Educated by Failure (Part A)

The jealousy of God is protective, not possessive. It guards what belongs to Him. And that's what we're seeing flash out here from Him. I want to know what you're talking about with them because whatever's coming out of you is an influence that I don't like.

That's the idea. So it flashes outward to unwelcome influences, as it should, that act upon the minds of the followers. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Mark.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick in Mark Chapter 9 with a brand new study called Educated by Failure. Gospel according to Mark Chapter 9. I think it's a very exciting section of scripture.

What makes it exciting is how many benefits, I think, are within this consideration. We will take verses 9 through, actually verses 14 through 29. A little long, but what else do you have to do right now? Again, we'll take verses 14 through 29. And when He came to the disciples, He saw a great multitude around them and scribes disputing with them. Immediately when they saw Him, all the people were greatly amazed and running to Him, greeted Him. And He asked the scribes, What are you discussing with them? Then one of the crowd answered and said, Teacher, I brought you my son who has a mute spirit. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples that they should cast it out.

But they could not. He answered him and said, O faithless generation, how long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me. Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw him, immediately the spirit convulsed him. And he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. So He asked the Father, How long has this been happening to him? And He said, From childhood. And often He has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him.

But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Jesus said to him, If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe.

Help my unbelief. When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you come out of him and enter him no more. Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said he is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand, lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, Why could we not cast it out? So He said to them, This kind comes out by nothing but prayer and fasting.

A lot of action taking place there. Educated by failure, that's the title for this message, and I hope that that theme is not lost for us as we go through this section of scripture. There's quite a few spots and hot spots where the pastor reads it and would like to just take the morning talking about that verse.

For example, you know, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. How often have we been there as believers? What has happened prior to this, of course, the Lord had a private meeting up on the mountain with three of His disciples, and there we saw Moses and Elijah meet with the Lord.

They were not in their resurrected bodies yet, that had not yet taken place, but they were there. And after this mountaintop experience, as they come down to the valley at the base of the mountain, there's trouble waiting for them. And so often it's like that in life. You have a real good day in the Lord, a good day in ministry, and then there something is to come at you that is out of hell. And yet we are supposed to face it, like believers. Now we look now at verse 14 again and we re-read that verse, and when He came to His disciples, He saw a great multitude around them and scribes disputing with them. Now that's what was waiting for Him, people arguing with His followers. And it was amazing, an amazing time up on top of the mountain for the three, but those down in the valley had to deal with this. Where it says the scribes disputing with them, we know that Jesus didn't like the looks of that as soon as He saw it.

He became very protective of His own. The world hates truth, so it devotes itself to opposing truth or trying to get rid of it. Paul said they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And we see that very much today in the age of media. You know, anything that YouTube and Facebook and Google and all the tech giants, anything that they are for, we probably should be against.

If they say something is wrong or right, we should go the other way, because they are fundamentally messed up. And they now represent the world on a very large scale. Yeah, we use them. We try not to use them.

It takes work to get around them. It's the age we live in, and so we try to make these things work for Christ. They sneer at everything that is godly.

It's just a reaction. It's automatic because of the darkness that they live in. They yield to nothing from God, incidentally. They never admit, never give in, especially to the truths that expose their lives.

Well, this was the case with the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the scribes were very closely connected to them. They yielded to nothing about Christ. They would say the miracles.

They'd still protest. Verse 15, immediately when they saw Him, all the people were greatly amazed and running to Him, greeted Him. Only Mark points this out.

Luke and Matthew cover the story. John does not mention it. But Mark points this one little thing out that as Christ approached, there was something of His awesome glory lingering from that mountaintop experience, and the people noticed it.

How much so? We're not told. It's just passing mention. Of course, it's very likely that Peter was the one relating the story to Mark. Mark could have been here for some of this, and it stood out to him. And so it is captured in verse 16 now, and he asked the scribes, what are you discussing with them?

I would love to have heard his tone. The jealousy of God is protective, not possessive. It guards what belongs to Him, and that's what we're seeing flash out here from Him. I want to know what you're talking about with them, because whatever's coming out of you is an influence that I don't like.

That's the idea. So it flashes outward to unwelcome influences, as it should, that act upon the minds of the followers. Be good for more Christians to be a little bit more guarded when they read anything on the Internet about Christianity.

I don't. I just get my Christianity from my Bible, from trusted Bible teachers, but I am very picky and happy to be so. In Exodus 32, when Moses came down from the mountain, he also incurred the devil up to no good with God's people. And it reached a point when Moses, Exodus 32, verse 26, then Moses stood at the entrance of the camp and said, whoever is on Yahweh's side, come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him.

What a powerful moment. Moses is about to administer swift justice, and he says, who's on Yahweh's side? And the Levites raise up without hesitation and side with Moses, because Moses is siding with God.

And Moses was dealing with these influences in the camp that needed to be dealt with. And so this God that we love so much has power to forgive sin, and we have power to side with him against our own sin, against all sin, but hopefully we do it graciously, even on ourselves. Some Christians can be very kind to others and not too kind to themselves. If that is you, I encourage you to put yourself with the rest of us when you're dealing with yourself.

Don't be overly hard on yourself. That does not mean dismiss issues that need to be addressed. It just means do not crush yourself, because who can handle that and still be effective? In verse 17, then one of the crowd answered and said, teacher, I brought you my son who has a mute spirit. Well, the man expected to find Jesus when he came to his disciples, but the Lord was coming down from the mountain at the time. Matthew adds that when he approached Christ that he was kneeling down. Matthew chapter 17, verse 14, and when he had come to the multitude, a man came to him, kneeling down to him. And so here we have this picture of the son, the only begotten son of the father, and yet there in the valley, the only begotten son of a man who this son is demon-possessed.

Quite a contrast. Imagine you're one of the three apostles that went up to the mountain with Christ, and you have this great experience that you can't tell anybody about right now, and then you're coming down the mountain and Christ is teaching you. You're asking questions about Elijah and the end times, and then you come down and you're faced with this.

You're faced with the other, your comrades who have this look of defeat on their face, and yet they're also happy to see the Lord. Matthew is the one that identifies this as a demon in the child, and only Mark points out that the demon kept the boy from talking. Verse 18, it's going to heat up in a minute.

This is all background to the story. Verse 18, and wherever it seizes him, it throws him down and he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples that they should cast it out, but they could not.

What a miserable experience for everybody. They can see, you know, wherever it seizes him, it throws him down and he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. And there are people who saw this happening to this little child. The age is not stated, but the word for child here in the Greek means a little child.

It's the same Greek word used for the boy Jesus when Pilate was looking for him. You know, go find him, then find the child that we could worship him to. And so he's a little guy. We can safely say that.

Evidently, he can walk. But these terrifying fits were something that others, just nothing they could do. So I spoke to your disciples that tells us in verse 18 that they should cast it out, but they could not. But without Christ, there's nothing we really can do against the spiritual realm. John 15, 5, I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

It's a basic of what belongs to our faith. A fundamental of Christianity is our utter dependence on Jesus Christ, which makes it difficult when we need something and he doesn't appear to be doing anything. Then faith has to kick in and we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But how often have we been powerless? We pray, we apply as much wisdom as we can muster, we do all, take all the steps we know how to take and still, we have not dislodged the problem. It's still there, staring us in the face, attacking us oftentimes. Today our victories are by truth, though.

Without outward signs, mostly, there are still outward signs, but mostly it's by truth that the church advances its mission. Today, the Lord being invisible is not absent, though many times we feel like he's not there. Why doesn't he do something if he's so sovereign, if he loves me so much, why is he not resolving these issues? Imagine if he resolved every single issue.

Well, he's going to do that one day, just not here. We get to heaven, all of it's going to be gone, but here, here is a battleground, there's a battle for souls. And what we're learning from all this is that the just will live by faith.

You don't have to like it or agree with it or sign off on it, it is presented to us, it is a fact. This is one of the main themes from this passage of scripture. We are in the age of faith right now, we're not in the age of the law, we're not in the age of miracles and signs and wonders, but we are in the age of faith built on the law and built on miracles. Knowledge of truth is what the church really has to give to a world that is being sucked under by lies. It's so easy to lose sight of this because the carnal side of me says that's not enough, I want action, and I want action now. Truth, what good is truth if I'm starving to death, if I'm being persecuted, if I'm in pain, I'm writhing in pain, physical agony, what good is truth?

God says you're going to find out, but you've got to get through this. This is how it is. I believe that all the power that was available at the time of Christ and his apostles is still available.

It just doesn't operate the same way. 2 Peter 3, his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness to the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue. It's the knowledge of Christ. And so there are times when God's love for his people seems to be contradicted by his apparent inaction.

He says he loves me. And why is this? It's the whole story of Job. The whole story of Job. Job did not have the knowledge we have. Job remained true to God, as frustrated, as bitter as he had become in the midst of those things without even knowing that he was a battleground. That God would use Job for the centuries to come to make Christians stronger, to help Christians get through and stay focused on the main things because Satan is always trying to get us to major in the minors.

God wants us to major in the majors and faith is it. Their faith, these apostles here facing this demon, they could not cast him out. The faith is being tested. There is a passage in Habakkuk. If you don't know about the prophet Habakkuk, I love this prophet. He didn't like what God was showing him. He protested it.

But he had help. I will stand my watch and see what he's going to do because he's God. Habakkuk got that. And he writes a song at the end of this experience when God says, listen, I'm going to judge my people. I'm going to send the Chaldeans.

It's going to be brutal. Habakkuk said, I don't like this. But at the end, he writes this, though the fig tree may not blossom nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in Yahweh. I will joy in the God of my salvation. You see, he said, I can starve to death. It's not going to stop me from worshiping God.

My worship of him is not built on whether I eat or not. Those tough words. Years ago, they seemed a lot easier to enjoy than they do as years roll by and the battles stack up. But there they are nonetheless. So we must not allow, now remember we're talking about the apostles being unable to help this father and his child. When they had done this before, they had cast out demons before.

