Help me in my unbelief     Mark 9:14-29

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- April 23, 2006

“And he answered them and said, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?”  Mark 19:19

Ken Davis in his book How To Speak To Youth, pp 104-106 writes:

In college I was asked to prepare a lesson to teach my speech class. We were to be graded on our creativity and ability to drive home a point in a memorable way. The title of my talk was, "The Law of the Pendulum." I spent 20 minutes carefully teaching the physical principle that governs a swinging pendulum. The law of the pendulum is: A pendulum can never return to a point higher than the point from which it was released. Because of friction and gravity, when the pendulum returns, it will fall short of its original release point. Each time it swings it makes less and less of an arc, until finally it is at rest. This point of rest is called the state of equilibrium, where all forces acting on the pendulum are equal.

I attached a 3-foot string to a child's toy top and secured it to the top of the blackboard with a thumbtack. I pulled the top to one side and made a mark on the blackboard where I let it go. Each time it swung back I made a new mark. It took less than a minute for the top to complete its swinging and come to rest. When I finished the demonstration, the markings on the blackboard proved my thesis.

I then asked how many people in the room BELIEVED the law of the pendulum was true. All of my classmates raised their hands, so did the teacher. He started to walk to the front of the room thinking the class was over. In reality it had just begun. Hanging from the steel ceiling beams in the middle of the room was a large, crude but functional pendulum (250 pounds of metal weights tied to four strands of 500-pound test parachute cord.). I invited the instructor to climb up on a table and sit in a chair with the back of his head against a cement wall. Then I brought the 250 pounds of metal up to his nose. Holding the huge pendulum just a fraction of an inch from his face, I once again explained the law of the pendulum he had applauded only moments before, "If the law of the pendulum is true, then when I release this mass of metal, it will swing across the room and return short of the release point. Your nose will be in no danger."

After that final restatement of this law, I looked him in the eye and asked, "Sir, do you believe this law is true?" There was a long pause. Huge beads of sweat formed on his upper lip and then weakly he nodded and whispered, "Yes." I released the pendulum. It made a swishing sound as it arced across the room. At the far end of its swing, it paused momentarily and started back. I never saw a man move so fast in my life. He literally dived from the table. Deftly stepping around the still-swinging pendulum, I asked the class, "Does he believe in the law of the pendulum?" The students unanimously answered, "NO!" 

Jesus has been with his disciples, Peter, James and John, up on the mountain. We considered the fact that he was transfigured before them the last time we looked at Mark’s Gospel together. The other nine have been down in the valley.

We are taken abruptly from the glory of the mountain top into the depths of degradation in the valley. WE have heard God the Father say, “This is by beloved Son.” And in the valley we hear a man tell Jesus, This is my child. Literally, the man says to Jesus “This is by only begotten son.” And he is demon possessed.

This man is going to ask Jesus to help him in his unbelief.

Think about what our text reveals to us today:  The scribes were in willful and persistent unbelief. The Father of the boy was in unwilling unbelief. The disciples, the nine who were left in the valley, were in unconscious unbelief. Jesus has come down from the mountain into an atmosphere of unbelief.

When Jesus comes down from the mountain, he discovers that the Scribes and the disciples have been arguing about something. And when Jesus asks about it, “Why do you question them?” It is the father of the demon possessed boy who answers. He tells Jesus his story about his son. The man tells Jesus that he had spoken to his disciples, the nine in the valley, that they should cast out the demon and they did not have the power to do so.

The situation of the father and the boy was the topic of their discussion. And the disciples were defeated. They had attempted to cast the demon out of the boy and had failed. They had called upon the Name of Jesus and were unable to cast out the demon. You will remember that when they were sent out by Jesus earlier to reach out to the people of Israel, they were casting out demons. They had come back rejoicing that they had cast out demons. They had the power then to do so.

But something has happened here and they cannot do it. They do not now have the power to do so. One wonders why they did not. If you will remember, when Jesus began speaking to them of what was coming…his betrayal, death and resurrection, they wanted no part of it. They did not want to accept his teaching and that refusal to believe had cut their power. Something has come in between them and their power.

And now in the presence of this boy and his father they are paralyzed, helpless.

Faith had failed them. That is what Jesus told them later.

The reason of their failure was their little faith.

And Jesus will tell them later that the full secret of success with this kind of demon is prayer.

Jesus’ response is to ask: “O faithless Generation, how long shall I be with you.” “How long shall I tolerate you?”

There is the awful, tragic that willful unbelief can be so blind, so persistent, and so rebellious, that the Son of God will have to say, “No longer. I will tolerate you no longer.” The scribes are questioning the disciples, laughing at them and calling into question the power of the Lord.

And the Scribes are challenging them and mocking them in their inability. The crowd observes all of this. Imagine how they must have felt and what they must have thought about the inability of the disciples of Jesus to help this man and his son.

The father speaks to Jesus:  “If you can do something, having had compassion for us, help us.”

“I believe.” he says. “Help me in my unbelief.” He has seen the failure of the disciples of Jesus. And now he doubted if Jesus could do anything to help his son. “If you can…”

Jesus responds to the man, “If you can!” “All things are possible to those who believe.”

And the man says, “I believe!”  “Help me in my unbelief.”

And then Jesus casts out the demon.

When the disciples ask Jesus why they could not help the man and his son, he explains the failure of the disciples, he tells them that this kind of demon is only cast out by prayer.

Prayer is the activity of faith.

Prayer is the resting of the soul in Jesus and prompts the displaying of the power of God.

Think about prayer.

When we are in need…who do we turn to? 

Who can help us in our time of need? 

The answer of course is that we turn to God.

And there are times when it seems as if God is so distant from us.

What is it that gets our attention?  Suffering. Suffering forces us to look toward God and when we turn to him and pray, we display our faith in Him. So it is God to whom we turn in our need and we pray.

Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed. He went there to pray. Prayer prepares the soul for suffering.

Prayer does two things for us: 

1. It helps us cope with hardship.

2. It keeps us from temptation.

Suffering and hardship brings temptation: the temptation to compromise our principles, to renounce our faith in God. In the garden, Peter, James, John and the other disciples did not pray. They slept. And when the temptation came to betray Jesus, they did so in a flash. They did not pray so they did not stay!

Where do we go from here?

Most likely we will go from Gethsemane to Golgotha. Our faith will be challenged in many ways. We will be tempted by the trials of life to doubt and not believe. The key to overcoming will be to pray. That is the pathway to power in Jesus Christ. The disciples didn’t pray and they were powerless. If we truly believe, we will pray. And when we pray, we will see the power of God accomplish the things God wants done.

Jesus told his disciples that the activity of faith is prayer. And when you pray, even difficult demons can be cast out. Prayer is the pathway to the spiritual power we need.

“Lord,” we will say, “we believe; help us in our unbelief.” So that we might have power to do the work you have called us to.

--Dennis Gleason