The document discusses the nature and power of faith through biblical references, particularly focusing on a father’s struggle with belief as depicted in Mark 9:24. It emphasizes that true faith involves acknowledging one’s weaknesses and seeking divine assistance to strengthen belief. Various historical examples and interpretations illustrate how faith can persevere despite uncertainties, encouraging believers to pray earnestly for help with their doubts.

1. JESUS WAS RESPONSIVETO FEEBLE FAITH
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
“And straightwaythe father of the child cried out and
said with tears, Lord, I believe;help You my
unbelief.” Mark 9:24.
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
The Omnipotence Of Faith
Mark 9:23
A.F. Muir This is a case in which the revisers have introduced a dramatic play of expression into
what has seemed a merely conditional statement; and apparently with the authority of the best
manuscripts. The words of Christ are seen to be those of surprise and expostulation. He sends
back the qualification which the man had uttered, and asserts the virtual omnipotence of faith,
and, at the same time, the dauntlessness of its spirit.
I. The SPIRIT WHICH CHARACTERIZES THE BELIEVER.
1. Confidence and fearlessness. The true believer will never say, "If thou canst." The greatest
difficulties will not seem insuperable, and the testimony of sight and ordinary experience will be
distrusted. Inward weakness and uncertainty will be conquered. The one thing of consequence
will be, "Is this promised?" "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13:15; cf. Habakkuk
2:17).
2. It is to be distinguished from self-confidence. There is no immediate reference to self in such a
conviction; it bases itself upon the unseen and eternal, the laws and promises of God. Hence we
may speak of the humility of faith.
3. It is exceptional and divinely produced. Most men are guided by their ordinary experience.
When that experience is deliberately set aside or ignored, it must be because of some fact or truth
not visible to the natural mind. But such a discovery would be equivalent to a Divine
communication. The faith which proceeds upon this must, therefore, be supernaturally inspired.
It cannot exist save in one conscious of God, and of a peculiar relation to him.

2. II. THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH. If not wholly dependent upon the actual experience of the
power of faith, the confidence of the believer is nevertheless greatly sustained and strengthened
by it. Resting in the first instance upon the consciousness of One mighty to save, whose help is
promised and assured, and concerning whom it may be said, "If God be for us, who can be
against us?" the man of faith will also prize every indication that God has been with man. For he
is assured from within and from without that the possibilities of faith are:
1. Unlimited - because it identifies itself with the power of God. Faith is the union of the spirit of
the believer with him in whom he trusts. It ensures nothing less than his interest and help. The
weakest child of God can secure his aid. "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
2. Unlimited - save that it subjects itself to the will of God. Just as God is omnipotent and yet
incapable of unrighteousness, so the faith of the believer will only avail for things pleasing to his
heavenly Father. But, then, it never desires any other. The promises of God, however, declare the
direction in which Divine help may be certainly expected; and there are countless instances in
which the believer can plainly discern the lawfulness and propriety of the objects for which he
pleads.
(1) The work of faith is ever blessed.
(2) The prayer of faith is never denied; for if the answer do not assume the form expected, it will
nevertheless prove to be substantially, and under the best form, the blessing that is required. And
fervent, earnest, repeated prayer is unmistakably encouraged by the teaching of Christ. It is for
Christians not to pray less, but more and more importunately, only leaving the particular mode in
which the answer is to come to the wisdom and love of God.
3. Unlimited - as illustrated ia Scripture and the biographies of godly men. The eleventh chapter
of Hebrews is a magnificent confirmation of the promises of the Lord; and them can be no better
exercise than the study of the answers to prayer recorded in the Word of God and the lives of
saints. - M.
Biblical Illustrator
Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief.
Mark 9:24
Faith unto salvation
Andrew Gray.This incident will show us what believing presupposes and consists in.
I. The text shows A MAN THAT IS IN EARNEST. He cried out with tears. They were tears that
told how his heart was moved.

3. II. We look at this man, and we find that there is more than a general earnestness about him. We
see the tokens of a special and active desire to have the blessings which faith was to secure for
him. So he who is awakened to flee from the wrath to come.
1. He seeks forgiveness. Sin is not a light thing in his eyes.
2. He longs for healing of the disease of his soul.
3. To say all in a word, his desire is set upon salvation.
III. The operation of this desire. It is an active desire.
1. It makes a man pray and cry to God. It is a time of felt need.
2. It may cast into an agony, which may evince itself in tears. There is a melting power in strong
desires that agitate the soul.
3. The desire for salvation will cause you to seek for faith. We are justified by faith; no holiness
without it.
4. There will be an effort to believe. It is not God that believes; we have to believe. He would not
command you to believe, if it were idle for you to try.
IV. HE FEELS HIS NEED OF GRACE FOR THE EXERCISE OF FAITH — "Help mine
unbelief." My own resources are not sufficient for it. A true sense of the need of grace to believe
is a great step towards the act of believing.
V. THE MAN BETAKES HIMSELF TO CHRIST. I need grace and I look to Thee for it. So is it
with all those that are about to believe. "Thou hast destroyed thyself, but in Me is thy help." The
fulness of Christ is unlimited.
VI. THE MAN HAS A DISTINCT CONCEPTION OF THE GRAND OBSTACLE WHICH
GRACE MUST REMOVE — "Unbelief." Why is it that unbelief has so great an ascendancy?
Because it possesses the heart.
VII. WE FIND THAT THE MAN DOES BELIEVE — "Lord, I believe." "I must believe" is the
first step. The next, "I can believe." The third, "I will believe." The last step, "I do believe."
(Andrew Gray.)
Worlds of faith
C. H. Spurgeon.We have often heard of George Muller, of Bristol. There stands, in the form of
those magnificent orphan houses, full of orphans, supported without committees, without
secretaries, supported only by that man's prayer and faith, there stands in solid brick and mortar,
a testimony to the fact that God hears prayer. But, do you know that Mr. Muller's case is but one
among many. Remember the work of Francke at Halle. Look at the Rough House just out of
Hamburg, where Dr. Wichern, commencing with a few reprobate boys of Hamburg, only waiting
upon God's help and goodness, has now a whole village full of boys and girls, reclaimed and
saved, and is sending out on the right hand and on the left, brethren to occupy posts of usefulness
in every land. Remember the brother Gossner, of Berlin, and how mightily God has helped him
to send out not less than two hundred missionaries throughout the length and the breadth of the
earth, preaching Christ, while he has for their support nothing but the bare promise of God, and
the faith which has learned to reach the hand of God, and take from it all it needs.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)

4. Dealing directly with GodPastor Harms, in Hermannsburg, desired to send missionaries to the
Gallas tribe in Africa, and in his life he is reported to have said: Then I knocked diligently on the
dear Lord in prayer; and since the praying man dare not sit with his bands in his lap, I sought
among the shipping agents, but came to no speed; and I turned to Bishop Gobat in Jerusalem, but
had no answer; and then I wrote to the Missionary Krapf, in Mornbaz, but the letter was lost.
Then one of the sailors who remained said, "Why not build a ship, and you can send out as many
and as often as you will." The proposal was good; but, the money! That was a time of great
conflict, and I wrestled with God. For no one encouraged me, but the reverse; and even the truest
friends and brethren hinted that I was not quite in my senses. When Duke George of Saxony lay
on his death bed, and was yet in doubt to whom he should flee with his soul, whether to the Lord
Christ and His dear merits, or to the pope and his good works, there spoke a trusty courtier to
him: "Your grace, straight forward makes the best runner." That word has lain fast in my soul. I
had knocked at men's doors and found them shut; and yet the plan was manifestly good, and for
the glory of God. What was to be done? "Straight forward makes the best runner." I prayed
fervently to the Lord, laid the matter in His hand, and as I rose up at midnight from my knees, I
said, with a voice that almost startled me in the quiet room, "forward now in God's name!" From
that moment there never came a thought of doubt into my mind!
Weak faith clinging to a mighty object
Milman.There was once a good woman who was well known among her circle for her simple
faith, and her great calmness in the midst of many trials. Another woman, living at a distance,
hearing of her, said, "I must go and see that woman, and learn the secret of her holy, happy life."
She went; and accosting the woman, said, "Are you the woman with the great faith?" "No,"
replied she, "I am not the woman with the great faith; but I am the woman with a little faith in
the great God."
(Milman.)
Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief
B. Noel.I. FAITH MAY BE WEAK AND PARTIAL IN A REAL BELIEVER. However much
some persons may talk of our religious faith being the result of inquiry and evidence, and
depending solely on the power of the intellect, or on its feebleness, we know well that passion
and prejudice, not only in religious matters, but in all other matters where our interests or our
passions are involved, have a powerful influence on the formation of our opinions; and wherever
prejudice or excited passion exists, a much stronger degree of evidence is required to fix our
belief of a thing, than were our minds perfectly calm. So in religion.
II. TO BECOME STRONG IN FAITH, WE MUST PERSEVERE IN PRAYER. Increase of
faith does not come by argument or evidence, but by direct influence on the heart, sweeping
away prejudice and calming the impetuous passions. He who gave can alone increase our faith.
Let us ask of Him who is so willing to bestow.
(B. Noel.)
The balance and the preponderance
Dean Vaughan.I. It was so with the suppliant of this text. THERE WAS IN HIM THIS CO-
EXISTENCE OF FAITH AND CREDULITY. It was not so much a suspended or a divided
feeling, as of one who was postponing the great decision, or in whom some third thing, neither
belief nor disbelief, was shaping itself; as we hear now of persons who can accept this and that in

5. Jesus Christ, but who also refuse this and that, so that they come to have a religion of their own,
of which He is one ingredient, but not the one or principal one. This man's state was not one of
mixture or compromise; it was the conflict of two definite antagonists — faith and unbelief —
competing within. He was not a half believer. He was a believer and an unbeliever, in one mind.
The "father" of this story saw before him a Person who was evidently man, and yet to whom he
was applying for the exercise of Deity. Brethren, if we can succeed in making the condition
clear, there is a great lesson and moral in it. Many men in this age, like the well-known Indian
teacher, are framing for themselves, without for a moment intending to be anything but
Christians at last, a Christianity with the supernatural left out of it — miracle, prophecy,
incarnation, resurrection, the God-man Himself, eliminated; and it is much to be feared that this
kind of compromise is likely to be the Christianity of the educated Englishman in so much of the
twentieth century as the world may be spared to live through. It will be a Christianity very
rational, very intelligent, certainly very intelligible. But it will have parted with much that has
made our Christianity a discipline; it will have got rid of that combination of opposite but not
contrary and certainly not contradictory elements, which has been the trial yet also the triumph of
the Divine Revelation which has transformed, by training and schooling, mind, heart, and soul. It
will have done with that characteristic feature of the old gospel which made men suffer in living
it; which made a man kneel before Jesus Christ as a Saviour to be wondered at as well as adored,
with the prayer on his lips, "Lord, I believe — help Thou mine unbelief."
II. There is a second thing to be noticed in the condition of this suppliant. He was one who knew
and felt that, in all matters, whether of opinion or of practice, THE SOUND MIND ACTS
UPON A PRINCIPLE OF PREPONDERANCE. He believed and he disbelieved. He did not
conceal from himself the difficulties of believing; the many things that might be urged against it.
He was not one of those rash and fanatical people, who, having jumped or rushed to a certain
conclusion, are incapable of estimating or even recognizing an argument against it — who bring
to, their deliberations upon matters of everlasting importance minds thoroughly made up, and
count all men first fools, and then knaves, who differ from them. No; the father of this demoniac
boy saw two sides of this anxious question, and could not pretend to call its decision
indisputable, whichever way it might go. He himself believed and disbelieved. But he was aware
that, as nothing in the realm of thought and action is literally self-evident — nothing so certain,
that to take into account its alternative would be idiocy or madness — a man who must have an
opinion one way or the other, a man who must act one way or the other, is bound, as a reasonable
being, to think and to act on the preponderance, "if the scale do turn but in the estimation of a
hair," of one alternative over the other. This man was obliged to form an opinion, in order that he
might accordingly shape his conduct, on the mighty question, What was he to think of Christ?
But he had a more personal, or at least a more urgent, motive still. In the agony of a tortured and
possessed home, he could lose no chance presented to him of obtaining help and deliverance. If
Jesus of Nazareth was what he heard of Him there was help, there was healing, in Him. The
father's heart beat warmly in his bosom, and it would have been unnatural, it would have been
unfeeling, it would have been impossible, to leave such a chance untried. Action was required,
and before action opinion. Therefore he only asked himself one question. Which way for me,
which way at this moment, does the balance of probability incline? There is on the one side the
known virtue, the proved wisdom, the experienced benevolence, the attested power — so much
on the side of faith. There is on the other side the possibility of deception, the absence of a
parallel, the antecedent improbability of an incarnation.

6. III. There is yet one more thought in the text, which must be just recognized before we conclude.
THIS FATHER TESTED TRUTH BY PRAYING. He was not satisfied with saying, "I believe
and I disbelieve." It was not enough for him even to carry his divided state to Christ, and say,
"Lord, I believe and I disbelieve." No, he turned the conflict into direct prayer — "Lord, I
believe — help Thou mine unbelief!" Many persons imagine that, until they have full and
undoubting faith, they have no right and no power to pray. Yet here again the principle dwelt
upon has a just application. If faith preponderates in you but by the weight of one grain over
unbelief, that small or smallest preponderance binds you, not only to an opinion of believing, and
not only to a life of obeying, but also, and quite definitely, to a habit of praying. Faith brings
unbelief with it to the throne of grace, and prays for help against it to Him whom, on the balance
and on the preponderance, it thinks to be Divine. "Lord, I believe — help Thou mine unbelief." It
is the prayer for the man who is formulating his faith, and has not yet arranged or modelled it to
his satisfaction. It is the prayer for the man who is shaping his life, and has not yet exactly
adjusted the principles which shall guide it. It is the prayer for the man in great trouble — who
cannot see the chastening for the afflicting who feels the blow so severe that he cannot yet
discern the Father's hand dealing it.
(Dean Vaughan.)
The only help for unbelief
J. Slade, M. A.I. THE NECESSITY OF A FULL BELIEF IN THE SAVIOUR.
1. It is necessary as the foundation of all our Christian privileges and blessings. Our Lord
continually laid it down as the condition of bestowing His favour; His apostles insisted upon the
same holy doctrine.
2. It is clear in the very nature of things: we can do nothing of ourselves, by any independent
effort, for our own salvation; we are estranged from God without the means of reconciliation.
II. OUR NATURAL INABILITY TO ATTAIN THAT BELIEF AND THE METHOD BY
WHICH IT IS CERTAINLY ATTAINABLE. If it required nothing more than the assent of the
understanding, it would be clearly within own reach; it implies a disposition to receive all the
doctrines of revealed truth, a submission to the law and love of God. It is idle to beseech of God
a living faith, when we have no intention to imbibe those principles, to form that character,
which a true faith implies. Look at the case of this man: there were no earthly prejudices which
he resolved to keep; no earthly hindrances which he desired to set up; all he wanted was further
light in his understanding, and a complete conviction in his heart; hence he honestly prayed his
prayer to Him, in whose hand was the bestowal of these blessings.
III. THE EFFECT AND TRIUMPH OF IT, WHEN ATTAINED. It is the only means by which
the enemies of our peace can be vanquished, and we prepared for our crown of rejoicing (1 John
5:4).
(J. Slade, M. A.)
The spirit of faith amid uncertainties
Morgan Dix, D. D.Let us take comfort in this wonderful saying. Never fear; whatever thoughts
may from time to time move through the listening spirit. Deal firmly and bravely with your
intellectual and spiritual tempters; repel them; cast yourself on God. Assert, in terms, the
principle of faith. Say, "I believe." Thus, at length, all shall be well. For the hour is at hand when
doubt shall end forever, and when the Eternal Truth shall stand out clear before our eyes. Doubt

7. and uncertainty belong to this life; at the end of the world they will sink to long burial, while the
world also sinks away, and then we shall see all things plainly in the "deep dawn beyond the
tomb." In this dim life we see spiritual things imperfectly, yet ever draw we on to full, clear
knowledge. Even so, a man might be led, step by step, through darkness, till he came out and
stood on a narrow line of sandy beach hemming the border of the immeasurable deep, whose
depth and majesty were hidden from his eyes by the cold veil of fog. But once let the winds arise
and blow, and the dull, grey curtain, swaying awhile, shall be gathered into folds, and as a
vesture shall it be laid aside; while, where it hung, now rolls the sea, clear, smooth, and vast,
each wave reflecting the sunbeam in many-twinkling laughter; the broad surface sweeping back,
to where the far horizon line is drawn across, firm and straight from one side of the world to the
other. Faith sees already what we are to see for ourselves by-and-by, when God's time is come.
And, meanwhile, though we be here, on this narrow border of the world beyond, and though we
cannot see far, and though the fog do sometimes chill, yet let us be men and shake ourselves, and
move about; yea, let us build a fire as best we may on the wild shore, to keep off the cold and to
keep us all in heart; and let us believe and trust, where we can neither see nor prove, and let us
encourage one another and call to God.
(Morgan Dix, D. D.)
The struggle and victory of faith
John Ker, D. D., John Trapp.I. FAITH AND UNBELIEF ARE OFTEN FOUND IN THE SAME
HEART. The picture which Milton gives of Eve sleeping in the garden is true of us all. There is
the toad-like spirit whispering evil dreams into the heart, and the angel is standing by to keep
watch on the tempter. So the two worlds of faith and unbelief are close to the soul of man. When
he is in the dark, gleams from the light will shoot in as if to allure him; and when he is in the
light, vapours from the dark will roll in to perplex and tempt him.
II. WHENEVER FAITH AND UNBELIEF MEET IN AN EARNEST HEART THERE WILL
BE WAR. The question raised by faith and unbelief presses on the whole nature, and will not be
silenced until settled one way or the other.
III. WE CAN TELL HOW THE WAR WILL GO BY THE SIDE A MAN'S HEART TAKES.
When a ship is making for the harbour, there is a set in the tide which may carry it straight for
the entrance, or to the treacherous quicksands, or to the boiling surf. Such a set of the tide there is
in a man's own heart. It is acted on by his will, therefore he is responsible for it. A man cannot
use his will directly, so as to cause himself to believe or not to believe, but he can use it in "those
things which accompany salvation." We cannot reverse the tide, but we can employ the sails and
helm, so as to act upon it. Let us seek to have(1) a sense of reverence proportioned to the
momentous character of the issue at stake. The weight of the soul must be felt if we are to decide
rightly on its interests.(2) A sense of need: a care for the soul, leading us to look out, and up, and
cry for help.(3) A sense of sinfulness, a conviction of the gulf between what we should be and
what we are. The way to God begins in what is most profound in our own souls, and when we
have been led by God's own hand to make discoveries of our weakness and want and sin, it is not
doubtful how the war will go.
IV. THE WAY TO BE SURE OF THE VICTORY OF FAITH IS TO CALL IN CHRIST'S
HELP. Full deliverance from doubt and sin is only to be procured by personal contact with the
Saviour's person and life. So long as we turn our back on Him, we are toward darkness; as soon
as we look to Him, we are lightened. If there are any who have lost their faith, or fear they are

8. losing it, while they deplore the loss, let them cry toward that quarter of the heavens where they
once felt as if light were shining for them, and an answer will in due time come. Christ is there,
whether they see Him or not; and He will hear their prayer, though it has a sore battle with doubt.
This short prayer of a doubting heart comes far down like the Lord Jesus Himself, stretches out a
hand of help to the feeblest, and secures at last an answer to all other prayers. H men will use it
truly, it will give power to the faint, and to them that have no might it will increase strength, till
it issues in the full confidence of perfect faith.
(John Ker, D. D.)This act of his, in putting forth his faith to believe as he could, was the way to
believe as he would.
(John Trapp.)
Faith and unbelief
D. Fraser, D. D.Take these words as —
I. THE VOICE OF ONE SEEKING SALVATION. Give Christ your whole confidence. Don't
lose time in excuses, or lamentations, or in seeking fuller conviction. Cast yourself at once on the
Rock of Ages — "Lord, I believe," But you say, "I seem to slip off the Rock again." Well, that is
surely a sign that you are on, if you are afraid of slipping off. Then add, "Help Thou mine
unbelief," i.e., "Hold me on the Rock; do Thou keep me from rolling off." No man is quite a
stranger to the Lord, or an utter unbeliever, who with tears entreats Christ to put away his
unbelief.
II. THE VOICE OF THE CHRISTIAN IN SOME ANGUISH OF SPIRIT. In adversity, when
your faith is slipping away, bow before Jesus, saying — "Lord, I believe; I cling to Thee; I hang
on Thee. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." What did I say? Who am I, to utter such
mighty words of confidence? And yet, at such an hour, I take them not back; but with tears I
haste to add, "Lord, help Thou mine unbelief."
III. THE WORDS OF THE BELIEVER IN VIEW OF DUTY, OR OF SOME HOLY
PRIVILEGE.
IV. THE VOICE OF THE WHOLE CHURCH ON EARTH, ANXIOUS FOR THE
SALVATION OF HER CHILDREN.
(D. Fraser, D. D.)
Mine unbelief
C. H. Spurgeon.Unbelief is an alarming and criminal thing; for it doubts —
(1)The power of Omnipotence;
(2)the value of the promise of God;
(3)the efficacy of Christ's blood;
(4)the prevalence of His plea;
(5)the almightiness of the Spirit;
(6)the truth of the gospel.In fact, unbelief robs God of His glory in every way; and therefore it
cannot receive a blessing from the Lord (Hebrews 11:6).
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
The strife of faith and doubt in the soul

9. Morgan Dix, D. D.This was the cry of a soul in distress; it was a frank, honest exclamation,
showing what was in the man; it was spoken to God. It was a cry of agony: the agony of hope, of
love, of fear, all pouring out and upward, trembling and expecting: the cry of a solitary soul
indeed, yet, substantially, a cry from all humanity summed up together. Nor did it meet rebuke;
no fault was found with it; but in the granting of the prayer, assent and approval were implied;
assent to the description, acceptance of the state of mind it disclosed.
I. DOUBT AND FAITH CAN CO-EXIST IN THE HEART AND ACTUALLY DO. Natural to
believe; we cannot but cling to God; cannot live without Him. Yet natural to doubt; because we
are fallen; the mind is disordered, like the body: Divine truth is not yet made known to us in
fulness. So it follows that the mere existence of doubts in intellect or heart is not sinful, nor need
it disquiet the faithful. The sin begins where the responsibility begins, viz., in the exercise of the
will.
II. THE WILL HAS POWER TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THE TWO. This is the sheet anchor of
moral and intellectual life. No man need be passive, or is compelled to be all his life long subject
to bondage under the spirit of doubt. The will can control and shape the thoughts, throwing its
weight on one side or the other when the battle rages in the soul. Because it can do this, we are
responsible for the strength or weakness of our faith.
III. IF WE CHOOSE TO BELIEVE, GOD WILL HELP. Lift thy poor hand upward, and another
Hand is coming through the darkness to meet it.
(Morgan Dix, D. D.)
Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief
Anon., C. H. Spurgeon.If a man can say this sincerely, he need never be discouraged; let him
hope in the Lord. Little grace can trust in Christ, and great grace can do no more. God brings not
a pair of scales to weigh our graces, and if they be too light refuseth them; but he brings a
touchstone to try them: and if they be pure gold, though never so little of it, it will pass current
with Him; though it be but smoke, not flame — though it be but as a wick in the socket —
likelier to die and go out than continue, which we use to throw away; yet He will not quench it,
but accept it.
(Anon.)We give a beggar an alms (says Manton), "though he receives it with a trembling palsied
hand; and if he lets it fall, we let him stoop for it." So doth the Lord give even to our weak faith,
and in His great tenderness permits us afterward to enjoy what at first we could not grasp. The
trembling hand is part of the poor beggar's distress, and the weakness of our faith is a part of our
spiritual poverty; therefore it moves the Divine compassion, and is an argument with heavenly
pity. As a sin, unbelief grieves the Spirit; but, as a weakness, mourned and confessed, it secures
His help. "Lord, I believe," is a confession of faith which loses none of its acceptableness when it
is followed by the prayer, "help Thou mine unbelief."
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Weakness of faith no sinA friend complained to Gotthold of the weakness of his faith, and the
distress this gave him. Gotthold pointed to a vine, which had twined itself round a pole, and was
hanging loaded with beautiful clusters, and said, "Frail is that plant; but what harm is done to it
by its frailty, especially as the Creator has been pleased to make it what it is? As little will it
prejudice your faith that it is weak, provided only it be sincere and unfeigned. Faith is the work
of God, and He bestows it in such measure as He wills and judges right. Let the measure of it

10. which He has given you be deemed sufficient by you. Take for pole and prop the cross of the
Saviour and the Word of God; twine around these with all the power which God vouchsafes. A
heart sensible of its weakness, and prostrating itself continually at the feet of the Divine mercy, is
more acceptable than that which presumes upon the strength of its faith, and falls into false
security and pride."
Weak faith may be effectual
T. Adams.The act of faith is to apply Christ to the soul; and this the weakest faith can do as well
as the strongest, if it be true. A child can hold a staff as well, though not so strongly, as a man.
The prisoner through a hole sees the sun, though not as perfectly as they in the open air. They
that saw the brazen serpent, though a great way off, yet were healed. The poor man's "I believe,"
saved him; though he was fain to add, "Lord, help mine unbelief." So that we may say of faith, as
the poet did of death, that it makes lords and slaves, apostles and common persons, all alike
acceptable to God, if they have it.
(T. Adams.)
Prayer is the cure for unbelief
Vita.One said to me, "I have not the faculty of belief or faith in God, or in a book revelation."
Answer: "Have you prayed with your whole heart and strength — as for dear life — for light and
faith?" He said, "I cannot; for a man who does that already half believes." Answer: "No; for a
man might be rescued from a shipwreck, and be watching the attempt to save that which was
dearest to him — dearer than life — which had been swept from his side: putting aside conscious
prayer, his whole being, his very heart and soul would go out into the wish and the hope that his
treasure might be saved: yet it would not involve any belief that the rescue would be
accomplished. Many a time an agony like that has been followed by the bringing in of the lifeless
body. But after a true heart agony of prayer for light, no lifeless soul has ever been brought in.
(Vita.)
Faith without comfort
C. H. Spurgeon.The soul's grasp of Jesus saves even when it does not comfort. If we touch the
hem of His garment we are healed of our deadly disease, though our heart may still be full of
trembling. We may be in consternation, but we cannot be under condemnation if we have
believed in Jesus. Safety is one thing, and assurance of it is another.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Faith without assurance
T. Manton.As a man falling into a river espieth a bough of a tree, and catches at it with all his
might, and as soon as he hath fast hold of it he is safe, though troubles and fears do not presently
vanish out of his mind; so the soul, espying Christ as the only means to save him, and reaching
out the hand to Him, is safe, though it be not presently quieted and pacified.
(T. Manton.)
Faith only in God
C. H. Spurgeon.He did not believe in the disciples; he had once trusted in them and failed. He
did not believe in himself; he knew his own impotence to drive out the evil spirit from his child:

11. He believed no longer in any medicines or men; but he believed the man of the shining
countenance who had just come down from the mountain.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Faith under difficulty
C. H. Spurgeon.Happy is the man who can not only believe when the waves softly ripple to the
music of peace, but continues to trust in Him who is almighty to save when the hurricane is let
loose in its fury, and the Atlantic breakers follow each other, eager to swallow up the barque of
the mariner. Surely Christ Jesus is fit to be believed at all times, for like the pole star, He abides
in His faithfulness, let storms rage as they may.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Faith's dawn and its clouds
C. H. Spurgeon.I. THERE IS TRUE FAITH. It was faith in the Person of Christ. It was faith
about the matter in hand. It was faith which triumphed over difficulties.
(a)Case of long standing.
(b)Considered to be hopeless.
(c)Disciples bad failed.
(d)The child was at that moment passing through a horrible stage of pain and misery.
II. THERE IS GRIEVOUS UNBELIEF. Many true believers are tried with unbelief because they
have a sense of their past sins. Some stagger through a consciousness of their present feebleness.
Others are made to shiver with unbelief on account of fears for the future, The freeness and
greatness of God's mercy sometimes excites unbelief. A sacred desire to be right produces it in
some. It may also arise through a most proper reverence for Christ, and a high esteem for all that
belongs to Him.
III. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE TWO. He regards it as a sin and confesses it. He prays
against it. He looks to the right Person for deliverance.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Feeble faith appealing to a strong Saviour
C. H. Spurgeon.I. The suspected difficulty. The father may have thought it lay with the disciples.
He probably thought the case itself was well-nigh hopeless. He half hinted that the difficulty
might lie with the Master. "If Thou."
II. The tearful discovery. Jesus cast the "if" back upon the father — then —
1. His little faith discovered his unbelief.
2. This unbelief alarmed him.
3. It was now, not "help my child," but "help my unbelief."
III. The intelligent appeal. He bases the appeal upon faith — "I believe." He mingles with it
confession — "help my unbelief." He appeals to One who is able to help — "Lord." To One
Who is Himself the remedy for unbelief — "Thou."
(C. H. Spurgeon.)

12. Unbelief
James Smith.Nothing is so provoking to God as unbelief, and yet there is nothing to which we
are more prone. He has spoken to us in His Word; He has spoken plainly; He has repeated His
promises again and again; He has confirmed them all by the blood of His own dear Son; and yet
we do not believe Him. Is not this provoking? What would provoke a master like a servant
refusing to believe him? Or, what would provoke a father like a child refusing to believe him?
The man of honour feels himself insulted if his professed friend refuses to believe his solemn
protestation; and yet this is the way in which we daily treat our God. He says: "Confess, and I
will pardon you." But we doubt it. He says: "Call upon Me, and I will deliver you." But we doubt
it. He says: "I will supply all your needs." But we doubt it. He says: "I will never leave thee nor
forsake thee." But who has not questioned it? Let us seriously think of His own words: "He that
believeth not God hath made Him a liar"; and His question, "How long will this people provoke
Me?" Lord, forgive, and preserve us from it in future.
(James Smith.)
COMMENTARIES
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(24) And straightway the father of the child . . .—The
whole verse is peculiar to St. Mark. The better MSS. omit “with tears.” The answer of the father
shows that the conflict between faith and unfaith was still continuing; but the relative position of
the two had altered for the better, and the former was beginning to prevail.
MacLaren's ExpositionsMark
UNBELIEVING BELIEF
Mark 9:24.
We owe to Mark’s Gospel the fullest account of the pathetic incident of the healing of the
demoniac boy. He alone gives us this part of the conversation between our Lord and the afflicted
child’s father. The poor man had brought his child to the disciples, and found them unable to do
anything with him. A torrent of appeal breaks from his lips as soon as the Lord gives him an
opportunity of speaking. He dwells upon all the piteous details with that fondness for repetition
which sorrow knows so well. Jesus gives him back his doubts. The father said, ‘If thou canst do
anything, have compassion on us and help us.’ Christ’s answer, according to the true reading, is
not as it stands in our Authorised Version, ‘If thou canst believe’-throwing, as it were, the
responsibility on the man-but it is a quotation of the father’s own word, ‘If Thou canst,’ as if He
waved it aside with superb recognition of its utter unfitness to the present case. ‘Say not, If Thou
canst. That is certain. All things are possible to thee’ {not to do, but to get} ‘if’-which is the only

13. ‘if’ in the case-’thou believest. I can, and if thy faith lays hold on My Omnipotence, all is done.’
That majestic word is like the blow of steel upon flint; it strikes a little spark of faith which lights
up the soul and turns the smoky pillar of doubt into clear flame of confidence. ‘Lord, I believe;
help Thou mine unbelief.’
I think in these wonderful words we have four things-the birth, the infancy, the cry, and the
education, of faith. And to these four I turn now.
I. First, then, note here the birth of faith.
There are many ways to the temple, and it matters little by which of them a man travels, if so be
he gets there. There is no royal road to the Christian faith which saves the soul. And yet, though
identity of experience is not to be expected, men are like each other in the depths, and only
unlike on the surfaces, of their being. Therefore one man’s experience carefully analysed is very
apt to give, at least, the rudiments of the experience of all others who have been in similar
circumstances. So I think we can see here, without insisting on any pedantic repetition of the
same details in every case, in broad outline, a sketch-map of the road. There are three elements
here: eager desire, the sense of utter helplessness, and the acceptance of Christ’s calm
assurances. Look at these three.
This man knew what he wanted, and he wanted it very sorely. Whosoever has any intensity and
reality of desire for the great gifts which Jesus Christ comes to bestow, has taken at least one step
on the way to faith. Conversely, the hindrances which block the path of a great many of us are
simply that we do not care to possess the blessings which Jesus Christ in His Gospel offers. I am
not talking now about the so-called intellectual hindrances to belief, though I think that a great
many of these, if carefully examined, would be found, in the ultimate analysis, to repose upon
this same stolid indifference to the blessings which Christianity offers. But what I wish to insist
upon is that for large numbers of us, and no doubt for many men and women whom I address
now, the real reason why they have not trust in Jesus Christ is because they do not care to
possess the blessings which Jesus Christ brings. Do you desire to have your sins forgiven? Has
purity any attraction for you? Do you care at all about the calm and pure blessings of communion
with God? Would you like to live always in the light of His face? Do you want to be the masters
of your own lusts and passions? I do not ask you, Do you want to go to Heaven or to escape Hell,
when you die? but I ask, Has that future in any of its aspects any such power over you as that it
stirs you to any earnestness and persistency of desire, or is it all shadowy and vain, ineffectual
and dim? What we Christian teachers have to fight against is that we are charged to offer to men
a blessing that they do not want, and have to create a demand before there can be any acceptance
of the supply. ‘Give us the leeks and garlics of Egypt,’ said the Hebrews in the wilderness; ‘our
soul loatheth this light bread.’ So it is with many of us; we do not want God, goodness, quietness
of conscience, purity of life, self-consecration to a lofty ideal, one-thousandth part as much as we
want success in our daily occupations, or some one or other of the delights that the world gives. I
remember Luther, in his rough way, has a story-I think it is in his Table-talk-about a herd of
swine to whom their keeper offered some rich dainties, and the pigs said, ‘Give us grains.’ That
is what so many men do when Jesus Christ comes with His gifts and His blessings. They turn
away, but if they were offered some poor earthly good, all their desires would go out towards it,

14. and their eager hands would be scrambling who should first possess it.
Oh brethren, if we saw things as they are, and our needs as they are, nothing would kindle such
intensity of longing in our hearts as that rejected or neglected promise of life eternal and divine
which Jesus Christ brings. If I could only once wake in some indifferent heart this longing, that
heart would have taken at least the initial step to a life of Christian godliness.
Further, we have here the other element of a sense of utter helplessness. How often this poor
father had looked at his boy in the grip of the fiend, and had wrung his hands in despair that he
could not do anything for him! That same sense of absolute impotence is one which we all, if we
rightly understand what we need, must cherish. Can you forgive your own sins? Can you cleanse
your own nature? Can you make yourselves other than you are by any effort of volition, or by
any painfulness of discipline? To a certain small extent you can. In regard to superficial culture
and eradication, your careful husbandry of your own wills may do much, but you cannot deal
with your deepest needs. If we understand what is required, in order to bring one soul into
harmony and fellowship with God, we shall recognise that we ourselves can do nothing to save,
and little to help ourselves. ‘Every man his own redeemer,’ which is the motto of some people
nowadays, may do very well for fine weather and for superficial experience, but when the storm
comes it proves a poor refuge, like the gay pavilions that they put up for festivals, which are all
right whilst the sun is shining and the flags are fluttering, but are wretched shelters when the rain
beats and the wind howls. We can do nothing for ourselves. The recognition of our own
helplessness is the obverse, so to speak, and underside, of confidence in the divine help. The
coin, as it were, has its two faces. On the one is written, ‘Trust in the Lord’; on the other is
written, ‘Nothing in myself.’ A drowning man, if he tries to help himself, only encumbers his
would-be rescuer, and may drown him too. The truest help he can give is to let the strong arm
that has cleft the waters for his sake fling itself around him and bear him safe to land. So, eager
desire after offered blessings and consciousness of my own impotence to secure them-these are
the initial steps of faith.
And the last of the elements here is, listening to the calm assurance of Jesus Christ: ‘If Thou
canst! Do not say that to Me; I can, and because I can, all things are possible for thee to receive.’
In like manner He stands at the door of each of our hearts and speaks to each of our needs, and
says: ‘I can satisfy it. Rest for thy soul, cleansing for thy sins, satisfaction for thy desires,
guidance for thy pilgrimage, power for thy duties, patience in thy sufferings-all these will come
to thee, if thou layest hold of My hand.’ His assurance helps trembling confidence to be born,
and out of doubt the great calm word of the Master smites the fire of trust. And we, dear
brethren, if we will listen to Him, shall surely find in Him all that we need. Think how
marvellous it is that this Jewish peasant should plant Himself in the front of humanity, over
against the burdened, sinful race of men, and pledge Himself to forgive and to cleanse their sins,
to bear all their sicknesses, to be their strength in weakness, their comfort in sorrow, the rest of
their hearts, their heaven upon earth, their life in death, their glory in heaven, and their all in all;
and not only should pledge Himself, but in the blessed experience of millions should have more
than fulfilled all that He promised. ‘They trusted in Him, and were lightened, and their faces
were not ashamed.’ Will you not answer His sovereign word of promise with your ‘Lord, I
believe’?

