The following sermon is from the Westminster Pulpit, extending the worship ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We are a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Please contact us for permission before reproducing this message in any format. I invite you to turn to your Bible to Mark chapter 9 as we continue in this gospel series. Recall how last time when Pastor Walker was preaching that while Peter, James, and John are on the mountaintop serving as eyewitnesses to the transfiguration of Jesus, the other disciples are now down in the valley struggling with a demon-possessed little boy and suffering accusations and antagonism from the scribes of the Jewish leadership. It's an occasion of testing of faith for a father who has a face-to-face encounter with Jesus, and the disciples who come to grips with their limited abilities and understanding of the Son of God's mission on earth. Please follow as I read Mark chapter 9 beginning in verse 14. And 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 to him, and greeted him. And Jesus 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 Jesus 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.' 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 and into water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, 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 the crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, you mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him. 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, the 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. they went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise. But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him." This is the Word of God. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we would ask that you might open our eyes, that you might give us ears to hear and hearts to understand the meaning and the message of this portion of your Word. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. For many people, Donald Trump's election victory last fall was too good to be true. For at least as many people, it was too bad to be true. They just couldn't believe it. The diagnosis that you have cancer may be too bad to be true, paralyzing you with fear, even being in a state of denial for a time. But then again, the report from the doctor that your cancer is now in remission, especially after a long, arduous battle, may be too good to be true. You may have lingering doubts. Perhaps the tests have not uncovered all the sleeper cells just waiting to awaken and battle against your health once again. Many people love reunions Perhaps you've seen on social media these surprise reunions of husbands and fathers who've been away serving in the military and come back to greet unsuspecting loved ones who are reunited before adoring crowds. It's too good to be true. Belief is a funny thing. Our human tendency is to guard ourselves from giving in to too much hope. We don't want to be naive. be disappointed. On the other end, we also can be stuck in denial, conveniently ignoring hard realities of life. Like many other passages in the Gospels, the too-good-to-be-true and the too-bad-to-be-true dynamic of Jesus and his message come to us. Our passage follows the mountaintop experience of Jesus and his three closest disciples as they go into the valley of darkness where evil spirits and human unbelief are prominent. The encounters of Jesus, especially his dialogue with this father and the disciples, reveal for us the vital call of discipleship. Despite our questions, doubts and our fears about following Jesus, God calls us to trust, to pray, and even to suffer for the sake of the gospel. Well, just as Moses came down from Sinai, to greet Aaron and Israel who were in a state of pandemonium at the worship of the golden calf. So our scene opens with chaos. Jesus and the three disciples come down to find the other nine disciples in a heated contention with the scribes, apparently over their failure to heal a little boy terrorized by an evil spirit. Jesus enters the chaos. and calmly asks what they are arguing about. The father of the tormented boy speaks up. He explains that his son is a deaf-mute being possessed by a mute spirit. And as he unveils the very symptoms, it's eerily familiar to us. Perhaps any of us who have been witnesses of somebody suffering maybe an epileptic seizure, the foaming of the mouth, the grinding of the teeth, rigidity, being endangered by fire and drowning in a pool of water. But this father is convinced his son has a demon. Jesus concurs. And he proves it by successfully casting out a wicked spirit and setting this boy free, as we'll see in our passage. I think we can identify with this man. We have either known or we've heard stories of parents in similar desperate situations watching helplessly as a child suffers tumultuous seizure after seizure after seizure. We know of others who have suffered through the gut-wrenching pain of taking a child or a loved one to doctor after doctor after doctor, trying in vain to find a diagnosis, or trying even hard to find, even more rare, some sort of effective treatment for somebody afflicted with great ailment. Helplessness. Futility is the experience, is the feeling of having a child turn his or her back on God, or make destructive lifestyle choices. Can we trust God with such pressing challenges? Do we believe that God truly has our best interest at heart when we are overwhelmed with life's circumstances? Can God deliver us? Will he deliver us