The Healing of the Possessed Boy

The disciples tried to cast out a demon, but they couldn't do it, and they asked their teacher why. And Jesus said, because this was a tough one.

This kind only comes out by prayer and fasting. Again, do you see that the strength of our faith, the strength of our prayers can never be put on automatic pilot. Jesus taught His disciples that sometimes there is a tinge of rebuke, sometimes a bit of frustration, but always a big helping of compassion. And that's the way Jesus responds to us as well.

Today on Renewing Your Mind, we will see that on full display as we return to R.C. Sproul's series from the Gospel of Mark. If you're able and have your Bibles handy, you'll want to turn to Mark chapter 9, verse 14. When Christ came to the disciples, remember He had been apart from the rest of the disciples just with the three. Now as they come down from the mountain, He rejoins the rest of His disciples, and when He joins them, He finds them involved in some kind of argument or dispute with the scribes. And so He said to the scribes, what are you discussing with them?

That is, with the disciples. And one of the crowd answered and said, Teacher, I brought you My Son who has a mute spirit. Whenever it seizes Him, it throws Him down.

He foams at the mouth, gnashes His teeth, and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples if they should cast it out, but they could not. So the point of the discussion here was the impotence of the disciples of Jesus to manifest the power that Jesus Himself was able to manifest, particularly with respect to ministering to this boy who suffered from the demon possession that is described. Now just as a little parenthesis, one of the reasons why sometimes modern critics reject the testimony of the Bible is because they say the biblical authors ascribe to Satan things that we know can be explained without any reference to the supernatural realm but simply can be referred to and explained by natural science and natural problems. The description of this boy's malady fits perfectly with grand mal seizures associated with severe forms of epilepsy. And so the critics say this young boy was not possessed by a demon.

He was suffering simply from a natural disease that we know now to be epilepsy. Now let me just say this intersection and interaction between the demonic world and the natural fallen world with its afflictions is one that we need to understand with some care. I remember back on the day when the President of the United States was assassinated, allegedly by Lee Harvey Oswald, and immediately following the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I noticed that the news commentators, particularly on the radio and on television, constantly reached for language that would adequately express how egregious this vile act was. And repeatedly I heard the press describe the assassination of Kennedy in terms like this, that it was a satanic act, that it was a diabolical act, that it was a devilish act, and that it was a demonic act, and even it was called a hellish act. And I remember at that time listening to these verbal descriptions of the crime against the President of the United States, I thought within myself, self, I said, it could well be that this act was inspired by Satan. But we don't have to look to Satan to account for evil of this kind. There lurks quite sufficient wickedness in the heart of human beings to perform such vile acts without any assistance from Satan. And so what happened was people just wouldn't recognize that human beings could be that corrupt, that fallen in and of themselves without appealing to Satan. So the same kind of thing comes to play when we look at this episode here of this young boy who suffers obviously from epilepsy. What you need to see throughout Scripture is that when Satan does possess and when Satan does come into a person's life, he uses whatever frailty is already there to exploit his power over his victim.

So I don't see any ultimate conflict between the account here of a young man suffering from a well-known malady, but which suffering is exacerbated by the intervention of the evil one to torment the person all the more. But in any case, the man comes and he's upset because he had asked the disciples of Jesus to minister to his son, and they failed in their ministry. Let me just comment in passing how common this is for the followers of Jesus to be powerless when Christ is absent. This is one of the reasons why the day of Pentecost is so important in redemptive history because Jesus said to His disciples, I'm going away. I'm going to leave you, not just for a few days to go up onto the mountain of transfiguration, but I'm leaving the planet.

I'm going to My Father's house, but I will not leave you alone. I want you to gather in Jerusalem and wait, you tarry there, until I send the Spirit. After that, the Holy Ghost will come upon you, and you shall receive power, and that power will be My presence with you and in you, so that even though Jesus is no longer present with us, touching His human nature, He's never absent from us, touching the presence of His Holy Ghost, so that the church today really has more power at her disposal than even the disciples had before Pentecost.

But in any case, the issue here focuses on their inability to do the things that Jesus had been able to do. And Jesus responded to this and said, He said, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? It's a lament coming from the lips of our Lord. Jesus is lamenting not the lack of power in His disciples, but the lack of faith, faithless generation.