15. II. Then, secondly, we have here the infancy of faith.
As soon as the consciousness of belief dawned upon the father, and the effort to exercise it was
put forth, there sprang up the consciousness of its imperfection. He would never have known that
he did not believe unless he had tried to believe. So it is in regard to all excellences and graces of
character. The desire of possessing some feeble degree of any virtue or excellence, and the effort
to put it forth, is the surest way of discovering how little of it we have. On the other side, sorrow
for the lack of some form of goodness is itself a proof of the partial possession, in some
rudimentary and incipient form, of that goodness. The utterly lazy man never mourns over his
idleness; it is only the one that would fain work harder than he does, and already works tolerably
hard, who does so. So the little spark of faith in this man’s heart, like a taper in a cavern, showed
the abysses of darkness that lay unillumined round about it.
Thus, then, in its infancy, faith may and does coexist with much unfaith and doubt. The same
state of mind, looked at from its two opposite ends, as it were, may be designated faith or
unbelief; just as a piece of shot silk, according to the angle at which you hold it, may show you
only the bright colours of its warp or the dark ones of its weft. When you are travelling in a
railway train with the sun streaming in at the windows, if you look out on the one hand you will
see the illumined face of every tree and blade of grass and house; and if you look out on the
other, you will see their shadowed side. And so the same landscape may seem to be all lit up by
the sunshine of belief, or to be darkened by the gloom of distrust. If we consider how great and
how perfect ought to be our confidence, to bear any due proportion to the firmness of that upon
which it is built, we shall not be slow to believe that through life there will always be the
presence in us, more or less, of these two elements. There will be all degrees of progress between
the two extremes of infantile and mature faith.
There follows from that thought this practical lesson, that the discovery of much unbelief should
never make a man doubt the reality or genuineness of his little faith. We are all apt to write
needlessly bitter things against ourselves when we get a glimpse of the incompleteness of our
Christian life and character. But there is no reason why a man should fancy that he is a hypocrite
because he finds out that he is not a perfect believer. But, on the other hand, let us remember that
the main thing is not the maturity, but the progressive character, of faith. It was most natural that
this man in our text, at the very first moment when he began to put his confidence in Jesus Christ
as able to heal his child, should be aware of much tremulousness mingling with it. But is it not
most unnatural that there should be the same relative proportion of faith and unbelief in the heart
and experience of men who have long professed to be Christians? You do not expect the infant to
have adult limbs, but you do expect it to grow. True, faith at its beginning may be like a grain of
mustard seed, but if the grain of mustard seed be alive it will grow to a great tree, where all the
fowls of the air can lodge in the branches. Oh! it is a crying shame and sin that in all Christian
communities there should be so many grey-headed babies, men who have for years and years
been professing to be Christ’s followers, and whose faith is but little, if at all, stronger-nay!
perhaps is even obviously weaker-than it was in the first days of their profession. ‘Ye have need
of milk, and not of strong meat,’ very many of you. And the vitality of your faith is made
suspicious, not because it is feeble, but because it is not growing stronger.
III. Notice the cry of infant faith.

16. ‘Help Thou mine unbelief’ may have either of two meanings. The man’s desire was either that
his faith should be increased and his unbelief ‘helped’ by being removed by Christ’s operation
upon his spirit, or that Christ would ‘help’ him and his boy by healing the child, though the faith
which asked the blessing was so feeble that it might be called unbelief. There is nothing in the
language or in the context to determine which of these two meanings is intended; we must settle
it by our own sense of what would be most likely under the circumstances. To me it seems
extremely improbable that, when the father’s whole soul was absorbed in the healing of his son,
he should turn aside to ask for the inward and spiritual process of having his faith strengthened.
Rather he said, ‘Heal my child, though it is unbelief as much as faith that asks Thee to do it.’
The lesson is that, even when we are conscious of much tremulousness in our faith, we have a
right to ask and expect that it shall be answered. Weak faith is faith. The tremulous hand does
touch. The cord may be slender as a spider’s web that binds a heart to Jesus, but it does bind. The
poor woman in the other miracle who put out her wasted finger-tip, coming behind Him in the
crowd, and stealthily touching the hem of His garment, though it was only the end of her finger-
nail that was laid on the robe, carried away with her the blessing. And so the feeblest faith joins
the soul, in the measure of its strength, to Jesus Christ.
But let us remember that, whilst thus the cry of infant faith is heard, the stronger voice of
stronger faith is more abundantly heard. Jesus Christ once for all laid down the law when He said
to one of the suppliants at His feet, ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ The measure of our
belief is the measure of our blessing. The wider you open the door, the more angels will crowd
into it, with their white wings and their calm faces. The bore of the pipe determines the amount
of water that flows into the cistern. Every man gets, in the measure in which he desires. Though
a tremulous hand may hold out a cup into which Jesus Christ will not refuse to pour the wine of
the kingdom, yet the tremulous hand will spill much of the blessing; and he that would have the
full enjoyment of the mercies promised, and possible, must ‘ask in faith, nothing wavering.’ The
sensitive paper which records the hours of sunshine in a day has great gaps upon its line of light
answering to the times when clouds have obscured the sun; and the communication of blessings
from God is intermittent, if there be intermittency of faith. If you desire an unbroken line of
mercy, joy, and peace, keep up an unbroken continuity of trustful confidence.
IV. Lastly, we have here the education of faith.
Christ paid no heed in words to the man’s confession of unbelief, but proceeded to do the work
which answered his prayer in both its possible meanings. He responded to imperfect confidence
by His perfect work of cure, and, by that perfect work of cure, He strengthened the imperfect
confidence which it had answered.
Thus He educates us by His answers-His over-answers-to our poor desires; and the abundance of
His gifts rebukes the poverty of our petitions more emphatically than any words of remonstrance
beforehand could have done. He does not lecture us into faith, but He blesses us into it. When the
Apostle was sinking in the flood, Jesus Christ said no word of reproach until He had grasped him
with His strong hand and held him safe. And then, when the sustaining touch thrilled through all
the frame, then, and not till then, He said-as we may fancy, with a smile on His face that the

17. moonlight showed-as knowing how unanswerable His question was, ‘O thou of little faith,
wherefore didst thou doubt?’ That is how He will deal with us if we will; over-answering our
tremulous petitions, and so teaching us to hope more abundantly that ‘we shall praise Him more
and more.’
The disappointments, the weaknesses, the shameful defeats which come when our confidence
fails, are another page of His lesson-book. The same Apostle of whom I have been speaking got
that lesson when, standing on the billows, and, instead of looking at Christ, looking at their wrath
and foam, his heart failed him, and because his heart failed him he began to sink. If we turn away
from Jesus Christ, and interrupt the continuity of our faith by calculating the height of the
breakers and the weight of the water that is in them, and what will become of us when they
topple over with their white crests upon our heads, then gravity will begin to work, and we shall
begin to sink. And well for us if, when we have sunk as far as our knees, we look back again to
the Master and say, ‘Lord, save me; I perish!’ The weakness which is our own when faith sleeps,
and the rejoicing power which is ours because it is His, when faith wakes, are God’s education of
it to fuller and ampler degrees and depth. We shall lose the meaning of life, and the best lesson
that joy and sorrow, calm and storm, victory and defeat, can give us, unless all these make us
‘rooted and grounded in faith.’
Dear friend, do you desire your truest good? Do you know that you cannot win it, or fight for it
to gain it, or do anything to obtain it, in your own strength? Have you heard Jesus Christ saying
to you, ‘Come . . . and I will give you rest’? Oh! I beseech you, do not turn away from Him, but
like this agonised father in our story, fall at His feet with ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine
unbelief,’ and He will confirm your feeble faith by His rich response.
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary9:14-29 The father of the suffering youth reflected on the
want of power in the disciples; but Christ will have him reckon the disappointment to the want of
faith. Very much is promised to our believing. If thou canst believe, it is possible that thy hard
heart may be softened, thy spiritual diseases may be cured; and, weak as thou art, thou mayest be
able to hold out to the end. Those that complain of unbelief, must look up to Christ for grace to
help them against it, and his grace will be sufficient for them. Whom Christ cures, he cures
effectually. But Satan is unwilling to be driven from those that have been long his slaves, and,
when he cannot deceive or destroy the sinner, he will cause him all the terror that he can. The
disciples must not think to do their work always with the same ease; some services call for more
than ordinary pains.
Barnes' Notes on the BibleSaid with tears - The man felt the implied rebuke in the Saviour's
language; and feeling grieved that he should be thought to be destitute of faith, and feeling
deeply for the welfare of his afflicted son, he wept. Nothing can be more touching or natural than
this. An anxious father, distressed at the condition of his son, having applied to the disciples in
vain, now coming to the Saviour; and not having full confidence that he had the proper
qualification to be aided, he wept. Any man would have wept in his condition, nor would the
Saviour turn the weeping suppliant away.
I believe - I have faith. I do put confidence in thee, though I know that my faith is not as strong
as it should be.

18. Lord - This word here signifies merely "master," or "sir," as it does often in the New Testament.
We have no evidence that he had any knowledge of the divine nature of the Saviour, and he
applied the word, probably, as he would have done to any other teacher or worker of miracles.
Help thou mine unbelief - Supply thou the defects of my faith. Give me strength and grace to put
"entire" confidence in thee. Everyone who comes to the Saviour for help has need of offering this
prayer. In our unbelief and our doubts we need his aid, nor shall we ever put sufficient reliance
on him without his gracious help.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary24. And straightway the father of the child cried
out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief—that is, "It is useless
concealing from Thee, O Thou mysterious, mighty Healer, the unbelief that still struggles in this
heart of mine; but that heart bears me witness that I do believe in Thee; and if distrust still
remains, I disown it, I wrestle with it, I seek help from Thee against it." Two things are very
remarkable here: First, The felt and owned presence of unbelief, which only the strength of the
man's faith could have so revealed to his own consciousness. Second, His appeal to Christ for
help against his felt unbelief—a feature in the case quite unparalleled, and showing, more than
all protestations could have done, the insight he had attained into the existence of a power in
Christ more glorious them any he had besought for his poor child. The work was done; and as
the commotion and confusion in the crowd was now increasing, Jesus at once, as Lord of spirits,
gives the word of command to the dumb and deaf spirit to be gone, never again to return to his
victim.
Matthew Poole's CommentarySee Poole on "Mark 9:17"
Gill's Exposition of the Entire BibleAnd straightway the father of the child cried out,.... As soon
as ever he found it was put upon his faith, and that the issue of things would be according to that,
he expressed himself with much vehemency, being in great distress; partly with indignation at
his unbelief, and partly through fear of missing a cure, by reason of it:
and said with tears; repenting of his unbelief, and grieved at the present weakness of his faith;
which he very ingenuously confesses, saying,
Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief; not forward, but out of the way: he found in himself
some small degree of faith in the power of Christ, but it was mixed with much unbelief, through
the greatness of the child's disorder; and therefore desires it might be removed from him, and he
might be helped against it: he saw it was not in his own power to believe; nor had he strength of
himself to oppose his unbelief; but that both faith must be given him, and power against unbelief.
The Syriac version renders it, "help", , "the defect of my faith": till up that which is lacking in it,
it is very deficient, Lord, increase it; and the Arabic and Ethiopic translate thus, "help the
weakness of my faith". He found his faith very weak, he desires it might be strengthened, that he
might be strong in faith, and give glory to God; and in this way belief is helped, or men helped
against it: every believer, more or less, at one time or another, finds himself in this man's case;
and also that it is necessary to make use of the same petition; for faith is but imperfect in this life,
and often very weak and defective in its exercise.
Geneva Study BibleAnd straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I
believe; help thou mine unbelief.
EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

19. Expositor's Greek TestamentHYPERLINK "/mark/9-24.htm"Mark 9:24. κράξας: eager, fear-
stricken cry; making the most of his little faith, to ensure the benefit, and adding a prayer for
increase of faith (βοήθει, etc.) with the idea that it would help to make the cure complete. The
father’s love at least was above suspicion. Meyer and Weiss render “help me even if
unbelieving,” arguing that the other, more common rendering is at variance with the meaning of
βοήθησον in Mark 9:22.
Bengel's GnomenHYPERLINK "/mark/9-24.htm"Mark 9:24. Βοήθει μου τῇ ἀπιστίᾳ, help Thou
mine unbelief) by removing mine unbelief or else by healing my son, even though I have not
sufficient faith. Comp. the help, βοήθησον, Mark 9:22.
Vincent's Word StudiesCried out and said (κράξας - ἔλεγεν)
The former denoting the inarticulate cry, the ejaculation, followed by the words, "Lord, I
believe," etc.
PRECEPT AUSTIN RESOURCES
CHRIS BENFIELD
Help my Unbelief Mark 9: 14-29
Today our text takes a captivating twist. Peter, James, andJohn had
experiencedthe glory of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Their
experience was so wonderful that Peterdesired to remain on the mountain.
Jesus knew they could not stay there; He had much yet to accomplish. He had
takenthem there to revealHis glory, which would serve to strengthen their
faith as they endured the difficulties of ministry following His death,
resurrection, and ascension.
As the men made their way down the mountain, they were immediately met
with difficulty. There would be no time to restin the beauty of the moment.
They were back among the world, and would need to be ready to endure the
difficulties it brings.

20. We all enjoy those mountain top experiences,but we are not afforded the
opportunity to dwell on the mountain. Mostof the time, we will soon
encounter the realities of life, following a mountain top experience. We must
learn to use the lessons learnedonthe mountain as we navigate the difficulties
of the valley. As we examine the aspects ofthis encounter, I want considerthe
thought: Help my Unbelief.
I. The Difficulty Encountered – After experiencing the transfiguration, the
disciples were immediately met with a difficult situation regarding a man and
his son. Consider:
A. The Condition of the Son (17-18;21-22a)– Here we discoverthe dire
condition of this young man. We find:
1. He was Dominated (18a) – And wheresoeverhe takethhim, he teareth
him. He was takenand torn by a spirit. The word takethhas the idea of
“laying hold of, to carry away, seize, or apprehend.” The word tearethspeaks
of “causing convulsions.” He was possessedofthe devil; his life was filled and
dominated by an evil spirit.
2. He was Delusional(18b) – and he foameth, and gnashethwith his teeth,
and pineth away. When the evil spirit would attack this young man he would
cry out, screaming in misery and pain. He would foam at the mouth and
gnashhis teeth. His life was not lived in a normal or peacefulway. This young

21. man dealt with Satan’s influence and domination on a daily basis and it
affectedhis mind and his emotions.
January 31, 2018
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3. He was Defeated(18c;21-22a)– and I spake to thy disciples that they
should casthim out; and they could not. [21] And he askedhis father, How
long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child. [22] And
ofttimes it hath casthim into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him.
Here we discoverthe severity of the situation. This young man was literally
living in torment on a daily basis, suffering such difficulty since he was a
child. The spirit would overcome the young man, causing him to fall into the
fire or bodies of water, in an attempt to take his life. He was at the mercy of
this evil spirit. His life was dominated by Satan and he lived in utter defeat.
B. The Compassionofthe Father – We also discoverthe unwavering
compassionofthe young man’s father. Notice:
1. His Desire (17) – And one of the multitude answeredand said, Master, I
have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit. The father came to

22. Jesus, desiring Him to heal his son. He had tried everything imaginable, and
yet his son continued to deal with this dreadful condition. The father
recognizedJesus and desired Him to do what others could not.
2. His Dilemma (18c;22b-24)– and I spake to thy disciples that they should
casthim out; and they could not. [22b] but if thou canstdo any thing, have
compassiononus, and help us. [23] Jesus saidunto him, If thou canstbelieve,
all things are possible to him that believeth. [24] And straightwaythe father of
the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine
unbelief. The father had done all he could. He had takenhis son to others, but
they were unable to help. Apparently he had heard of Jesus and the miracles
He had performed. He beggedJesus to do something for his son. Jesus
declaredhealing was possibly, but it required faith. The father honestly
replied that he wanted to believe, but he needed help with his unbelief. (We
often respond much the same. We know Jesus is more than able to meet our
needs, and yet we tend to doubt whether He will respond to our prayers.)
II. The DesperationExposed(18c-19)– Mark revealedthis was a desperate
situation. Others had compassionfor the situation, but they were unable to
help. Their desperationis revealedin:
A. Their Lack of Faith (18c-19a)– and I spake to thy disciples that they
should casthim out; and they could not. [19] He answerethhim, and saith, O
faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? These lackedthe faith
necessaryto overcome Satanand gain the victory. Even the disciples, those
who walkedwith Jesus, were unable to castthe demon out. Jesus was not
referring to faith in themselves, but faith in Him to provide the strength and

23. powerto overcome. Theylackedfaith in the Lord to provide in their time of
need.
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B. Their Lack of Fortitude (19b) – how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto
me. The word suffer means to “hold up, sustain, or endure.” Jesus was
disappointed that they lacked the desire to do the things they were able to do.
He was weary of their lack of faith and complacency. It appearedthey were
all too eagerto let the Lord do things for them that they were well able to do
for themselves. (There are things that are beyond our ability, but there is
much that we cando, and God expects us to accomplishthose things. We need
the desire and fortitude to labor for the Lord.)
III. The DevastationExperienced(20) – And they brought him unto him: and
when he saw him, straightwaythe spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground,
and wallowedfoaming. Here we discoverthe devastationthis young man
experiencedas he was attackedby the evil spirits. Consider:
A. The Timing of the Attack (20) – As they brought the young man to Jesus,
the enemy attacked. He did not want him to getto Jesus. As he was making
his wayto the one who was wellable to meet his need, Satanattacked. This

24. was no accident;in fact, it was a carefully orchestratedattack. He attacked
when the young man was vulnerable. He had made the decisionto come to
Jesus and was about to have the opportunity for healing. Satanwanted to
keephim awayfrom the Lord.
 He has not changedhis ways. As long as you are living among the world,
seeking to please the flesh, Satanlikely won’t bother you much. But if you
decide to turn towardthe Lord and seek Him, you might as well count on a
fight. He doesn’t bother idle Christians much either, but when we decide to
draw nigh to the Lord and seek to serve Him, we can expectan attack!
B. The Tenacityin the Attack (20) – Here Satanpulled out all the stops. He
realized the young man was about to get to Jesus. He knew the Lord had the
powerto deliver him and sethim free. Justprior to the young man getting to
Jesus, he endured a tenacious attack.
 You can rest assuredthat Satan wants to prevent you from getting to Jesus.
He has no problem with you attending services. He has no problem with you
being a part of the activities, but he does not want you to get to Jesus and have
a life changing encounter. I am convincedthat his attacks are the most
tenacious and prominent just prior to us getting to Jesus.
 There is a profound truth for the church as well. Satandoesn’t mind us
gathering on Sunday mornings. He doesn’t mind us singing songs, praying
prayers, or even preaching a message.He doesn’tcare in the leastif we go
through the religious motions of a worship service. But, if we get serious about
serving the Lord, drawing closerto Him, experiencing His power in our
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services, resulting in transformed lives, we are in for a battle. Satanis in the
business of hindering and defeating the church. We must be aware and we
must be prepared!
IV. The Deliverance Extended(25-29)– In the closing verses we find the
miraculous deliverance Jesus provided. Notice:
A. The Rebuke (25) – When Jesus saw that the people came running together,
he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I
charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. That is an actionof
authority. It speaks of“declaring guilt, to censure severely, to admonish.”
Jesus had the ability to call out the spirit, pronounce judgment, and restrain it
from further hindrance of this young man. Jesus revealedHis absolute
authority!
B. The Restoration(26-27)– And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came
out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. [27]
But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose. At the

26. command of Jesus, the spirit had to depart. The young man was delivered
from the evil spirit. He was setfree from the dominance and torment of Satan.
 That is a beautiful picture of our salvation. We are healed from the disease
of sin. We are setfree from Satan’s bondage. We are delivered from the guilt
and shame of our past. We are restoredto God through the Son. Jesus alone
has the ability to restore a sin sick soul.
C. The Revelation(28-29)– And when he was come into the house, his
disciples askedhim privately, Why could not we casthim out? [29] And he
said unto them, This kind cancome forth by nothing, but by prayer and
fasting. After the incident, in the privacy of a house, the disciples questioned
the Lord regarding their inability to castout the spirit. Jesus revealedthese
could only be defeatedthrough prayer and fasting. There had to be greatfaith
and greatpreparation through the Lord to overcome. A casualapproach
would never be sufficient.
 Too often we are much like the disciples. We may have noble ambitions, but
we fail to put in the work necessaryto experience victory and overcome. A
casualChristianity will not provide strength againstthe enemy. We must be
willing to labor in prayer and fasting if we are to overcome!
Conclusion:We all face difficulties in life. Often these difficulties are beyond
our ability to handle. Faith in the Lord is essentialto overcome and
experience victory. Are you struggling in a valley of
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life? Does it seemas if your faith is weak?The Lord has the ability to meet
our needs and increase ourfaith. We must trust Him to provide, even when it
appears hopeless. Maybe you are like this young man, in need of spiritual
deliverance. Jesus provided the means of salvation. We must come to Him in
repentance and faith. If you are yet unsaved, come to Christ for salvation!
Mark 9:14-29
AND THEY COULD NOT
Intro: Ill. Thomas Aquinas - Roman Catholic scholarwho lived between1225
and 1274. He was a brilliant thinker who left an indelible imprint on the
fabric of his time. Ill. His visit to the Vatican.
The Pope is said to have lookedat Thomas Aquinas and said, “Behold, Master
Thomas, the church can no longer say, as St. Peter, ‘Silver and gold have I
none!’”
Aquinas was quick to reply, “Alas, neither can we say what follows, ‘but such
as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and
walk.’”
Thomas Aquinas understood a truth that many people never grasp.
· The realmeasure of successfora church or a ministry is not how fine its
buildings are; how large its offerings are; or how greatits crowds are.
· The realmeasure of successfora church or a ministry is in whether or not it
operates in the powerof God.

28. We are living in the day of ministerial success. Everychurch wants to be the
largest, the richest, the most influential, etc. Successis measured these days in
millions of dollars; tens of thousands of attendees and in worldwide fame and
attention.
The sadtruth is this: God has a very different standard for determining what
constitutes a successfulministry.
In this passage, the Lord Jesus teaches us about the most important ingredient
of a successfulministry. The disciples lackedthat ingredient and they failed
miserably.
We are told in
verse 18 of this text that the disciples of Jesus failedin their attempt to cast
out a demon from a little boy. The boy’s father summed up their efforts by
saying
“…and they could not.”
He was right! He came to these men hoping to find some help for his family,
but he found that these men had no help to offer. They could not! Why did
they fail?
They failed because they lackedspiritual power. They lackedspiritual power
because they were missing the one ingredient that assures spiritual power.
I would like for us to look into these verses today because we needthe message
they teachus. We are here trying to carry out the Lord’s business in these
dark, sinful days and too many times people walk away from our churches
saying, “…and they could not.” Our problem is the same as that of the Lord’s
disciples. Often, we lack the necessaryingredient required for spiritual
success.
By God’s help, I want to unpack these verses today. I want to preach on the
phrase this father used to sum up the ability of the disciples, when he said,
“…And They Could Not”. I want to point out
The Lack Of Spiritual Power;
The Lord of Spiritual Powerand The Lessons Of Spiritual Power.
Let’s listen carefully to what the Lord has to say to us today, both as
individuals and as a church. I pray that we will hear the truth and heed the
truth so that it will never be said of Calvary BaptistChurch, “
And They Could Not!”
I. v. 14-19 THE LACK OF

29. SPIRITUAL POWER
· Let’s setthe stage for these verses. In verses 1-13 of this chapter, Jesus had
takenPeter, James and John up into Mount Hermon and He was transfigured
before them. The glory of His heavenly state became visible on the mountain
top. These three disciples say Jesus in His glory. They saw Mosesand Elijah
and listened to them talk to Jesus about His impending death on the cross.
They even heard the voice of God the Fatheras He praise Jesus ChristHis
Son!
These men had seenThe Midnight Son and they must have been floating with
excitement as they came down from that mountain. But, when they arrived
back in the valley below, they came face to face with a world struggling under
demonic force.
That’s why I told you last Sunday to enjoy those mountain tops for all they
are worth. There is a valley just ahead and you will need the blessings and
glories of the mountain top experience to sustain you through the valleys.
· When Jesus and the three disciples come down from the mountain, they find
the other nine disciples engagedin an argument with some scribes, v. 14. It
seems that a distraught father had brought his demon possessedsonto Jesus
for healing. Jesus was gone up on the mountain when he arrived, so he asked
the disciple to heal his son. They could not castout the demon and the scribes
are mocking them for their lack of power.
· Jesus walks upon this scene and asks for an explanation, v. 16. The father, in
agonizing detail, describes the pitiful condition of his son. Every verb the
father uses in verse 18 is in the “presenttense”. The father’s language
describes a horrible, ongoing situation of demonic torment.
· It is a sad state of affairs and when Jesus hears the details, He voices His
Own dismay over the all that He has heard.
The word “O” in
verse 19 is a word of deep anguish. It was usually reservedfor a time of
burdened prayer. People would come before God and cry out of their hearts
and lift their “O’s” to the Lord.
Have you ever been there? Have you ever had a time when your heart was
breaking and as your soul vented its pain it cried “O” unto the Lord?
Jesus is expressing His displeasure towardeveryone assembledthere that day.
He is hurt that no one seems to be able to believe. The disciples, who have seen
His powerfirst hand, don’t have faith. The religious leaders don’t have faith.
The gatheredcrowds lack faith. Even this broken hearted father does not

30. have the faith necessaryto see his son delivered from this demon. Jesus sees
this lack of faith and He cries out, “How much longer am I going to have to
put up with you?” It was a heartbreaking moment from Jesus, following as it
did immediately after the transfiguration and His Father’s affirmation. Jesus
was ready to get back to His Father’s house!
· The saddestaspectofthis whole scene is not the condition of the boy; the
spirit of the scribes, or the anguish of the father. The saddestpart of this
whole accountis the powerlessnessofthe disciples.
These men had seenJesus perform countless amazing miracles, yet they still
lackedgenuine faith. These men had even castout demons in the past, Mark
6:7; 12-13. Thesemen had seenthe miracles and they had performed the
miracles themselves, but now it is said of them “
and they could not.”
· In many ways these nine disciples are a picture of the modern church. Like
them, we have the reputation that we have power. This father came to Jesus,
but he thought the disciples could help his son, v. 18. But, they lackedthe
powerto make a difference. As a result, they have lost face with the father, the
crowds and with the scribes, who are mocking them for their lack of power
and ability.
The modern church has everything it needs to exist. Mostchurches have nice
facilities in which to meet. Mostchurches have skilled people preaching and
organizing the work of the church. Mostchurches have all the money they
need to do the things they want to do. Many churches have all the people they
want to fill up their pews and to do the jobs that need to be done around the
church. But, most churches lack what they need most: The powerof God.
· This building here, beside this highway, is making a promise to the world.
This building tells every person who passesby that this is the place God meets
with His people. This church house promises a needy world that they canfind
help when they come here. This church says, “If you need God, we can help
you getto Him. If your life is broken, we canshow you how God can fix it. If
your family is coming apart, we canshow you how God can put it back
togetheragain. If you are lost, we can show you how to be saved.”
This church makes a promise to the world that we are different than they are;
that we are able to help them; and that we care about them.
Our sign says it all!
Ø Calvary – That word means “
the

31. place of a skull”. We representthe place Jesus died to save sinners. We
representthe cross and the blood of Jesus. We representthe power of God to
save souls, secure eternities and change lives. We represent the Christ Who
died on the cross to set His people free from sin’s bondage and to give them
new life!
Ø Baptist – That name doesn’t mean what it used to! In my mind it still stands
for something!We are Baptists!That means we are committed to preaching,
teaching, sharing and living out the truth. We are Baptists!That means that
we are different from every other denomination in the world. We are Baptists!
Baptist means that we are committed to the sovereigntyof God; biblical
separationfrom sin and worldliness;and personalholiness. That word is our
promise to the world that we are unique; we are different and we are real.
Ø Church – The word “
church” comes from a Greek wordthat means “a calledout assembly”. That
word tells the world that we have been called out from among them to be
different. It tells the world that we gather here to assemble ourselves before
God to worship and honor Him. We are a church! We are not a socialclub.
We are a church! We are not an entertainment organization. We are a
church! We are not like them, but we are like Him. We are a church! His
powershould be on us. His truth should be within us. His way should be
before us. His Word should guide us.
· Mostchurches in our day lack genuine spiritual power. There is no touch of
God. There is not powerof God. The world comes in and there is no help in
the church for their condition. What does the world do? It stands around us
and it mocks our weakness.Mayit never be said of this church “…and they
could not.”
II. v. 19b-27 THE LORD OF
SPIRITUAL POWER
· Jesus hears the father’s story and commands the boy be brought to Him.
When he arrives, the demon in the child recognizes Jesusand attacks the boy
again. The child is gripped by convulsions, and he wallows onthe ground,
foaming at the mouth, v. 20. It is a pitiful scene.
As the child writhes on the ground, Jesus begins to question this father. Jesus
is attempting to overcome this father’s lack of faith. Jesus askshim about how
long the child has been this way,
v. 21. The father’s answeris graphic and telling. He tells Jesus that things
have been this way since the boy was little. He also tells Jesus that the demon