when we call upon him? Well, this father was drawn to Jesus. He's moved by some measure of faith, perhaps desperation, hoping that Jesus can do something for his afflicted little boy. Perhaps you thought, well, if Jesus can't do something, who can? It's interesting that Jesus uses this occasion to vent his frustration on what he calls a faithless generation. To me, it sounds very familiar to Moses, who was exasperated as he led a very grumbling and unbelieving Exodus generation so long before. don't believe Jesus is criticizing this father. Rather, I believe he's exposing the crowd to demanded signs and wonders. He is calling out these scribes for their duplicity, and even rebuking his own disciples for being dense. They just didn't get it. remember that moment it was just moments ago that Jesus heard the sweet affirming words of his father this is my beloved son listen to him but now Jesus is back in the valley and must bear a little bit longer with this faithless generation Moses had borne a great weight he led the people Israel through the wilderness, interceding on their behalf on a number of occasions when God threatened to wipe them out. Moses was a good mediator. It was through him and his intercession that God forgave that idolatrous generation, but now one greater than Moses was here. The people obey Jesus and bring the little boy to him, and right away the Spirit reacts with revulsion and repulsion against being in the presence of the Son of God. And like a good physician, Jesus asked the father a question, how long has he suffered? Jesus is entering into this father's world. He dignifies the father by inviting his input to give him details to make a proper diagnosis. As we see, as the man talks, his heart is revealed. His doubts bubble up to the surface. We can imagine that his father is just, he's half wondering whether Jesus is for real or not until he expresses, but if you can do anything, have compassion and help us. This father had undoubtedly heard great things about Jesus, the healer. but his boy had suffered long and hard. The disciples couldn't fix it. Jesus seems to care, but can he do anything? This father has faith, even though it's a weak faith, a weary faith. Jesus had helped others, but could he handle this case? Friends, you and I have the same questions. We have the same doubts. Is this worthy to bring to the attention of my Father in Heaven? Will He hear me? And yes, I think most of us believe that God can, but will God? Will He listen to me? Perhaps my sin is too great for God to forgive me. Perhaps God has given up on me. Perhaps my lost loved one is too far gone, too deeply far into the far country for God to bring him home again. Jesus ministers to this father, first with a firm rebuke. If you can, though how dare you question my power, but it's not an angry rebuke because it's followed by the assurance all things are possible for one who believes. Jesus brings this father to a crisis of faith where he's forced to blurt out, I believe. Help my unbelief. I think there's few truer words expressed in all of Scripture by a struggling sinner crying out to God for help. Help my unbelief. This Father is an example to us of how to overcome our pretentiousness, to admit our weakness. Asking for help is hard. Especially as you age, as you become more independent, we're not supposed to need help, right? But the Father delights when we ask for help. When we're struggling to believe the too-good-to-be-true gospel and repenting of the too-bad-to-be-true reality about ourselves, we need help. convince ourselves of what we profess to believe. I believe we're called to preach the gospel to ourselves on a regular basis. See, we have to get the rational truth in our brains to sink down into our hearts. the prefrontal cortex portion of the brain and the rastal center of the brain to get that content into what's called the limbic system, just the natural emotional response to how we do life. It's hard work to turn head knowledge into heart knowledge. And part of the process is acknowledging first how much our belief fails to materialize in true believing action. Many of us have knowledge that has not translated itself into true belief, conviction. For instance, if I profess to believe that God is truly sovereign, why am I so anxious about my future? If I believe in God's promise that he will never leave me nor forsake me, why? Why am I so afraid of my financial circumstances? Or my job situation? Or my marital situation? If I believe that God loves me with a steadfast love that endures forever, why is it so hard for me to accept that he's forgiven me? That he will not reject me the next time I stumble over a temptation to sin? In each of these situations, we have the freedom to say what this nameless Father, oh Lord, I believe, but please help my unbelief. Help what I say I believe to sink down deep inside of me. You know, if you truly trust the pilot and airline, you will actually get on the plane. It's only if you truly trust the doctor will you hand your child over to him for surgery. Only if you truly trust the financial advisor will you hand over the details of your retirement accounts. The action must follow the belief we profess when it comes to trusting the living God. In the verses that follow, the father receives that which he seeks and asks for. Jesus rebukes the spirit, commands it to come out of the boy, to never return. And the spirit, in good fashion, gives the boy one last convulsion, leaving the boy like a corpse, so much so that the people thought he was dead. For Jesus gently brings the boy up to his feet. It's interesting that Mark doesn't record the reaction of the crowd. the Father, I can imagine his joy being able to communicate with his Son, who can speak, who can hear, finally. But Mark does pay attention to the reaction of the disciples who, when alone with Jesus, ask why they could not cast out the evil spirit. Jesus acknowledges that this was a tough case. without pretension or any type of accusation, Jesus simply says, this kind can't be driven out by anything but prayer. Really? The disciples just forgot to pray? Is there some formula here where if you just pray a certain prayer, you're gonna cast out a demon? No, it's a prayer of faith. It's the kind of prayer that demonstrates I am incapable in and of myself, and I need the power of God to act, to bring change that I cannot bring by my own power. believe that Jesus is calling out the arrogance and the self-reliance of these disciples. Once again, they are failing to admit their weakness and their helplessness. This is one of many rebukes we see in the Gospels where Jesus is exposing how the disciples trust in their own wits. It's refreshing to me as you look ahead at the Apostles in the book of Acts, how they commit themselves to the ministry of the Word and prayer. I believe this occasion raises several important questions for us regarding prayer. Do we believe that God truly hears prayer? You remember Hagar who was on the run from her mistress Sarah for beating her, and when she was afraid she and her son Ishmael would die, God heard Hagar and met her need. After generations of captivity in Egypt, Israel thought that God had forgotten them, but then God spoke to Moses and sent him back to Egypt. That he had heard the cries of his people and he would deliver them from their bondage. We worship the God who hears. Over and over again, the psalmist implore us, implore God, oh Lord, hear my prayer. In response, God implores us in Psalm 50, Secondly, do we believe that prayer actually changes things? You know, you and I, we make our plans, we go about our business, We trust that things will basically work out. I think that we often take life for granted. We live in a largely functional and prosperous society governed by justice and the rule of law. And for many of us, it's only in time of crisis that we are aware of our desperate dependency upon the living God. I mean, why pray for food when you can just go out and buy some? Why pray for healing when I can just buy medicine or take my child to the doctor? All too often we have too much trust in human power. We live in a society designed to hinder and limit our dependency upon God. We are a presumptuous people, all too unaware of our vulnerability. I believe you and I are guilty of our overconfidence in our control of things. We are duped by this illusion that we can fix our problems by our own designs and resources. You need physical healing? Go to a doctor. You need emotional healing? Go to a counselor. You need education? Go back to school. We have the greatest military, the greatest universities, the greatest scientific and medical progress in the world. And we should be grateful for these things, and yet maintain a healthy awareness of how much we depend upon our Heavenly Father in daily, humbly trust in His provision. But I believe that if we truly believe that prayer changes things, we will pray more boldly. That we will pray for real change, revival in the church. Reformation and society, the transformation of the people we know and care about, change in our hearts. If we truly believe that prayer changes things, we will boldly and directly go to our Heavenly Father in prayer. The third question that this text raises is whether or not we seek God or only the things that God gives. In other words, do we pursue true intimacy with God, or is prayer for many of us merely robotic, a routine, as though God is the great vending machine in the sky? You know, I don't believe it's wrong for us to boldly and plainly go to God with our needs. ask him. I believe God delights, he's pleased when we come to him needfully. We must not presume or demand or come with the entitled spirit, become humbly independent. But may in prayer we also seek that which is greater than God's gifts, God himself. Prayer is is the means for fellowship of genuine intimacy with God. It's through prayer that we know him, enjoy him and learn to see the world and see ourselves and see other people the way God sees. Prayer is the means for conforming our own self-centered hearts more and more into his likeness. I grow more and more convinced that prayer is what prepares us for heaven. to remind us that this world is not our home, that we were made for another place, a world of love, as Jonathan Edwards described it. The celestial city, as John Bunyan writes, our true home, a new heaven and a new earth. Well, after experiencing the mountaintop and witnessing Jesus do a battle back in the valley and hearing a good message of prayer, disciples in private with Jesus, hear once again the message of the cross. They're passing through Galilee, the text says, and Jesus once again informs his disciples that he will be handed over to men, will be killed, and on the third day rise again. Mark notes that the disciples did not understand what he was talking about, and they were too afraid to ask him. I've had that similar experience where we're too afraid to ask. The teacher gave instructions and we were distracted, but we're too embarrassed to ask again. Us men are guilty of failing