This one wasn't moving. The lesson is, one of them, is that the sense of inability in confrontation with Satan is not to deceive us into thinking that we will be ineffective in all confrontations with Satan. You know when the world says you win some, you lose some.

We understand him and I like it, but we understand it. Well, it's that way in Christianity to a large degree and we're going to lay some of this out. The battle of the soul is more important than the battle for outward, miraculous signs and wonders and some satisfaction that comes with it. It is more important to establish ourselves before God by trusting him. As again, frequently quoted verse from Job, though he slay me, I will trust him.

Remember, Job was on a rollercoaster. At one moment he's like, what are you? You're an enemy to me. That's what he said to God. You're like a warrior coming at me. And the next minute he's saying things like that. You know, you can kill me.

You're still going to be my God. Well, that's what happens when you're going through tough times. You're on that rollercoaster.

One minute you're up high, the next minute you're crashing down to the bottom. God's hand is on you all the time. You know, one of the struggles for me after all these years is maintaining the joy in the face of opposition. To face opposition, to face life, to face things that perplex me, confuse me, bother me, disturb me, frighten me and still have some joy in my salvation, as I used to in the early days of Christianity.

And yet that is just what Habakkuk said. Yet I will rejoice in Yahweh. I will joy in the God of my salvation.

I'm not going to let these things rob me of this, but to do it, to pull it off. We worship God because he is worthy. We've discovered that he is worthy by truth, not because we approve of what he allows or does not allow. When we get to verse 28, we will revisit this. This is not unbelief.

This is fact. There's not a lack of faith to say God does not dole out the miracles as he did in the book of Acts. Not to say that he can't. Not to say that he does not do it from time to time. But he does not do it on that level.

And no one can honestly refute that. Verse 19, he answered him and said, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?

Bring him to me. The question indicates that there's a limit to his patience. We don't like hearing that.

We like to believe that no matter what I do, he's patient, he's loving. But we've already covered that he was irritated at another time with the disciples about the whole bread thing. What do I got to tell you to get you to understand some of these lessons? These irritations of the Lord with the apostles forced them to up their game. It does it to us too.

It puts pressure on us, squeezes out of us a better performance for the kingdom. What should he say? That's okay. I kind of like it when you don't believe me. No, he does not. He has to, he calls them out. Who's he talking to, O faithless generation?

He's talking to everybody. The environment that he ministered in was an environment of unbelief. Even John the Baptist.

Are you the one or are we looking for another one? Because I'm here in jail and the Messiah is supposed to liberate us. And of course John died at the end of an axe.

The henchmen came and they killed him, took his head from him. And yet John the Baptist is in heaven because of his faith. He's resolved to trust the Lord. Unbelief gives the Lord Jesus Christ sorrow to some degree because unbelief hurts us.

It doesn't work for us. We don't read in the scripture, I encourage you to disbelieve. I encourage you to not have faith so that you can be a better human being.

No, we never get that in the Bible. And the world wants to rewrite the definitions of faith without Christ being a part of what they rewrite. And we thumb our nose at them for that. We say, how dare you think that we're supposed to agree with you and we've got something so much better than what you could ever have on your own.

And we're not ashamed of this. It is a mistake to learn where we are weak as Christians and not at the same time learn where we are strong. You see, if the apostles just said, that's it, we can't throw it out, that's the end of it. There's no sense in following Jesus anymore. We're powerless, we're impotent. They had other strengths. And if you are a weak Christian, if you think yourself to be, I don't mean if someone has told you, I mean if you think you're just, you know, I'm a weak Christian, well welcome to the club, number one. Let's get that one right.

And then let's move on from there. Where are your strengths in Christ? Paul talked about the gifts.

That's what he was doing. He said, you have strength, you have something to contribute to this fight. It's not all based on one event here today with Satan. You can become educated from your failures or you can become ruined by them. You have a say-so in that. I have a say-so in it. I've had opportunities to say, that's it, I'm done. When Jesus said, bear your, take up your cross daily and die, he meant just that.

All the time. Defeat is going to be a part of, apparent defeat is going to be a part of serving him. Life is that way. The world even knows that. They even have bumper stickers that, although crude, they express that very thing.

But that's all they've got. We go beyond this. In verse 20 now, then they brought to him, and then they brought him to him, and when he saw him immediately the spirit convulsed him and he fell on the ground and wallowed foaming at the mouth. Well, just as the boy's father described it. But the sight of Jesus triggered an event. It triggered an episode with this poor child.

And this also tells us, this is a little child, he didn't do anything wrong to deserve this. It happened because he was born into a cursed world. And what can, what are you going to do with that?

You're born in a cursed world. Let's all gather at the surface and wring our fingers. Or are we going to say, Lord, where are my strengths and what can I do with them? I know where my weaknesses are. I'd like to sidestep those as often as I can. But it's so typical of the devil taking a cheap shot, sucker punches. He's going to do this again.

But the mute spirit made a scene before he was going to be cast out, giving the spectators a sample of his power. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the Book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the Book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.