32. has attackedthe boy repeatedly, trying to burn him to death or drown him in
the water, v. 22.
Then, the father bears the true condition of his faith. He looks atJesus and he
says, “but if thou canstdo any thing, have compassiononus, and help us.” It
is a pitiful plea, but it is also a plea from a faithless man.
This father trusted that the disciples of Jesus couldheal his son. When they
failed, his faith in Jesus and His abilities was shatteredas well. In verse 17,
this father had brought the son believing Jesus could deliver him. Now, this
father’s faith has been reduced to “if thou canstto any thing…”
When Jesus hears this man’s words, He responds immediately! The force of
the Lord’s words in verse 23 does not really come through in our English
Bibles. I don’t know if you know it or not, but the punctuation was not there
in the originals. Here is what Jesus was saying, “Whatdo you mean, if thou
canst? Believe!All things are possible to him that believeth!”
Jesus rebukes the father for his doubt and commands him to place his faith in
Jesus for the healing his sondesperatelyneeds. When the father hears this, he
makes one of the most honest and transparent prayers in the entire Bible. He
looks atJesus and says, “
Lord I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” He is saying, “Lord, I do believe in
You and in Your power. But, my faith is weak!Help me to grow in my faith.”
Then Jesus commands the spirit to leave the boy and to never return, v. 25.
The demon attacks the child one more time and comes out. The child becomes
so quiet and so still that the onlookersassume that he is dead, v. 26. Then,
Jesus does whatHe does best; He takes the child by the hand and He lifts him
up. The child rises and he is free,
v. 27.
· There are some spiritual lessons we needto glean here before we move to our
final thought today. Let me share them with you.
Ø A powerless church portrays Jesus Christin a bad light – Because the
disciples lackedpower, the father assumedJesus lackedpowertoo. The same
is true around the house of God. When a lost world walks into a church
building and it sees deadness, coldnessand apathy; the lost assume that Jesus
is just as lifeless, just as powerless and just as dead. Most churches are guilty
of false advertising! They claim to have something to offer the world, but they
have nothing but cold, dead religion and that helps no one!
It’s time the church told the truth about Jesus!He changes lives!Knowing
Him is exciting! His church is alive and active in the world. His Gospelhas

33. power. We should never be guilty of false advertising! We need to live up to
what’s written on our sign!
Ø Weak faith is better than no faith at all – This father was filled with doubt,
but there was still a kernel of faith in his heart. As a result, he got what he
desired from the Lord. God is not put off by our doubts, but total unbelief
slams the door on His powerin our lives. We need to remember that it isn’t
large faith that receives big answers from the Lord. It is simply genuine faith
that sees Him move in greatpower. Matthew 17:20, “
And Jesus saidunto them, Becauseofyour unbelief: for verily I say unto you,
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain,
Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be
impossible unto you.”
Ø Jesus is still in the “lifting up business” – Just as Jesus took this poor, dead
boy by the hand and lifted him up into a new life, Jesus cando the same for all
who come to Him by faith. He canlift that dead sinner out of his sins and into
a new life in Christ, 2 Cor. 5:17. He can lift that cold, apathetic church
member out of his complacencyand into a new life of joy and blessing, Rev.
3:20. He can lift that burdened believerout of his fears and give him peace
that passes allunderstanding, Phil. 4:6-7.
III. v. 28-29 THE LESSONS OF
SPIRITUAL POWER
· When this episode is over and the disciples are alone with Jesus, the nine
who failed to deliver the child ask Jesus aboutwhy they failed, v. 28. These
men were concernedabout their spiritual failure, and they should have been!
The answerJesus gave them is both simple and telling. His answeris that
these men failed because they lackedspiritual discipline in their lives, v. 29.
Prayer is a state of close communion with the Lord. Fasting speaks ofa
lifestyle of total submission and surrender to the Lord. These men were not
communing with God as they should have been. Neither were they as
surrendered to God as they should have been. As a result, they lackedthe
powerof God on their lives and they could not castout this devil.
· The disciples did not fail because theydid not believe! They believed all
right, or they would not have tried to castout the demon from this child. They
believed they could castout that demon and when they failed, they were
humiliated, amazed and dismayed. Their problem was they believed in the
wrong things. They failed because their faith was in their words and the
rituals they used and not in God. Their faith was in the ritual. Their faith was

34. in what they had done before. Their faith was in themselves. These menfailed
because they were not leaning on the Lord Jesus Christ for the power they
needed.
· We fail in the Lord’s work and we lack His power for the very same reasons.
We lack the power of God in the modern church because we lack spiritual
discipline! We are no longer a praying people. We are no longera
surrendered people. We are no longer a people who walk in total dependence
upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
· We have become like the Jews in Acts 19:13-17 who were trying to castout a
demon in Jesus’name. They had the formula and they had the ritual, but they
lackedthe power of God to getthe job done. That is the state of the modern
church!
We look back to the glory days and we rest on what the church did then. We
think we canhave the powerof God because we pray a five minute prayer.
We think the fire of Heaven will fall just because we are savedand doing a
few religious things in our lives.
The truth is, there will be no power; there will be no glory; there will be no
revival in the church until God’s people learn to leanon Jesus and on Him
alone for what we need. What do we need?
Ø We need to pray – I am referring to prayer that seeksthe face and the will
of God. I am referring to prayer assaults the throne room of God, refusing to
be silenceduntil the answercomes. I am talking about the church returning to
the days of lying on the altars, seeking Godand His power.
Ø We are commanded to pray, 1 Thes. 5:17;Luke 18:1. He has promised to
hear our prayers, Jer. 33:3; Isa. 65:24. He has promised to answerour
prayers,
Matt. 7:7-11;Mark 11:24;John 14:13-14;15:7. Genuine, faith-filled praying
is the keythat will open the door of revival and power for this modern age!
Ø We must be surrendered – God cannot bless and use a church that is not
separatedfrom the world, 2 Cor. 6:17-7:1. It is God’s will that we place
everything we have, are and ever hope to have or be on the altar for His glory,
Rom. 12:1-2.
Ø We need to become totally dependent on the Lord for everything – Until we
reachthe place where we understand that the power of God does not come
because ofour preaching, our singing, our working or our manipulation of
people and things. The power of God rests on us as we learn to restin Jesus,
John 15:5. The cure for what ails the modern church is found in our Lord’s

35. words to the church in Ephesus;we need to fall in love with Jesus once again,
Rev. 2:1-7.
· We do not need new programs. We do not need more powerful personalities.
We do not need new buildings, new trinkets and toys. We do not need to
become more “seekerfriendly”. We do not need to change our music or our
message. Whatwe need is simple. What we need is available. What we need is
the powerof God. That powerwill come when God’s people get serious about
seeking His face;walking in His ways and leaning on Him for all we need. It
will come then and only then, 2 Chron. 7:14.
Conc:“
And they could not!” What a tragic statement! When people come to Calvary
Baptist Church and worship with us, what is their thought when they leave?
Can they say, “
The powerof God is in that place;they serve a mighty, wonderful Lord”? Or
do they leave here saying, “
I went there for help; I went there for fellowship; I went there for love; I went
there for hope; I went there for peace;I went there for acceptance;I went
there for Jesus, andthey could not”?
Has God spokento you about what you need to do to make Calvary Baptist
Church the church He wants it to be? Has He spokento you about your faith?
He spokento you about your prayer life? He spokento you about your level of
surrender? He spokento you about to you about how much you depend on
Him? If He has spoken, you need to hear His voice and do what He is telling
you to do.
He spokento you about your salvation? If so, you need to come and be saved.
I have delivered the burden of these verses. I have delivered the burden of my
heart. It is time for you to do what He is calling you to do.
We caneither be a people who can or a people who could not. Which kind of
people we are rests on us.
http://www.sermonnotebook.org/mark/Mark%2043%20-%20Mark%209_14-
29.htm
TAKING OUR CASE TO CHRIST

36. Dr. W. A. Criswell
Mark 9:14-29
6-25-67 7:30 p.m.
On the radio, on WRR, you are invited to turn in God’s Book to the Second
gospel, the Gospel of Mark chapter 9, and we shall read out loud together
from verse 14 through verse 29, Mark chapter 9, verse 14 through 29. If you
are listening on the radio, read it out loud with us, in this great congregation
here tonight. This is the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas bringing
the evening message. It is entitled Taking Our Case to Christ. Mark 9:14-29,
all of us reading it out loud together:
And when He came to His disciples, He saw a greatmultitude about them, and
the scribes questioning with them.
And straightwayall the people, when they beheld Him, were greatlyamazed,
and running to Him saluted Him.
And He askedthe scribes, What question ye with them?
And one of the multitude answeredand said, Master, I have brought unto
Thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit;
And wheresoeverhe taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and
gnashethwith his teeth, and pineth away:and I spake to Thy disciples that
they should casthim out; and they could not.
He answerethhim, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with
you? how long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto Me.
And they brought him unto Him: and when he saw Him, straightwaythe
spirit tare him, and he fell on the ground, and wallowedfoaming.
And He askedhis father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he
said, Of a child.
And ofttimes it hath casthim into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him:
but if Thou canstdo anything, have compassionon us, and help us.
Jesus saidunto him, If thou canstbelieve, all things are possible to him that
believeth.
And straightwaythe father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord I
believe; help Thou mine unbelief.
When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the foul
spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of
him, and enter no more into him.

37. And the spirit cried and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as
one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.
But Jesus took him up by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.
And when He was come into the house, His disciples askedHim privately,
Why could not we casthim out?
And He said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer
and fasting.
[Mark 9:14-29]
We are, every Sunday night, preaching through the life of Christ. Unless there
is a specialprogram, the message Sundaynight will always be one about our
Lord takenout of the days of Jesus in His pilgrimage in this earth. And this
story we have just read is the incident that followedthe transfiguration of our
Lord on the mount when Moses andElijah appearedunto Him, when His
raiment became white as no fuller could whiten them [Mark 9:2-3], and His
face shined like the sun [Matthew 17:2]. It was in that glorious transfiguration
that the apostle Simon Petersaid, "Lord let us stay, let us stay; let us build a
tabernacle for Thee and one for Elijah and one for Moses, and let us stay"
[Matthew 17:4].
And in sympathy with that spirit and response of Simon Peter, all of us would
share tonight. O glory, glory! "How marvelous when God comes down; our
souls to greetand glory fills the mercy seat," [from "Every Stormy Wind";
Hugh Stowell]. High and lifted up close to God when the Lord comes down,
when God’s saints are together, whenwe sing and pray and our cups
overflow, and there’s an abounding of the presence of the Spirit of God. All of
us can sympathize with Simon Peter when he said to the Lord, "Let us stay;
let us stay" [Matthew 17:4]. There will come a time, there will be a day when
our assignments in this earth will be finished, our tasks are done, and we shall
sing and shout and glorify and worship our Lord God, world without end
forever and ever. But not now, not now.
Up there on the mountain top are our Savior, the Lord Jesus, and Mosesand
Elijah, and Peterand James and John. But down here in the valley are the
rest of the disciples. Theyare frustrated and defeatedand in despair. They are
mockedand ridiculed. They have ignominiously and ingloriously failed. And
down there in the valley is a multitude around them, and they are filled, that
throng around the disciples, with unbelievers and jesters and ridiculers, and
apparently a multitude of others who are in the deepesthilarity about the
failure of Christ’s followers. And in the midst down there, in that valley, is a

38. broken-heartedfather and a son that is torn and rent by an evil and a vicious
spirit [Mark 9:14-29].
Now, the Lord says to Simon Peter, "We are going back down there in the
valley." And the voice that fell out of heaven said, "This is My belovedSon:
hear Him" [Mark 9:8]. And down into the valley, out of the glory of the
Mount of Transfiguration, did they go. Jesus, who had just been glorified,
Jesus, with those three, to meet and to mingle with a rejecting and scoffing
and ridiculing and unbelieving world [Mark 9:9, 14].
Now may I pause there to saysomething about us? We have a great message
and a greatgospel, and it brings to us infinite and marvelous joy and gladness.
And sometimes when we meet here in this church, my own heart is so filled
with overflowing that I cannotkeepback the tears. I rejoice in God. I feel His
presence. And when the Spirit moves upon the service, and when people are
saved, my cup runneth over. But as glorious and as marvelous as is the
convocationofour people, and the mountain tops in which we share the
blessing of the presence ofthe Lord; yet, our first and our primary and our
tremendous assignmentis not in these walls;it is outside, up and down these
streets, in these homes where the multitude of the people are who even now
pass by the church and the Lord with never a thought and never a song and
never a prayer, who are engrossedin the cheap rewards of this world.
You see, the idea unapplied, un-applicated, the idea in itself is never of any
poweror pertinency. It is the application of it that gives it regnancy and glory
and meaning. It is like this. I was in the laboratoryof a great scientist, and he
had there a little model on a table that he had made. It was concoctedout of
glass and out of little things and do-ma-jigglers and whatnots and gadgets and
stuff around; it was just about this big. And this greatscientist, he was a
chemist, he was showing me how to crack petroleum, how to take just gobs of
black petroleum and crack it, and make it come out gasoline thatyou can put
in your car. And he had it going here and here and through this little thing
and burned up here and distilled here, and on and on and on. And I said,
"Thatis just great, isn’t it? That’s just great. But what in the world is it that
you do with it?" And he said, "Why, come here, come here." And I went with
him to the window of the laboratory – this is one of the great refineries of the
world – I went with him to the window of his laboratory, and he said, "Now
you stand here." "Now," he said, "do you see this vast installation?" And it
was about a half a mile long and must have costmillions and millions of
dollars.
He said, "Do you see this vast installation here?"

39. I said, "Yes, I see this vast petroleum plant."
"Well," he said, "that plant is exactlywhat you have seenin this little model
here. I put this model together, and I thought through all of these things. And
then the company implemented the plan, and what you see is what you have
just lookedat in that little table model that I showedyou": the application of
the idea.
May I take the opposite of that? One of the strangestofall of the observations
in human history is this: that from one side of this American continent to the
other, and from the ends of it down there at Tierra del Fuego clearup to Point
Barrow in Alaska and the North Pole, there are millions and millions and
millions of American Indians who live in the South American continent and
the North American continent. And yet in all of those millions and millions of
American Indians, not one of them, not one tribe, not one family, not the
Aztecs or the Montezumas, not the – not any of them, ever discoveredthe use
of the wheel.
I used to go, when I was pastor in Oklahoma, I used to go in the summertime
to the Indian fair at Anadarko, the Kiowas. And they campedthere and
recreatedtheir life as they had lived for generations before. And when those
Kiowas came to Anadarko for their annual Indian fair, they did it as they had
done it all of their generations. Theyput everything they had on poles and
draggedthose poles to the fair. They, after the coming of the Spanish, you
know, they brought the horse over here. The horse is not native to America;
they were brought over here. And after the Spaniards brought the horses,
why, these Indians would tie those poles to the back ends of the horses and
drag them. But they never discoveredthe use of the wheel. Now to me that
was amazing, but what is more amazing is this: some of these Indians had toys
for their children, and those toys had wheels!I just can’t imagine it. I can’t’
imagine it. The idea was there, and those children played with it, and those
adults saw it, but they never applied it and they never used it.
It is the application of the idea that gives it power and pertinency and regency.
Like steam, using it to run a greatengine; or the light that comes from
incandescentmetal, and we have a light bulb; or the fissuring of uranium,
atomic energy;it is the application of the idea that makes it powerful.
And it is that in the Christian faith. For us to have something that concerns
just us, howeverglad it may be and glorious it may be, yet, somehow it sours
in us. It must be scatteredabroad. It must be shared. It must be a part of
evangelism. It must be the announcing of it, the application of it, the living of
it, the scattering of it, the saying of it, the testifying of it. It must be the

40. carrying of it out that makes it what Godintended for it to be. Now that’s
what you have so magnificently here in the life of our Lord. Stay up there?
No. Come down where these people are [Mark 9:9, 14].
So the Lord comes, and He sees that multitude around the disciples [Mark
9:14], and they are in a heyday; just as the unbelievers are – the communists,
and the atheists, and the infidels, and the materialists, and the secularists –
just as they are today. How they scoffand scorn! "Ha, ha," they say, "the
church is losing its power!Ha, ha!" they say, "There’s no dynamic in the
pulpit any longer! Ha, ha!" they say, "Religionis nothing but an opiate of the
people, and the soonerdestroyedand forgot the better!" Just as here: a
multitude surrounding the disciples, and the scribes leading the ridicule and
the scornand the laughter.
But my sweetand precious friend, however the multitudes may scoff, and
howeverthe throng may scorn, and howeverthe infidels may lie and reject,
you still have that boy in the midst, and he represents all mankind. It is no
philosophical abstractionwhat sin does to the world. And the human heart
cannot fill itself with itself. It has to be filled with something else, either seven
devils or the sevenSpirits of the Holy God. And this lad represents us,
humanity, the whole world, and on the back of humanity dreams and rides the
old man of the sea. And how do you rid yourself of it, the drag and the curse
of sin, of age, ofdeath? You still have this boy [Mark 9:17-18].
So this man said to the Lord, "I brought him to Your disciples, and I asked
that these disciples heal him, castout the devil." And I can just see those
disciples as they responded, "Why, bring him to us! Man, we are proficient in
casting out devils, we are learned in that, we are gifted in that!" Hath not the
Lord sent out the twelve [Mark 6:7-13], and hath the Lord not sentout the
seventy? [Luke 10:1-16]. And didn’t they rejoice in their power to castout
devils? [Luke 10:17]. So it never occurredto them, it never occurredto them
that they had losttheir communication and their contactwith God [Mark
9:18]. "Sure!We can do it, bring him to us!" said the disciples, the nine that
remained down there. "Bring him to us, we are goodat that!" So this father
said, "I brought my boy to Your disciples, and askedthat they casthim out,
and they could not" [Mark 9:17-18]. And that was why the ridicule and the
scoffing and the scorning [Mark 19:4].
And I want you to know that I don’t know anything that is more terrible than
for a church to be powerless,and it’s pulpit without meaning and significance.
And the world points their finger at us and says, "Look atthem, they are
baffled, they are confused, they don’t have any answers, andthey can’t cast

41. out devils! They can’t make holy men out of bad men, look at them, look at
them!" So it was they scoffedat these disciples [Mark 9:14].
"Lord," saidthis man, "I’ve brought him to Thy disciples that they should
casthim out; and they could not" [Mark 9:18]. Then after the story you read,
and the Lord had healed that boy [Mark 9:25-27], those nine disciples came to
the Lord in the house privately; after everyone was gone, and they askedthe
Master, "Why could we not casthim out? Why could not we casthim out?"
[Mark 9:28].
All right look, "And the Lord said to them, What was it that ye disputed
among yourselves by the way? And they held their peace:for by the way they
had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest" [Mark 9:33-34].
I would think that was precipitated by the Lord choosing Peter, James, and
John, and taking them with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration. "What was
it, ye disputed among yourselves by the way?" [Mark 9:33]. And they
wouldn’t answer. "Theyheld their peace:for by the way they had disputed
among themselves who should be the greatest"[Mark 9:34]. And they lost
their power and their contactwith God.
And when this man brought that boy and laid him before the disciples that he
might be healed, they were powerless andimpotent [Matthew 17:16]. When
they came to the Lord Jesus privately and said, "Why could not we casthim
out?" [Matthew 17:19]. The Lord said, "Becauseyouhave lost your contact
with God" [Mark 9:19, 29]. Anything of envy, and littleness, and jealousy,
anything of self, anything that hides awaythe Lord, that comes betweenthe
soul and the Savior will cut off that wonderful communion and contactand
flow of power betweenus and God. And the Lord said unto them, "This kind
can come forth by nothing but by prayer," and a religious monk in afteryears
added, "and fasting" [Matthew 17:21]. And I don’t objectto the addition,
though Jesus didn’t say it. "This kind can come forth by nothing but by
prayer" and the monk added, "and fasting."
Now, may I say two or three things about that? Powerto save souls, to make
goodmen out of bad men, power to move hearts heavenward and God-ward.
First: let us be honest with ourselves. There is no powerin us to do it, none
whatsoever, none. I never feelso helpless in my life, even, as I stand in the
presence ofa little child, and he comes to me and he says, "Iwant to be
saved." How does one save souls? We cannot. The gift of life is not in us; it is
in God! And we must castourselves upon the mercies of God; we are
dependent upon God. We are in everything.

42. When you plant a seedit is God that makes it grow. We can cultivate and
plant and water, but it is God that gives life. When a wound is made, when a
scalpelcuts; the doctor canoperate, it is only God that canheal. When a baby
is born, it is only God that canbreathe into that child the breath of life. Now
we can try many things, and sometimes do, sometimes do. We can just holler
to the top of our voices. We can just talk and out loud and you could hear us
for five miles, and I saysometimes we do. There must be a reasonwhy I am
sort of hoarse tonight; there be some kind of a reason. And we get that idea
sometimes;"O Baal, O Baal, send the fire!" In that oratorio of Elijah, didn’t
you have somebodygo, "Baal!Baal!Baal!Baal! Baal!" [1 Kings 17:25], you
just round and round that altar, didn’t you do that? Seems to me you did. But
it is not in the fury of our speaking;it’s not that.
And sometimes we are persuadedit will come in the learnedness ofour
wisdom; "I want you to know, church member, we have the most learned
minister. Why he has his Ph.D, and his D.D, and his Litt.D, and his LL.D, and
his XYZ, and he has got his RFD number1. Oh, he is just the most learned
minister that I’ve ever lookedupon or heard in my life!" But you could sit and
listen to him forever and never know God! And the kind of congregationhe
has is a pitiful, insignificant, inconsequentialgathering of God’ saints. It’s not
by our learnedness.
And it is not by our human ingenuity. If human method and program could
bring in the kingdom of God, our Southern Baptist organizationallife would
have brought it in a generationago. We are dependent upon God[Luke
11:20]. It is God that gives life and powerand regeneration;"this kind can
come forth by nothing, but by prayer" [Mark 9:29]. We are dependent, we
castourselves upon God. Let’s be honest with ourselves. If there is power in
the church, and powerin the services, andif people are saved, it is because we
have lookedin mercy and expectancyto heaven. It is God that does it [Mark
10:27].
Second:let us be honest with them, with these that we are trying to witness to.
There is not anything in us, nothing. It’s in God, and lets don’t deceive them.
There are only two areas in this world where I know that deceptionis
expectedand practiced. One is in war. When you go to war you try to confuse
the enemy; you try to deceive him. You try to ambush him. You try to
surprise him. You try to overwhelm him in every way that is humanly
possible. That’s one, it is expectedthat in war you practice deception. Now the
other area in life where it is expectedis in love. Does thatbeat anything you
ever saw in your life? There is many and many and many an old boy that goes
down the altar with a girl, but if he were to see her with her hair curled up

43. and her face coveredwith grease andall the other things appurtenant thereto
before she goes to bed at night, I don’t know he’d be going down that aisle or
not. He says over here, "Preachon!" [Laughter].
It is so strange to me, there will be a girl and she will be at home and she is not
looking for her boyfriend, and he just suddenly drives up and you would think
the world had come to and end! She just evaporates, "Oh, my! I must,and on
and on and on and on. Well, I’m just telling you, that’s legitimate, that’s
understandable, that’s a part of life.
But I am also saying that when time comes to meet God, and for tremendous
spiritual confrontation, the best thing for us to do is just to be honestwith
him. There is no power in me, I cannot save, Godhas to do it [ACTS 4:12].
I was talking to a man. Oh, I never tried so hard to win a man in my life as I
did that man. Every argument I could think of, every ingenious approachI
could make, in every waythat I could humanly beg, plead, make appeal,
defend, urge, everyway! And I just fought, and argued, and plead, and
cajoled, and begged. Finally, before I left I askedhim humbly and simply, I
said, "Before Igo I want to kneeldown here," we were in his living room, "I
want to kneel down here and I want to pray, would you kneelby my side?"
And we prayed together. Well, I was a guestin his home, and it’s pretty
difficult, rather difficult for a man to say, "No, I won’t kneelby your side." So
I knelt on the living room rug, and he knelt by my side. In a few minutes, in a
few minutes, God had savedhim. And he took my hand as we were kneeling
together, and said, "I take Jesus as my Savior, I give Him my soul and my
life." And I baptized him, and he and his family were wonderful members of
our precious church. One word from the Holy Spirit is worth a thousand
words from us. One whispered appeal from the Spirit of God is worth ten
thousand arguments. It’s God that does it; "this kind comethout by nothing,
but by prayer" [Mark 9:29]. I must close. Let us be honest with ourselves;let
us be honestwith them; let us be honestwith God.
Our Lord we shall try, and we shall work;we shall plan; we shall do our best,
our utmost, but Lord, if the Spirit of Jesus does notbreathe upon our effort, it
is fruitless and barren and falls to the ground. Lord, we are dependent upon
Thee. God must work with us; God must help us; God must speak the word;
God must make the appeal; the Holy Spirit must convictthe heart; Jesus must
woo and win. And Master, we are dependent upon Thee. And it is when we
are on our knees that we are invincible and impregnable and unassailable. It
is God in us and God with us that brings to the world the light and the joy and
the glory of the saving grace ofthe Son of God, "This kind can come forth by
nothing, save by prayer" [Mark 9:29].

44. May all of us share in this prayer together? Our Lord, ten thousand times do
we act as though if we have the right plan, it will work of itself. And if we
form the right program, it’ll produce the desired results. And if we can just
get this machinery turning right, if we can getall of these gadgets just so, why,
we will have a marvelous harvest. When all the time He that sits above the
circle of the earth [Isaiah 40:22]says, "But without Me ye cando nothing"
[John 15:5]. O Lord may the powerof the Holy Spirit work with us, Lord, to
convict, to convert, to regenerate, to save, to bring to Thee. May it be at the
astonishment of the world, that so simple a messageand so humble appeal
should be so gloriously honored? But God is in it – the people prayed; they
lookedto heaven; they openedtheir hearts to the presence ofthe Holy Spirit –
and it is God in us, God with us, God among us that does such marvelous
things. O Lord, keepus on our knees, keepus, Master, onour faces. Mayour
people be a praying people looking to God, looking to Jesus. And may it be the
joy supernal, unspeakable, of our souls to see Godwork. Oh, may we rejoice
in Thee. Master, bless us as we seek to bring the lost people the glorious saving
goodnews of the abundant abounding life in our Lord. Outside of Him, just
death, defeatdespair, darkness, but the light of the world is Jesus [John 8:12].
Oh come to the light, ‘Tis shining for thee;
Sweetlythe light has dawned upon me;
Once I was blind, but now I can see;
The light of the world is Jesus!
["The Light of the World Is Jesus," Philip P. Bliss]
O Master, may we point to Thee, call upon Thee, love Thee, adore, worship
Thee, exalt Thee, preachThee, Lord. And may the Holy Spirit delight to
honor our word of appeal. Now Master, bless us tonight with a harvest, and
we shall thank Thee for every soul You give us, in the Savior’s dear name,
amen.
FEEBLE FAITH APPEALING TO A STRONG SAVIOR NO. 2881

45. A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 1904. DELIVERED
BY C. H SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE,
NEWINGTON, ON LORD’S-DAYEVENING, MARCH 19, 1876.
“And straightwaythe father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I
believe; help You my unbelief.” Mark 9:24.
THIS is the case ofa man who knew well enough what he wanted, and who
was full of anxiety to obtain it; indeed, he was so anxious to obtain it that he
prayed most earnestly, and most importunately, for it. He prayed to the right
Person, too;for, after having failed with the disciples, he resortedto their
MasterHimself. Yet, notwithstanding all this, at the time recordedin our text,
he had not obtained the blessing that he sought. We probably know of many
persons who have not yet been awakenedto a sense oftheir need, and much
labor has to be expended by the faithful minister in order to show them their
danger, and to make them realize their true condition in the sight of God.
They have many spiritual needs, but they do not know what those needs really
are. This man had gone further than that, for he did know, what, was the
greatneed of himself and his son. Then there are others, who have head
knowledge as to their spiritual needs, but they do not seemto be anxious to
have those needs supplied. They are stolid, careless, andimmovable. That was
not the case with this man. He knew that he wanted his son to be healed, he
was intensely eagerthat he should be healed, and healed there and then. His
heart was moved with compassionfor his child, and he was most anxious that
the evil spirit should be castout of him at once. There are some of our
hearers, who seemto have desire of a certain kind, but they do not use that
desire in the right way. They go about seeking salvationwhere it is not to be
found. They are, to an extent, earnestin their own fashion; but to them the
Lord might say, as of old, “Why do you spend money for that which is not
bread and your labor for that which satisfies not?” This man had gone a
stage beyond that. He was directing all his entreaties to Jesus;he was
appealing to the greatLord Himself, from whom alone deliverance could

46. come. It is a greatmercy, my dear friends, if you are brought as far as this
poor man was—to know whatyou really need, to be anxious to obtain it, and
to be making your appeal to Jesus to grant your requests. Yet, with all that,
this man had not obtained the gift he was seeking;and there are many, like
him, who, also have not securedthe blessing they are seeking. You are aware
of your sin, and you lament it, yet you cannotget a sense ofpardon. You know
your spiritual needs, and you bemoan them, but you cannotgrasp that which
can supply them. You have made an appealto God in Christ Jesus, and you
are resolvedthat you will never leave off so appealing. Yet, for all that, you
have not, thus far, receivedthe blessing. There is something or other in the
way— something that hinders you; and I should not wonder—no, I feelquite
certain—that the thing which hinders some of you from getting what you seek
from Christ is your own unbelief. That is the point at which I am going to aim
in my discourse, as Godshall help me; and I pray that as I do so, from many a
heart may be breathed this confessionand cry, “Lord, I believe; help my
unbelief.” I. There are three things in our text; and the first is THE
SUSPECTEDDIFFICULTYAND THE REAL DIFFICULTY. Reading the
story carefully, I gatherthat this man saw difficulties as to his child’s cure,
but that he never thought of the real one. He fancied that the difficulty lay in
the case ofhis child. His words to Christ, “If You cando anything,” seemto
imply that he felt, “This is a case that is quite out of the ordinary run—
something specialand singular—and, therefore, beyond Your power.” If I can
interpret his thoughts, it is my opinion that he said to himself, “This is too
mysterious a case to be cured. An evil spirit has struck my boy dumb, yet that
same spirit makes him foam at the mouth, and gnashwith his teeth. Those
very organs,
2 Feeble Faith Appealing to a Strong Savior Sermon #2881
2 Tell someone todayhow much you love Jesus Christ. Volume 50
which refuse to utter articulate speech, are, nevertheless,strangelysetin
motion. He seems to be taken, too, by this evil spirit, at intervals, and hurried
this way and that—he cannottell how—and, at one time, he is hurled into the
fire, and, at another time, into the water. It is a most mysterious malady; and,
possibly, because it is so mysterious, it is not in the Messiah’s line of things.” I

47. have known some who have thought their case, spiritually, to be very
mysterious. They have imagined that there was something about their
constitution or, worse still, that some extraordinary guilt had brought upon
them a condition of heart that was peculiarly vicious. They have even fancied
that this state of heart had put them beneath the ban of the unpardonable sin,
and that others had better beware of coming near them, for their condition
was so strange, so singular, so wild, that they could not tell what to think or
say of themselves. Sometimes, they are hot and in the fire; and, at other times,
cold, and in the water; with no voice for praying or praising, yet able to curse
and to blaspheme. “Ah!” says such a one, “my case is so mysterious that even
the Lord Jesus Christwill never be able to save me.” Very likely, too, the
father thought that his child’s disease was too violent to be cured. He was
dashed about, here and there, and rent and torn as though his poor body must
be dissolved into the atoms of which it was made. He could not be held in or
restrained; no government or controlcould be exercisedoverhim; for the
demon carriedhim, with an irresistible influence, whereverit pleased. The
poor father could truly have said, “Look at him now. I brought him into the
presence ofChrist Himself, and here he lay wallowing upon the ground, being
torn in pieces by the demon; and now that the paroxysm is past, he lies there
as if he was dead, and some say that he really is dead.” I should not wonder if
I am addressing a man who thinks that the difficulty as to his salvation lies in
the factthat his passions are so violent and so fierce. Possibly, he says, “I kept
soberfor months; but, all of a sudden, it seemedas if the drink demon
overpoweredme, and I had an awful bout of drinking till delirium tremens
was well-nearupon me.” “Ah!” says another, “I did struggle againsta vicious
habit which I had formed, and I thought I had overcome it; but, alas!The
next time the temptation came in my way, I did not seemto have any more
powerto resistit than a snowflake has to resist the wind that drives it along;
and I was carriedright awayby the evil impulse. Some men have a peculiar
bent towards evil because oftheir intense vehemence of character;it was so
with Samson, though he had the saving grace offaith. Such men are, perhaps,
strongly developed in the sinews and muscles of their body; but, certainly,
they are in the passions and impulses of their soul. You may bind them with
fetters and chains, but the strongestbonds are only like the greentwine was to
Samson. The devil that is in them seems to be absolutelysupreme over them

48. when he puts forth his power. I do not wonder, therefore, if they think that
the difficulty, in their case, lies in the violence and suddenness of their sin; but
it is not so. Perhaps this poor father thought that in his child’s case, the
difficulty lay in the factthat he had been such a long time a sufferer, even
from his childhood. In answerto Christ’s question, “How long is it ago since
this came unto him?” he said, “of a child.” So a man sometimes says, “Sinis
bred in my bones, and it will come out in my flesh. My very nature is corrupt;
while I was but a child, I loved sin; and since then, throughout my youth and
manhood, I have gone after it greedily, and it has become a habit that is firmly
fixed upon me. ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?’
Then may he, that is accustomedto do evil, learn to do well.” Such sinners feel
as if they had been steepedand soakedin the crimson lye until there was no
hope of ever getting the stain out of them. They have been wanderers from
God even from their youth, how can they be brought near to Him? Yet we
know that the difficulty did not lie in the child’s case atall, for Jesus Christ
was able to castthe devil out, and He did castit out. And if that child had
been possessedby a whole legion of devils, instead of only by one, Jesus Christ
could, with a single word, have castthem all out. No matter how long the
demon had been in possessionof the child, nor how vehement and impetuous
he might be, Christ could drive him out wheneverHe pleased. And, at this
moment, dear friend, your past life, your sins, your natural corruptions, your
inherited vices, your evil habits, which have grown so strong upon you, are
not the real difficulty. The Lord Jesus Christ “is able to save them to the
uttermost that come unto God by Him.” He Himself said, “All manner of sin
and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men;” so I care not how bad your case
may be—it may even be worse than I should dare to guess, there may be a
secretcriminality about it that sets it altogetherby itself as an unusual and
even unique offense againstGod;but that is not the difficulty in the way of
your salvation. Christ can easilywrite “settled” atthe bottom of the long
accountof your sins, and it is no more trouble for Him to write that word at
the footof a long bill than a short one. God canas readily make you a new
creature in Christ Jesus, whateveryour sins may have been, as if you
Sermon #2881 Feeble FaithAppealing to a Strong Savior3
Volume 50 Tell someone todayhow much you love Jesus Christ. 3

49. had been living a strictly moral life. You are spiritually dead in any case,and
it is He alone who cangive you life. You are lostin any case, and the good
Shepherd can just as readily find the lost sheepthat has gone far astray as
another which is only just outside the fold, for He is almighty; and, therefore,
able to do all things. So the difficulty does not lie there. Perhaps, however—
no, we know that it was so—the father thought that the difficulty lay with
Jesus Christ Himself. He seemed to say, “I have done all I canfor my child; I
brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him, and now I have
brought him to You. If You can”—buthe had hardly got those words out of
his mouth before the Lord Jesus addressedhim, in a peculiar Greek idiom,
which cannot be fully translated into English, but which might run something
like this: “The if you can”—thatis exactlythe Greek word—“the if you can
believe, all things are possible to him that believes;” as much as to say, “The if
you candoes not lie with Me. Oh, no, the if you can lies with you.” He takes
the man’s word, and hurls them back at him. I daresaythe man may have
thought, “If His disciples cannot cure my child, at all events their Masterdoes
not. He has seenhow afflicted he is; if He could have done it, surely He would
at once have said to my child, ‘Be healed;’ yet there He is, standing still, and
talking to me, as if this were not a pressing case ofurgent need. It must be
lack of power on His part that keeps Him from curing my child.” But Jesus
Christ will not let such a thing as that be said without showing that it is not
true; and, brethren, if you harbor in your heart any idea that there is a lack of
powerin the Lord Jesus Christ to save you, you are believing a most atrocious
falsehood, and defaming the almighty Savior. The difficulty, in your case, is
not either in the sin or in the Savior. He is able to forgive the greatest
conceivable transgressions ofall who believe in Him; and He is able to break
and to renew the hardest heart, even though it should be hard as steelor like
the nether millstone. II. We have now to consider, in the secondplace, THE
TEARFUL DISCOVERY:“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” What was his
discovery? Why his discovery was, that he did not believe;and that is where
the realdifficulty lay. When did the man make this discovery? When he began
to believe. Is it not a very singular thing that as soonas ever he had a little
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he discoveredthe greatabyss of his unbelief?
“Lord,” he said, “I believe;but, oh! I do also disbelieve so much that my
unbelief seems to swallow up my belief.” Until a man gets faith, he may think

50. that he has gotit; but when he has realfaith in Jesus Christ, then he shudders
as he thinks how long he has lived in unbelief, and realizes how much of
unbelief is still mixed with his belief. There are many of you, who have never
believed to the saving of your souls;yet you say, “Oh, yes! We believe the
Bible; we believe in God; we believe in Jesus Christ.” You stand up in church,
and say, “I believe in God the Fatheralmighty, Makerof heaven and earth,”
and so on, but you do not do anything of the sort. If you did, you would be
saved; since, true belief in Jesus Christbrings salvationto everyone who so
believes. While men have no faith—I repeat what I said just now—while men
have no faith, they are unconscious oftheir unbelief; but, as soonas they get a
little faith, then they begin to be conscious ofthe greatnessoftheir unbelief.
When the blind man gets a little light into his eyes, he perceives something of
the blacknessofthe darkness in which he has been living; so, you must be able
to say, from your heart, “Lord, I believe,” orelse you will never be able to
pray, as this man did, “help You my unbelief.” Even the small measure of
faith is needful to discoverthe greatmeasure of the unbelief. This man, as
soonas he discoveredhis unbelief, was distressedand alarmed at it. He could
not look straightat Christ and say, “Lord, I do disbelieve You, but I cannot
help it.” No, he was distressedaboutit; he felt how dreadful a thing it was to
be unbelieving; and he appealedto Christ, confessing his unbelief, saying,
“Lord, help me out of it, I beseechYou.” Notice how he turned his whole
attention to that one matter of his own unbelief; he did not even mention his
poor child. His child was, no doubt, still in his thoughts; yet his prayer was not
concerning his child, but concerning his own unbelief, for he saw that was the
difficulty needing to be removed. And when God, in infinite mercy, visits a
poor troubled heart, and gives it even a little faith in Jesus Christ, its great
distress is concerning its remaining unbelief, for it perceives that this is the
greatestofall sins, the most terrible of all stumbling blocks, and is, indeed, the
chief hindrance to men’s entrance into rest of heart, and into eternallife.
Now, look, all of you who are seeking Christ, but who saythat you cannotget
peace. The difficulty lies here; if you can believe, all things are possible to you;
but it is because you do not believe, that you remain as you are.
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51. Let me show you what it is that you do not believe. You say that Christ cannot
save you. Then, you believe that omnipotence—youdare not say it is not
omnipotence—has for once met its match. Look that statementin the face—
that the Eternal Son of God has a task setbefore Him which, He cannot
perform; in other words, you do not believe in the omnipotence of God, for, if
He be omnipotent, He must be able to save you. Next, sinner, when you say,
“Jesus cannotsave me,” you casta slur upon His precious blood. You stand,
in imagination, at the foot of His cross, andyou see Him bleeding away His
very life, yet you say, “The merit of that blood is limited; I know it is, for it
cannot atone for my sin.” You are trampling upon the blood of the Son of
God, and counting it an unholy thing, by declaring that your sin is mightier
than His infinite sacrifice. Again, after shedding His blood for sinners, Christ
went back into heaven, and a greatpart of His occupationthere is to make
intercessionfor the transgressors. Yetyou saythat His intercessioncannotbe
powerful enough to avail for you, although I have already reminded you that
God has said, “Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that
come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercessionfor them.”
To say of yourself, “Christ cannotsave me,” or to say of any other man, “He
cannot save that man,” is to insult His blood, and to caste a slight upon His
ever-living plea. What greatercrime canthere be than thus to limit the Holy
One of Israel—yes, to limit Him both when bleeding on the cross and sitting
on His throne? I charge you, sirs, to feel the utmost horror at the very thought
that you should have been guilty of such a crime againstthe Lord Jesus
Christ. God has declaredthat “He that covers his sins shall not prosper: but
whoso confessesand forsakesthem shall have mercy.” The apostle John,
writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, declares that “the blood of
Jesus Christ His Son cleansesus from all sin.” If, then, you say, “But it cannot
cleanse me from my sin,” you give the lie direct to the most solemn revelations
and pledges of the divine mercy. Do you mean to do that? Oh, how often shall
we have to remind you that whether you mean to do so, or not, that is what
you are doing? Remember how the loving John writes, “He that believes not
God has made Him a liar; because he believes not the record that God gave of
His Son.” In addition to insulting the Sonas to the efficacyof His blood, and
insulting the Fatherconcerning His veracity—bearwith me, sinner, in
bringing these grave charges againstyou; and as God bears with you, you

52. may well bear with me as I remind you of your sin—you also insult the Spirit
of God by your unbelief, for you as goodas say, “The Spirit of God cannot
renew my heart; He cannotbring me to repentance; He cannot bring faith to
me.” Yet the Spirit, and the Father and the Son, is Himself God, infinite and
almighty. It is a greatsin for anyone to say, “The Spirit cannot regenerate me;
there is no hope for me.” Is it possible that you, poor despairing sinner, think
that your despair proves that you are humble; it is not so. Despairis one of the
proudest things in the world, for it dares even to tell the almighty Spirit of
God that He cannot—He cannot—save. Ibeseechyou, do not sayso; but if
you have faith enough to believe that Jesus is omnipotent, and that there is
unlimited value in His blood and His plea; that the Fatheris true, and that His
promises must be fulfilled; and that the Spirit of Godis able to work such a
change in your heart that old things shall pass away, and all things shall
become new; then be alarmed to think that there should be any unbelief
remaining in you, and cry out, with tears, as this man did, “Lord, I believe;
help You my unbelief.” III. Now comes our third point—THE
INTELLIGENT APPEAL. The man has seenwhere the difficulty lies; he has
made a discovery as to his own unbelief; and now he turns round to Jesus, and
he cries, “Lord, I believe; help You my unbelief.” Kindly notice the wording
of the man’s prayer as recordedin the 22nd verse: “If You can do anything,
have compassiononus, and help us.” See that word “help.” And, now, when
he is convinced of his unbelief, look at his prayer: “Help You my unbelief”—
the same word that he had used before. In his first petition, looking at his poor
child wallowing on the ground, he cried, “Help us.” But now he has been
taught better, and he says, in effect, “Lord, I see that it is easywork for You to
casta devil out, but the difficulty is that I am unbelieving, and that hinders
You, Lord. Help me believe, for that is what is needed.” I recommend some of
you—insteadof praying, “Lord, give me a sense ofpardoned sin, give me a
new heart, give me to feel that You love me”—pray those prayers by and by;
but, for the present, pray like this, “Lord, help me to believe; Lord, give me
faith; Lord, drive awaymy unbelief.” Directyour prayers to that one point,
for that is the matter in which you are lacking. Unbelief is the greatstone
lying at the door of your heart, and preventing that door from being opened.
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53. Volume 50 Tell someone todayhow much you love Jesus Christ. 5
Notice that this man’s prayer was intelligently addressedto One, who, he
believed, could help him. He seemedto sayto himself, “If Christ can help my
child to get well, then He canhelp me to believe.” Believe that, sinner; and ask
Him to help you to believe. His prayer was addressedto One in whom he did
believe, in a measure; for he would not have prayed to Christ to help his
unbelief if he had not felt that Christ could do so. And he did say, “Lord, I
believe.” His was a strange mixture of belief and unbelief; and so are you, my
dear friends; but I charge you, with the little faith you have got, if you believe
that Jesus cansave other people, go to Him, and beseechHim to castout of
you the unbelief which is still lurking within you. The chief reasonwhy you
have not peace with God, why you have not found the consciousenjoyment of
eternal life, is that you lack faith; you need your unbelief to be castout. I am
going to close my discourse by showing you that there is nobody but the Lord
Jesus Christ who canhelp us to getrid of unbelief; and by advising you to
take your unbelief, and all your other sins, and confess them to Christ as sins,
and then ask Him to enable you to get rid of them. It ought to enable you to
see how Jesus Christ does help you to getrid of unbelief if you considerHis
nature; if you rightly understand that, it will be a deathblow to unbelief. Who
and what is Jesus. You believe—Iknow you do— that He is “very God of very
God”—thatJesus of Nazarethis “overall God, blessedforever.” If you will
only think of that greatfact, it will help you to believe in Him. Cannot you
trust your soul in the hands of God? Is He not able to deliver you? Is He not
able to pardon you? “The Son of man has poweron earth to forgive sins”
because He is God. If I had an angel sentto be my Savior, I dare not trust
him. When any man says that he canforgive my sins, I will not trust him, for I
know that he is a liar and a thief, trying to rob God of His prerogative. When
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, says that He cansave me, I cannot find any
reasonwhy I should not believe Him, and I do not believe you can suggestany
such reason. Unbelief is a most unreasonable thing, but faith is most
reasonable and right. As Christ is divine, my natural inference is, “ThenI will
trust Him.” Moreover, ourLord Jesus Christis man as well as God; and such
a man as the world has never seenbefore or since. You have read the story of
His life; did you ever read of any other man so gentle, so tender, so true, so

54. kind, so full of affection, so willing to live and die for others? What; not trust
Him? Oh, it seems to me as if I could not help trusting Him. Certainly, ever
since I have known my blessedLord and Savior, I have felt that I could sayto
Him, as David did, “Theythat know Your name will put their trust in You.”
Son of God, and Son of man, Your very nature helps to banish our unbelief;
and, as soonas we rightly understand it, we feel that unbelief is an unnatural,
illogical, and wickedthing. Think also, for a minute or two, of His great
offices. Our Lord Jesus Christ has a thousand offices, but there is one upon
which I especiallylove to dwell. He is a Savior; He “came into the world to
save sinners.” Many people imagine that they cannot be saved because they
are sinners; but that is the very reasonwhy they can be saved. You remember
how Martin Luther put it. He said, “The devil came to me, and he said,
‘Martin Luther, you are a big sinner; you are so great a sinner that you
cannot be saved.’” Luther replied, “I will tell you what I will do, Satan;I will
cut off your head with your own sword; for if I am a sinner— and I know that
it is so—Jesus Christcame into the world to save sinners, so I believe He came
to save me, and I have trusted my soul to Him for time and eternity.” A doctor
does not come to heal those that are healthy, he naturally looks afterthe sick;
and a Saviordoes not come to save those who need no saving, but He comes to
save sinners; so that your sinnership, instead of being a disqualification, is, to
speak broadly, a qualification. Just as filth is a qualification for being
washed—justas poverty is a qualification for receiving alms—just as sickness
is a qualification for medicine, so your very sin and vileness are qualifications
for Christ’s work of grace in you. I am using expressions that some will think
strange, yet I am speaking, nevertheless, whatis absolute truth. Does it not
help to remove your unbelief to hear that Jesus is “mighty to save”? Think,
next, of the anguish which Christ endured when He offered up Himself as the
greatatoning sacrifice for His people’s sin. I have never been able, for a single
instant, to believe in any limit to the value of the atonement offeredby Christ
on Calvary. It does seemto me to verge upon blasphemy to suppose that if
God Himself becomes incarnate, and suffers, and bleeds, and dies, there can
be anything less than infinite value in the atonement that He offers. So then,
sinner, as it is infinite, it can coveryour case;as it is without bounds, there
cannot be a bound setto it as far as you are concerned. Look atChrist on the
cross, and you will not dare to say, “He cannot save me.” Know what He is,

55. and who He is; see how He suffers, how the Father smites Him, and yet how
the Fatherloves Him all the while; and you must
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say, “Christ’s blood must have sufficient power in it to take awayall the guilt
of all who trust Him.” It is so;believe it, and that will help to drive awayyour
unbelief. Remember, too, dear friends, that when Christ died upon the cross,
He was not working out a trifling scheme of salvation. It was a sublime
enterprise that took Him from His throne in heaven, and brought Him down
to the manger in Bethlehem. It was a God-like undertaking which made Him
lay aside the scepter, and bear to have greatnails thrust through His hands. It
was a greatscheme, and therefore it included greatsin, greatpardon, and
greatsalvation; so, if you are a greatsinner, you match the generalscale ofthe
whole scheme, which is of such huge proportions that it canencompass even
you. Christ’s design in dying, too, ought to help to kill your unbelief. Why did
He die? Was it not that the free grace of God might have full swing and
abundant scope;and will it not have full swing if you are saved, and is there
not greatscope for pardoning mercy in you? Remember, dear friends, our
Lord Jesus Christ never thought it was worth His while to come from heaven
to give glory to a man: He came from heaven to bring glory to God, by
vindicating His justice, and manifesting His mercy. Now, if such a sinner as
you are—youwho think yourself too bad to be saved—ifyou get saved, what a
display of divine grace there will be in your case!A man said to me, some time
ago, “If ever I getto heaven, sir, I believe they will carry me about the streets,
and exhibit me as a marvel of God’s mercy.” “Well, then,” I replied, “they
will have to carry me around as well.” I suspectthat every saved soulin
heaven is a greatwonder, and that heaven is a vast museum of wonders of
grace and mercy, a palace of miracles, in which everything will surprise
everyone who gets there. It has been wellsaid that there will be three
surprises in heaven— first, we shall not find some we thought we would meet
there; then, we shall find some we never thought would be there; but the
greatestsurprise of all will be to find ourselves there!I think it will be so—not
that we shall be astonishedat the fact when we remember God’s promise, and

56. what He has done for us; but we shall be amazed when we recollectwhat we
used to be, and what the grace ofGod had to do for us to make us fit to be
there. Well, if you are one of those who will be carried all around heaven as a
marvel of mercy, I believe you are the very person who is likely to get there,
because Godwants the angels and all the redeemedto see the wonders of His
grace displayed to us-ward who believe. I close with this one thought. If, poor
soul, it is your lack of faith that stands in the way of the blessing coming to
you, and if that lack of faith is infamous on your part, since you give God the
lie; I charge you to repent of it, and to believe God, here and now. If you still
say, “I know not how to believe, and I cannottrust,” I dare not try to excuse
you for saying so. Unbelief is the greatestofall crimes; I know of none to
match it. But, if you really want help in fighting againstyour unbelief, cannot
you go to Christ for it? Even while you are thinking about Him, you will
believe in Him. If you want to trust His blood, think of His blood. If you want
to trust Him as a living, loving Savior, think of Him as a living, loving Savior.
“Faith comes by hearing.” When you are hearing about it, thinking about it,
reading about it, the Holy Spirit will breed faith in your soul. Oh, do get faith,
whateverelse you do not get!May God enable you to exercise saving faith in
Jesus Christ before you rise from your seat, lest, in this very building, you
should stumble into death and into hell! Do I need to ask you, sirs, a thousand
times, to believe the truth? Must I, overand over again, say to you as Jesus
said to the Jews, “BecauseI tell you the truth, you believe not me”? If Christ
is not worthy of being believed, then He is a liar. If Christ cannot be trusted,
then He is wrongly named. Oh, do not drive us to the inference that you think
thus of Him! Commit your soul into His hands this very moment, and have
done with it, once and for all, for His dear name’s sake. Amen!
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON:MARK 9:2-29
Verses 2-6. And after six days Jesus took with Him Peter, and James, and
John, and led them up into an high mountain apart by themselves:and He
was transfigured before them. And His raiment became shining, exceeding

57. white as snow;so as no fuller on earth could whiten them. And there appeared
unto them Elijah with Moses:and they were talking with Jesus. And Peter
answeredand said to Jesus, Master, it is goodfor us to be here: and let us
make three tabernacles;one for You, and one for Moses, andone for Elijah.
For he knew not what to say; for they were sore afraid. Brethren, like these
disciples of our Lord, we are not yet fit to be favored with a sight of His glory.
As we now are, we could not bear it. As our poet says— “At the too-
transporting light,
Sermon #2881 Feeble FaithAppealing to a Strong Savior7
Volume 50 Tell someone todayhow much you love Jesus Christ. 7
Darkness rushes overmy sight.” These three apostles ofChrist were too
bewildered to know what to say, they were quite lost, and I suppose that, if we
could go to heaven as we are, our bewilderment would even exceedour bliss.
But we may rest assuredthat Godwill prepare us for that which He has
prepared for us. 7, 8. And there was a cloud that overshadowedthem: and a
voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is My belovedSon: hear Him. And
suddenly, when they had lookedround about, they saw no man any more,
save Jesus only with themselves. And although this was not so ravishing or so
astonishing a sight, yet it was more encouraging to them—something which
they could more easily bear with joy and peace:“they saw no man any more,
save Jesus only with themselves.” MayGod grant to us, as long as we are here
below, that, if no Moses or Elijah shall ever come to visit us, at any rate Jesus
may never be absentfrom us! May our fellowship with Him be unbroken! 9,
10. And as they came down from the mountain, He chargedthem that they
should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen
from the dead. And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one
with another what the rising from the dead should mean. These were Peter,
and James, and John, the three most privileged disciples of Christ—probably,
the bestscholars in that class whichhad the Lord Jesus Christ Himself for its
Teacher;yet His plain language was withoutmeaning to them: “questioning
one with another what the rising from the dead should mean.” I wonder
whether, when our Lord comes the secondtime, we shall discoverthat the
prophecies concerning His advent were wonderfully clear, but that we could

58. not understand them till He came. Plain as His teaching concerning His
resurrectionwas, His disciples could not understand it till that greatevent had
really occurred. 11-13. And they askedHim, saying, Why saythe scribes that
Elijah must first come? And He answeredand told them, Elijah verily comes
first, and restores all things; and how it is written of the Sonof man, that He
must suffer many things, and be setat nothing. But I say unto you, that Elijah
is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoeverthey listed, as it is
written of him. John the Baptist had come, in the spirit and powerof Elijah,
and had reconstitutedmatters, and prepared the people for the advent of the
Savior, whose herald he was. 14, 15. And when He came to His disciples, He
saw a greatmultitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them. And
straightwayall the people, when they beheld Him, were greatlyamazed, and
running to Him saluted Him. Some relics of the glory on the mountain still
remained upon His face, and the people were astounded;so, though deeply
interestedin the battle which was proceeding betweenthe scribes and the
disciples, they left them, and turned to look upon that mysterious radiance
which hovered about His brow. 16. And He askedthe scribes, What are you
discussing with them? The circumstances ofthe disciples resembled a
battlefield on which the enemy was winning the day, and the loyal troops were
about to die defeated;when suddenly, the greatCommander Himself appears
for their relief. His presence is worth more than a thousand battalions of men;
and He charges atonce upon the adversary, and puts them to rout: “He asked
the scribes, Whatquestion you with them?” 17. And one of the multitude
answered— One who had a peculiar reasonfor answering—justas, I trust
there will be one in this multitude before me who will have a peculiar reason
for listening to my message,and a peculiar reasonfor remembering it after it
is delivered: “One of the multitude answered”— 17-19. And said, Master, I
have brought unto You my son, which has a dumb spirit; and wheresoeverhe
takes him, he tears him: and he foams, and gnashes with his teeth, and pines
away:and I spoke to Your disciples that they should casthim out; and they
could not. He answeredhim, and said, O faithless generation, how long shall I
be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto Me. I suppose our
Lord’s rebuke was meant especiallyforHis disciples. It was something like
the speechofa schoolmaster, who, having taught his pupils the same lessona
greatmany times, and labored hard with them, from year to year, yet finds

59. them failing in the very elements of knowledge. Christdoes not speak as if He
was tired of His life, and wishedto getawayfrom His disciples;but this is His
way of saying how disappointed He is that these learners have learned so little.
“How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto Me.” Those words struck my
heart very forcibly as I read them: “How long shall I suffer you?” Does not
the Lord Jesus Christhave to put up with a greatdeal
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from every one of us? I applied His words to myself, and I thought I heard
Him saying to me, “How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer
you?” Often, He must derive more pain than pleasure from communion with
many of His people. How grieved He must often be to see their slowness to
learn, their readiness to forget, and the difficulty with which they can be
brought to live the lessons which He so carefully imparts to them! Then note
what His actionis concerning the poor child: “Bring him unto Me.” 20. And
they brought him unto Him: and when He saw him, straightwaythe spirit tare
him; As soonas ever Christ lookedat him, “the spirit tare him.” One look
from Christ awakes the devil. Sometimes, sinners are worse for a time when
Christ looks upon them. The devil always has greatwrath, when he knows
that his time is short; and he rages and tears most violently when he is about
to be ejected. The Jews have a proverb, “When the tale of bricks is doubled,
Moses appears,” andwe may make it into a Scriptural proverb, “When the
devil’s torment of the heart is doubled, then Jesus appears to casthim out.”
20. And he fell on the ground, and wallowedfoaming. And Jesus, insteadof
curing him at once, gave his first attention to the other patient before him,
namely, the father of the child. He was suffering from an equally bad disease,
though the symptoms were different, and Jesus meantto cure him as well as
his boy. 21, 22. And he askedhis father, how long is it ago since this came
unto him? And he said, of child. And ofttimes it has casthim into the fire, and
into the waters, to destroy him: but if You can do anything, have compassion
on us, and help us. He put himself on a level with his child, and that is the
best way to pray for your children: “Have compassionon us, and help us.” It
will be compassiononyou, as well as upon your son, if the Lord saves him.

60. 23. Jesus saidunto him,— Catching at his words, “If You can do
anything,”— 23-29. If you canbelieve, all things are possible to him that
believes. And straightwaythe father of the child cried out, and saidwith tears,
Lord, I believe; help You my unbelief. When Jesus saw that the people came
running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, You dumb and
deaf spirit, I charge you, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And
the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one
dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand,
and lifted him up; and he arose. And when He was come into the house, His
disciples askedHim privately, Why could not we casthim out? And He said
unto them, This kind cancome forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.
There are some things, which we are not fit to do until we have drawn very
near to God, and have been deeply humbled, and, with sincere repentance,
and the gracious operationof the Holy Spirit, have been cleansedso as to
receive so greata gift. Faith alone will not accomplisheverything. Faith must
be accompaniedby prayer, and prayer must be, at leastsometimes, in special
cases, attendedwith fasting. The Lord makes reserves ofHis mercies, which
He does not give immediately even to the request of faith; He demands
importunity on our part, and heart-searching, andheart-cleansing, before the
blessing will be bestowed.
The Sermons of Dan Duncan Mark 9:14-32 Mark 9 "Leaving the Mountain,
Walking" TRANSCRIPT
[Message]Goodmorning. Our passagethis morning is Mark chapter and
we'll look at verses 14 through 32. You'll remember that the previous passage
was the transfiguration in which the disciples witnessedthe Lord's glory on
the mountain, and they have since come down from the mountain or they're
on their way down when the story picks up in verse 14. And when they came
to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and some scribes arguing
with them. And immediately when the entire crowdsaw Him, they were

61. amazed and beganrunning to greetHim. And He asked them, "What are you
discussing with them?" And one of the crowd answeredhim, "Teacher, I
brought you my son, possessedwith a spirit which makes him mute, and
wheneverit seizes him, it dashes him to the ground and he foams at the mouth
and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. And I told your disciples to castit out
and they could not do it." He answeredthem and said, "O unbelieving
generation. How long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?
Bring him to me" They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him,
immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground,
he began rolling about and foaming at the mouth. And He askedhis father,
"How long has this been happening to him?" And he said, "Fromchildhood
and it has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy
him. But if you cando anything, take pity on
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
us and help us." And Jesus saidto him, "'If you can?' All things are possible
to him who believes." Immediately the boy's father cried out and began
saying, "I do believe – help me in my unbelief." When Jesus saw thata
crowdwas rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it,
"You deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter
him again." After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it
came out, and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said,
"He is dead." But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him and he gotup.
When He had come into the house, His disciples beganquestioning Him
privately, "Why is it that we could we not castit out?" And He said to them,
"This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer." From there they went
out and began to go through Galilee, and He was unwilling for anyone to
know about it. For He was teaching His disciples and telling them, "The Son
of man is to be delivered up into the hands of men, and they will kill Him.
And when He has been killed, He will rise againthree days later." But they
did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask Him. May the
Lord bless this reading of His Word and bless our time of study togetherin it.

62. Let's bow in a word of prayer. [Prayer] Our gracious heavenlyFather, we do
thank you and praise you for the privilege we have to come togetheragainthis
morning and to have fellowship around the Scriptures, and that's really where
our fellowshipis, discussing and thinking upon the things of God, the
revelation that you've given to us. And so we pray that as we do this, you
would instruct us and teach us because ultimately, you are the one that leads
us into truth, who opens our minds to it and interprets it for us and then
enables us to live consistentlywith it. So we pray for that, Father, and pray
that you would bless us. We thank you for the time we have to study, to read
the Scriptures, to ponder these things together, and we thank you for the great
privilege we have to engage in our priestly service of prayer for
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
one another, for this assemblyand for others, for friends who have requested
such prayers. We think of some in particular. We pray for Annie Lori Knox
and pray that you'd continue to bless her. We thank you for the very good
recoveryshe's had and pray that you would bless the doctors and nurses as
they attend to her and pray that she'll be releasedvery soon. We pray for
John Wade and the surgery that he faces and pray that that would go very
well and be very successful. We think of these things, Father, and many
others, and we're reminded that what we have is a gift, the life that we have,
the health that we have is a gift from you and every moment of our life is a
moment that you've given to us. And so we are grateful for that which you
have given to us. We have much and we do thank you and confess thatso
often we take for granted what we have receivedfrom you and we don't show
the kind of thankfulness that we should. Even when we have little, Father, we
recognize that it's much because we deserve nothing. And yet we have needs,
and we pray for those who are without certain things. We pray for those
whose health is failing, we pray that you would give healing. We pray
certainly that you'd give encouragementand help those who are in difficulty
to look to you. We pray for those who are unemployed, pray that you'd
provide for them. We pray for those who are struggling with various

63. difficulties at home or at work, that you would give great encouragement, give
patience. So often the trials that drag on can weardown our spiritual
condition and yet we need to continually look to you, knowing that you are in
control and we pray that you would give that encouragementto those who
need it. Father, we pray for our assembly. We pray that you'd bless us with
vitality. We pray that you'd bless us with a hunger for your truth. So easyit
is, Father, to become indifferent to the things of God and yet this is what we
live on. We recognize that we cannotgrow and we cannotprosper in the faith
apart from continually feeding upon the Word of God. And so we pray that
you'd create within us an
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
appetite for it and a desire for it and instruct us and cause us to mature in the
faith, that we might be a church that bears a very clearand active witness for
you. Pray for those who teachand pray that you'd bless them in their gift and
the use of their gift, and those that have other services here, bless them. The
deacons, we pray that you'd honor their work and give them diligence. And
the secretaries andthose who do janitorial work, all, Father, we pray would
be done to your honor and glory. We thank you for the services they render
and pray that you would bless them in that. Bless all of us as we seek to
minister for you, to use our gifts, and strengthen us at this time as we look into
the Scriptures. Fit us for the work that lies aheadthis week, that we would be
very actively engagedin it and that would be foremostin our thinking and on
our minds. We pray for the meeting tonight. We pray you'd bless it. We
pray that you would prepare our hearts for it and we pray that it would be a
time of edification, a time of genuine worship, a time in which we celebrate
againour Lord's death/burial/resurrection, His ascensionon high, and help us
as we anticipate His return, that we would be encouragedby that and that
would give us perspective in life. We pray your blessing upon us now, Father,
as we sing our final hymn. May it be effective in preparing our hearts for the
teaching of Scripture, and may the Scriptures be taught clearly and well. We
commend these things to you and pray your blessings upon us in all that we

64. do, that all that we do would be to your honor and glory, for it's in Christ's
name we pray. Amen. [Message]A few years ago, J. I. Packerwrote,
"Supernatural living through supernatural empowering is at the very heart of
New TestamentChristianity." A Christian life is a supernatural life, a life
lived by faith in total dependence on the Lord, and our passagethis morning
underscores that fact with examples of human inability and divine sufficiency.
And I think to see that in its clearestlight, however, it really must be seen
againstthe backdrop of the previous
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
passagein which Peter, James, andJohn were on the mountain, witnessing the
transfiguration of Jesus. There we're told that His face became like the sun
and His garments beganto shine white as light. It was an unveiling of His
divine glory. It was an unveiling of the glory that He had with the Father
before the world began. It was then that the Lord spoke out of the cloud and
He said to these disciples, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him." Pay
attention to Him, look to Him, and the importance of that instruction by the
Father is illustrated in the events that were taking place at the bottom of the
mountain where the other disciples were engagedin a futile attempt to cast
out a demon from a young boy. This scene was capturedon canvas by the
greatRenaissance painter, Raphael, in the last painting that he did entitled,
"The Transfiguration," a painting on which he workedhimself to death.
Appropriately, it's an artistic study in contrasts oflight and shadow. In the
darkly shadedforeground are the possessedsonand the despairing father and
the helpless disciples, and in the midst of that company, there is one man
who's pointing to the light on the mountain where the Lord is bathed in power
and glory. It's more than just a contrastbetweenlight and darkness in that
painting. It is also a painting which shows the contrastof this passage, which
is a contrastbetweenthe powerand glory above with Christ and the struggles
and the defeat below without Him. It's a reminder in that man who's pointing
to the Lord above that apart from Christ, we can do nothing. The whole
passageis a reminder that we must look to Him who is sufficient for every

65. challenge of life. We're to look to Him as our guide. Well, how do we do that?
How do we find our sufficiency in Him? As the Lord explains to His defeated
disciples later in the passage, we look to Him in faith through prayer. Where
there is faith, there will be prayer, and where there is a lack of faith, there will
be a lack of prayer. And prayer is necessarybecause forthe most part, we
don't live on the mountaintop with the lights and the sounds and the
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
rest and the glory of it all. We live today in the valley. We live with life's
struggles and failures. It's much more pleasanton the mountain, of course,
and you'll remember how Peterwanted to stay up there, he didn't want to
leave. He said, "It's good for us to be here," and so he proposed building
three tabernacles and just staying on the mountain. He wantedto avoid the
toil of life below and hang onto the glory and the joy of the moment, and I
think we canunderstand that. Coming down from the mountain is a little bit
like going back to work on Monday morning or returning from a weekend
retreat where you've had wonderful fellowship, you've listened to inspiring
teaching and enjoyed some needed restand spiritual refreshment. What a
drag it is to have to come back from the country and go back to the city to
work, to the struggles ofeveryday life, the routine of life, the dailiness of life.
But we must. We have to do that. We have our responsibilities and we have
to take them up. And the disciples, they had to leave the mountain. There
was work to be done in the valley, and that was God's design. What the Lord
is doing in leaving that mountain is following the divine plan for His life and
the plan for the lives of His disciples, and so it is for eachof us. God has
ordained that our lives are going to be lived in this fallen world where there
are spiritual struggles, where there are difficulties, and He gives us moments
of rest and ease andHe gives us those moments of excitement. But much of
our life is not lived in the euphoria of a spiritual high. It's lived in the routine
of daily life. Much of it is lived 9 to 5, fighting the traffic on Central
Expressway, folding laundry, helping the kids with math. A life in which our
patience is often tested with the annoying interruptions that frequently enter

66. in or our faith is challengedby some tragedies that occurwithin our family.
Well, that's what Peterand the others were returning to. They were leaving
the glorious for the mundane because the glory and the rest are future.
They're the reward. They are our inheritance, and
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
what they had just seenon the mountain with the transfiguration was the
assurance thatthey would have that. Petermakes that point in 2 Peter1:19
where he makes the point that through what he had seen, the prophetic word
had been made more sure to him. He knew that that was coming, that was his
inheritance, that's what he was looking forward to. But that's future. That's
to come. The presentis struggle. It is, as the Lord had told His disciples, a
day of cross bearing. That's the way we live in the present. But events at the
foot of the mountain illustrate how we're to live that life so that the struggles
may be victories and the routine may have joy, real excitement, true
fulfillment in this world. It's by supernatural living in the powerthat we
appropriate by faith through prayer. Well, it's Monday morning for the
Lord and His disciples, and as they were returning to the other disciples, verse
14 states they saw a large crowd around them and some scribes arguing with
them. Now, the factthat these teachers of the law had come so far north, all
the wayup to Caesarea Philippi, shows how determined they were to monitor
our Lord's activity. And when they arrived, they found an opportunity to
criticize the Lord and to criticize His ministry, to criticize His disciples,
because a father had brought his demonpossessedsonto the disciples, and
they were unable to deal with his case. They were unable to castout the
demon, and so an argument followed, and you canjust see the scribes begin to
ridicule the disciples and their inability. And yet while the scribes were
making their criticisms and belittling the Lord's powerand His authority, the
Lord returns. To the surprise of everyone, Mark says they were amazedand
beganrunning up to greetHim. Their amazement was due to His unexpected
arrival. Now, they knew He was on the mountain and they didn't expectHim

67. to be back at such an opportune time, but that's true to our Lord. He comes
to our aid at the right time, He
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
comes to us at the opportune time, and just at the time when these disciples
needed him, unexpectedly, He comes. And when He arrives, He asks the
scribes what they were discussing with His disciples. That's when a man from
the crowdspeaks up and explains the circumstances in verse 17. "Teacher, I
brought you my son, possessedwith a spirit which makes him mute, and
wheneverit seizes him, it dashes him to the ground had he foams at the mouth
and grinds his teeth and stiffens out." Now, from the description that's given
here of the boy's symptoms, it's very clearthat he had a severe caseof
epilepsy, which was either triggeredby a demon or more likely causedby the
demon. The result was severe seizures. As the father explains in verses 21
and 22, he had been in this condition from childhood, and in an attempt to
destroy him, the demon would cause the boy to fall into the fire and into the
water. Luke adds a somewhatpoignant point to this when he states that the
boy was the father's only son, and so Jesus, God's only Son, was moved to
compassionoverthis child, and yet he's also moved to grief as the father
recounted how he askedthe Lord's disciples to castit out and they could not
do it. Their failure provokedthe Lord to respond in verse 19, "O unbelieving
generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?"
Now, this word "generation"is probably a reference to the disciples. That's
not all that certain, but I would think that it is probably referring specifically
to them since it was their inability to castout the demon that provokedit, it
was their lack of faith that causedthe failure. And what made that so
discouraging to the Lord was that they had been given authority over demons.
Earlier, back in chapter 6, He had sent them out on a mission. They went out
in pairs and we read there that He gave them authority overthe unclean
spirits. So they went out with this authority and they exercisedthis authority.
They had greatsuccessthen, but here they failed – because ofa lack of faith.

68. - 9 - " Leaving the Mountain, Walking " by Dan Duncan Copyright © 2014
Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
That is, a lack of faith in the Lord. They had faith but their faith was in
themselves, and that was really the problem. They approachedthe situation
with self-confidence, probably due to their previous success. Theylookedat
that and they took greatconfidence in what they had accomplished, what
they'd done in the past, and so they lookedto themselves, they lookedto their
success, andthey did not look to the Lord. They did not lean upon Him. They
didn't pray, as He will tell them, and that's what He says laterin this passage.
They didn't look to the Lord as the source of their power. They treated the
authority that He had given them as though it were their own, as though it
had its source in themselves. So as a result, there was failure. You can just
picture the scene. The distraught father brings his tormented son and he asks,
"Where's Jesus?" He'dheard of Him, he knew what He'd done, he's looking
for this one who is the hope for this child, and the disciples answer, "Well,
He's not here. He's up on the mountain, praying, and He won't be back for a
few days, but we're His disciples. What's the problem?" And so explains
their desperate situation and he asks, "Canyouhelp?" They lookedat each
other, I'm sure, filled with confidence in their ability, and smiled at one
another and said, "Sure. We're the Ghostbusters. We've gotthis down to a
science. This'llbe a piece of cake." And so he said, "Bring him here," and so
they beganto work on this demon. They command it to come out but nothing
happens. They command it again, nothing happens. They raise their voices,
maybe that'll help. They yell at it but still nothing. They invoke the name of
Jesus and they invoke the name of Jehovah. Still nothing happens, and by
now the scribes have begun to gatherand were ridiculing their failure,
rubbing it in. Frustrated, they tried every formula they could think of but
nothing changed. The demon was immovable. They were leaning on
themselves, full of their own previous success, and failure followed.
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.

69. But sometimes, failure is necessaryin order to keepus from becoming too full
of ourselves. It serves to remind us of the realsource of spiritual victory, and
that's one of the wonderful things about the Christian life. There really is
nothing that does not serve God's purpose in our life. Even our failures, even
when we stumble. That is used of God in His way to conform us into the
image of Christ and to serve in making us people more after His heart, people
who seek Him. Spurgeonhas some words on that. He points out that God
gives the measure of victory that is safe for us. He writes: "If you do not geta
blessing, it is because it is not safe for you to have one. If our heavenly Father
were to let your unhumbled spirit win a victory in His holy war, you would
pilfer the crownfor yourself, and meeting with a fresh enemy, you would fall
victim; so that you are kept low for your own safety. Sometimes failures come
for our own goodand they alert us to a problem so that when a greatertest
comes, we will not have a greaterfall. Well, this was a humiliating experience
for the disciples but one that would prove instructive, and the instruction is
first given in this sharp response by our Lord, "O unbelieving generation.
How long shall I be with you?" It's an expressionof exasperationclose to
heartbreak, as one writer puts it. In spite of all of the time that He had spent
with them and that they had spent with Him, their understanding of Him was
still shallow and their faith was very weak. So much so that it was hard to
distinguish them from the restof that unbelieving generation. There they are
with the scribes and other people, and He looks atthem and He says, "You're
really not much different than them. You're an unbelieving generation." It's
a sad thing when the people of God are hard to distinguish from the world. I
wonder if that isn't true of some of us, if it isn't true of the church at large. It
is so much like the world around us that it just blends in. Well, we are called
to live a life of faith and that is at the heart of our passage,and living a life of
faith is totally contrary to
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.

70. the life of the world, which lives by sight. If we don't live by faith, then we
lose the vitality of our Christian life and we begin to blend in, we begin to look
just like the world. That's the danger, and that's what we see here with these
disciples, and it provokes this question from our Lord, "How long?" He's
ready for the end. He's longing for the glory that he left up on the mountain
because ofthe discouraging conductof His disciples. But the Lord doesn't
quit on the disciples. He never does. His patience is long with them, just as it
is with us, and He will continue to teach them throughout the rest of this
gospeland in doing so, He will prepare them for the day when they will carry
on His work in His place. We have the nice advantage of knowing the end of
that, knowing what happens to these men, and we can take greatcomfort and
encouragementin the fact that we see them in this weaknessoffaith and know
that God's not finished with them and He'll continue to work with them and
He will make them the kind of men that can take His place after He leaves and
carry on the ministry which He established. That's the encouraging truth
that we all have, that He's never finished with us. What He begins in the life
of His people, He always ends. He brings it to a successfulconclusion. Well,
their insufficiency is now answeredby His complete sufficiency. He says,
"Bring him to me" – and that's always the answer, the answeris always found
in coming to Christ – and as they did, the child went into a violent seizure,
falling to the ground, convulsing and foaming at the mouth, which shows that
this was not an ordinary case ofepilepsy but one that was causedby the
demon. It was evidently one last attempt on the part of this demon to destroy
the boy and frustrate the work of the Lord and prevent a salvationfrom
occurring. When the Lord saw it, He was moved deeply, and He askedthe
father how long this condition had persisted. Like a physician, He's asking
the right questions to make the right diagnosis, and the father describes how
this violent, suicidal
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
condition had gone on from childhood. And then he pleads, "If you can do
anything, take pity on us and help us." Now, that reveals much about the

71. father's state of mind because it's a request that's filled with doubt. "If you
can," he asks. Now,whenhe brought that son originally to the disciples, he
was confident that they could heal. He askedthem to do that. But their
failure to do that led him to question the Lord's ability for having success with
this demon. (Maybe this is just too much for even you. Your disciples
couldn't do it, I'm not sure you can do it.) Now, that may not be reasonable
on his part, but it's the way it is. The world often measures Christ by his
disciples. And after all, we are His body. We are his representatives, his
ambassadors in this world and there is a sense in which the world should be
able to measure Christ by looking at us. We're His representatives. So
because that's the case, ourfailures due to lack of faith send a messageto the
world. Just as our faith, our obedience to the Lord, sends a powerful message
as well. Well, here, it's the failure that's communicated, the failure of the
disciples to castout the demon castdoubt into the mind of the father, and he
weaklyrequests help from the Lord. His confidence has been shattered. He
wasn't sure that the Lord could help, and so the Lord addresseshis weakness
of faith by immediately fixing on the word "if." Verse 23: "'If you can.' All
things are possible to him who believes." Yousee, the issue here is not
whether Jesus canor cannot deal with this unclean spirit. Of course He can,
He's the Sonof God. That's been made very clear on the Mount of
Transfigurationand the FatherHimself said, "This is my beloved Son." He
can do it. The issue is not with the Lord, the issue is with this man, the issue is
faith. Does this man believe in Him? Does he trust in Christ? Becausethere's
no blessing apart from faith. The author of Hebrews makes that very clear.
Hebrews 11:6: Without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes
to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarderof those who seek
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
Him." Now, that statement by the author of Hebrews tells us some important
facts about faith, which are implied in our Lord's question. Faith is
knowledgeable. Thatis, it's grounded in a knowledge ofthe one who is being
trusted. Faith believes that He is, so it has some theologicalgrounding. And

72. really, I think that's self-evident. We don't trust people that we know nothing
about. We trust people we know about. We base our trust upon the
knowledge that we have and that's the reasonwe trust them. For example,
suppose I have some money that I've saved up. It's my life savings and I
decide it's time to make it work for me, and I read the newspaperand I watch
the news, and I keepseeing how the stock marketkeeps going up, it keeps
reaching record highs, and so I'm going to invest it in the stock market. But
since I don't know, really, anything about the stock market, I entrust my
savings to an acquaintance and allow him to invest it for me. Well, you find
out about this and come to me and you say, "You know, you're putting your
savings at risk. What do you know about this individual that you have
entrusted your money to?" And I say, "Well, not much. I know that he was
convicteda few years ago of fraud and he spent some time in jail. Mostpeople
think he's a swindler. He's a con artist, so they say, but, you know, opinions
differ and, really, faith has nothing to do with knowledge. Ibelieve in him
and, really, it's how much you believe, how intensely you believe, not what you
believe that's important." Well, now, that's ludicrous. You'd never handle
your money that way and yet many people handle their lives, their spiritual
lives, that way. That's just the way some people talk about religion, as though
faith and knowledge are separate. Butwe can't trust someone, it's impossible,
really, if we're rational about things, to trust someone who's untrustworthy.
And so to have faith in Christ, to trust in Him, a person must know about
Him. That, I think, lies behind the Lord's words here where he says, "All
things are possible to him who believes" – that is,
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
who believes in Him, who has a knowledge ofHim. The faith that pleases our
Lord and obtains His blessings is basedon a knowledge ofHim and a
knowledge ofHis Will. Nowhere do we find in the Scriptures, "All things are
possible for those who believe hard enough." God operates according to His
promises. He operates according to His Will, and we are to pray and to live
according to the promises that He has made according to the Will that He has

73. revealedto us. This man obviously had knowledge aboutour Lord. He knew
that the Lord could heal. There was ample evidence for that and that's why
he came, and he knew that the Lord would heal everyone who came because
he had healed everyone who came. The Lord doesn't turn people away. All
who come to Him, He receives and He blessesand He would heal. So he had
confidence that that was the Lord's Will. There was always successwhen the
Lord ministered. In fact, I think that's an interesting and significant thing to
bear in mind when we hear people talk about the apostolic gifts being active
today and people claiming that for themselves or for their group. Measure
that by what we see in the New Testamentand every time someone was sick or
demon-possessedandbrought to the Lord, He received them and He healed
them completely. There were no failures, no one was turned away. The only
failure we have is this one here, and this was because ofthe disciples'lack of
faith. The Lord corrects that. So this man had ample reasonfor believing
that Christ could healand that He would heal if that was His Will, but with
the disciples'failure, he was having doubts. So the question that the Lord put
to him was, "Do you trust me?" Do you believe in me to heal your child? He
was challenging the man's faith, and often that's why trials, long, drawn-out
trials, the nature of health or finances or whatever the case may be, that's why
they come. They challenge our faith and they drive us to the Lord, and not
only that, not only do they drive us to the Lord but they compel others around
us to come to our aid in prayer
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
and in various ways. The Lord uses that to draw people into faithful service
and to draw people to Him. So it was with this man, and immediately he
responds, "I do believe. Help me in my unbelief." It was a recognitionon his
part that he had faith but his faith was mixed with unbelief. It's genuine faith
but imperfect faith, and so he appeals to the Lord to help him where his faith
was ready to fail. It's an honestprayer and it's a prayer, I think, that reflects
a truth about all of us. Beliefand unbelief contradicteachother, but the
reality is we all live with that contradiction. None of us have perfectfaith.

74. This is a goodprayer for all of us to pray, to seek the Lord's help for our
unbelief, to help us in our unbelief because we all need that help. And He
does, He helps. He helped this man. Helped him in his unbelief. Not by
taking him aside and giving him a lessononfaith and the powerof faith and
how to use that faith, He helps him by blessing the little bit of faith that he
had, by healing his child. Later, in Matthew's accountof this incident, when
the disciples ask, "Whycould we not castit out?" the Lord answeredthat it
was because oftheir lack of faith. "If you have faith as a mustard seed," he
said, "you canmove mountains." So the Lord blesses faith, even when it's as
small as a mustard seed. But it's by blessing it and in our seeing the blessing
of it that our faith is given growth and it begins to increase. Amustard seedis
often used by our Lord in parables because it fits so wellwith the parables
that He gives, and here it fits so well with that expressionbecause it's very,
very small and with all of us, our faith begins small. It begins weak. But
faith that's genuine is alive, like a mustard seed, and it has the potential for
growth, and the mustard seedhas potential for greatgrowth, for becoming a
greatplant, and so it is with faith. It grows as we exercise it. That little bit of
faith becomes great faith as we exercise it, and as the Lord blesses us, we take
God at His Word and rely on Him and actin obedience. The Lord is very
generous with us. While He demands everything from us, we must deny
ourselves, take up our cross, follow Him, He also knows our weaknesses and
He helps
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
us grow in our capacityfor obedience, and this man is an example of that. He
comes to the Lord with weak, wobbly faith but the Lord blesses his faith. We
read in verses 25 and 26 that he rebuked the unclean spirit, identifying it
according to the afflictions it caused. "Youdeaf, dumb spirit, I command
you, come out of him and do not enter him again," and after crying out and
throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out, and the boy became so
much like a corpse that most of them said, "He's dead." Now, he wasn't
actually dead. Mark writes that he became like a corpse. He was so

75. completely exhaustedby the ordeal that he lookeddead. But that description
may be intended to suggestsomething to us about what the Lord has
accomplished. In that description of death, it may be intended to remind us of
what man is naturally, spiritually, and his condition is one of death and
remind us of what the Lord has accomplishedon our behalf. Because we'llsee
that the Lord raises that child up and that's what He's done with us. We who
were dead in our transgressions and sins have been made alive and raised
with Him. In fact, this whole terrible scene is illustrative of the general
condition of mankind and what we as believers have been delivered from.
John writes at the end of his first epistle, "The whole world lies in the power
of the evil one." That's the spiritual environment in which we were born.
We were born into the domain of Satan. Paul also says in Ephesians 2:2, you
formerly walkedaccording to the course of this world, according to the prince
of the powerof the air. So we followedhim as children of wrath, sons of
disobedience, according to that course, which, as we look at the violence of
this demon and the way it treatedthat child, is a course of destruction. But
the Lord came to destroy the works of the devil and to deliver us from his
powerand deliver us from that course. That's why He came down from the
mountain. Had He stayedup there and continued to be bathed in light and
glory and all of that and the adorationof those three disciples, we
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never would have been redeemed. We would be lost. There'd be no kingdom
to enter into. He had to come down from the mountain. He knew that and
that's why, as Luke records shortly after this, He resolutelyset his face to go
to Jerusalemwhere He would make his exodus and deliver us from the
domain of Satanand the penalty of sin. This incident, in fact, with the child
lying as dead foreshadowedthe dethroning of Satanbecause in dethroning
Satan, the author of Hebrews says Christ rendered powerless him who had
the powerof death; that is, the devil. And that's where we as believers, we as
people who are in Christ, that's where we stand today, delivered from Satan's
authority. Now, he's still around. We're still in a spiritual battle. Petersays

76. that he prowls about like a roaring lion. The drives down Central
Expressway, the tedious hours of housework, the upheavals at work or in the
home, they canbe occasions forSatan's attacks,forhis temptations, for
various discouraging thoughts that he puts within our minds, but Petersays
resisthim firm in your faith, and James assuresus that if we do that, if we
resisthim, he will flee from us. He has his fiery darts which he hurls at God's
people, but as we walk by faith, firm in our faith, trusting in the Lord, we
meet his assaults victoriouslybecause Christhas gainedthe victory for us. So
with the demon driven out from the exhausted child, Jesus took him by the
hand and raisedhim and he got up. Afterward, the Lord entered a house with
the disciples, who were very puzzled over all of this, and verse 28, they ask
him: "Why is it that we could not castit out? After all, you gave us the
authority to castout demons and we did it in the past, why couldn't we do it
now? Why were we powerless?" So the Lord explains: "This kind cannot
come out by anything but prayer," and prayer is simply an exercise offaith.
It's looking to the Lord, asking Him for His help, just like that father did
when he asked, "Helpus, Lord." That's how we are to live. That's how
we're to live our lives, in prayerful dependence on the Lord, because prayeris
the means given
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
to us for appropriating the strength and the wisdom that we have in Christ.
When we don't, we don't live by faith, when we don't look to Him, when we
don't trust in Him, then we will experience failure just like these disciples did.
At the beginning, I quoted J. I. Packeronthe Christian life being a
supernatural life. He has some helpful words on prayer and praying in the
Spirit. It includes four elements. He writes: "Firstit is a matter of seeking,
claiming, and making use of accessto God through Christ. Then the
Christian adores and thanks God for His acceptance throughChrist and for
the knowledge thatthrough Christ his prayers are heard. Third, he asks for
the Spirit's help to see and do what brings glory to Christ, knowing that both
the Spirit and Christ Himself intercede for him as he struggles to pray for

77. rightness in his life. Finally, the Spirit leads the believer to concentrate on
God and His glory in Christ with a sustained single-minded simplicity of
attention and intensity of desire that no one ever knows save as it is
supernaturally wrought." So how do we pray in the Spirit? Well, we seek
the Lord in prayer, to begin with, and in doing that, we praise Him and we
thank Him for the fact that in Christ, our prayers are heard. The prayers
that you pray as a Christian are heard by God, so there's every reasonto use
that access thatwe've been given to Him in Christ. He hears our prayers, and
thirdly, we pray for the Spirit's help to do that which is pleasing to Him, to do
that which is right, to do that which brings glory to the name of Jesus Christ,
and as we do that, our minds are filled with Christ, they're controlled by the
Spirit, and all of that is a supernatural work of the Lord. It's as we do that, as
we seek to glorify Christ, to fill our thoughts with Him, to make Him the goal
of our actions, as we pray for His help, that we experience the Spirit's
enabling power and the mundane of this world in which we live becomes
glorious and the routine becomes joyous. That's the kind of life that we're to
live. That's the kind of life that the disciples were to live, and had they lived
that kind of life at
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
that moment, when that demon-possessedboy was brought to them, they
would have succeeded. Now, following these things, the Lord and the
disciples journey south, passing through Galilee on their way to Jerusalem.
The Lord's destination was not Galilee;His Galileanministry is finished. He
was now going to Jerusalemwhere He would complete His mission of
salvation. So the book is turning now in that direction. And teaching the
disciples about what He would do in Jerusalem, teaching them about His
death becomes the focus of His attention. He's preparing them for what
would occur some six months later. And so He was avoiding the crowds, He
was avoiding distractions, in order to teach them. Verse 31 states that the Son
of man is to be delivered up into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and
when He has been killed, He will rise again three days later. This is His

78. secondprediction of His death, and one of the few examples of His teaching in
the gospelofMark. Mark, you'll remember, is primarily a record of our
Lord's actions, ofHis works, not His words, and that in itself is very
instructive because the Lord Jesus came into the world not primarily to say
something, not even to be something, but to do something, and that something
was to give life through His death and resurrectionto those who were dead in
their trespassesandsins. Understanding that and entrusting our soul to Him
as the one who saves is where faith begins, and that's where the life of faith
begins. Everything we sayhere about the life of faith means nothing if a
person has not yet first believed in Jesus Christas Savior. This is where faith
begins, in trusting ourselves to the Savior, and that's where the life of faith
begins and continues on. And Scriptures are very clearthat the Lord Jesus is
one in whom we cantrust as our Saviorand one who we can trust as our guide
throughout life. But again, the disciples failed to penetrate into the meaning
of His words. They didn't understand and verse 32 states they were afraid to
ask
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
Him. Well, why is that? Why were they afraid to ask Him for some
clarificationon what He said? Well, perhaps they're like a lot of students
who sit there with a professorand they're little embarrassedto ask a question
because they're afraid it's going to be a stupid question and they might get
ridiculed. Maybe they had been thinking of Peterwhen he was rebuked by
the Lord earlier– "Getbehind me, Satan" – and they didn't want to face that.
Or perhaps it's because they were afraid to learn the meaning of His words, a
meaning that would be too painful for them. This is not the first time He's
mentioned His death, and so having mentioned it this secondtime, the light
was beginning to dawn on them, and what they were beginning to understand
troubled them. They were like men or women who are afraid to go to the
doctor because they're afraid of the news that they might receive and what
they might be told, and so they avoid going altogether. People are like that
with spiritual things as well. They are afraid to hear the truth of what is being

79. said because ofwhat it might mean. When Felix heard Paul speak about faith
in Christ and the judgment to come, he became frightened. He trembled and
he sent Paul away. "Enoughof this, we'll talk about this some other time," he
says. The warning of judgment struck a chord in Felix's soul and he sensed
his guilt and he became frightened of what was coming, with the judgment to
come. But when the wayof escape openedbefore him, the wayof faith alone
in Christ as Savior, he couldn't let go of self, he couldn't let go of the world,
and so he just dealt with the situation by refusing to hear it, by just shutting it
off. What a tragedy it is to be afraid to hear what is goodnews, to be afraid to
hear the promise of eternallife that is ours freely, to simply receive the work
that Christ has accomplishedon the cross by faith and enter into that life. If
you're here this morning and you've not believed in Christ for salvation, don't
become frightened by the good news, by the Word of salvation. Trust in
Christ. Invest your soul with Him. He's the Son of God who has
demonstrated Himself to be trustworthy. He gives
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Believers Chapel, Dallas, Texas. All Rights Reserved.
spiritual health. He gives spiritual healing. He gives salvation to all who draw
near to Him. That is His Will, that all who come to Him, He will in no wise
castout. Come to Him and you'll be receivedand you'll enter into salvation
because He has accomplisheddeliverance from the evil one, because He's paid
the price for sin at the cross when He died as the substitute for sinners. Satan
now has no authority over those who've been forgiven. Satan's poweris in
sin. That's where he has the power in a person's life, and we have been
delivered of the power of sin. It's been broken in our lives. He has no hold on
us. The justice of God has no hold over the people of God because we've been
forgiven of all of our sins, we are guiltless, we have been delivered from that
judgment to come, we've been delivered from the justice of God, we are
innocent in Christ and because we are in Christ, we are heirs of eternal life.
That's ours through faith and through faith alone. If you've not believed in
Christ, may God help you in your unbelief. May God give you the faith. May
God open your eyes to your need and cause you to turn to Him and receive the

80. forgiveness ofsins and life everlasting. MayGod help you to do that. Shall
we stand now for the benediction? [Prayer] Our gracious heavenly Father,
we do thank you for the great truth of which we are reminded in this passage,
that while we are insufficient of ourselves, we are totally dependent upon you.
You are completely sufficient. We are to look to you in faith, look to you
through prayer, and know that you deliver and you bless and you give the
victory. Lord, help us to live by faith because it's as we live by faith that we
become productive, we find our fulfillment in this life, we serve you, we bring
glory to you, the mundane becomes glorious, the tedious becomes joyful. God,
help us to live by faith as only you can help us to do that. We acknowledge,
Father, that we believe but help us in our unbelief. We pray these things in
our Savior's name, who loved us and gave Himself for us. Amen.
Great Texts of the Bible
Faith and Doubt
Straightway the father of the child cried out, and said, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.—
Mark 9:24.
The text is a part of St. Mark’s reference to the great problem which confronted our Lord
when He came down from the Mount of Transfiguration. There are many aspects of the
scene which call for interest and sympathy; the blight and bitterness of a father’s heart
over the limitations of human love; the epilepsy of a son; the paroxysms of this awful
malady in the presence of them all; and the mental unbalancing which was worse than
death.
We owe to this Gospel the fullest account of this pathetic incident. St. Mark alone gives us
this part of the conversation between our Lord and the afflicted child’s father. The poor
man had brought his boy to the disciples, and found them unable to do anything with him.
Now a torrent of appeal breaks from his lips as soon as the Lord gives him an opportunity
of speaking. He dwells upon all the piteous details, with that fondness for repetition which
sorrow knows so well.
In the background of the story is the Mount and the glory of the Transfiguration. It is true
that the “mist is on the river,” and the “sun is on the hill”; but the sun shines into the
valley, and the mist goes. The Mastercomes down from the Mount, and the child is healed.
Is it not the message of the Incarnation? Sin and sorrow are at the foot of the Mount; but
though the light be in heaven, the Christ shall be born in Bethlehem. The glory of heaven

81. must cast its light on the earth. As we come to the study of a passage such as this, we learn
that darkness is not to shut out the light, but light is to banish darkness. The end is to be
not eternal night, but eternal light. Grace is to master sin, and our imperfect life is to know
the joy of eternal perfection.
Hours there will come of soulless night,
When all that’s holy, all that’s bright,
Seems gone for aye:
When truth and love, and hope and peace,
All vanish into nothingness,
And fade away.
Fear not the cloud that veils the skies,
’Tis out of darkness light must rise,
As e’erof old:
The true, the good, the fair endure,
And thou, with eyes less dim, more pure,
Shalt them behold.1 [Note: Frederick M. White.]
The subject may be considered under two aspects—
The Suppliant’s Attitude towards Christ
Christ’s Attitude towards the Suppliant
I
The Suppliant’s Attitude towards Christ
i. His Distress
The case has been in the hands of the disciples, but they have failed to do anything
effective, and so the hope that mercifully turns men from one failure to a new test, brings
this woe to the MasterHimself, if perchance He can do anything. We cannot tell how much
hope this father had. Hope is hard to kill, but years of sorrow and disappointment are full
of wear and tear, so far as the element of expectation is concerned, and though the

82. expectation of hope may grow less and less, the longing of hope, which bids recourse to new
expedients, always lingers where love is. There does not seemto be a great deal of
expectancy on his part, but he is full of yearning for the recovery of his son. He is sure that
he wants the Christ to try to help his boy and him. “If thou canst do anything, have
compassion on us, and help us.”
1. One thing is certain: the man knew what he wanted. And he wanted it very sorely. He
felt his sense of utter helplessness. How often this poor father had looked at his boy in the
grip of the fiend, and had wrung his hands in despair that he could do nothing for him. It
was this sense of absolute impotence that urged him to seek Divine help. If only he could
believe in the omnipotence of Jesus. How those words must have sounded in his ear, giving
birth to the faith which was trembling in his heart. “If thou canst! Do not say that to Me. I
can. And because I can, all things are possible for thee to receive.” As soon as the
consciousness of belief dawned upon the father, and the effort to exercise it was put forth,
there sprang up the consciousness of its own imperfection. He would never have known
that he did not believe unless he had tried to believe. “I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
The man’s desire for the moment was not so much that his faith might be increased, as that
his unbelief, which he recognises as the barrier to the healing of his child, might be
removed. His words mean rather—“Help my child, though it is unbelief as much as faith
that asks Thee to do it.” It is the intense longing of a father’s love that breaks forth in his
distracted cry.
Sweet cares for love or friend
Which ever heavenward tend,
Too deep and true and tender to have on earth their end.
These in the soul do breed
Thoughts which, at last, shall lead
To some clear, firm assurance of a satisfying creed.1 [Note: Lewis Morris, Poems (The
Muses’ Library), 114.]
2. If our faith is dim and variable, so was that of those who walked with Christ when He
was on earth. “O ye of little faith,” “O faithless generation,” “If ye had faith as a grain of
mustard seed,” said our Lord. But to whom? To the self-complacent Scribes and
Pharisees? To the thoughtless, ignorant crowd? No; He thus spoke to His disciples. His
nearest of kin “believed not on him.” The apostles “as yet believed not the Scriptures.” It
was not only the two on the road to Emmaus who were “slow to believe.” We will hope,
then, though our faith be almost nothing, that the light will grow. The perfect clay will not
be here, but it will lie hereafter.
For deep in many a brave, though bleeding heart,

83. There lurks a yearning for the Healer’s face—
A yearning to be free from hint and guess,
To take the blessings Christ is fain to give:
To all who dare not with their conscience strive,
To all who burn for this most dear success,
Faith shall be born!
3. Many are the times in our own lives, in the lives of our friends, when we cannot tell
scoffers or evenourselves where God is. Perhaps it is bodily pain or moral guilt that clouds
our vision; or the sin and suffering everywhere visible ask us, “Where is now thy God?” At
such times we make a great mistake if we look for comfort in ourselves; for this is just the
quarter whence the mists and clouds spring which hide God from us. Nor should we too
much blame ourselves, as if mourning after an absent God always indicated want of love in
us; for a man may think more of God and be more anxious to serve Him while doubting
His existence, and in the anguish of his soul crying for light, than while resting comfortably
in a taken-for-granted creed and coldly serving Him. We know that evento Him whose
meat it was to do God’s will, and who loved His father as only He could, there came in His
dying agony a moment of mysterious forsakenness—“My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?”
A conscientious, intelligent woman, who had been in deep distress for many weeks, at last
said to the clergyman who visited her, “Peace with God I know nothing about, but I have
done quarrelling with Him. I have resolved to submit to God and serve Him, and do all the
good I can while I live, and then go to hell as I deserve.” The clergyman smiled and quietly
remarked, “You will find it hard to go to hell in that way.” The poor woman soon found
that her willing submission to God brought her lasting peace. She had found the true
religion, which is to know Christ’s will and to do it without stopping to bargain for the
ready pay of joy and happiness.1 [Note: E. J. Hardy.]
ii. His Faith
“I believe.”
1. In this particular instance, as in all instances, a man’s belief is of vastly greater
significance than his unbelief; and, besides that, it is only by one’s distinct possessionof
belief that one is everable to get the better of unbelief. So that clearly it is the first of the
two clauses rather than the second that makes prior claim to our thought and interest. It is
to the moral and intellectual credit of the man in question that he was thoughtful enough to
be able to state his case in a manner at once so simple and thorough.
One of the outstanding characteristics of the present age is the extent to which believers

84. doubt, and doubters believe. This strange blending of earnest faith and honest doubt is a
great puzzle to some thinkers, and a source of painful anxiety to others. To those who love
truth above everything, and believe in its final victory, it is a welcome sign of the times,
inasmuch as it proves that men think on these problems; and the Christian faith is never in
danger when men exercise their mind upon it. Such men will often find themselves among
shadows, and some of their discoveries during the progress of their research will startle
and evenfrighten them; but if they think on, and continue the quest, every step they
advance will bring them nearer the clarified and revealing light which surrounds the
Person and the presence of the Christ, and farther from the shadows where He is only
dimly known.1 [Note: H. E. Thomas.] We should not deprecate thoughtful doubt; we
should say with Browning:
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
2. What is Faith in its essence—this mysterious power which brought the man an answer to
his prayer? Faith in its essence is the power by which we grasp the future, the unseen, the
infinite, the eternal; and in its application it is a principle of knowledge, a principle of
power, a principle of action. (1) It is a principle of knowledge. Revelation tells us what we
can know of the invisible and eternal world, and faith makes the message her own. In this
sense it is most true that we believe in order that we may know. (2) It is a principle of
power. For faith not only apprehends the unseen, but enters into vital union with it, and so
wields, according to its strength, the powers of the world to come. (3) It is a principle of
action. Our temptation at present is to acquiesce in worldly motives for right-doing: to stop
short of the clear confession, to ourselves and to others, that as citizens and workers we
take our share in public business, we labour to fulfil our appointed task, because the love of
Christ constraineth us. And yet no other motive has that permanence, that energy, that
universality, which can support our efforts through failure, or make them independent of
praise, or bring them into harmony with the countless activities of life.1 [Note: B. F.
Westcott.]
3. The weakness of new-born faith calls for the compassion of all who love the souls of men.
In addition to their own weakness they are liable to special dangers, for at such times Satan
is frequently very active. No king will willingly lose his subjects, and the Prince of Darkness
labours to bring back those who have just escapedover the confines of his dominion. If
souls are never tried afterwards, they are pretty sure to be assailedon their outset from the
City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Bunyan very wisely placed the Slough of Despond
at the very commencement of the spiritual journey. The cowardly fiend of hell assails the
weak, because he would put an end to them before they get strong enough to do mischief to
his kingdom. Like Pharaoh, he would destroy the little ones. He seeks, if possible, to beat
out of them every hope, so that their trembling faith may utterly perish.
4. Let us remember that, whilst the cry of infant faith is heard, the stronger voice of

85. stronger faith is more abundantly heard. Jesus Christ once for all laid down the law when
He said to one of the suppliants at His feet, “According to your faith be it unto you.” The
measure of our belief is the measure of our blessing. The wider you open the door, the more
angels will crowd into it, with their white wings and their calm faces. The bore of the pipe
determines the amount of water that flows into the cistern. Every man gets, in the measure
in which he desires. Though a tremulous hand may hold out a cup into which Jesus Christ
will not refuse to pour the wine of the Kingdom, yet the tremulous hand will spill much of
the blessing; and he that would have the full enjoyment of the mercies promised, and
possible, must “ask in faith, nothing wavering.” The sensitive paper, which records the
hours of sunshine in a day, has great gaps upon its line of light answering to the times when
clouds have obscured the sun; and the communication of blessings from God is
intermittent, if there be intermittency of faith. If you desire an unbroken line of mercy, joy,
and peace, keepup an unbroken continuity of trustful confidence.
iii. His Doubt
“Help thou mine unbelief.”
We have considered the man’s faith. And now, when we come to consider his doubt, we
find that it is not so desperate. At any rate, whatever it was, he took the right way with it.
1. He made a frank confession of it.—Doubts which loom large in the dark, sometimes
assume far less alarming proportions when brought to the light. Faltering faith is better
confessedthan concealed.
A great-minded and tender-hearted bishop, whose name is cherished by us all, said to a
mother who was much distressed by the disposition of her son, a college student, to talk
sceptically, “Let him ventilate his notions. Let him air his views. He is trying to find out
what he believes, and he will not find out until he exposes his ideas to the full light of day.”
Another, equally wise, said in a similar instance: “It is a plain case of intellectual measles.
This kind of scepticism is the rash. It is best to let it come out. Don‘t drive it in.”1 [Note: C.
C. Albertson.]
2. He went straight to the Masterwith his confession.—How many knots would be
untangled, how many vexedand vexing problems would be solved, by going to the very
central source of authority! The rest that our Saviour promises to the labouring and heavy-
laden is rest from perturbing thoughts, rest from tormenting uncertainties, rest from
harassing doubts, as well as rest from weariness, and weakness, and wickedness. Faltering
faith, in the case of this doubter, not only honours itself by candid confession, but points
out the way of peace by the very nature of its expression. The confession is a prayer. The
doubter who makes the confession of his doubts an advertisement, a mere cheap appeal to
publicity, alienates himself, by that very act, from the spirit of the truth-seeker. It is as
indelicate to expose one’s doubts in the market-place as to display one’s sorrows to the gaze
of passers-by. Here is the golden rule for all such souls as this father, this half-believer: Tell
your doubts to God; publish your faith to your fellow-man. There is no place where doubt
so quickly vanishes, where weak faith so certainly grows strong, where lame faith leaps,

86. and blind faith sees, as at the Master’s feet, the throne of Grace. There is wisdom in the
prayer, “Help thou mine unbelief.”
We do not say there are no others to help our unbelief. There are books and teachers and
pastors and friends who help our unbelief. A Cambridge professor once declared that no
student of his everleft the university without being permanently influenced by the study of
Butler’s Analogy. Walker’s Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation has been useful in
dissipating doubt and stimulating faith in many a student’s life. When Phillips Brooks died,
a great company of men rose up to call him blessed, to testify that when, in crises of their
lives, they went to him, they found light and leading. If anywhere within your reach there is
a man of firm faith, a man like Tennyson’s friend who “fought his doubts and gathered
strength,” one who has faced the spectres of the mind and laid them, one whose faith is
refreshing and contagious, and who knows how to prove that “the soul has reasons that
Reasoncannot know,” go to that friend, that teacher, and say, “Help thou mine unbelief.”
Not to the doubter, to compare your doubts or to confirm them, lest you be like a sick man
who seeks advice of fellow-patients in a hospital, but to the believer who has a well-
reasoned creed and the capacity to vindicate it, to him go with the request, “Help thou mine
unbelief.” But the skill of all such men is feeble compared with His to whom, at this or any
moment, we may appeal with the absolute certainty that He will speak to us the one word
we most need to hear.
O Thou! unseen by me, that like a child
Tries in the night to find its mother’s heart,
And weeping, wanders only more apart,
Not knowing in the darkness that she smiled—
Thou, all unseen, dost hear my tired cry,
As I, in darkness of a half belief,
Grope for Thy heart, in love and doubt and grief:
O Lord! speak soon to me—“Lo, here am I!”1 [Note: Margaret Deland.]
3. He kept his mind in vital touch with the little that he was already assured of.—All
wholesome faith, whether religious or otherwise, is a growth, a process of vital expansion
from below upward, and the maintenance of that growth is made possible only by a careful
observance of the laws of growth. If you have a bud on your rose-bush that you want to
blossom, the last device you would think of resorting to would be to detach the bud from
the stalk and to toss it into the air. And yet that is precisely what hosts of young men and
young women are doing who are not merely questioning,—which is perfectly proper,—but
are nipping the fibre of connection that would unite what they do doubt with what they do
not doubt; and so of course their doubts never become faith, cannot become faith. Buds of

87. doubt do not blossom and become conviction when separated from the live stalk of
assurance, any more than rosebuds become rose blossoms when cut from the living stalk of
the bush. It makes very little difference how small a man’s conviction is if only it is
conviction, and if only he will stand to it and be true to it in his thought and in his life, and
make that conviction the basis of his thinking, the support of his inquiring, and the law of
his conduct.
The heathen philosopher, Plato, said, “My son, many have ere now doubted of the existence
of the gods, but no man everpassed from youth to age without at some time or other
believing.”2 [Note: B. Jowett.]
When Horace Bushnell was in college he lost his belief in God as God is usually understood.
All that remained to him from his previous conviction was a belief in the abstract principle
of right. That was not much of a God, but it was something, and that something he held to.
Instead of entangling himself in the intricacies of the darkened realm of mystery in which
he could so easily have become enslaved and submerged, and thus letting his splendid
career of Christian faith and service be sacrificed, he simply held his ground inside the very
small area of assurance remaining to him. Instead of dissipating his religious energies by
roaming aimlessly in a world where nothing offered to him a basis of firm support, he kept
simply and unswervingly to his confidence in the abstract principle of right, and not simply
kept to it, but knelt down and prayed to it. “A dreary prayer,” he said it was, but it was a
prayer; it was the best he could do, and it was honest, and, as he afterwards told the
students at Yale, the God that he had lost came back to him in his act of trying faithfully
and sincerely to worship the small fraction of God that had survived to him.1 [Note: C. H.
Parkhurst.]
Constrained at the darkest hour to confess humbly that without God’s help I was helpless,
I vowed a vow in the forest solitude that I would confess His aid before men. A silence as of
death was round about me; it was midnight; I was weakened by illness, prostrated with
fatigue, and worn with anxiety for my white and black companions, whose fate was a
mystery. In this physical and mental distress I besought God to give me back my people.
Nine hours later we were exulting with rapturous joy. In full view of all was the crimson
flag with the crescent, and beneath its waving folds was the long-lost rear column.2 [Note:
H. M. Stanley, In Darkest Africa, i. 2.]
iv. His Prayer
“I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
1. When we take the prayer in its entirety, it may seemto us a brief and imperfect
confession, and a prayer which it were needless for us to use. Certainly the words recorded
by St. Mark were the expression of a weak, rudimentary faith: a confession due to
interested motives, followed by the petition of one struggling to attain just such a measure
of belief as was the necessary condition of his request being granted. “Only he who really
believes,” it has been said, “guesses aught of the unbelief of his heart.” He is no true
believer who is not keenly alive to the weakness and unworthiness of his faith. No one who

88. has any true faith can fail to realise how this continually requires enlarging and
strengthening. We can never dispense with the prayer, “Help thou mine unbelief,” until
this life is ended, and faith is exchanged for the open vision of those who know evenas they
are known. The disciples themselves were rebuked on this very occasion for their unbelief.
Later in the ministry they were constrained to address to their Masterthe petition, “Lord,
add to our faith.”3 [Note: T. H. Stokoe.]
“What God requires and looks at,” says Bishop Hall, “is neither the arithmetic of our
prayers—how many they are; nor the rhetoric of our prayers—how eloquent they be; nor
the geometry of our prayers—how long they be; nor the music of our prayers—how sweet
our voice may be; nor the logic, nor the method, nor eventhe orthodoxy of our prayers.
The one thing which prevails is ferventness and sincerity.”
2. The very appeal is a tribute to God.—May we not say that there is a faith of the mind
and a faith of the heart? One climbs to his creed by syllogisms, from premise to conclusion,
and seems to know not only what he believes, but why he believes it. Another is averse to
logic, and clings to God in trustfulness through the magnetism of love. He does not know
why he believes; it is enough for him that the character of God finds a response and an
affinity in the impulses of his own soul. He may not exactly believe in the God of other men,
at least according to the portraiture given by other men, but he believes in God as he
understands His portraiture in the Gospel, and he worships what he sees. From the view-
point of other men he may be an unbeliever, but his soul clings to an ideal which he finds in
the Book of God; and at least he can say: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” And
he may take to himself the words of the apostle: “If our heart condemn us not, then have
we confidence toward God.” It is something to know what is in your mind, but it is more to
know what is in your heart, for out of the heart are the issues of life. The brain is the
birthplace of ideas. The heart is the touchstone of impulse. The mind moulds creeds. The
heart may have no spoken language, but it is a dynamo, and it throbs motive into life.
A Society of Atheists at Venice sent an address to Victor Emmanuel congratulating him on
the escape of his son and daughter from assassination. Forgetting that they were atheists,
they thanked Divine Providence for the miraculous escape.
It is told of Thistlewood, the Cato Street conspirator, that, after arguing against the
existence of a God, the moment he was left alone he was heard to fling himself on his knees
in his prison cell in a passion of entreaty, and that on the scaffold he poured out the
agonised supplication, “O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!”1 [Note: E.
J. Hardy.]
II
Christ’s Attitude towards the Suppliant
i. The Sympathy of Christ
1. There are people so superior in their own estimation that it is impossible to approach

89. them. They do not suffer fools gladly or suffer them at all. If we ask them a question they
snap us up; they cannot tolerate our ignorance and stupidity. It is different with those who
are really great. Their patience with our infirmities often surprises us. And the greatest of
all, the perfect Man, was, and is, the most accessible. He suffered children to come unto
Him when His followers would have driven them away. Any one might touch His garment,
and He put His hand evenon lepers. Few of us believe enough to tolerate doubt. How
different was the Truth in this respect! The greater than Solomon who answered the hard
questions of humanity was most patient to faithless, awkward, stupid interrogators. The
Lord Jesus Christ did not insist upon a confession of His Divinity. Christ’s first followers
were far from possessing the full Christian belief. A centurion merely said that a word of
His would heal, and the Lord commended the greatness of his faith. An alien woman asked
to eat the crumbs of His mercy, and He answered, “O woman, great is thy faith.” When one
of His followers declared Him to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” he received the
beatitude which may now be read in huge letters underneath the dome of St. Peter’s.
Chief Justice Coleridge once confessedthat his mind was sorely perplexed on the question
of inspiration. He was told that “most of the men who had difficulties on that subject were
too wicked to be reasoned with.” We may be sure that this answer was as little pleasing to
our Lord Jesus Christ, for whom the man who gave it was mistakenly zealous, as was the
desire of the sons of Zebedee to call down fire from heaven against opponents. Believers
should recognise those weak in faith as “men of like passions” with themselves, and give
them credit for wishing to believe if they could do so, instead of, by their manner,
conveying to them, while using the endearing term “beloved brethren,” the compliment
which some Egyptian kings are said to have paid their people before asking for any special
favour, “By the head of Pharaoh, ye are all swine.” They should let them see that they
appreciate the difficulties to faith which are felt only by those who try to realise to
themselves the meaning of what they profess to believe. Very often unbelievers are in
revolt, not against Christianity, but against a grim, repulsive perversion of it.1 [Note: E. J.
Hardy.]
2. What constitutes the difference between the believer and the unbeliever, since they both
doubt and both believe? Are they not therefore in the same spiritual order? Think not so.
The great fact, the determining fact, in the life of the believer is his belief; in the life of the
unbeliever it is his doubt. The believer clings to his faith, and suspects his doubt. The
unbeliever clings to his doubts and suspects his faith. The poor man of the text, the man
with a sick child (and how we pity him, and pity the child!)—is he a believer or an
unbeliever? Which does he put first, his faith or his unfaith? “Lord, I believe.” That is the
first thing in his mind. That counts most. The other thought is secondary. So he is a
believer, but he is a doubting believer. His prayer is the prayer of a doubter, but he is a
believing doubter. There is a world of difference between honest doubt and stupid or
stubborn unbelief. Jesus dealt differently with the two, and so should we. “Him that is
weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations.” And again, “Tarry one for
another.” Some are able to make more rapid progress in truth than others; let not such
despise those who find it hard to take their first few steps in faith.
You know how it is in school. There are always some bright, precocious scholars who leave

90. the others far behind. You know the contempt with which the prize scholar sometimes
looks upon the “trailer.” You know the impatience of the teacher sometimes when a whole
class is held back by one student who cannot get over a hard place or see through an
intricate problem. I do not know that the best pedagogy would say to the teacher, “Tarry
for the slow scholar,” but many a slow scholar has caught up with his class because some
teacher patiently tarried for him. You know what soldiers do on a long march. They tarry
for the weak and the lame, except in the emergency of approaching battle. The strong and
vigorous will bear the arms of the weak, and if one sinks down by the roadside, there is an
ambulance for him, and, in the absence of an ambulance, officers have been known to
dismount, and repeat the beautiful self-denial of the Samaritan who put a wounded man on
his own beast and brought him to the inn. Look at the Master’s treatment of this doubter.
The man confesses his faith is faltering. Something is in the way of his belief. I have
wondered if it may not have been that barrier to faith which all of us have stumbled over at
times when approaching some great promise of God, that common reflection, “It is too
good to be true.” Whatever it was, it was no barrier to the love and power of Jesus, for,
without delay, He granted the father’s request, and spoke the word that releasedand
relieved the afflicted child.1 [Note: C. C. Albertson.]
ii. The Power of Christ
1. The father of the boy comes to Christ as a doubter; he is sure of nothing but his own
distress. “If thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.” Christ gives him
back his doubts. He repeats the father’s words, and places them in contrast with the
spiritual facts which he had yet to learn: “If thou canst! For one who believes, all things are
possible”: i.e. it is for thee rather than for Me to decide whether this thing can be done; it
can be, if thou believest.
It is the majestic power of Christ that draws the distracted father to lay hold of His
omnipotence. His word is like the blow of steel upon flint; it strikes a little spark of faith
which lights up the soul, and turns the smoky pillar of doubt into clear flame of confidence,
“I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
Bishop Westcott has said, “Faith is a principle of power.” Yes, and Christ is the great
Power which, as a magnet, draws all faith to Himself. It is to be in touch with Christ that
gives faith power.
Can peach renew lost bloom,
Or violet lost perfume;
Or sullied snow turn white as overnight?
Man cannot compass it, yet never fear:
The leper Naaman

91. Shows that God will and can;
God who worked there is working here;
Wherefore let shame, not gloom, betinge thy brow,
God who worked then is working now.
2. Christ is our great argument. He is both the glory and the defence of Christianity. The
case of John Stuart Mill may be taken as a typical one. That this calm, guarded, sceptical
thinker should close a life of research by acknowledging the validity of the argument from
design, extolling Christianity, attributing its main power to the doctrine of an incarnate
God, admitting that Christ is really historical, praising and vindicating His character, and
in so many words recommending Him to the worship of men, is certainly something to
make the most inveterate unbeliever think and think again. And any man who is
conversant with the chief writers of the time will perceive that John Stuart Mill is not
solitary, but that, in spite of a materialistic drift, there is an under-current of the earnest,
intensely ethical, philanthropic, and spiritual which is turning hearts more and more to
Christ. The character of Christ was never so much or so widely appreciated as at the
present day, nor has the difficulty of accounting for Him on purely natural principles ever
pressed so heavily. In the history of Christ, the materialist is confronted with this question:
Was this noble, self-denying, compassionate Holy One, who bore mankind on His heart,
who on the Cross prayed for His murderers and resigned His spirit into the hands of His
heavenly Father—was He only a fleeting combination of atoms, and was all this sublime
self-devotion a delusion? Is this life and death of Jesus a creation of human thought? Is that
great picture of God manifest in the flesh, a God so loving that He comes into human
nature to suffer and die and thus win men back to Himself, simply the projection of the
human heart, an ideal which it forms for itself? Then what depths there must be in the
heart that creates such an ideal and worships it! Is this the ideal that man forms? and is he
himself only perishable matter?
The history of Jesus is wholly unparalleled. It is so splendid, so wrapt in deepest mystery,
so clear, so simple, and so deep, with roots through all the past, and throwing such light
over God and man. Is that history a human creation? This is the difficulty that unbelief has
to meet. Objections raised against particular parts of the Bible and difficulties about
inspiration do not affect this. Treat the Bible as you like, you can never throw the Divine
out of it. You can never obliterate the marks of a great Divine purpose in it or remove the
glory of its great miracle and proof—Jesus Christ. “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast
the words of eternal life.”1 [Note: J. Leckie.]
Faith and Doubt

92. Mark 9:14-24 I Have No Doubts!
Rev. David Holwick K Lies Christians Believe
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
March 15, 2015
Mark 9:14-24
I HAVE NO DOUBTS!
I. Is certitude a good thing?
A. We are a nation of convinced people.
1) Go to Google, type in "I have no doubts about my faith" and
you will get 20,700 results.
a) Perhaps you would claim that for yourself.
2) If that's the case, plenty of people have doubts about you.
A comment on an online Yahoo religious forum:
When a religious person says, "I have no doubts about my
beliefs," are they lying?
Because how could one not have doubts about something for
which absolutely no corroborating evidence exists?
It's just not possible, is it?
There will always be some level of doubt, won't there?
I mean, sure the human mind is quite capable of
malfunctioning severely ... but I'm talking about the
people you see in Wal-Mart.
You know, the average [joes] who make up the general
populace;
These are the people who insist on having their beliefs
and morals dominate everyone else in society and they
claim to be certain about their beliefs ...
They're lying, aren't they?
They just can't be certain...
#64786
3) Apart from the judgmental tone and faulty logic - how could

93. he know there is "absolutely" no evidence for our faith
- are Christians wrong to claim they have no doubts?
B. Supreme confidence is a Christian virtue.
1) We lie about our certainty because reality is complicated
and we want our faith to be simple.
2) We want to persuade other people, and doubts make you
less convincing.
3) Sometimes, we are just trying to convince ourselves.
C. Plenty of Christians DO have doubts.
1) Gary Habermas wrote a book on the topic and he found that
almost everyone he interviewed admitted to having doubts.
a) It wasn't always about big items like the existence of
God.
b) They might be convinced of that, but have questions on
why allows some of the things he does, like pain.
c) Others are convinced there is a God, but doubt their
own faith in him. #63049
2) Doubt and faith are fascinating topics with many levels.
a) Sometimes doubt becomes unbelief, which the Bible
condemns.
b) But doubt can also signify a healthy faith like Abraham
had.
c) If Isaiah 55:8 is right and God's thoughts are not our
thoughts, we should not expect absolute certainty
until we are glorified in heaven.
In this life you just cannot completely figure him out.
II. Other people have doubts about what we believe.
A. The well-known conflict with science.
1) A scientist can be a believer, but the majority are not.
A survey of hundreds of scientists in the elite National
Academy of Sciences found that only 8% believed in God
and an afterlife; the rest did not. #64583
2) Ordinary people struggle with it, too.
Andrea Dilley grew up in a missionary family in Kenya,

94. then moved to the Pacific Northwest and was raised in
a Presbyterian church.
It was an intelligent, educated church, not a bunch of
wackos.
Yet during her junior year in college, she took a butter
knife from her mom's kitchen and scraped the Christian
fish decal off her Plymouth hatchback.
A few years later, listening to a sermon in her brother's
church, she leaned over to her father and said, "This
is baloney" and marched out of the sanctuary.
It wasn't just the sermon, which was on Psalm 91's promise
that God would deliver us from suffering.
It was about all the spiritual questions that had been
plaguing her.
Why does God seemto distant and uninvolved?
Above all, why does God allow suffering? #6662
B. Keepin mind that doubting is not limited to Christians.
1) Every human should hold their convictions lightly.
2) Kyle Simpson is 27 years old and was raised Christian.
He has a tattoo on the inside of his wrist that says
in Latin, "Salvation from the cross."
It bothers him when people ask him about it because
he is not sure what he believes anymore.
He tells people the Latin means, "I made a mistake when
I was 18."
But when he first got the tattoo he remembered thinking it
would be good for him because if he everhad trouble
believing in God, he would just look at his wrist.
And that is exactly what has happened.
Kyle struggles with faith, but when he looks at evolution
and science, they don't necessarily have answers either.
He asks, "What about love? What about the idea of
forgiveness?
I like to believe they are true and they are meaningful."

95. "I think having a God would create a meaning for our lives,
like we're working toward a purpose...
and at the end of the day we will maybe move on to another
life where everything is beautiful.
I love that idea."
#64448
III. It all depends on how you deal with doubt.
A. The Bible takes several approaches to the issue.
1) With Job and Doubting Thomas, their doubt is rebuked.
a) They are told not to do it.
b) At the same time, they are not rejected by God.
1> Job is shown God's power in a brilliant display
(theophany).
2> Thomas is given the evidence of seeing Jesus
himself, and his wounds, and he is finally
convinced.
2) Abraham and Paul expresseddoubts but were not rebuked.
a) Abraham doubted how God could carry out his promise
to give him children.
b) He also questioned God's plan to condemn Sodom and
Gomorrah, and argued with God over those cities.
c) Paul said he was perplexed by the toughness of the
persecution against him - but he did not despair.
B. We don't have to prove God, we just have to trust him.
1) Lyn Anderson says faith is a choice we must make without
having all the complete information we'd like to have.
If we had complete information, it would no longer be
faith, but knowledge. #62995
2) Believers like Job and Abraham learned that God could be
trusted evenwhen they couldn't figure everything out.
3) They discovered that they already know enough about God to
have confidence in him in those things they didn't
understand.
#63049

96. IV. Doubt can be a sign we are moving toward God.
A. It highlights our tension with reality.
Today's passage is about a desperate father.
His son has a self-destructive condition.
To us, it sounds a lot like epilepsy.
The gospel attributes it to a demon.
The disciples were failures in dealing with it.
Jesus calls all of them unbelievers. 9:19
The child is brought to Jesus.
Immediately the boy has an attack.
Jesus doesn't do anything right away, but asks about his
condition.
The man fatefully says, "If you can do anything, take pity
on us and help us."
It is touching that he feels he needs the Lord's pity as
much as his son does.
Jesus keys in on the "if you can." 9:23
He reminds the man, "Everything is possible for him who
believes."
Immediately the man responds, "I do believe; help me
overcome my unbelief!" 9:24
He is a conflicted man - but we can feel for him.
Faith and confidence in God are usually not 100%.
Maybe for you it is 95 or 97%.
But there is always a little doubt, especially when you are
asking God to do something for you.
Apparently Jesus accepts the desperate man's partial faith
and completely heals his boy.
B. Update on Andrea Dilley, the missionary kid.
After she walked out of church, she lived a secular life.
She smoked cigarettes and drank hard liquor.
The local bars became her temples.
She got involved with men twice her age.
She said she wanted to have a break from being good.

97. But then one Sunday morning two years later, she got up,
climbed in her car, and drove to a church service.
Andrea says she never had a dramatic reconversion moment,
but she has steadily come to peace with God.
She also came to realize her doubts belong in church.
With all its faults, she still associates the church with the
pursuit of truth and justice, with community and shared
humanity.
It's a place to ask the unanswerable questions.
She says, "No other institution has given me what the church
has: a space to search for God."
Andrea agrees with Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor, who loved
today's passage in Mark.
O'Connor said the man's response to Jesus, "I believe, help my
unbelief," is the foundation prayer of faith.
We should pray it often.
#6662
V. Doubt is part of the journey but not the destination.
A. Your questions should lead you to dig deeper.
1) Some answers can be revealed by God.
2) Search the Scripture, search your heart.
3) One of the great privileges of being a pastor is being
able to wrestle with these timeless challenges.
B. You don't have anywhere else to turn.
The First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, has been a leading
institution in the Southern Baptist Convention.
W.A. Criswell was its pastor for 48 years and is considered
one of the greatest Baptist preachers of all time.
In 1994, Dr. Criswell gave his last interview to the Dallas
Morning News.
At one point the interviewer asked, "Do you have any doubts?"
Dr. Criswell replied, "Oh boy. Along this pilgrim way,
sometimes I think I am an infidel."
The interviewer responded, "How can that be?"

98. "I don't know, I just have, sometimes, I have a hard time
believing. I just do.
The things that happen in life, the things that I see and
the things that I watch.
Ah, I just struggle with it.
I struggle with evil in this world.
Why doesn't God do something?
And I struggle with that.
And I struggle with the presence of death.
Just you and I talking here and we face that inevitable day.
Oh, sometimes I struggle.
I've just battled through those times.
"The reason is very obvious.
One is that I have no place to go.
If I turn aside I don't have anything to turn to.
It's just ultimate despair.
And second, I don't care what, it is a blessing to love the Lord
and trust in the Lord and evenwhen we don't understand.
We believe that he'll make it plain in the by and by.
So we'll just trust him for it."
Dr. Criswell learned to trust the Lord even when he did not
understand.
He clung to a faith that said God would make it plain some
day.
That's what God calls any of us to do.
#64357
Believe in God.
He'll help you with the unbelief.
Rev. David Holwick
Ledgewood Baptist Church Bible study
October 30, 1997
Mark 9:17-24

99. DEALING WITH DOUBT
I. What should we do when we are afflicted by doubts?
A. Intellectual doubts - is it all true?
B. Personal or moral doubts - am I a real Christian?
C. Practical doubts - will God help me this time, the way I want?
II. God does not require rock-solid, 100% convinced faith. Mark 9:17-24
A. He begins with us where we are at.
B. God is open to our doubts and willing to be tested. Malachi 3:10
C. "Fleeces" show a lack of faith, but God still used Gideon
to do great things. Judges 6:11 ff
D. Even mature Christians can have periods of doubt. Matthew 28:16
III. Ways to increase your faith, and decrease doubt.
A. Seek God through prayer and Bible study. Mark 9:29
1) Confront unconfessed sin. 2 Thess. 2:9-12; Hebrews 3:13
B. Diligently look for answers to hard questions. Job; Acts 17:11
C. Be patient: believe in God evenwhen it is hard. Romans 4:18-21
D. Get close to a mature Christian.
2 Timothy 3:14-15; Jude 1:22; Hebrews 3:12-13
E. Get involved in a ministry.
1) We will always doubt whether God can do stuff if we are
never in a situation where he has to.
2) Do not neglect church and sermons.
Copyright © 2018 by Rev. David Holwick
Rev. David Holwick ZJ
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
October 8, 1989
Mark 9:19-24
JESUS AND FAITH
I. The gospel invitation.

100. A. Each church service ends with one. Why?
B. Jesus' message always climaxed with an appeal: (more than morality)
"The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is
near. Repent and believe the good news!" Mark 1:15
1) Judgment or salvation depends upon a decision.
a) The answer to his challenge is faith.
1> "Do not fear, only believe." Mark 5:36
2> Not intellectual leap into dark, but acceptance of
what Jesus stands for.
II. Old Testament background.
A. Basic meaning of root of faith is "firm, constant, reliable."
1) One form refers to carrying a child in the folds of a
garment or on the hips.
2) Other form, "gain or keepconfidence, trust."
B. More than reliance on God in daily life.
1) Searching for God in a crisis.
a) Also, fighting down temptation.
2) God is trusted against appearances.
a) Best example - Abraham.
1> BelievedGod's promise of land and dynasty.
A> Even when he was old and childless.
2> BelievedGod would not take away his son forever.
A> Even if he had to take his life.
B> (Hebrews - he looked for God to resurrect him)
C. Same emphasis as NT: Faith is a trust which does not allow
itself to be discouraged.
III. Faith in the Gospel of Mark.
A. Usually faith is associatedwith a miracle or healing.
1) Greek and Roman miracle stories do not mention faith.
B. The people come to Jesus believing he can help them.
1) More than superstitious belief in possibility of a miracle.
2) It includes an attitude toward Jesus.
a) They have confidence in his goodness and compassion.
b) They continue seeking him evenwhen they are turned away.

101. IV. What faith does in Gospel of Mark.
A. Faith allows God's power to work in our lives.
1) We must be open to him.
He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you.
Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." 5:34
2) Doubt stops the power. 6:5-6
B. Faith casts out fear. 5:35
1) Jaime Vega backing up against traffic to get a parking space.
C. Faith has no limits.
1) Mountains can be moved. 11:23
V. Faith is not restricted to "religious" people.
A. Religious people often had little or no faith.
1) His enemies.
2) His own disciples.
B. The greatest faith came from unusual sources.
1) Roman centurion.
2) Syro-Phoenician woman. Mark 7:27
VI. False faith exists. Mark 13:21
A. Sky-diver.
In April 1988 a skydiving photographer jumped with his friends.
He had a camera attached to his helmet and he filmed them as
they fell through the air.
After a period of freefalling their parachutes begin to pop open
and they disappear from view.
Then the camera went berserk.
The cameraman forgot to put his own parachute on.
Nothing could save him, for his faith was in a parachute he
never buckled on.
#339
B. False religious faith.
1) Putting confidence in someone other than Jesus.
At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the
Christ!' or, 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it." 13:21
2) Many go blindly for anything that "works".

102. VII. Weak faith.
A. Woody Allen.
"Faith would be easierif God would show Himself by depositing
a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in our name."
#845
B. Jesus accepts weak faith.
9:23 "'If you can'?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible
for him who believes."
9:24 Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe;
help me overcome my unbelief!"
1) We can feel for his predicament.
2) Few have rock-solid, never-wavering faith.
C. Even the smallest faith can do great things.
VIII. Faith on behalf of others.
A. Intercession works.
1) Father and son Mark 9:14
2) Friends Mark 2:3
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
"Son, your sins are forgiven." Mark 2:5
B. Maria Shriver and influence of mother & grandma.
About a year ago Maria Shriver was interviewed in a leading
magazine.
She works at NBC-TV as a journalist, and it doesn't hurt that
her mother is a sisterof John F. Kennedy,
her father ran for vice-president,
her uncle is Senator Ted Kennedy,
and her husband is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Maria flies around world, and is very driven and successful.
The interviewer wrote:
Remarking that she's "the happiest I've everbeen" professionally,
Maria added that she's taking time to examine the quality of
her inner life.
"My single long-term goal, if I have one, is to find some
inner peace," she says levelly.

103. "You look at people who have great faith in God, like my
grandmother, and they have that - inner peace.
They know they haven't hurt anyone on the way up, they haven't
lied or done anything that they fell horrid about.
So no matter what, they're very centeredpeople." #610
1) Our faith can bring them into Jesus'presence.
2) But eachmust then make their own decision.
Copyright © 2018 by Rev. David Holwick
JOHN MACARTHUR
All Things Possible
• Sermons
• Mark 9:14–29
• 41-45
• Oct 24, 2010
A l l T h i n g s P o s s i b l e
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All right, let’s open the Word of God to the ninth chapter of Mark’s gospel. Mark chapter
9. We’re going to be covering a fairly lengthy portion of Scripture, contrary to the normal
procedures here. It’s amazing, sometimes it’s very brief, sometimes it’s longer, depending
on the nature of the text.
This is Mark chapter 9, beginning at verse 14, and rather than me read the text, I’m going
to let the story unfold because it is a really fascinating story. But suffice it to say there is a
statement in the story to which I would direct your attention, and it’s in verse 2., “All
things are possible to him who believes.” In response to that, in verse 24, “I do believe; help
my unbelief.” This is about faith. This is about believing. In fact, it is a lessonon the power
of faith - a lessonon the power of faith.