to ask for directions when we're out driving. Of course now GPS devices save us from that embarrassment. but we get embarrassed, we're afraid. Well, I believe in this situation, think about the disciples were afraid to ask Jesus because in the prior chapter, Jesus had rebuked Peter harshly because Peter had rebuked Jesus. To stop talking nonsense about suffering and being killed, the disciples were afraid and blinded. just could not accept this message. It was too bad to be true. This is the fact the third of four times recorded in Mark that Jesus prepared his disciples for his own suffering and death on a Roman cross. The disciples were still looking for a political liberator. not a suffering servant. They still had in their minds the common view of the Jews of a general revelation of all the elect at the end of history, but they just couldn't imagine an individual rising from the dead in time, space, and history as we know it. I had a mountaintop experience once. My junior year of high school, just months after I was converted, I went on this Senior high retreat where I experienced the love of God and fellowship with believers like I had never experienced before. And at the end of that weekend, I dreaded going back to school. Monday, I just couldn't face it. The same old, same old. Back in the drudgery. Back with the knuckleheads on my football team. I wanted to stay on the mountaintop and not return into the valley where there was temptation. hardship and sin. You know, mountaintop experiences can be too good to be true, but then we are forced back into the valley to face the too bad to be true reality check of living in a fallen world. But the good news of the gospel is that it gives us the resources to face evil, temptation, suffering, and sin. We live in a society that has a severe allergy against death, that has proposed an all-out war against suffering and aging, and would even prefer death over suffering by means of assisted suicide. The godless and the secular around us are convinced that suffering has no purpose, that it is meaningless, that there's nothing to redeem. Sin causes a kind of amnesia. And if we're not careful, we can become like the unbelievers around us who forget that we are fallen and that we have brought suffering upon ourselves. And like other sinners, we are tempted to blame God for the injustice of human suffering, rather than cry out to God for relief. To repent of our own sin and to seek redemption, Christ. The disciples tried prayerless exorcism for the same reason they couldn't understand why Jesus had to die. They didn't see how weak and proud they truly were. They underestimated the power of evil in the world and in themselves. In contrast, this father of the little boy admitted that he did not have what it takes to handle the suffering and the evil he faced. Jesus essentially replies to this father, I can do it if you believe. Through Jesus, you do not need perfect faith, but repentant helplessness to gain access to the presence of God. Notice that Jesus does not say to this father, well, once you have confessed all your sin, purified your heart and gotten rid of all your doubts and surrendered to me completely, then maybe I will heal your son." Dorothy had to kill the Wicked Witch for the wizard to grant her request to go home, but he turned out to be a humbug. God does not demand of us great heroic deeds or tremendous faith. but requires of us to humbly acknowledge our weakness and entrust him enough to fight against our doubts. And unlike that silly wizard, God always delivers. And saving faith is not only for those who forsake all and travel distant shores to preach the gospel among the lost, but it's also for those of us riddled with doubts. who cannot muster enough strength to meet the moral and spiritual challenges that we face every day. The gospel message is for those who ask for help. Help my unbelief. And the Bible assures us that God hears us when we call upon him. The gospel is about good news and bad news. It's the good news of our salvation. It's the bad news of our sinful condition. The gospel exposes the heinousness of our rebellion, our precarious situation. We face the threat of eternal punishment before a holy, just, and righteous God. For many people, that is too bad to be true. It just can't be that bad. But people of faith will embrace that glorious truth Because the other side of that coin is the glorious and beautiful truth that God demonstrated his own love for us. That while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God did not spare his own son, but freely gave him up for us. The too-good-to-be-true news of the gospel is true. You know, I don't deserve it. It's not pie in the sky, this is not mere fairy tales. We have a Savior who came to seek and to save the lost, to rescue us from our bondage, whatever form or shape it takes. And God calls you and I to trust Him, to pray to Him, to even be willing to suffer for His name, if we are unashamed to admit the worst about ourselves. while on the same motion gladly embrace the best news the world has ever heard. Let's pray. Gracious God, our Father, we are grateful for the too good to be true gospel of Jesus Christ, who came in our likeness to bear our sin, to conquer it, to defeat it, to set us free, and to give us hope in this life and the eternal life to come, I pray. that you would send us with that humble and joyful confidence as we go back into the valley of the week ahead, wherever you may lead us and take us. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.