Mark 9:14-29

19 Jan 2025

Mark 9:14-29

Passage Mark 9:14-29

Speaker Ben Tanner

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Passage: Mark 9:14-29

14 When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. 15 As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him.

16 “What are you arguing with them about?” he asked.

17 A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. 18 Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.”

19 “You unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.”

20 So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.

21 Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”

“From childhood,” he answered. 22 “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

23 “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”

24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the impure spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”

26 The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.

28 After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

29 He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”

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Transcript (Auto-generated)

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Seat. And the page number is 1012.

Let's read the Word of God starting at verse 14.

When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him. What are you arguing with them about? He asked. A man in the crowd answered, teacher, I brought you my son who's possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech.

Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.

You unbelieving generation. Jesus replied, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me. So they brought him.

When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the boy's father, how long has he been like this? From childhood, he answered. It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him.

But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us if you can, said Jesus. Everything is possible for the one who believes. Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief. When Jesus saw that the crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the impure spirit.

You deaf and mute spirit, he said, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again. The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, he's dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet and he stood up. After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, why couldn't we drive it out?

He replied, this kind can come out only by prayer.

This is the word of the Lord God for his word. Thank you, Joni. Let me add my welcome to that of Beth earlier on. Please do have the Bible's open page 1012. I'm just going to pray and ask God to speak to us.

Father, God, I can't say anything of eternal significance this morning. But you can, and I believe that you will. As we look at your word and say, father, would you take my words and our hearts and would you focus them on Jesus, that this morning wouldn't just be a run of the mill Sunday, but a Sunday in which we encounter Christ and he changes us. For I ask it in Jesus name. Amen.

Many of you will know it's an exciting time of the year in American football in particular, you'll know that we are in the playoffs at the time when a few of the teams have this knockout stage to try and get to the. To the Holy Grail, to the super bowl itself. And around this time, lots of American football teams, they release what's called hype videos to try and get the fans and the team in a place where they're ready to play the game. And they show all of the kind of highlights from the team playing really well throughout the year. And they have a motivational speaker now in 2017, a year, incidentally, when the Philadelphia Eagles happened to win the Super Bowl.

But we'll leave that to one side, they released a hype video and it was called this. We All We Got, We All We Need. Or to put it in the Queen's English, we are all that we have got and we are all that we need. I wonder, does that phrase resonate with you? We're all we got, we all we need.

We're in a section of Mark's Gospel, you'll remember where Jesus has been identified as the Messiah by Peter. And then he spends some time saying, what does that look like? What does it look like for Jesus to be the Messiah? And each time we've seen what it looks like for Jesus and also then what it looks like for us. So a couple of weeks ago, we saw that.

It looks like him suffering and dying and rising again. And for us, it looks like his followers taking up their cross, denying themselves and following after him. Last week we saw as he was transfigured, he shone with the very glory of God. What does it look like for Jesus to be the Messiah? It means that he is the divinity that spoke creation into existence.

What does it look like for us? It means that we listen to him. We don't define Him. He defines us. Today we're going to see that he is the God who can save and heal.

And for us, it's going to look like depending on him. So the narrative, it carries on. Jesus has been up the mountain there. He went all shiny. He comes down the mountain and people, a crowd are there and they gather to him.

They're amazed. Wow, finally you're here. They run off after him. But when Jesus comes down the mountain to this crowd, he comes down, well, to a bit of a barney, an argument that's going on. Don't know if you've ever been around to somebody's house and the people there have had a Bit of an argument before you arrive, and it's tense and a little bit awkward.

And if you're anything like me, you kind of arrive and pretend that nothing's happened. Jesus doesn't do that. He arrives. It's a bit awkward. There's his disciples and the teachers of the law, and they've been arguing, and Jesus says, what are you arguing about?

Awkward. But perhaps more awkwardly, the subject of their argument walks up to Jesus, a father with a son who has gone through the unimaginable. And the father comes and says, teacher, my son's possessed by a spirit that's robbed him of speech. He carries on. And even as we start this passage, we're reminded, you know, that there is something that's gone wrong.

When hurting people become ammunition in a theological argument, rather than people who should be brought to Jesus, we know that there's something that's gone wrong straight away.

He says, verse 18. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth. He gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they couldn't.

Jesus replied, you unbelieving generation, bring the boy to me. Now, there's a few theological elephants that are in the room in this passage. The first is this. As you read that passage, it sounds a lot like epilepsy, doesn't it? Sounds a lot like this child has epilepsy.

And yet what Jesus does is he identifies that there are times when Jesus heals the physical ailments that we are in. And there are also times when he deals with a spiritual element. Now, it is not that epilepsy and demon possession are one. They are not. They are different things.

And in this instance, Jesus identifies and shows, look, this is something that is demon possession and is not purely a physical. There are hints as to why that is. We see that it's as the spirit sees Jesus that it then throws him into convulsion. We see that this spirit has often tried to kill the child through water and fire. Often not just once or twice, not accidentally.