104. We, according to the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, walk by faith and not by
sight. Paul, writing to the Galatians in chapter 2 says, “We live by the faith of the Son of
God.” Hebrews 11 says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God, and faith is the
evidence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” So we believe and we live by
faith. Faith is the dominating feature of the life of every Christian because we have to put
our trust entirely in what we cannot see.”
What do we mean by that? We trust in a God we have not seen. We trust in a Christ we
have not seen. We trust in a Holy Spirit we have not seen. We embrace a death and
resurrection we have not seen. We trust in a justification we have not seen. And we look for
a fulfillment in eternal heaven, which we have not seen. Peter describes us this way, “We
love the One we have not seen.” And so we live by faith.
It is not blind faith, it is faith based on evidence. And the evidence for our faith, what
anchors our faith, is the Scripture, the Word of God, because this tells us all we need to
know, and it is a true Word, it is a sure Word, it is an unassailable Word. But nonetheless,
we live by faith.
For two years plus, the disciples had lived by sight. They had walked with Jesus 24/7. They
had heard everything He taught right out of His own mouth. They had seenall of His
reactions with their own eyes. They had seenevery way that He had dealt with
circumstances of all kinds, running the gamut, and they had experienced it with Him. They
had seenevery miracle that He had performed. Every time He cast out demons, they were
there. When He raised the dead, they were there. They lived by sight. But soon they would
have to live by faith.
They would always have the memory of what they had seen. In fact, that memory would be
enriched and enhanced by the Spirit of God to allow them to write down what they had
seenand heard, they and their associates, and it would show up in the four gospels and be
further delineated in the epistles that they wrote. But they lived by sight. Soon they would
live by faith.
The power was always in their midst because Jesus was always there, and so there was
never a time when they didn’t have the power because the very power itself was present.
But here in this incident, there is a lessonon the power of faith that they really need to
learn because it just so happens in this incident that Jesus is not there. How are you going
to behave when He’s not there? How are you going to access the power when He’s not
there? They needed to learn that because that’s the way they were going to have to live.
In a few months He would die, rise again, ascend to heaven and be gone and they would
have to live by faith, like we do. They knew what was true because they saw it; we know
what’s true because we have the Word of God, but we live by faith. We’re saved by faith,
sanctified by faith, and we hold the hope of glory by faith. Our faith is not perfect, but it is
sufficient. What makes it sufficient is not our ability but it is a gift of God. Your salvation
comes by grace through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
The faith that we have to believe the Word of God, to believe the gospel, is a sufficient faith
because it is a faith given us by God and God designs it to be sufficient. Perfect? No.
Imperfect? Yes. Weak? Yes. Vacillating? Yes. Wavering? Yes. Doubting? Yes. But
sufficient? Yes. This is the lessonthat is before us in this text. We now enter into a period of
time in which Jesus begins to move toward Jerusalem, where He will die and rise again and

105. ascend. In this last segment of a few months, the focus of Mark is on lessons taught to the
disciples and, therefore, to us.
It is interjected with a few references to the coming cross but the primary emphasis is
instruction on issues that were critical for the training of His disciples and apostles. The
first lessonbefore us is on faith, the power of faith. Then there’s a lessonon humility. And
then there’s a lessonon offenses. And then there’s a lessonon the seriousness of sin. And
then there’s a lessonon marriage and divorce. And then there’s a lessonon the place of
children in the kingdom.
And then there’s a lessonon earthly riches. And then there’s a lessonon true wealth. And
then there’s a lessonon leadership and sacrificial service. And then there’s a final lessonin
chapter 10, verses 46 to 52, on faith again. So all these lessons are bracketed by a lessonon
faith at the beginning and a lessonon faith at the end. The lessons come to a conclusion at
the end of chapter 10, and in chapter 11, verse 1, He enters Jerusalem for the final week of
His life. I just gave you the coming lessons and, consequently, the coming sermons.
Now, the lessonon faith is from verse 14 to 29. This is such an important lessonthat
Matthew records it and so does Luke. However, Matthew and Luke give about a half a
dozen verses to this. Mark gives us a very lengthy section. We get a lot of detail from Mark.
And if you wonder why that is true, apart from the purposes of the Spirit of God, it may
well be because Mark’s source, Mark’s direct source for the things that happened during
the life of Christ, was Peter. He was in the presence of Peter in Rome, he was being
mentored by Peter, and Peter was an eyewitness and, therefore, Peter could fill in all of
these very, very dramatic details.
Still, there are components in Matthew’s account and Luke’s account that will enrich even
Mark’s more lengthy account. Previously was the transfiguration, the prior passage, Jesus
in glory on the Mount with Moses and Elijah. Peter, James, and John with Him there, we
remember that. Here He comes back down to the valley, back down to reality, out of the
glory back down to the struggling world. Like Moses coming down from the mountain and
from the presence of God to a faithless people, waiting for him at the bottom of the
mountain, Jesus comes down from being in the glorious presence of His father to the
faithless people waiting for Him below as well.
Now, we know the disciples and apostles by now pretty well. We know that they are
characterized by misunderstanding, shallow faith. In fact, just in chapter 8, the previous
chapter, in verse 14 through 21, you remember that section, the Lord asks them, down in
verse 17, “Do you not see or understand? Do you have a hard heart? Having eyes, do you
not see? Having ears, do you not hear? Do you not remember?” And then in verse 21, “Do
you not understand?”
The constant issue with them is no matter what He did, no matter what He said, they had a
hard time grasping it. They are definitely a work in progress. And here, we find out how
desperately they needed to understand. They needed to understand a lot of things. Here,
faith is the issue, then humility is the issue, and then on through the list that I gave you. But
for now, since faith is their life, and our life, and faith is the source of power and - theirs
and ours, it’s critical that they learn to grow in their trust, their confidence, and their
dependence on the Lord because soon they will not be able to have them in their sight.

106. So they go, Peter, James and John do, from the glories of the mountain with Christ and the
presence of God in the cloud and Moses and Elijah down to the troubles and pain and the
misunderstanding of their companions, as well as the demonic disruptions of life in the
world. Juxtaposing these two together, the transfiguration and this, really draws some
amazing contrasts. Transfiguration happens on a mountain; this happens in the valley
below. In the transfiguration; there is glory, here there is suffering. In the transfiguration,
God dominates the scene; here, Satan dominates the scene.
In the transfiguration, the Father is pleased; in this incident, the earthly father is tortured.
In the transfiguration, there’s a perfect Son; here, there’s a perverted son. In the
transfiguration, you have fallen men in holy wonder; in this story, you have a fallen son in
unholy horror. It is a dramatic scene, one of the most dramatic in all the New Testament. It
involves demon possession, a boy filled with a demon, an unclean spirit. This is always a
reality. It is a reality today.
Demons are in the world, doing the work of Satan - they always have been, since the fall.
They are not as readily manifest to us because they choose to operate covertly, as we have
told you. They like to stay invisible. They like to disguise themselves as angels of light,
appearing to be very religious and very moral in a sophisticated culture like ours. They
don’t want to surface and be known to be doing what they are doing, but they’re doing it.
However, in the day of Jesus, they put on an all-out blitz against Him. They proliferated
their expressions of power so that they were manifesting themselves here and there in some
degree willingly, and then when Jesus showed up, unwillingly. He unmasked them, and so
there was this unequaled, unparalleled exposure of demon activity during the years of our
Lord’s ministry, never such before or since here such an occasion.
This demon would have been very happy to be undiscovered in this boy, although it
perhaps would have been figured out by some that this was demonic activity. Most people
would have simply diagnosed him in another way as having some kind of a mental
disorder. In fact, according to one of the other New Testament writers, he was deigned to
be a lunatic - a lunatic.
So let’s find out about him. Verse 14, “When they came back to the disciples” - down the
mountain, Peter, James, John and Jesus, the four of them, they came back to the disciples -
“they saw a large crowd around them and some scribes arguing with them.” Down in the
valley below are the nine other apostles and perhaps some other assorted followers and
disciples. And there’s a large crowd gathered around them because the entourage of Jesus
assumed that Jesus would be there. Whenever people saw Jesus’ people, they would assume
His presence, and so the crowd begins to collect around the apostles who are known to be
His associates, eventhough He’s not there.
That’s a very important aspect of the story, this large crowd drawn by Jesus, only to find
that He’s not there. Then we see the scribes, scribes arguing with them. They are located in
the area around Caesarea Philippi, and there would have been Jewish towns and villages in
that area, on the north part of Galilee. There would have been scribes there. The scribes
were always around Jesus. They were there for the purpose of discrediting Him. They were
there for the purpose of trying to protect their turf against His teaching and to drive the
people back to the systems that they had advocated, away from what Jesus taught.

107. So they were there and they started arguing with the disciples of Jesus. They were arguing
probably about what they always argued about. They always argued about Jesus’ view of
God and Jesus’ view of the kingdom and Jesus’ view of their misrepresentation of the Old
Testament. So they were carrying on a debate with the disciples.
The disciples are on their own. And as it turns out, things have not gone well. So there’s no
doubt another component that’s been added to the scribes arsenal as they come at these
disciples. There’s little doubt in my mind that they were also mocking them. They were also
ridiculing them, and we’ll find out why.
“Immediately,” verse 15, “when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began
running up to meet Him.” As soon as Jesus arrives with Peter, James, and John, the crowd
sees Him and moved directly toward Him as fast as they can. They are greatly amazed.
That is a very, very strong word. I can’t tell you now strong that word is. It is a word that
you would probably translate awestruck. This would be the kind of attitude that you see
silly junior-highers have when a rock star shows up. This is that kind of attitude. This is a
very, very strong compound word. It’s used only in Mark, and he uses it again in 14:33.
Some people have said, “Well, that’s because Jesus had glory on His face, like Moses did
when he came down the mountain, because Jesus was still shining from His transfiguration
and the presence of God.” No, that’s not possible because in verse 9, Jesus said, “When you
go down the mountain, don’t tell anybody what we’ve just experienced.” That would be
contradictory to that. That’s not the issue. The issue is simply that He was the healer, He
was the wonder worker, He was the miracle man, and the crowds were always attracted to
Him.
They also ran to Him because the disciples had disappointed them. They had disappointed
them not in a general sense, but in a very specific sense. We find that out as we begin to
read verse 16. He askedthem, “What are you discussing with them?” What are you and
these scribes talking about? What are you debating about? What are you arguing about?
He steps in here in a wonderful way. He’s their protector. He’s their cover. He’s their
rescuer because they’ve gotten themselves into a situation they’re not handling very well.
The word “discussing” is often used to describe confrontations with religious leaders. A
common word for that, you see it in chapter 8, verse 11; chapter 12, verse 28. So they’re
having an argument, and Jesus says, “What’s the argument about? What is the argument
about?” We would assume that the argument is about the typical theology issues. Well, the
scribes don’t say anything. They keeptheir mouths shut. And the disciples don’t say
anything, either, they keeptheirs shut. Nobody answers until somebody in the crowd
volunteers to speak. Verse 17, “And one of the crowd answered Him.”
We don’t know why the scribes didn’t answer. Probably because they would much rather
have had a debate with the disciples than with Him. They learned they didn’t fare well with
that. But why didn’t the disciples respond? Disciples didn’t respond because they may not
have been doing very well in the debate but more importantly, they were embarrassed and
they were actually humbled, and they were being mocked and scorned. And in their
embarrassment, they kept their mouths shut. They not only had lost the argument
theologically, perhaps, but they had definitely lost the argument in terms of the power that
they should have been able to demonstrate but did not. So this man speaks up.

108. By the way, Matthew adds - Matthew has this account in chapter 17; Luke, in chapter 9.
Matthew adds that the man was falling on his knees. Falling on his knees. And Matthew
says he called Him, “Lord.” So this man has some faith in Christ, in His person as well as
His power. He comes in a very reverent and humble way. Matthew also says he shouted.
It’s noisy. There’s a din going on. And there’s also a great, great burden in his heart.
So he comes, falls on his knees, and he shouts, “Teacher” as well as “Lord,” Lord and
teacher. “I brought you my son possessedwith a spirit which makes him mute. And
whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth and grinds
his teethand stiffens out. I told your disciples to cast it out and they couldn’t do it.” That’s
why they didn’t say anything - they were embarrassed. This man says, “I brought you my
son, you just didn’t happen to be here. I brought my son, assuming you would be here with
these, your followers. My intention was to get my son to you because he is possessedwith a
spirit, a demon.”
Demons are spirit beings that take up residence in people, and the demon had caused this
boy, the end of verse 17, to be mute. Not only mute, we find out later in the story that he
was also deaf. The boy could not hear and the boy could not speak, and it had nothing to do
with some kind of physical problem, it had to do with demonic control. The demon had
such power over him. It may also have to do with brain damage that the demon had
literally inflicted on this boy. And I’ll tell you how, as you continue to read. Verse 18,
“Whenever it seizes him” - whenever it seizes him” The demon seizes him.
This is not some kind of genetic disorder, this is not some kind of childhood disease that
he’s had to live with. The symptoms are totally in the control of the demon. Luke adds that
the boy, when seized by the demons, suddenly screams. And this is where the sort of
general diagnosis comes in Matthew 17, he’s a lunatic. The demon periodically produces
this power over the boy. It makes him scream and then it slams him to the ground - slams
him to the ground. Strong verb again. Concussion after concussion after concussion after
concussion.
Little wonder that the symptoms show up, classic symptoms of a grand mal seizure.
Though that kind of seizure can be caused by some dysfunctional aspect of the brain, this is
trauma. This demon is literally battering this kid and he foams at the mouth. This is not,
again, by some brain dysfunction, this is demon domination causing such trauma to the
boy’s body that I think he’s scarred the brain, throws him into convulsions. He begins
rolling around, as it says later, on the ground and then he grinds his teeth and stiffens out.
Demons have great power over bodies. They do. They can do this. Satan, it says in Hebrews
2, is evengiven the power of death. But that’s all within God’s permission. Satan is a great
power in the world. His demons are great powers in the world.
Luke 9:39 uses the verb suntribō, which means to crush or shatter or maul. It says the
demon is mauling this poor boy. No wonder he brought this boy to Jesus who had a
reputation for being able to cast out demons.
Well, the problem is — end of verse 18 — they couldn’t do it. “I brought him to your
disciples. They couldn’t do it.” Luke says he begged them and they still couldn’t do it.
That’s very strange because back in chapter 6, you will remember this, in verse 13, it says,
“Regarding the apostles, they were casting out many demons.” How did they do that?
Verse 7, “He gave them authority over the unclean spirits.” Jesus had delegated power to

109. them, His power delegated through them, to cast out unclean spirits and they had been
doing it. They had been doing it. Chapter 6 says that. “And they were casting out many
demons.”
What’s going on here? Why do they now fail? What’s wrong? What happened? Well, Jesus
answers that question in verse 19. “He answered and said to them, ‘O unbelieving
generation.’” Hmm. That’s the problem. Problem is what? They didn’t believe. “O” is not
a normal greeting, that’s an emotional expression. “Unbelieving generation.” He had called
the nation of Israel in chapter 8, verse 38, an adulterous and sinful genea, generation,
people. A way to describe the nation. Here, He’s talking to His disciples, His apostles, and
He says, “You are faithless.”
That could be true of the crowd who didn’t believe in Him - certainly was. It could be true
to some degree of the father who certainly didn’t have a mature faith in Him. But the focus
really is on them. Why couldn’t they do this? O unbelieving generation. You know, when
you think about the things that Christ suffered, this, I think, in my mind, would be one of
the toughest things to deal with. I will tell you this, just as a man, as a human being, lack of
trust is a hard thing to handle.
If you have spent your life trying to live a life worthy of trust, put yourself in a place and
live a life in which people trust you and believe in you, distrust, mistrust, false accusation,
wrong assumptions, assuming the worst, it’s hard to deal with. But that’s peanuts
compared to being the Son of God, God the Son, living in glory, accustomed to perfect
angelic trust, perfect angelic love, perfect angelic devotion, and then to come down here
and have to deal with these men who have a lack of faith in Him, in His power. That was
part of Him learning obedience as a slave, by suffering the wounds inflicted on Him, not
only by His enemies but by His own followers who struggled to trust Him.
His words are harsh. “O unbelieving generation,” and Luke says He added, “perverted
generation. How did you get so twisted so fast?” As the words fell from His lips, maybe the
disciples thought of Deuteronomy 32. Deuteronomy 32 is an indictment on the nation
Israel. Deuteronomy 32, just a couple of verses, verse 5, “You’re a perverse and crooked
generation.” Verse 20, “They are a perverse generation, sons in whom is no faithfulness, no
trust.” They were waning in their trust. Had they trusted before? Yes, but not here. Had
they believed before? Yes, but not here.
What was the difference? Always before, Jesus was where? There. Now, when He’s gone,
they’re struggling to believe. They’d better learn how to believe when He’s gone because
He’s going away in a few months and He’ll be gone permanently. They need to learn how to
believe. “How long,” He says, “shall I put up with you?” That’s a soliloquy, like “O ye of
little faith.” That’s exasperation - holy exasperation. And he must have thought for a
moment maybe about the pure fellowship with the perfected Moses andElijah as a stark
contrast to coming back down and dealing with these guys.
So in holy frustration, He says, “How long shall I put up with you?” Like the several times
when He said, “O ye of little faith.” “Bring him to me,” He says at the end of verse 19.
“Bring him to me.” At this point, the man would get what he wanted and the demon would
get what he didn’t want. They would both come face-to-face with the sovereign Lord for
the good of the man and for the bad of the demon.

110. So they start to bring the boy to Him and, according to verse 20, they brought the boy to
Him. Luke adds, “And while he was still approaching,” as they’re bringing the boy, “the
demon begins to go into action.” This is really dramatic. “When He saw him,” when the
eyes of Jesus saw the boy, the demon could then see Jesus as Jesus sawhim. Immediately
the spirit threw him into a convulsion, literally convulsed him, and falling to the ground or
being thrown to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. Terrible
trauma, a kind of smashing to the ground.
It’s not a stretch to imagine that this - you know, they say about football players, you can
have three concussions, and that’s all you can have. Who knows how many hundreds this
young boy had had, smashing his brain against his skull by the power of this demon? And
now he is rolling and foaming at the mouth in the midst of this convulsion.
While this dangerous, demonic display of vile power is going on - and, again, I think this
demon always was trying to kill this boy, but the Lord never let him. This is the part (one
of the parts) that I love most about the story, verse 21, and you would probably skip over it
if I didn’t help you to see deeperinto it. And He askedhis father, “How long has this been
happening to him?” Why does He ask that question? Does He need the information? No.
He knows everything.
Does it matter according to His power, like, you know, if it’s more than five years, the
statute of limitations has run out and He can’t do the miracle? Why? What’s the point?
What’s the point? I’ll tell you what the point is. There’s only one point. He wanted to hear
the father’s pain. Why? He wanted the father to tell Him the story. Why? Because the
father was not coming to a power, the father was coming to a person. And if there’s
anything demonstrated in the miracle ministry of Jesus Christ, it is the compassion of God,
that He cares and Christ cares, and He cares about your pain.
He cares about your suffering and He cares about the struggle you have with your children.
He cares about the things that break your heart and He wants to hear. This is not a power,
this is a person - this is the ultimate person. This is the ultimate One who loves people. This
isn’t for the crowd and this isn’t for information, this is for the man to unfold his heart to
find a partner for his pain. Why? Because Jesus is a sympathetic and merciful high priest -
is He not? - who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He wants the father to
have an opportunity to rehearse what he has suffered.
Well, his father responds in verse 21, “From childhood.” It’s been this way his whole life.
We don’t know why. There’s nothing in the story about why. Certainly it wasn’t some sin
in the boy and it wasn’t some sin in the father. You remember the blind man in John 9?
They said, “Who sinned, this man or his father or his mother?” And Jesus said, “Nobody
sinned, this is for the glory of God.” I don’t know in every case why God allows Satan to do
what he does to certain people, but in this case, this also was for the glory of God.
And though the demon wanted to devastate the family by killing the boy, it never was going
to happen because this boy was going to be for the glory of God like the blind man. So
there’s no reason given for why this boy, other than the outcome makes the reason obvious.
God controls demon power. He controls Satan, who has the power of death. I think the
demon had tried to kill this boy all through his life. It throws him into a fire. Why would he
do that? Why would the demon convulse the boy and slam him into a fire? To kill him. And
fires, open fires, were everywhere. That’s the way you cooked and that’s the way you

111. heated everything, by fire, they were everywhere. And on other occasions into the water.
There were wells because that was the source of water, there were pools of water
everywhere.
Apparently, the father had spent his whole life in this unbelievable effort to keephis son
from being killed by this demon, rescuing him out of wells and pools and rescuing him out
of fires. What a life for this father to live. But there must have been in the heart of the
father a rising glimmer of hope because Jesus is talking to him with such sympathy about
his beleaguered, battered, and brain-scarred boy. Back to verse 22, he admits that the
demon was trying to destroy him, trying to kill him.
And then he says this: “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” That is a
pretty weak statement of faith, wouldn’t you say? “But if you can do anything?” He’s not
saying, “Will you,” I think he’s convinced of the will-you because of the conversation, the
sympathy of it. What he’s not sure about is the can. Earlier in Mark 1 the question was,
“Since you can, will you?” Here it is, “Since you will, can you?” Take pity, is
splagchnizomai, splagchna, bowels, feelings. Do you feel deeply inside? And this translation
is showing mercy, take pity, show mercy.
And the word “help”, “help us,” really a very interesting word, boētheō. It’s such a rare
word. It means to run to the aid of someone who needs help or to run to the aid of someone
who calls for help, cries for help. Beautiful word. If you can, would you run to my aid and
help me?
And Jesus said to him in verse 23, “If you can!” and that’s not a question, that’s an
exclamation. Another way to say that would be, “If you can - are you kidding?” It’s an
elation of surprise. How can that be in question? The very fact that you’re here with a
demon-possessed boy would probably indicate that you have known about others who have
been demon possessedwho’ve been delivered. How can you be asking the question? How
can you be doubting my ability, my power? Daily miracles of healing and demon
deliverance having gone on for well over a year in the area, or nearby. If I can?
And then Jesus gives the lesson. “All things are possible to him who believes.” All things
are possible to him who believes. That’s the heart of the lesson, the challenge of faith. Do
you have the faith to believe that the Lord can do it? He has talked about faith in chapter 5,
chapter 6. He’ll talk about it in chapter 10, chapter 11. But this is the first time He has
shown the importance of faith and made it a mandate in Mark’s gospel. What we have here
is an issue of faith. It’s not an issue of power for these men, it’s an issue of accessing that
power that comes by faith.
Jesus healed many people with no faith. Faith wasn’t always an issue. He healed lots of
people who didn’t believe. He healed the friends and relatives of people who didn’t believe.
But here, the lessonis about the power of faith because He’s going to be gone and the
disciples are not going to have Him around. The power will still be available to them, that’s
what He says in the upper room, “I’ll do all things according to my Father’s will, that the
Father may be glorified in the Son. I’ll do it if you ask in prayer, believing.”
They needed to learn how to access the absent power and make it present by faith. So the
principle is for them and for us. Christ isn’t here, now we live by faith. They would soon
live by faith and not by sight. The power is available. His power is available to those who
believe in Him and that power.

112. Well, the father responds in verse 24. “Immediately the boy’s father cried out,” there’s so
much emotion here - so much emotion. And remember, while this is going on, his son is
rolling around, foaming at the mouth, and he screams over the din of whatever else is
happening and says this, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” Boy, there’s an honest man. I
believe, I believe in you, I believe in your power, but I have a lot of doubt and I admit it. Is
that enough? All things are possible to the one who believes - that is, all things within God’s
will are possible, all things that are acceptable to God are possible. But how much faith do
you have to have?
What do you mean? All things are possible to those who believe, but to what degree do you
need to believe? I do believe. Help. A he uses the same verb, boētheō, again. Run to my
unbelief - run to my unbelief, run to my aid (present tense) and help me keepbelieving.
Come and dispel my doubts.
The Lord never expects perfect faith. That would be pointless, though he is worthy of it. He
only expects imperfect faith because that’s all He’s ever going to get out of us and all of us
are going to believe with a measure of doubt mixed in.
While Jesus is having this conversation, the crowd starts to swell, verse 25, and Jesus saw
that it was rapidly gathering and it’s time to act. The word is spreading that He’s there, the
crowd is swelling. He decides to cut the conversation, not because of the chaos, not because
of the commotion, He was used to that, but because of the fact that His public ministry was
over - it was over. He is not the public healer anymore. That part of His ministry is in the
past. He’s not going to wait for the crowd. He’s not attempting to prove anything to the
crowd. He wants no more publicity than is necessary because the emphasis now is on
instruction for His disciples.
So quickly He acts. He rebuked the unclean spirit. He rebuked it. Matthew says it came out
of him at once, “Saying to it, ‘You deaf and dumb’” or “‘deaf and mute spirit,’” that’s
where we get the deaf part, Jesus said that he was deaf, father may have not known that
because he couldn’t speak. “‘You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him
and do not enter him again.’”
In Matthew chapter 12, verses 43 to 45, Jesus says there are times when a demon leaves a
man and sevenmore come back, and the end is worse than the beginning. Not this boy - not
this boy. How long had this been happening to him, verse 21 says? From his childhood. His
father had dealt with this the whole life of this boy. And now at last, in an instant, Jesus
commands the unclean spirit to come out of him and never return again. And the demon
reacts the way the demon reacted in the first chapter of Mark. Do you remember?
In the first chapter, verse 25, “Jesus rebuked the evil spirit, said, ‘Come out of him,’ and
He threw the man into convulsions and the unclean spirit screamed through the man’s
voice and came out.” There’s a final protest there. There’s a final protest here by the
demon, a vicious protest, verse 26. “After crying out and throwing him into terrible
convulsions, it came out, and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said,
‘He’s dead.’” Convulsions, literally sparassō, convulsing him. After screaming, he
convulsed him.
And he uses the adverb, polla, P-O-L-L-A, would be a transliteration of it. And if you just
look it up in a lexicon, it’ll say much or many, but it is an interesting Greek word that
moves to the context. Its meaning is basically carried by the verb that it modifies. And if

113. it’s convulsion, it can’t be many convulsions. It adapts the verb, so it’s terrible convulsions.
If it was money, it would be much money. But if it’s convulsions, it’s terrible convulsions,
that’s a good translation of that adverb. Context determines its meaning.
And with that final protest, again hammering this poor boy into another terrible set of
convulsions, the demon came out. It could do nothing else under the power of Christ, and
the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them thought, “He’s dead.” Maybe, you
know, maybe this would have been close to the end. Maybe one more crash against his skull
by his brain would have done it. But he lies limp, exhausted by the convulsions and further
traumatized, and he’s so still they think he’s dead.
And I love this, verse 27, Jesus took him by the hand and raised him up, and he got up, or
better, he stood up - he stood up. Such a beautiful picture. Luke adds, “Jesus gave him
back to his father.” The tenderness of that - what a magnificent scene.
Now, that’s a pretty good illustration from which to teach a lesson, don’t you think? So
let’s go to class, verses 28 and 29. That was the story, here’s the instruction. They came into
a house, we don’t know what house, some house in Caesarea Philippi somewhere, came into
a house. This is private time now and we’ve got to get the disciples to the place where they
can live by faith. So His disciples began questioning Him privately. This is the greatest way
to teach, question-and-answer.
“Why couldn’t we drive it out?” Which means they had what? Tried. They had tried.
“Why couldn’t we do it?” We did it before, we did it back in chapter 6 when you
empowered us and sent us out two by two. Why couldn’t we do it? And He said to them,
“This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.” This kind? Genos, this species, this
kind of spirit, this kind of unclean spirit. And maybe it’s talking about all of them, all of
that kind of being, fallen angels, you will never be able to command on your own, you’re
going to have to depend on me, and prayer is the highway that faith takes into the power of
God. Prayer is the highway that faith takes into the power of God.
They obviously tried to do it on their own, didn’t they? Tried to do it with their own
strength, their own power, maybe because they had success in the past. “You’re not going
to be able to live like that. When I’m not here, you’re not going to be able to think that you
can pull it off. You need to be dependent on me.” For every spiritual miracle that the Lord
everdoes, we have to depend on Him, do we not? Even evangelism, we can’t depend on the
cleverness of our presentation, that’s all about the power of God. It’s only going to happen
by prayer.
Well, that’s all that Mark says, but we should be thankful for what Matthew adds. Go to
Matthew 17. Because you’re still thinking in your mind: Just how much faith does it take,
how much faith in my prayer, to access God’s power? Not - look, I’m not going to cast out
demons, this isn’t a lessonon how to cast demons out. This isn’t a lessonon how to do
miracles, raise dead people. This is simply a lessonon how to access the power of God on
behalf of the things that God wills to do. Certainly salvation is one of them. The work of
sanctification.
How He orders His providence to accomplish goals that exalt His Son and advance His
kingdom, that’s the lesson. We can’t everapproach kingdom ministry from a human
standpoint, from the strength of men. How much - how much faith do we need? He says to
them in verse 20, “Because of the littleness of your faith” - here we go again. The problem

114. with you is your faith is so small, “O you of little faith.” And that is something He said to
them again and again and again, Matthew 6:30, Matthew 8:26, Matthew 14:31, Matthew
16:8, Luke 12:28, “O you of little faith, O you of little faith.”
The lack of faith shut their prayers down. They thought they could handle it. And then this
is so important. “I’m not asking for a lot out of you, I’m not asking for perfect faith.”
“Truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you’ll say to this mountain,
move from here to there and it’ll move, and nothing will be impossible to you.” He’s not
talking about literally changing topography. He’s simply saying life is full of
insurmountable things, and you will never have the power to alter those things, but if you
have the faith of the size of a grain of mustard - that is the smallest seedusedin agriculture
in Israel, tiny, tiny seed.
You know, there’s a lot of ways to teach that. I’ve heard people say, “You need to have
more faith, you need to have your faith get up to the point of a grain of mustard seed.”
That isn’t the point. The point is, you’ve got that much already. Come on, that’s minimum.
The Lord is not expecting you to be some person of great faith, magnificent faith, all-
pervasive faith, or you’d have a hard time getting going in your Christian life, wouldn’t
you?
All it takes is the faith of a grain of mustard seed. And you know who the model of that is?
The father - the father. The miracle was done on the basis of the father’s faith. “Lord, I
believe; help my unbelief.” Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. I believe but I’m - my faith is
mixed with doubt. I want more faith. Run to the rescue of my weak faith. Help my unbelief.
That was sufficient faith.
Our Lord shows these men that a new believer who hadn’t been with Jesus at all, who had
a very beginning faith, if he exercisedthat faith, had enough faith to bring down the power
of God. I mean it’s a hard lessonto learn if you’re a disciple and you’ve been around Jesus
for two and a half years or so, and He’s telling you, “If you could just be like this stranger
who’s never walked with me or talked with me before.”
You need to exercise only the simplest faith, that’s the grace of God. But persistently, like
Luke 11 and Luke 18. Remember the stories of prayerful persistence? “You have not,”
James says, “because” - what? - “you ask not.” If you have the faith of a grain of mustard
seedand you take that faith on the highway of prayer into the power of God, you will see
God do mighty things.
Listen, Jesus could have let them succeed without persistent faith. He could have let them
succeedwithout prayer. He could have let them succeed, thinking they could do it on their
own. That would be a bad lesson, wouldn’t it? He could have made them think prayer
wasn’t really necessary. And so He was gone and the instant it happens - and He says,
“You’re going to have to learn that you’re going to depend on me evenwhen I’m not here,
and the way you demonstrate that dependence and that trust and that faith is through
prayer.”
So we’re not learning here how to cast out demons. We’re not learning here how to change
the earth’s surface if we believe strongly enough. We’re learning here how a very small
amount of struggling faith can draw us in to God dependently, trustingly, and cause God’s
power to be releasedto do His will eventhrough our lives. It’s an incredible lessonfor those
of us who live by faith.