How long do I have to put up with this? You've been with Me. Your eyes have seen what angels wanted to look at, and still you are faithless. And humanly speaking, this weighed on Jesus that He had to exhibit such forbearance with His own pupils, with His own students, not to mention the multitudes who had also observed His ministry in this world, and still people walked around without faith. So they brought this boy to Him, and when Jesus saw him, immediately the Spirit convulsed him. And he fell to the ground. He wallowed on the ground like a pig in the mud, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus watched this, and He said to the Father, He said to the Father, how long has this been going on?

How long has Your Son had to endure this kind of affliction? And the Father said, since He was a young boy. He said, if you can do anything, if there's anything you can do, Jesus, please have compassion and help us. Now listen to what Jesus said, verse 23, if you can believe, all things are possible to Him who believes. Now that verse ripped out of its context has been used over and over and over and over again not to describe a powerful Christian faith but really to be used as a talisman for magic. In an age that has been so influenced by a neo-Gnostic spirit, the New Age movement seeks to manipulate the external world by mind control.

If you can think about world peace, you can bring world peace. And in the Christian world, we have these simplistic ministries called faith healing, which say to people, all you have to do is believe, and if you believe strongly enough, you can move mountains, and you can make anything happen you want to make happen. I told this story once before here of a young man that was a student of mine who suffered from cerebral palsy. He was a dynamic Christian, a victorious Christian, a devout Christian, and some of his students at the college came to him and said, Harvey, we're going to heal you from your cerebral palsy. And so they laid hands upon Harvey, and they pronounced him whole.

But Harvey still had cerebral palsy. And so the student said, well, the problem with you, Harvey, is that you don't have enough faith. And if you don't have enough faith, you're never going to get healed. But if you really want to be healed, you have to claim your healing in Jesus' name. You have to believe that you're healed before you can be healed. It's like trying to give a blind man his sight and tell him, name it and claim it, believe that you can see, and then you'll be able to see.

And this goes on every day in America where people are told to believe they can see. They open their eyes and say, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe. Open their eyes, they can't see a thing.

So in all, all of a sudden, the weakness is in them. They have no faith. Nobody asks the obvious question, if all it takes is enough faith, why isn't the healer have enough faith for the person to bring them to this conclusion? Well, that wasn't enough for poor Harvey. First it was Harvey's fault that he wasn't healed because he didn't have enough faith. So then they said, we're going to meet with you again, and this time we're going to have an exorcism. Because your problem is that you're demon possessed. And so then they tried to drive the demon out of poor Harvey, and Harvey still had cerebral palsy. And he came to me in all earnestness and in tears, and he said, Dr. Sproul, do you think that I'm demon possessed? I said, no, Harvey, I don't think that you're demon possessed, but I wonder about your friends.

And I prayed for him, and I prayed that he would have peace, that he would trust the Lord with his body and for his life. Because sometimes God says, no, this text is not a blanket universal promise that says anything that you believe will happen will happen. Now I want to say something else about that.

Number two, and this is important for Christians to understand. You cannot make a decision to believe something that in fact you do not believe. I remember years ago when the Orlando Magic had a competing basketball team. Some of you can remember that. And the Magic had an opportunity to go to the NBA Finals, go to the NBA Finals, and the motto in Orlando was, you have to believe. So all we have to do is close our eyes like Alice in Wonderland and say, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope.

Oh, I don't know whether we're going to make it or not. You can't make a decision with your mouth to believe something that in fact you don't believe. You can make a decision to repent of your sins. You can make a decision to learn of Jesus, to study the Word.

You can make a decision to do all kinds of things that will affect your future behavior. But what you can't do is create faith by a decision. Here's where I fault modern evangelistic techniques that sort of suggest that all you have to do is make a decision, and voila, faith will well up in your soul.

No. It doesn't work like that. Faith comes by hearing. Faith comes by the Word of God. It is God who creates faith in the doubting heart. Now this man is in the presence of Jesus, the author of faith, and Jesus calls him to trust Him. He had every reason to believe without making an arbitrary decision that Jesus did have power to do something here. He wasn't sure, however, that Jesus would in fact be compassionate enough to use that power to heal His Son. And so he responds in honesty, and he said, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.

That's why this narrative is so important. Everybody in this room who is a Christian has some level of authentic, saving faith in their hearts. But the level of our faith is not constant. It waxes and wanes. It increases. It diminishes.

