1.
Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen. In our Gospel lesson for today taken from
Mark 9:14-29 we see that Jesus descends from the Mount of Transfiguration and
meets a defiant demon, an anxious father, an astonished crowd, and despairing
disciples. Even today, despair threatens to overwhelm our faith by pointing out
how we fail to change or improve, suggesting that God neither cares for us nor
has power to help. However, we see in the Gospel lesson today that Jesus
doesn’t linger in the glory of the transfiguration, but graciously descends to
a world of despair and doubt so that He might deliver us. We thank Jesus for His compassion, which
brought Him to our world of pain and dismay.
Today we ask Him to give us faith to overcome our doubts, and help us
believe that all things are possible with Him.
The message is entitled, “Jesus: I Believe, Help My Unbelief.” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Mark
9:14–29 says, “14 And
when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and
scribes arguing with them. 15 And immediately all the crowd,
when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. 16 And
he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” 17 And
someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he
has a spirit that makes him mute. 18 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.” 19 And
he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How
long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” 20 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. 21 And
Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said,
“From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into fire and
into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us
and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’!
All things are possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately
the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” 25 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.” 26 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.” 27 But Jesus took him by the
hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when he had
entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it
out?” 29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out
by anything but prayer.”
3.
The
most important thing in the entire world is to learn to say, “I believe.”
Without faith in the one true God and Jesus Christ, whom He sent,
there’s no salvation. By the grace of
God, a child can say it. By the grace of
God, given through Holy Baptism little Bentley will have saving faith. Without the Holy Spirit, the wisest man on
earth doesn’t even know what it means to believe. The disciples had made a fine confession of
their faith earlier in Mark’s Gospel.
Now we see that their faith fails them in a crucial moment. What could we expect from this troubled
father in our text? May the Lord teach
us all to believe, to help us in the midst of our unbelief!
4.
Here
in Mark 9 Jesus, with Peter, James, and John, had been on the Mount of
Transfiguration. This amazing experience
had lifted the disciples far above the distasteful things of this world. They had a foretaste of heaven. To a lesser degree, we too have moments when
we feel the nearness of God, when in God’s Word and Sacraments Jesus reveals to
us His love. But, the return to the
realities of life in this world are unavoidable.
5.
As
the little group came down from the mountain, they saw that the other disciples
were in the midst of an agitated crowd. In
the front were the scribes, who were questioning the disciples and taking
advantage of their inability to heal a demon possessed boy whose father had
brought him to Jesus to be healed. In
the absence of Jesus, the disciples had tried to drive out the demon that was
harassing the child. Before the scribes
could answer Jesus about why they were arguing with the disciples, the father
poured out his tale of woe. His son had
from early childhood been troubled by a demon who would cast him to the ground,
trying to destroy him by throwing him into fire and water. The father hoped Jesus would do what the
disciples couldn’t. Heal this child.
6.
Faith
that takes God at His Word and lays hold of His almighty power can never fail. It can truly move mountains. Deeply moved the father cries out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” This man detests the weakness of his
faith, but he goes straight the Jesus, the only One who can make up for his
lack of faith. When we go to Jesus where
He promises to be found in His Word and Sacraments, we find that our own weak
faith is strengthened in our hour of need.
Here in Mark 9 we see how soon the time of need and sorrow was over for
the troubled soul of that father! Before
the crowd could grow larger, Jesus rebuked the demon, commanding it with
authority to leave the child forever. As
always, the voice of Jesus, the Son of God, demands obedience. Although the demon cried out in anger and
gave the boy a final blow so vicious that he appeared to be dead, Jesus took
him by the hand and restored him to life and health.
7.
In
this passage from Mark 9 we learn of what to do with our doubt, despair, and
unbelief. We take them to our Lord Jesus
who alone can give us saving faith to believe in Him, which He has done through
the hearing of His Holy Word and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. There was a pastor who once encountered a
young man who was a dynamic, devout Christian, but he suffered from cerebral
palsy. He told the pastor that some of
his friends had come to him and said, “We’re
going to heal you of your cerebral palsy.”
So, they had laid hands on him and pronounced him whole, but Harvey
still had cerebral palsy. Then they told
him, “The problem is that you don’t have
enough faith, and if you don’t have enough faith, you will never be
healed. If you really want to be healed,
you have to claim your healing in Jesus’ name.
You have to believe that you are healed before you can be healed.” When he remained unhealed, they
eventually had concluded that he must be guilty of a heinous sin that was
blocking the healing. Finally, they had
declared he must be under demonic possession, so they had planned an exorcism
and tried to drive the demon out of him, but still he wasn’t healed. Finally he came to the pastor in tears and
said, “Pastor do you think that I’m
possessed by a demon?” The pastor
told him that he didn’t think so, then he prayed that Harvey would have peace
and that he would trust the Lord with His body and his life, because sometimes
God says “no” even to the most ardent prayers.
8.
This
kind of thing goes on ever day in America and around the world. Blind people are told to believe they can see
and they try their best to do so, but they open their eyes and can’t see a
thing. The lame are told to believe they
can walk, but they can’t get out of their wheelchairs, though they exert
themselves. So, by implication, the
problem is with them, they have inadequate faith. But, no one asks the obvious question, “If faith is all that is needed, why doesn’t
he healer himself have enough faith to cause the healing to take place?”
9.
We
can’t make a decision to believe something that we don’t actually believe. We can repent of our sins by the power of the
Holy Spirit. We can learn about Jesus
and study His Holy Word. We can make
decisions to do all kinds of things that will affect our future behavior, but
what we can’t do is create saving faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior by our
own willpower. This is what’s wrong with
modern evangelistic techniques that suggest that all a person has to do is make
a decision and faith will well up in his soul.
It doesn’t work like that. Paul
tells us in Romans that faith comes by hearing, it comes by the Word of God
that points us to Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer from sin, death and the
power of the devil. It’s the Holy Spirit
who creates saving faith, as we will see today with the baptism of little
Bentley.
10. The father of
this young boy who was demon possessed was in the presence of Jesus, the Author
of Faith (Heb. 12:2). Jesus called him
to trust Him. He had every reason to
believe that Jesus had the power to do something for his son, but he wasn’t
completely sure that he believed enough.
So, he cried out in honesty with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Every Christian has some level of saving
faith in their heart. But, the intensity
of that faith isn’t constant. It
increases and diminishes. No matter how
strong your faith is, there are moments in this life when it’s assaulted by the
devil. Sometimes it can seem as if your
faith is barely hanging on, and you make a prayer much like this man made to
Jesus, “I believe, but my belief isn’t
perfect, it isn’t pure, it isn’t strong.
I need help. Help me with my
unbelief.” When you’re assaulted
with doubts and your faith seems frail, go to the source of faith, the Word of
God that points you to Jesus as your Savior and Lord. Trust in your baptism, that you were washed
and cleansed of all of your sin and made a child of God through water and the
Word. Trust in His body and blood given
and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins in the Lord’s Supper. There’s no time in your life when your faith
is stronger than when you are immersed in God’s Word and His Sacraments. Staying close to God’s Word, listening to the
promises of our Lord Jesus, and opening your heart to Him are the things that
kill unbelief and build a powerful faith that doesn’t let you down in the midst
of doubt, despair, and unbelief.
11. Please pray with
me: Dear
Jesus, we pray that You have patience with us.
Help us not to wait until the trouble that surrounds us is so great that
we can hardly see Your presence for our tears.
May we rather come and learn of Your grace and power to help and to
save, so that when Satan assails us and our loved ones, we may not doubt but
believe, so that the mountains of difficulties and the depth of despair may not
rob us of the certainty that You are mightier than Satan and sorrow. We, too, pray, “I believe; help my
unbelief!” Amen.
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