115. Father, we thank you again for your truth. Thank you for the way the Word of God opens
up to us.
We feel like we’ve spent the morning with our Lord and in this very setting and how alive it
is and full of rich texture and meaning. Thank you for the way the Word speaks. Thank
you for the fact that it’s alive and powerful, penetrating, life-changing, instructive,
sanctifying. Use it to shape us into Christlikeness.
Father, now we go away from this experience into that much more challenging one. It’s as
if we’ve just been on the mountain with you, and now we go back into the valley of the
realities in which we all live. May we take the lessons we’ve learned.
Teach us to live by faith, to translate that faith into persistent prayer and then to see your
power unleashed in our lives in ways that bring you glory. We pray in the name of Christ.
Amen.
ALEXANDER MACLAREN
UNBELIEVING BELIEF
‘And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help
Thou mine unbelief.’—Mark ix. 24.
We owe to Mark’s Gospel the fullest account of the pathetic incident of the healing of the
demoniac boy. He alone gives us this part of the conversation between our Lord and the
afflicted child’s father. The poor man had brought his child to the disciples, and found
them unable to do anything with him. A torrent of appeal breaks from his lips as soon as
the Lord gives him an opportunity of speaking. He dwells upon all the piteous details with
that fondness for repetition which sorrow knows so well. Jesus gives him back his doubts.
The father said, ‘If thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us.’ Christ’s
answer, according to the true reading, is not as it stands in our Authorised Version, ‘If thou
canst believe’—throwing, as it were, the responsibility on the man—but it is a quotation of
the father’s own word, ‘If Thou canst,’ as if He waved it aside with superb recognition of its
utter unfitness to the present case. ‘Say not, If Thou canst. That is certain. All things are
possible to thee’ (not to do, but to get) ‘if’—which is the only ‘if’ in the case—‘thou
believest. I can, and if thy faith lays hold on My Omnipotence, all is done.’
That majestic word is like the blow of steel upon flint; it strikes a little spark of faith which
lights up the soul and turns the smoky pillar of doubt into clear flame of confidence. ‘Lord,
I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.’
I think in these wonderful words we have four things—the birth, the infancy, the cry, and
the education, of faith. And to these four I turn now.
I. First, then, note here the birth of faith.
There are many ways to the temple, and it matters little by which of them a man travels, if
so be he gets there. There is no royal road to the Christian faith which saves the soul. And
yet, though identity of experience is not to be expected, men are like each other in the

116. depths, and only unlike on the surfaces, of their being. Therefore one man’s experience
carefully analysed is very apt to give, at least, the rudiments of the experience of all others
who have been in similar circumstances. So I think we can see here, without insisting on
any pedantic repetition of the same details in every case, in broad outline, a sketch-map of
the road. There are three elements here: eagerdesire, the sense of utter helplessness, and
the acceptance of Christ’s calm assurances. Look at these three.
This man knew what he wanted, and he wanted it very sorely. Whosoever has any intensity
and reality of desire for the great gifts which Jesus Christ comes to bestow, has taken at
least one step on the way to faith. Conversely, the hindrances which block the path of a
great many of us are simply that we do not care to possess the blessings which Jesus Christ
in His Gospel offers. I am not talking now about the so-called intellectual hindrances to
belief, though I think that a great many of these, if carefully examined, would be found, in
the ultimate analysis, to repose upon this same stolid indifference to the blessings which
Christianity offers. But what I wish to insist upon is that for large numbers of us, and no
doubt for many men and women whom I address now, the real reason why they have not
trust in Jesus Christ is because they do not care to possess the blessings which Jesus Christ
brings. Do you desire to have your sins forgiven? Has purity any attraction for you? Do
you care at all about the calm and pure blessings of communion with God? Would you like
to live always in the light of His face? Do you want to be the masters of your own lusts and
passions? I do not ask you, Do you want to go to Heaven or to escape Hell, when you die?
but I ask, Has that future in any of its aspects any such power over you as that it stirs you
to any earnestness and persistency of desire, or is it all shadowy and vain, ineffectual and
dim? What we Christian teachers have to fight against is that we are charged to offer to
men a blessing that they do not want, and have to create a demand before there can be any
acceptance of the supply. ‘Give us the leeks and garlics of Egypt,’ said the Hebrews in the
wilderness; ‘our soul loatheth this light bread.’ So it is with many of us; we do not want
God, goodness, quietness of conscience, purity of life, self-consecration to a lofty ideal, one-
thousandth part as much as we want success in our daily occupations, or some one or other
of the delights that the world gives. I remember Luther, in his rough way, has a story—I
think it is in his Table-talk—about a herd of swine to whom their keeperoffered some rich
dainties, and the pigs said, ‘Give us grains.’ That is what so many men do when Jesus
Christ comes with His gifts and His blessings. They turn away, but if they were offered
some poor earthly good, all their desires would go out towards it, and their eagerhands
would be scrambling who should first possess it.
Oh brethren, if we saw things as they are, and our needs as they are, nothing would kindle
such intensity of longing in our hearts as that rejected or neglected promise of life eternal
and divine which Jesus Christ brings. If I could only once wake in some indifferent heart
this longing, that heart would have taken at least the initial stepto a life of Christian
godliness.
Further, we have here the other element of a sense of utter helplessness. How often this
poor father had looked at his boy in the grip of the fiend, and had wrung his hands in
despair that he could not do anything for him! That same sense of absolute impotence is
one which we all, if we rightly understand what we need, must cherish. Can you forgive
your own sins? Can you cleanse your own nature? Can you make yourselves other than
you are by any effort of volition, or by any painfulness of discipline? To a certain small

117. extent you can. In regard to superficial culture and eradication, your careful husbandry of
your own wills may do much, but you cannot deal with your deepest needs. If we
understand what is required, in order to bring one soul into harmony and fellowship with
God, we shall recognise that we ourselves can do nothing to save, and little to help
ourselves. ‘Every man his own redeemer,’ which is the motto of some people nowadays,
may do very well for fine weather and for superficial experience, but when the storm comes
it proves a poor refuge, like the gay pavilions that they put up for festivals, which are all
right whilst the sun is shining and the flags are fluttering, but are wretched shelters when
the rain beats and the wind howls. We can do nothing for ourselves. The recognition of our
own helplessness is the obverse, so to speak, and underside, of confidence in the divine help.
The coin, as it were, has its two faces. On the one is written, ‘Trust in the Lord’; on the
other is written, ‘Nothing in myself.’ A drowning man, if he tries to help himself, only
encumbers his would-be rescuer, and may drown him too. The truest help he can give is to
let the strong arm that has cleft the waters for his sake fling itself around him and bear him
safe to land. So, eager desire after offered blessings and consciousness of my own impotence
to secure them—these are the initial steps of faith.
And the last of the elements here is, listening to the calm assurance of Jesus Christ: ‘If
Thou canst! Do not say that to Me; I can, and because I can, all things are possible for thee
to receive.’ In like manner He stands at the door of each of our hearts and speaks to each of
our needs, and says: ‘I can satisfy it. Rest for thy soul, cleansing for thy sins, satisfaction
for thy desires, guidance for thy pilgrimage, power for thy duties, patience in thy
sufferings—all these will come to thee, if thou layest hold of My hand.’ His assurance helps
trembling confidence to be born, and out of doubt the great calm word of the Mastersmites
the fire of trust. And we, dear brethren, if we will listen to Him, shall surely find in Him all
that we need. Think how marvellous it is that this Jewish peasant should plant Himself in
the front of humanity, over against the burdened, sinful race of men, and pledge Himself to
forgive and to cleanse their sins, to bear all their sicknesses, to be their strength in
weakness, their comfort in sorrow, the rest of their hearts, their heaven upon earth, their
life in death, their glory in heaven, and their all in all; and not only should pledge Himself,
but in the blessedexperience of millions should have more than fulfilled all that He
promised. ‘They trusted in Him, and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.’
Will you not answer His sovereignword of promise with your ‘Lord, I believe’?
II. Then, secondly, we have here the infancy of faith.
As soon as the consciousness of belief dawned upon the father, and the effort to exercise it
was put forth, there sprang up the consciousness of its imperfection. He would never have
known that he did not believe unless he had tried to believe. So it is in regard to all
excellences and graces of character. The desire of possessing some feeble degree of any
virtue or excellence, and the effort to put it forth, is the surest way of discovering how little
of it we have. On the other side, sorrow for the lack of some form of goodness is itself a
proof of the partial possession, in some rudimentary and incipient form, of that goodness.
The utterly lazy man never mourns over his idleness; it is only the one that would fain
work harder than he does, and already works tolerably hard, who does so. So the little
spark of faith in this man’s heart, like a taper in a cavern, showed the abysses of darkness
that lay unillumined round about it.

118. Thus, then, in its infancy, faith may and does coexist with much unfaith and doubt. The
same state of mind, looked at from its two opposite ends, as it were, may be designated faith
or unbelief; just as a piece of shot silk, according to the angle at which you hold it, may
show you only the bright colours of its warp or the dark ones of its weft. When you are
travelling in a railway train with the sun streaming in at the windows, if you look out on
the one hand you will see the illumined face of every tree and blade of grass and house; and
if you look out on the other, you will see their shadowed side. And so the same landscape
may seemto be all lit up by the sunshine of belief, or to be darkened by the gloom of
distrust. If we consider how great and how perfect ought to be our confidence, to bear any
due proportion to the firmness of that upon which it is built, we shall not be slow to believe
that through life there will always be the presence in us, more or less, of these two elements.
There will be all degrees of progress between the two extremes of infantile and mature
faith.
There follows from that thought this practical lesson, that the discovery of much unbelief
should never make a man doubt the reality or genuineness of his little faith. We are all apt
to write needlessly bitter things against ourselves when we get a glimpse of the
incompleteness of our Christian life and character. But there is no reason why a man
should fancy that he is a hypocrite because he finds out that he is not a perfect believer.
But, on the other hand, let us remember that the main thing is not the maturity, but the
progressive character, of faith. It was most natural that this man in our text, at the very
first moment when he began to put his confidence in Jesus Christ as able to heal his child,
should be aware of much tremulousness mingling with it. But is it not most unnatural that
there should be the same relative proportion of faith and unbelief in the heart and
experience of men who have long professed to be Christians? You do not expect the infant
to have adult limbs, but you do expect it to grow. True, faith at its beginning may be like a
grain of mustard seed, but if the grain of mustard seedbe alive it will grow to a great tree,
where all the fowls of the air can lodge in the branches. Oh! it is a crying shame and sin
that in all Christian communities there should be so many grey-headed babies, men who
have for years and years been professing to be Christ’s followers, and whose faith is but
little, if at all, stronger—nay! perhaps is evenobviously weaker—than it was in the first
days of their profession. ‘Ye have need of milk, and not of strong meat,’ very many of you.
And the vitality of your faith is made suspicious, not because it is feeble, but because it is
not growing stronger.
III. Notice the cry of infant faith.
‘Help Thou mine unbelief’ may have either of two meanings. The man’s desire was either
that his faith should be increased and his unbelief ‘helped’ by being removed by Christ’s
operation upon his spirit, or that Christ would ‘help’ him and his boy by healing the child,
though the faith which askedthe blessing was so feeble that it might be called unbelief.
There is nothing in the language or in the context to determine which of these two
meanings is intended; we must settle it by our own sense of what would be most likely
under the circumstances. To me it seems extremely improbable that, when the father’s
whole soul was absorbed in the healing of his son, he should turn aside to ask for the
inward and spiritual process of having his faith strengthened. Rather he said, ‘Heal my
child, though it is unbelief as much as faith that asks Thee to do it.’

119. The lessonis that, evenwhen we are conscious of much tremulousness in our faith, we have
a right to ask and expect that it shall be answered. Weak faith is faith. The tremulous hand
does touch. The cord may be slender as a spider’s web that binds a heart to Jesus, but it
does bind. The poor woman in the other miracle who put out her wasted finger-tip, coming
behind Him in the crowd, and stealthily touching the hem of His garment, though it was
only the end of her finger-nail that was laid on the robe, carried away with her the blessing.
And so the feeblest faith joins the soul, in the measure of its strength, to Jesus Christ.
But let us remember that, whilst thus the cry of infant faith is heard, the stronger voice of
stronger faith is more abundantly heard. Jesus Christ once for all laid down the law when
He said to one of the suppliants at His feet, ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ The
measure of our belief is the measure of our blessing. The wider you open the door, the more
angels will crowd into it, with their white wings and their calm faces. The bore of the pipe
determines the amount of water that flows into the cistern. Every man gets, in the measure
in which he desires. Though a tremulous hand may hold out a cup into which Jesus Christ
will not refuse to pour the wine of the kingdom, yet the tremulous hand will spill much of
the blessing; and he that would have the full enjoyment of the mercies promised, and
possible, must ‘ask in faith, nothing wavering.’ The sensitive paper which records the
hours of sunshine in a day has great gaps upon its line of light answering to the times when
clouds have obscured the sun; and the communication of blessings from God is
intermittent, if there be intermittency of faith. If you desire an unbroken line of mercy, joy,
and peace, keepup an unbroken continuity of trustful confidence.
IV. Lastly, we have here the education of faith.
Christ paid no heed in words to the man’s confession of unbelief, but proceeded to do the
work which answered his prayer in both its possible meanings. He responded to imperfect
confidence by His perfect work of cure, and, by that perfect work of cure, He strengthened
the imperfect confidence which it had answered.
Thus He educates us by His answers—His over-answers—to our poor desires; and the
abundance of His gifts rebukes the poverty of our petitions more emphatically than any
words of remonstrance beforehand could have done. He does not lecture us into faith, but
He blesses us into it. When the Apostle was sinking in the flood, Jesus Christ said no word
of reproach until He had grasped him with His strong hand and held him safe. And then,
when the sustaining touch thrilled through all the frame, then, and not till then, He said—
as we may fancy, with a smile on His face that the moonlight showed—as knowing how
unanswerable His question was, ‘O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’ That is
how He will deal with us if we will; over-answering our tremulous petitions, and so
teaching us to hope more abundantly that ‘we shall praise Him more and more.’
The disappointments, the weaknesses, the shameful defeats which come when our
confidence fails, are another page of His lesson-book. The same Apostle of whom I have
been speaking got that lesson when, standing on the billows, and, instead of looking at
Christ, looking at their wrath and foam, his heart failed him, and because his heart failed
him he began to sink. If we turn away from Jesus Christ, and interrupt the continuity of
our faith by calculating the height of the breakers and the weight of the water that is in
them, and what will become of us when they topple over with their white crests upon our
heads, then gravity will begin to work, and we shall begin to sink. And well for us if, when
we have sunk as far as our knees, we look back again to the Masterand say, ‘Lord, save

120. me; I perish!’ The weakness which is our own when faith sleeps, and the rejoicing power
which is ours because it is His, when faith wakes, are God’s education of it to fuller and
ampler degrees and depth. We shall lose the meaning of life, and the best lessonthat joy
and sorrow, calm and storm, victory and defeat, can give us, unless all these make us
‘rooted and grounded in faith.’
Dear friend, do you desire your truest good? Do you know that you cannot win it, or fight
for it to gain it, or do anything to obtain it, in your own strength? Have you heard Jesus
Christ saying to you, ‘Come . . . and I will give you rest’? Oh! I beseechyou, do not turn
away from Him, but like this agonised father in our story, fall at His feet with ‘Lord, I
believe; help Thou mine unbelief,’ and He will confirm your feeble faith by His rich
response.
RICH CATHERS
Mark 9:14-29
Sunday Morning Bible Study
January 30, 2005

121. Introduction
Jesus took Peter, James,and John for a little field trip up the mountain. He
went up the mountain for a reason:
(Luke 9:28 KJV) … went up into a mountain to pray.
While up on the mountain, something happened. Jesus was “transfigured”. He
was glowing. Mosesand Elijah appearedand spent time talking with Jesus.
The disciples caught a glimpse of who Jesus reallywas.
As they make their waydown the mountain, they’ll be walking into a mess.
:14 …and the scribes questioning with them.
questioning – suzeteo – to discuss, dispute; NLT – “arguing”, NKVJ –
“disputing”
What are they arguing about? Their arguments apparently have something to
do with the inability of the disciples to casta demon out of a boy.
:15 and running to him saluted him.
saluted – aspazomai – greet, to receive joyfully, generallyby embracing and
kissing
:17 Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a
dumb spirit;
dumb – alalos – speechless,the boy couldn’t talk.
Luke tells us that this is the man’s only child. (Luke 9:38)
:18 …he taketh him, he teareth him…and pineth away
he teareth – rhegnumi – to distort, convulse;of a demon causing convulsions
in a man possessed;to dash down, hurl to the ground
pineth – xeraino – be withered. After the convulsions, the boy was wasted.
This boy was thrown into something that lookedlike an epileptic seizure by
the demon. Keep in mind, epilepsy is not causedby demons, but demons can
make a person look like they’ve got epilepsy.
:18 I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out;
and they could not.
could not – ischuo – to be strong; to have power; to be able, can

122. The disciples had been authorized by Jesus to castout demons (Mark 6:7).
What the man had askedthe disciples was not out of the question. They just
couldn’t do it.
Lesson
The disciples and the Master
People will let you down
Illustration
Hospital Mystery
Doctors and nurses in the Intensive Care unit ofa hospital thoughtthey had a problem.Patients always died in the same bed at thesame
time on the same day. It was always on Sundaymorningat about 11a.m., regardless of the patient’s illness ormedical condition. This
puzzled the doctors and some even thought that it had somethingto do with thesupernatural. No one could solve the mystery as towhy
the deaths occurred around 11a.m. on Sundays.The hospital assembled a World-Wide team ofexperts to investigate the cause of the
incidents. The nextSundaymorning, a fewminutes before 11a.m.,all the doctors and nurses nervouslygathered outside the u nitwaiting
anxiouslyto see of the esteemed panel of experts could determine whatthe terriblephenomenon was all about. Some were holding
wooden crosses,prayer books and other holyobjects toward off the evil spirits.Just when the clock struck 11:00 a.m.,a part time
janitorenteredthe unitand calmlyunplugged the life support systemof the first bed so he could plug in the vacuum cleaner.
People may let you down, but Jesus won’t.
Just because we as disciples fail at some things doesn’t mean that Jesus is a failure.
:19 O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you?
O faithless generation– who is Jesus talking about? The disciples? The
crowd? The scribes that were arguing? The father? Yes. All of them.
:19 bring him unto me.
bring him – apparently the boy wasn’t with the father at that moment,
perhaps being held off at a distance.
:20 …he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.
wallowed– kulioo – to roll itself in mud; to wallowing in the mire; imperfect
tense – the boy was on the ground for awhile rolling around in the dirt and
foaming at the mouth.
:22 And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire…to destroy
him
Lesson
Two plans for your life
The father felt that these suicidal attempts of falling into a fire or into water were caused directly by the
demon.
This is Satan’s way of handling things.
(John 10:10 KJV)The thiefcometh not, butfor tosteal, and to kill, and todestroy:I am comethatthey might have life,and thatthey
might have it more abundantly.
Illustration

123. This week there was a great tragedy up in Glendale. A man who was suicidal parked his
Jeepon the tracks of the Metrolink train. He was intending to commit suicide, just as this
boy was thrown into the fire at times. At the last minute, the man jumped out of the car,
but his jeep caused the train to derail, collide into a parked freight engine, and then
jackknife into another oncoming commuter train. I’m sure Satan was real pleasedwith
what happened. Eleven people were killed, 180 people were injured, and the suicidal man is
charged with elevencounts of murder.

124. For some reason people have this notion that it’s cool toplayaround with Satanic things – listeningto Satanicmusic,dabblingin the
occult, dressing up to look “bad”. There’s nothingcool aboutit. Satan wants to destroyyou.
Satan hates you and has a horrible plan for your life. He wants you tospend eternityin hell with him.
On the other hand, Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
He wants you tospend eternity in heaven with Him.He has taken care ofthe very thingthatwill keep you outof heaven – your sins. He
died on a cross in order to paythe price for your sins.
All that remains is for you to start trustingin Him and followingafterHim.
:22 but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us,
and help us.
The man isn’t questioning whether or not Jesus has compassionforhe and his
son. He isn’t saying, “Wellif you’re so big and wonderful, then why don’t you
have compassiononus and help us?”
What he’s saying is that he simply isn’t sure that Jesus has enough powerto
deal with this demon. After all, Jesus’disciples didn’t have the ability to help.
:23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth.
canst– dunamai – to be able to do something; to be capable, strong and
powerful
possible – dunatos – able, powerful, strong; it’s a form of the word translated
“canst”
In some of the manuscripts, the first “believe” is not there and it reads a little
differently, “Jesus saidto him, “’If you can’? All things are possible to him
that believes”
It’s as if Jesus is quoting the man’s words back to him “if you can” from the previous
verse.
However you look at it, the emphasis is still on the fact that we need to believe.
Where we get into trouble is when we think that the “allthings” includes
every possible thing that could ever happen.
Some folks like to think that “faith” is some sort of cosmic energy, and if you have enough
of this cosmic energy you can spiritually zap anything and make it happen.
The problem is that we get to thinking that the power is from us. The power is in Jesus.
This is not some kind of a pep talk like the person that says, “You can do ANYTHING if
you put your mind to it”.
The truth is,you can’t do “ANYTHING”.
I really don’t think any amount of faith or positive confession could make you jump to Catalina. There are
some things that God has no intention of you having or doing.
There is a difference between faith and presumption. Faith knows what God wants and acts on it.
Presumption guesses what God wants.

125. It’s better for us to say, “All things that God wants for us are possible if we will only
believe”
Some things that God wants for us are not possible because we don’t trust Him.
Lesson
Faith
What is faith?
Trusting in something you don’tsee.
Knowing in your heartthatwhatGod has promised, He will do,even when it doesn’t look like itwill happen.
(Heb 11:1 NLT) What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going
to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.
Faith is something that pleases God.He loves itwhen we trust Him.
(Heb 11:6 KJV) But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God
must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
We are saved through the act offaith
(Eph 2:8 KJV) For by grace are ye savedthrough faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the
gift of God:
God has done wonderful things for us in sending Jesus to die for us. This is His grace. But
the way God’s grace gets turned into salvation for me is through my faith, through trusting
in Him.
What does a life of faith look like?
Abraham is called the “father” of faith.He was one ofthe first fellows tounderstand whatfaith was all about.
(Heb 11:8-16KJV) By faith Abraham, when he was called to goout intoa place which he should afterreceive foran inheritance,obeyed;
and he wentout,not knowing whither he went.
He didn’t know where he was going, but he followed God’s direction and went anyway.
Faith is active – it makes you do things, go places.
{9} By faith he sojourned in the land ofpromise,as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob,the heirs with him
of the same promise: {10} For he looked for a citywhich hath foundations, whose builderand maker is God.
He didn’t live his life in order to have a bigger and better house. He was looking forward to
living in God’s city, heaven – even though he didn’t see it.
{11} Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was pastage, because she
judged him faithful whohad promised. {12} Therefore sprangthere even ofone, and him as good as dead,somany as the stars of the sky
in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable.
Abraham and Sarah trusted God. And because they did, they got pregnant, eventhough it
didn’t make sense to the human mind. Abraham became the father of Isaac when he was
one hundred years old.
{13} These all died in faith, nothavingreceivedthe promises, but havingseen them afar off, andwere persuaded of them,and embraced
them, and confessed that theywere strangers and pilgrims on the earth. {14} For theythat say such things declare plainlythat they seek
a country.{15} And truly, ifthey had been mindful of that countryfrom whence theycameout,they mighthave had opportunityto have
returned. {16} But now theydesire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he
hath prepared for them a city.
He lived for heaven, though he didn’t see it in his earthly life.
Dave Ritner was talking to the men on Saturday morning about how God will plant His ideas into our hearts.
For some of us,when God whispers an ideain ourheart, we respond by saying, “Oh I could never do that!”
The issue isn’t what you are capable of doing, but whether or not you will trust God.

126. How do I grow in my faith?
(Rom 10:17KJV) So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearingby the word of God.
In this passage, Paul is talking about how a person comes to believe in Jesus, and it starts
by having someone share God’s Word with them.
The person hears about God’s Word, and God’s Word stirs up “faith” in them.
I believe it goes beyond salvation – God’s Word is one of the big sources of “fuel” for our
faith.
It’s through the Word that I know more about God, about who He is, and about how I can
trust Him.

127. :24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and
said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
He realizes that when Jesus said,
(Mark 9:19 KJV) …O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you?
That he was part of the problem.
Lesson
Confession
Don’t be afraid to admit where you’re weak.
Sometimes we get the feeling that we need to put on a front of being a strong believer when deep down inside
we know that we struggle with trusting God at times.
It’s okayto admit that you need help.Jesus doesn’t rebuke the man for this confession,He helps him.
In reality, Jesus is lookingfor honestyfrom us.
Jesus responds tothis fellow by deliveringhis son.
If you are feeling like your faith is weak today – you need to ask Jesus for help.
:25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together
It may be that Jesus had pulled the man and his boy awayfrom the crowd to
talk to him and now the crowd comes running to see what’s happening.
:25 I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into
him.
I charge – epitasso – order, command, a military term used in ordering troops
around. Jesus barks a firm command to the demon that He expects to be
obeyed.
no more – meketi– no longer, no more, not hereafter.
Jesus had taught that when a demon was cast out, it would wander around looking for a
new home and if it came back and found the old place neat, clean, and unprotected, it
would come back (Mat. 12:43-45).
Here Jesus is telling the demon to leave and ordering it to never come back.
:26 And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of
him
One last thrashing for the boy and the demon is gone.
:27 But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and
he arose.
took – krateo – to have power;to take hold of, seize

128. :28 Why could not we cast him out?
could – dunamai – to be able to do something;to be capable, strong and
powerful
:29 This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and
fasting.
Some of the translations omit the word “fasting”, but that’s not a big issue
here. Fasting is important, but it doesn’tneed to be the issue.
Jesus had already given the disciples authority to castout demons (Mark 6:7).
And apparently they had already experiencedsome sort of success incasting
demons out of people. But the nine had come across a particular case where
the demon wouldn’t respond.
Something was missing in the disciples.
Lesson
Disciplined Prayer
Matthew tells us that when Jesus responds to the disciples:
(Mat 17:20KJV) And Jesus said untothem, Because of your unbelief…
And then the specific ingredient that was missing in their faith was a lack of prayer and
fasting.
We don’t have a record of Jesus praying at the time of this exorcism. When He’s talking about prayer being a
key ingredient in this exorcism, He’s talking about a life that has cultivated the habit of praying.
Where had Jesus just come from when this incident occurred? Jesus had been up on the mountain praying.
God can use just about anybody, but to be honest, there will be a few times when the situation calls for a
person who has learned to discipline his life to build strong spiritual muscles.
As we develop the disciplines ofstudy and prayer, we build our “faith muscles”sothatwhen we encounter situations requiringa lot of
“muscle”, we can handle it.
Prayer does so many things.
It opens the curtains for us intothe realm of the invisible, spiritual world. Prayer is where we touch the invisible.
Daniel the prophet got glimpses into the spiritual world – things that came after times
devoted to prayer and fasting.
(Dan 10:2 NLT) When this vision came to me, I, Daniel, had been in mourning for three
weeks.
His vision included a visit from a heavenly visitor, an angel. His period of “mourning” was
a time of fasting.
(Dan 10:12-13 NLT) Then he said, "Don't be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you began
to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been
heard in heaven. I have come in answer to your prayer. {13} But for twenty-one days the
spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way…

129. Prayerbuilds our faith.
Getting up early on Tuesday morning for the Men’s Prayer meeting is a difficult thing. I
rarely wake up on Tuesday mornings and say to myself, “Oh boy, I get to go pray this
morning”. Just being honest.
But after our prayer time is over, it’s a rare morning where I don’t feel so pumped up
spiritually that I feel like I could fly out of the office.
Are there things in my life that God wants to be doing, but I won’t do them because I lack the faith? Could
these things be affected if I learned to pray a little better or a little more?
Did the disciples ever “get it”?
Before ascending to heaven, Jesus told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy
Spirit was poured out on them.
They didn’t just wait, they prayed.
(Acts 1:14 NLT) They all met together continually for prayer, along with Mary the mother
of Jesus, several other women, and the brothers of Jesus.
As you read through the book of Acts, you’ll see that one of the ingredients in the early
church that is always present behind the scenes is prayer. The early church was a praying
church. The early church was a church with faith. The early church was a powerful
church.
Do You Believe?
Mark 9:14-29
(Mark 9:24) "And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I
believe; help thou mine unbelief."
• The Setting - returning from the mount of transfiguration.
• The Scene - The mob - pushing and shoving
• The disciples - embarrassed, confused, and defensive over their inability to perform
a miracle.
• The scribes - gleeful, pressing home the attack on the disciples.
• The boy - demon possessed(shows Satan's real intent - hatred, hurt, murder)
• The cure - Jesus' words CAST it out. Jesus' words KEPT it out.
Unbelief is a great enemy to the cause of Christ. This passage presents three groups or
individuals, which suffer from a form of unbelief. We see the scribes, the father, and the
disciples. As we consider the passage today, the question we must answer is this, "Do we
believe?"
I. The Scribes Illustrate a Callous Unbelief.
A. They simply did not believe that Christ was the Savior.

130. 1. Lost, unable to believe to the saving of the soul.
2. Note: Heb 10:39
(Heb 10:39) "But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but
of them that believe to the saving of the soul."
B. This unbelief showed itself in several ways:
1. Scorn, ridicule of Christ and His followers.
2. Attempts to discredit Him.
3. Hatred for the things of Christ. (They wanted Him DEAD!)
C. This unbelief is everywhere today.
1. Denial of God in public areas, schools and government alike.
2. Court cases today where parents are charged with child abuse for teaching
what is right and true.
3. Acceptance and protection of every imaginable religion, but Christianity!
4. People tend to accept ANYTHING, no matter how bizarre, but NOT
CHRIST!
D. This unbelief condemns itself.
1. All men know there is a God.
2. All men are without excuse before this God.
3. Callous unbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence, can only be explained
as a REJECTION of the truth.
4. (They KNOW, but the REFUSE TO BELIEVE!)
E. This unbelief leads to hell.
(Rev 21:8) "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and
murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall
have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the
second death."
II. The Father Illustrates Shaken Unbelief.
A. He had enough belief to come in the first place!
1. That is commendable.
2. Many won't evenconsider their need to come to God for help.
3. They have been convinced that it is all a hoax, all phony.
B. He had heard of the disciples' ability.
1. Note: Mark 6:7, 13, 14
2. If Herod had heard, then the reputation had spread to others as well.
3. People had heard about Jesus and His power of the demons and devils of hell.

131. C. But, when the disciples failed, his belief was shaken to the point where he
doubted Christ's ability!
1. What a tragic scenario.
2. Many today will go to hell, not because Christ can't save them, but because
some Christian let them down!
3. Many Christians will sit on the sidelines, never amounting to anything for
Christ, because of the failure of some other Christian in their life.
4. How we as Christians should strive to live right for others' sakes!
D. His unbelief, though understandable, was still inexcusable.
1. Jesus rebuked him - "If thou canst believe!"
2. His attitude should have been like that of Peter:
3. Note: Luke 5:3-6
III. The Disciples - Careless Unbelief.
A. Consider their background.
1. They were SAVED
2. They were COMMISSIONED - 6:7
3. They were EMPOWERED - 6:7
4. They were EXPERIENCED - 6:13
B. But, they were OVERCONFIDENT
1. Note: v17-18
2. "…they could not…"
3. They had begun to trust in themselves and in their own abilities, rather than
in God.
4. When we begin to trust in ourselves we are destined for failure.
C. Jesus said their failure was because of UNBELIEF (cf. Mt 17:19-20).
1. Some tasks are more difficult than others.
2. Some need greater faith and much prayer.
3. Let's not get careless … Let's believe in Jesus Christ for the answers to all our
difficulties and needs.
Do you believe? Maybe you've heard the gospel before… you know it inside out…but you
just refuse to believe it. Trust Christ today!
Maybe other believers in the past have shaken your faith. Christ rebuked the father's
unbelief, because it showed that the man's perspective was wrong. He was watching the
Lord's servants, rather than the Lord. Don't allow the sin of unbelief to remain in your life
just because other believers have disappointed you. It is your responsibility as a believer to
keepyour eyes onthe Lord Jesus Christ, and to just BELIEVE!

132. This morning, we need to be careful that we do not grow complacent, or overconfident.
Forgetting that it is only through our faith in Jesus Christ that we can be victorious. Do we
believe?
(Mark 9:23) "Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that
believeth."
http://www.brandonweb.com/sermons/sermonpages/mark24.htm
Is It Really Impossible?
Mark 9:17-29; 10:17-27
Read text:
In these two passages we see two seemingly impossible situations. The word "impossible"
as found in our text means "without strength, impotent, powerless, incapable of being
done:" But these passages show us by the words of Christ and His actions, that no situation
exists, and there are no problems that we may face, that are impossible for God to solve.
I want you to see with me several important spiritual insights concerning God doing the
impossible in our lives.
I. God Is An Expert In Handling Totally Impossible Situations
A. "Bring him unto me." v19
1. That's the answer!
2. Here is the solution to every seemingly impossible situation that we may
encounter.
3. Jesus assures the father that "all things are possible"! v23
4. Many folks never consider the limitless power of God.
5. What is that you face this morning that seems impossible?
B. God, the Creator of the Universe, is an expert in doing the impossible!
1. Note the invitation of Christ
2. Bring Him unto Me…
3. He can deliver from the bondage of sin, if you will come to Him
4. He can take care of the impossible situation in your life, if you will come to
Him.
5. If you are lost this morning, come to Christ this morning and find
deliverance…find salvation for your soul.
6. Note v23, "All things are possible to him that believeth"
7. To believe in Him means placing our faith in His finished work on Calvary.
8. Do you believe this morning?

133. (Rom 10:9-10) "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,
and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead,
thou shalt be saved. {10} For with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."
II. God Cannot Do The Impossible Until He Places Us Into An Impossible Situation
A. Look at the situation in which this father found himself.
(Mark 9:18) "And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth,
and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that
they should cast him out; and they could not."
1. Do you hear the agony in this father's voice.
2. The frustration of failure everywhere he had turned.
3. But listen to the glimmer of hope as he comes to Christ for help.
4. He was at the end of himself, to him the situation was impossible.
B. He was like so many others before him.
1. Daniel as he was cast into the lions' den …no hope of survival…it was
impossible!
2. Like David against Goliath…how could he be victorious over such a mighty
warrior?
3. And yet God did the impossible!
4. When it seemedthere was no hope, when it seemedthere was no way
out…then God did something wonderful!
C. God will do it again!
1. He said, "Nothing shall be impossible!"
2. It is when God brings us to the point in our lives where we think there is no
hope.
3. It is when we come to the end of our rope…when we run out of
answers…when we turn to Him in faith…God will do the impossible!
III. We Must Open The Door To The Miraculous Intervention Of God
The first passage dealt with physical deliverance and the second passage deals with
spiritual deliverance. God desires to work in both areas of our lives.
A. Without faith we close the door on God's power in our life.
1. What did this man desire?
2. Eternal life.
3. It seems that he recognized his need, and knew that he must come to Jesus to
receive eternal life.
4. So far so good, right?
5. But Jesus, who knows our hearts, begins to question him.

134. 6. He has been religious, righteous in his deeds, but there is an underlying
problem.
7. The problem was not riches…it wasn't money… it was an issue of trust.
B. Note Jesus' explanation in v23-24
1. That is the bottom line isn't it?
2. It all comes down to 'trust' or 'faith'.
(Heb 11:6) "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that
cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek him."
3. Did you hear what God says here?
4. It is 'impossible without faith'
5. But note v27
(Eph 2:8-9) "For by grace are ye savedthrough faith; and that not of
yourselves: it is the gift of God: {9} Not of works, lest any man should
boast."
C. Our faith in God and His miraculous power is the key that unlocks the door to
answered prayer and divine intervention.
1. The rich young man walked away from God's saving power because of lack of
faith.
2. He shut the door of God's power by unbelief.
3. There is no indication that this man was eversaved…he made a conscious
choice that day.
4. Everyone here this morning must make that same choice.
5. Will you trust Jesus Christ or will you turn away?
6. Will you place your faith in Him or will you continue to place your faith in
your own abilities…your own plans…your own goals?
• God Is An Expert In Handling Totally Impossible Situations
• God Cannot Do The Impossible Until He Places Us Into An Impossible Situation
• We Must Open The Door To The Miraculous Intervention Of God
• What will you do today? Come to Jesus in faith…do not turn away!
http://www.brandonweb.com/sermons/sermonpages/mark33.htm