It diminishes. We move from faith to faith, from life to life, from grace to grace. And I don't care how strong your faith is, there are moments in this world where your faith is assaulted by the enemy. And sometimes your faith is like hanging on by your fingernails, and you make the prayer that this man made to Jesus, I believe. But mixed in with that belief is unbelief. My belief isn't perfect. My belief isn't pure. My belief may be weak.

I need help. Help me with my unbelief. When you are assaulted with doubts, and your faith seems rocky and frail, tie yourself to the mast. Go to the source of faith. Go to the source of faith.

Go to the Word of God. There is no time in my consciousness, no time in my life when my faith is stronger than when I'm immersed in the Word of God. Staying close to the Word, listening to the promises of your Redeemer, looking to Jesus, these are the things that build a powerful faith that won't let you down in the midst of afflictions. And so this man knew where to look for an increase in faith.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. So Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him, enter him no more. Spirit cried out, gave one last attack on the lad, convulsed him greatly, and then came out. But the boy became as one who was dead, and many thought that he was dead. But Jesus took him by the hand, lifted him up, and he arose. What do you think happened to the Father's faith? Help thou mine unbelief. Okay. Come out.

Stand up. How's your unbelief now, Father? Now the Father looked at His Son in His wholeness, and He looked at Jesus, and He was filled with faith because Jesus did what He said He would do. That's what creates faith. You know, I've always said about human relationships, it takes a long time to develop trust of people, five minutes to destroy it. Who do you trust in this world? How much faith do you have in your friends, in your spouse, in your children?

When you can come to the place where you can trust people and trust them with those things that are valuable to you, you have found something priceless. But people let us down. People break our trust. And unfortunately, what we do is we project that lack of trust that we experience among our friends onto God. But it is reasonable and rational to trust God. Indeed, nothing is more irrational than not to trust God because God is perfectly trustworthy. He's never broken a promise, and He never will.

He doesn't know how to betray His people. Finally, when they came to the place where He came to the house, the disciples went up to Him privately, and they said, well, that was something what you did out there, but we tried it. It didn't work. How's come it is that you were able to rebuke the Spirit and we failed? And Jesus said, because this was a tough one.

This kind only comes out by prayer and fasting. Again, do you see that the strength of our faith, the strength of our prayers can never be put on automatic pilot? When we face a formidable foe, it's not enough simply to depend on the reservoir of faith that we have in our souls. We have to get on our knees. We have to plead with God. We have to make all of the means of grace that He has given His people, make use of them.

And then you see God acting in behalf of His people. When I was in California, and I'll finish with this, our first conference was in a Korean Presbyterian church, and they had like 10,000 members of this church. And we went over for our conference on Saturday morning, and we went into the parking lot at 7.30 on Saturday morning. We could hardly get in the parking lot because there was this massive traffic jam. There were all these cars leaving the parking lot at 7.30 in the morning. And I said, what's this? Are the people leaving us already?

We haven't even started the conference. Then we found out that what was going on was that on Saturday morning at 6.30, a thousand people were gathered for an hour of prayer. They have a thousand people at that church almost every morning gathering at the church to pray for the things of God. And I interviewed the pastor, and he said, this is emanating from the Korean church in Seoul, Korea. He said, that's the secret that the Koreans learned during the war, that nothing builds faith among people like prayer. And he asked me how our church was.

I said, well, you know, we have a prayer thing going in our church, and a handful of people are involved. We need to discover the power of kingdom-focused prayer. That's what the disciples were learning here in this miracle of Jesus. The father of the possessed boy expressed what every Christian feels at some point, I believe, but help me with my unbelief.

Jesus showed compassion for this father and his son, and we can be assured that when we approach Him humbly, we receive that same compassion. We've heard another important message from Dr. R.C. 's Sproul series from the Gospel of Mark, and you're listening to Renewing Your Mind. Each week on the Lord's Day, we return to this series. And today, when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we will send you R.C. 's commentary on this gospel. It's a hardbound volume with more than 400 pages, all with his signature easy-to-read explanation of each verse.

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Just look for Ligonier in your app store. Well, next Sunday, the disciples will learn about humility the hard way. Join us as we learn about humility the hard way. Join us as Dr. Sproul recounts the story of the disciples' argument over who would be the greatest. That's next Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind.