scriptural symbolism intentionally built into every detail. Throughout church history, we have been way better at integrating all forms of art in our worship. Maybe we should recapture some of that, just a thought. Anyways, back to our story in verse 15. 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 have brought my son to you for he is a spirit that makes him mute. 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." The argument here between the religious scribes and the disciples was apparently over this young boy's condition. The father had originally meant to bring his son to Jesus but in his absence while he was up on the mountain, must have brought him to the disciples instead. Maybe the scribes started getting all uppity because the disciples weren't able to exercise the demon. I can hear it now. Ha, I knew it, Thomas, you can't cast out this demon, your bag of tricks doesn't work. Shut up, Carl, you can't do anything about it either, back off. Meanwhile, imagine the boy's father, he just wanted to get help for his son and now he was in the middle of complete chaos. No wonder when he saw Jesus, he ran towards him when he saw him coming down the mountain. 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 the spirit saw him immediately convulse 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 has often cast him into the fire and into water to destroy him. Now, we need to be careful with what we take from these verses with regards to medical illnesses and demonic possession. The boy's symptoms seem to describe seizures and since they've been happening from his childhood, this is very likely a case of epilepsy. The Cleveland Clinic describes epilepsy as a long-term chronic disease that causes repeated seizures due to abnormal electrical signals produced by damaged brain cells. The Mayo Clinic gives the following symptoms, procedures, temporary confusion, stiff muscles, uncontrollable jerking movements of the arms and legs, loss of consciousness. The question then is whether this is a physical condition or demonic possession. Let me be clear, I am not a medical doctor, but I would answer both. Mark is very clear in this passage that this medical condition in this instance is caused by demonic spirit. Mark is not saying that every instance of epilepsy is a result of demonic possession, neither any other mental or physical condition for that matter. But it is certainly possible and we've seen other people who have been possessed in Mark's gospel to display symptoms of various illnesses. In any case, the point is not what came first, the demon or the sickness. The point is that the boy's suffering is real, it's a deadly serious and the disciples couldn't do anything about it. Ironically though, the disciples had done this before. Back in Mark 6, Jesus sent out the disciples and gave them authority over the unclean spirits and they cast out many demons and anointed with oil, many who were sick and healed them. If the disciples were successful then, why is it going so poorly now? Did they think they were missing the right words? Using the wrong procedure, were they whispering to each other, was it tomato or tomato? I think Jesus gives us the reason in his response when he says, "Oh, faithless generation, how long am I to be with you, how long am I to bear with you?" Jesus may be directing this comment in part towards the Father and in part towards the crowd and scribes, but because it comes right after the Father's statement of the disciples inability to cast out this demon, I think it's primarily directed at them. There might be a hint of annoyance in Jesus' words, but I think he had it mostly to do a time running out, Jesus is moving towards Jerusalem and his eventual death and the disciples still can't get this kind of stuff right. The same stuff they've already gotten right before. This is a perfect example of one of the themes in Mark that we're calling discipleship failure. In this moment, the disciples failed to cast out this demon. We'll get more to this later. The Father continues. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Remember, the Father had just watched the disciples' failure and I wonder if he thought that was a reflection on Jesus. If Jesus' disciples couldn't help, maybe this Jesus isn't all he's cracked up to be. No wonder he said, "But if you can do anything, all of us who have children or siblings or parents or others who we care so deeply about, I think all of us can relate to this Father in some small way. But some of you have the unfortunate grace to identify especially closely with this Father." The NIV application commentary says about him, "He is like so many parents today who helplessly watch their child suffering from some malignant disease caught in the grip of some addiction or living at the mercy of gangs and societal violence. They experience anger, frustration and anguish, and not knowing where to turn for help. They fear in their deepest soul that something is taking control of their children's lives that will kill them unless they can be delivered." There are so many of you here at Grace who have watched your children suffer with illnesses, addictions, mental health issues, and the consequences of poor decisions. I know because I have walked and talked and cried and prayed with so many of you who deal with these issues for your children every single day. And I want to thank you for giving me the honor to help bear your burden in some small way. And I know the same goes for every other pastor here at Grace. And Jesus said to him, "If you can, all things are possible for the one who believes. Jesus' reply takes the attention off of the disciples' failure of faith and turns it now towards the Father. How does he respond?" Immediately, the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe, help my unbelief. How many of us approach God so honestly like this Father with complete vulnerability, more out of a sense of utter desperation, I believe, help my unbelief. He immediately cries out in anguish, in panic, with the deep yearning and aching for an outcome that he's not even convinced as possible, but he's daring to believe. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful, raw, and genuine moments captured in all of Scripture. It's one that I can personally identify with. There's clearly faith to some degree, since he brought his son to Jesus in the first place, but there is also a superauthentic and humble acknowledgement of where his faith fell short. This was a struggle with faith, not a struggle with a demon. And the father here is lifted up as an example of another's theme we see over and over again in Mark, Ordinary Heroes. This father, in this moment, is an example for each of us. Church, you can have both faith and unbelief at the same time. It's not mutually exclusive. It's not a binary choice. Some of you think that if you have any doubts, a lack of faith at any point, it means you must not have real faith. And I rebuke that notion as a lie from Satan to be aware of where your faith falls short and to consciously fight and strain and struggle through it might be one of the most faithful acts you could ever do. I can't imagine anything else that is more truly God-honoring and glorifying. The famous evangelist, D.L. Moody, described three kinds of faith that he observed during his ministry career. The first is a struggling faith, like someone just trying to keep their head above water. The second is a clinging faith, like someone grasping onto the side of a boat. And finally, the third is a resting faith, like being safely in the boat and reaching out to help pull others in. Each of these is equally real and true. Some people have the gift of a resting faith. I'm amazed and envious of these people. They always seem to trust that God will work it all out in the end, even when the odds are stacked against them. Those have a clinging faith who lose their grip on the side of the boat and their head goes under. They get swallowed up by the circumstances of life and it can look as if they've fallen away, but they always pop back up, sometimes after a shorter period and sometimes after a longer one, and they get their grip once again. Some, though, have the God-given lifetime labor of a struggling faith. It can feel as if they never seem to get closer to the boat or the shore no matter how hard they try. Every day feels like an exhausting, overwhelming struggle to believe, but they keep fighting and paddling and treading water waiting for their deliverance. This is the authentic faith I see displayed here. When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, "You mutant death 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. 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." Fascinating. What does "driven out by prayer" mean? Let's start by defining prayer. And I love Gretchen Ronnovich's simple definition of prayer as "the slightest and sometimes unknown communication with God." You can't be close to someone you don't talk to or spend time with. That's a fact which applies to spouses, children, parents, friends, etc. And it's the exact same with God. We must train ourselves to consciously and even subconsciously commune and walk with God throughout our day. That's what Paul meant in his first letter to the Thessalonians when he commanded them to "pray without ceasing." He didn't mean spend each of your 84,600 seconds in a day on your knees, hands folded, eyes closed. He meant that we should strive to live all those seconds with a heart posture of continual dependence and communion with God. And that kind of prayer can only flow out of a humble heart when that recognizes our own inability and as God to intercede. Over the last few months and especially while preparing the sermon, I realized that I wasn't praying enough and I'm a pastor. You could say I literally get paid to pray. But the heart posture that I was convicted of was the same one the disciples had here. I, like them, was trying to do things out of my own power, not from God's power. I was trying to come up with my own solutions, trying to convince others of the best way before. And I was trying to be everything to everybody. Spoiler alert, my solutions aren't that great and there's not enough of me to go around even if they were. So I actually changed up my chair time. Actually, I cut back on Bible reading to focus more on prayer. Notice that I didn't cut Scripture out, but now I read less so that I can pray more. I'm doing this new thing where after I'm done reading, I set up, grabbed my phone and set up a five minute timer and I prayed through it three times in a row. The first five minutes is for my family. Emily always comes first, then my kids, then my other family members as a Holy Spirit brings them to mind. The next five minutes I pray for my ministry for Grace Church and the many difficult situations my flock is going through. Finally I pray for missions that God would complete the task and bring his gospel to places like Japan, Spain, and wherever there are those who haven't heard the name of Jesus. I've found that this little technique helps me to focus my prayers on different subjects that are important to me and I don't know what it is about having a timer, but I don't have to worry about finishing all my prayers or getting sidetracked until I hear the beeping. It's just me and God. The Spirit bringing things to mind, Jesus interceding for me and the Father patiently listening, loving, and speaking to me. One of our dream disciple roles here at Grace is something we believe all of us, including me, should embody, is that of a savvy follower. It means that I can discern God's voice and follow his lead at the right time in the right way. And the only chance I or any of us have of fulfilling this role is by being in constant communication and dependence with God through prayer. The disciples were too busy trying to cast out the demon in their own power or too busy arguing with the scribes to stop and pray. They didn't realize that this demon couldn't be cast out with a process or a foam reela, but only with a relationship. The NIV application commentary says, "The disciples had been tempted to believe that the gift that they had received from Jesus was in their control and could be exercised at their disposal. Presumably they'd come to regard their power to heal and exercise as their own autonomous possession, rather than being a commission from Jesus to realize his delegated authority afresh each time through dependent prayer. Mark is suggesting then that self-confident optimism may feel like faith, but is in fact unbelief because it disregards a prerequisite of human powerlessness and prayerful dependence on God. The disciples' failure wasn't that they lacked faith, they had plenty of it. Their failure was that they were placing their faith in themselves and not in Jesus, demonstrated by lack of humble prayer, but, and pay attention because this is a big butt, Jesus draws out faith in the midst of the disciples' failure. Church, that's my big idea this morning, Jesus invites faith even in our failure. The disciples failed once again and there would be more failures to come, yet Jesus patiently instructed them afterwards. Church tradition views Mark's gospel as primarily relying on Peter's account of events. If that's true, and remember, this story has so much more detail than the other accounts and the other gospels, I wonder if this event had a particularly strong impact on Peter. Who knows how foundational this experience, this failure, was to his future ministry. I'm sure the disciples asked themselves some form of the question that we've come up with to go along with the theme of discipleship failure. What's holding me back from looking more like Jesus? What is standing in the way of me being able to better fulfill that role of savvy follower? Obviously, the disciples kept at it and grew through this experience. We can and should grow through our failures too. Our sanctification, the lifelong process of looking more and more like Jesus takes time. It's full of winds and losses, ups and downs. It's not linear, but remember, Jesus invites faith, builds faith, even in our failure. What about the Father? He was on the cusp of failure, and yet Jesus drew his faith at just the right instance. He chose to lean into Jesus at the hardest moment. Notice that he didn't try harder. That wasn't going to get him anywhere. Instead, he accepted Jesus' invitation to trust him with what came next, even if he had no idea where it would lead. Remember, the Father is embodying our theme called ordinary heroes. The question that we have to go along with this theme is, "What is my next small step of obedience today?" For this dad, his step wasn't to do anything, it was just to trust God. Honestly, in my life, that's often the hardest thing to do. Is that the one he wants you to take today? I have two next steps for us this morning, but you only have to choose one, so pick your poison. For some of you, your next step is simply to be encouraged. You may feel like your faith is a roller coaster, high highs and low lows, and that's not the picture you see reflected in the stories of Christian spiritual role models. Or do you see it often reflected in social media, or maybe even from this church sometimes? I want you to receive encouragement right now. If you're trying, if you're struggling, if you're striving, if you're just breathing, you're doing a good job. Every moment that you choose God instead of giving up on him, no matter how small, no matter how minuscule, that is a supremely valuable act of faith. God is honored by that. Good job, sister. Keep going, brother. Please remember, God isn't just glorified by the end of the journey. He's glorified by every little faithful step you take. Be encouraged. Now, there are some of you that need to redirect your faith. You're doing this Christian life in your own power, whether you realize it or not. You need to change the object of your faith from yourself, or maybe from someone or something else, and you need to put it back where it belongs. You need to trust God with your relationship status. You need to trust God with your child's future. You need to trust God with 10% of your income. You need to trust God with that big decision looming over you right now. You need to trust God that he is working in that person's life, whom you love so dearly, calling him or her to himself. And by the way, I'm not promising any outcomes here, but I am promising an easier yoke, a more abundant life, a peace that only faith in Jesus can provide. And you can start by doing what I did as I was preparing this sermon. I confessed. I told God that I was trying to do it on my own. Again, I asked for forgiveness. I asked for help to replace my sinful tendencies with faith. And then here's the key. After receiving that forgiveness, I repented. I started changing my mental, emotional, and physical habits with the help of the Holy Spirit so that they moved me from my failure to greater faith in Jesus. If you stop at forgiveness, you're not going to make any progress. No change. You have to repent to actually follow through and work with the Holy Spirit to cultivate a life of dependence on God. As I get ready to finish this morning, listen to the following statements and let the Holy Spirit maybe poke you if one of these should be your prayer this morning. Father, I believe help my doubts. I believe help my hopelessness. I believe help my selfishness. I believe help my inability to accept your love and forgiveness. I believe take away my deep shame and guilt. I believe give me a greater purpose in this life. I believe help me to be more aware of your presence every day. I believe help me to see my worth first, foremost, and always as your daughter or son. I believe help my marriage, my children, my parents. I believe help my unbelief. And as you may be cling to one of those simple prayers, let me use Paul's familiar words in the letter to the Ephesians as a reminder and encouragement for you and for us as a church. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Jesus invites faith even in our failure. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]