We happened to be. And it just happened, but has often tried to do this. Now, it might be that even hearing that, some of us sit here and think, oh, I don't really like the idea of demons. We've seen demons before. In the Book of Mark, we see that when God is doing unusual things, such as being incarnate and walking on earth, we would expect to see the largest opposition to God manifest at that time.

God manifests in a unique way. We would expect to see unusual things. And the Bible is clear that there is a God and that there are spiritual forces of good and evil and that demons exist, but they are less powerful than God, more powerful than us, less powerful than God.

We can talk more on that over a coffee or a pint if you'd like to this week. Either way, you can imagine what life must have been like for this family. Imagine the joy of the pregnancy, the excitement of the baby. Imagine what it would have been like as child's born, we've got a son. Imagine all the things we could do.

I love the idea of playing in the garden or going down to synagogue together. Imagine what it will be like. It'll be great, won't it? Then imagine as you see this child afflicted again and again, the way in which our hearts break. Then imagine what it must have been like as they walk one day by a lake and the child suddenly sprints off towards the lake and has one of these convulsions face down.

And the family come and they wrestle the child out and they make sure he's okay. That was a strange event. And then it happens again and again and again, and they begin to take routes that don't go near the lake. But there are people cooking on open fires and we see the child starting to run towards those. Imagine the repeated heartbreak of the family as they witness this poor child going through this.

And then insults added to injury as they bring the child to this healer that they've heard about. He's not there, but his disciples are around. And his disciples, we've heard, have cast out demons and done all sorts of miracles in the past. So surely they'll be able to help out, we think, and they're not. And not only do they not help, but they then get into a debate with other religious people about how they could or couldn't help.

No wonder this poor father turns to Jesus, verse 22, and says, if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us. This is a cry of desperation, please help. And Jesus response is perhaps a little strange, if you can. It's almost as if he's kind of nitpicking the Father's statement. If you can wait a second.

Jesus says everything is possible for the one who believes. What's Jesus doing? Is it that Jesus is sort of saying, okay, here's the issue? The issue's not with me. The issue's with your faith, right?

You need to have a sort of certain level of faith and then everything's possible, right? Like at the moment, Mr. Father Figure, you're a sort of grade one faith. What we need to do is to kind of bump that up to grade five faith, and then everything's possible, you know, like you're 20% faith. If only you had a bit more than we could sort you out.

Friends, I need to tell you there are churches in this world that will teach you that. They will say, if only you have enough faith. I have sat with people who have carried burdens of guilt for years because they believe that if only I had enough faith, that family member would still be with me. If only I had enough faith, my cystic fibrosis would be no more. If you've been told that, I am so, so sorry.

I am so sorry. Because that kind of theology, what it does is it turns the gospel on its head. It says, if only you can summon up enough faith, if only you can sort of sit there and try hard, then you're sorted. If only you can just be a bit better, save yourself. God helps those who help themselves.

If you've heard that, I'm sorry. The apostle Paul spoke of a thorn in his flesh. The apostle Paul said, I've asked God three times to remove it.

I doubt the apostle Paul was struggling to have enough faith. No, in fact, what goes on is that Jesus shows, doesn't he, that it's not about that. In fact, the man replies, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief. There's the Father.

And he's admitting, look, I haven't got this together. Help me overcome my unbelief. And what does Jesus do? He doesn't go, oh, well, there's unbelief there. Sorry.

No, it's at that moment, at the moment that the man says, I don't have enough faith. Jesus goes, okay, let me heal him. You see, the Christian life promises full healing at the resurrection. You will have a resurrection body with no more ailments. That is promised occasionally, wonderfully.

God gives us foretastes of that now, and we do see miraculous healings, but we cannot claim it and we cannot put it on people's consciences. It, if only you try hard enough. It's the opposite of the gospel. Now, Jesus, what he's not doing is saying, let me evaluate the strength of your faith. He's saying, let me remind you of the strength of the God in whom that faith is.

Anything's possible. Why? Because, well, we've just seen who Jesus is. He's the shiny God of all creation. Of course everything's possible.

And so he rebukes the spirit, the spirit screeches out, leaves the child. And it looks like the child is dead. And people look at the child. Is he dead? Just imagine the poor Father at this stage.

And yet Jesus does just what he's done with Jairus Daughter a few chapters back, takes the child by the hand and raises them up. Verbs the same as Jesus, raising from the dead, takes the child and raises them up.

And then, well, then there's a conversation that happens about why the disciples couldn't drive out the demon. What can we learn from this? Well, there's all sorts that we can learn from this and we'll think about it for the moment. We've already thought about people as ammunition. We also think as we go through, we see the power of Jesus.

We also see our need for Jesus to help us with our faith. It's interesting, isn't it? The Father, he says, I believe. Help my unbelief. As if even my believing is something that God needs to give me, that Jesus needs to give me.

I can't do it on myself. I can't sit in a quiet room and just think myself up into faith. No, only God can do it.

We see an honesty on the part of the Father. I believe help my unbelief. Church should be a place of openness and honesty. One of the damaging things about that theology that says if only you've got enough faith, is that it encourages us to look like we've got it all together. If you come into church and look around and it looks like everybody else has got this Christian life down, they've got it all together.

I'm sorry. One of my lecturers always used to talk about how church should be not a trophy cabinet of saints, but a hospital for sinners. Church is a place of brokenness, a place of saying, hey, do you know what? I believe? But I need the Lord to help my unbelief.

It should be a place where we're able to come and say, I trust in Jesus. But I've got this great line of questions that I'm working through. I trust you, Jesus, but my life circumstances look really difficult on all these levels. Paul, please, please help me, Jesus, to trust you. I believe.

Help my unbelief. Growth group should be a place not where we just discuss the right answers, but the place where we say I believe. And yet in this area, right at the moment, I'm really struggling. I need you to pray for me. I need to pray because my health here is causing me doubts or this situation in my home is causing me doubts, or this situation with my wider family is causing me doubts.

We need to be honest with one another.

We can learn that from the Father, but we can also learn something from the disciples. After Jesus had gone indoors, verse 28, his disciples asked him privately, didn't want to lose face perhaps, why couldn't we drive it out? He replied, this kind can only come out through prayer.

Loads of ink spilled on that, that last sentence. This kind can only come out through prayer. If you read the commentaries, there's lot some people like, okay, so what we need to do is we need to have like this flowchart of demons. And, you know, this one can come out by prayer, and this one needs something else. And this one, that's not what Jesus did.

Jesus made it really simple twice in this passage. First time he says, this one can only come out by prayer at the end and further up. What did he say? Bring the boy to me. What on earth did his disciples think they were doing?

Trying to cast out a demon and not praying about it. Trying to cast out a demon and not bringing him spiritually to Jesus.

The disciples were drinking the Philadelphia Eagles Kool Aid 2000 years before. We all we got, we all we need. They've done this before, this casting out of demons stuff. In fact, the disciples are doing just what the Israelites did when Moses was up the mountain. Remember how we said there's lots of connections with Moses up the mountain.

Jesus goes up the mountain. Moses comes down the mountain. There's a big argument. There's all sorts going wrong. Jesus comes down the mountain and what do we see?

We see a people who say, our leader's gone, but we can do it ourselves. It was the golden calf for the Israelites. Let's build our own God who brought us out of Egypt. We know how to do this. We'll do it our own way.

We all we need. Down comes Jesus from the mountain. And his disciples just been trying to do ministry without prayer, without bringing them to Jesus.

Foolish, isn't it? And yet how often do we do the Christian life like this? You see, in a sense, this boy is a kind of a microcosm, a picture of the human condition. We too have been afflicted since birth with something that is trying to kill us. We too are hopeless without somebody intervening.

We too can't even drum up the faith that we need to find God. We need to be given it by God. We too will one day lay our head down on our pillow, close our eyes, and wait for Jesus to take us by the hand and raise us up, we too are headed for death. We rehearse every night, right? Like when you close your eyes at night and you're helpless until Jesus wakes you in the morning.

It's a rehearsal for that day when you will close your eyes on life and he will raise you up on the last day as he's promised.

See, we too are in a place where we are entirely dependent on Jesus. If you want to live your life for Jesus, if you want to die as somebody who knows and loves the Lord Jesus, you cannot do it in your strength and neither can I. There's a danger in where we've been over the last few weeks that we begin to think that we can. That we begin to think, hey, if I'm listening to Jesus, if I'm opening my Bible every day and I've got just the right Bible reading notes and I'm doing them religiously, if I'm doing battle with sin, denying myself, not following after what I want, and I'm being really religious about all of that, then I can get through my own way. And don't get me wrong, there's a great thing about Christian discipline.

It's good sometimes to deny ourselves. It's good sometimes to turn off traitors and read the Bible because we haven't read the Bible, but it's okay to do that. But if you're trusting in that, if you're thinking, somehow you've got this Christian stuff down, we're hopeless.

Jesus says this kind can only come out by prayer. Are we dependent on him?

I wonder, if somebody was to take a video camera to your life, would they label it? They're all they've got. They're all they need. We all we got. We all we need.

Or in a perhaps slightly cheesy twist, would they label it? He's all they've got. He's all they need. Are you dependent on Jesus? Are you dependent?

Will you try and do this in your strength? Let me lead us in a prayer.

Our Heavenly Father, we're sorry. We're sorry for the times when we try and live this Christian life as if it depends on us, as if we can do it somehow apart from you. We're sorry for the times when we don't pray because we think we've got it. We're sorry as a church that our prayer meetings are smaller than the sum of the growth groups that meet on those nights. Sorry for what that says about our dependence on you.

We're sorry for the ways in which sometimes we might look at the front here and see prayer ministry going on after the service and think, I don't want to go to that, because then people will think, I've not got it to together. Our Heavenly Father, help us to be wonderfully dependent on Christ. To be, as we'll see next week, humbly dependent on Christ. Help us to be those who say, all I have is Christ and yet all I need is Christ.

Thank you so much that we have one who at our most vulnerable when we lie powerless in the grave, can and will take us by the hand and raise us to life eternal. Amen.