Amen. Just as I am, without one plea. May these words become real to us tonight as we come now to meditate upon God's holy and infallible Word. The Dutch theologian Gerardus Vos once said in his book, Biblical Theology, Faith and a desire for more faith frequently go hand in hand. The reason that through faith we lay hold upon God, and in grasping the infinite object, the utter inadequacy of each single act of appropriation immediately reveals itself in the very act of believing. I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief. Brothers and sisters, I believe that there's much noise going on in North America, in the Church, and many things are done for the Kingdom of God. But the question we need to ask ourselves as we are faced with the powers of evil and the skepticism of our days, and the Church finds itself blocked and completely helpless and powerless, is we need to realize the need of going back to our source of strength and power, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to realize that without Him, there's no way that we can stand. This is faith's power over the forces of evil. And we will look at this in the example given to us in God's Word of Mark, the Gospel of Mark, chapter 9, which we will focus tonight. Mark chapter 9. If you have a Bible, I ask you to turn to Pew Bible, it's page 709. Mark chapter 9. We will focus tonight in verses 14 to 29. But this Gospel, this Gospel of Mark, which we know is a Gospel that has often been described as a Gospel of action. And this Gospel tries to answer the question, who is this man Jesus? This miracle worker, this wondrous miracle worker, Jesus Christ. What do you make of Him? It seems like throughout the Gospel, this casting of demons that we will see in our text, is a sign of God's Kingdom coming upon us. And the question is, how will you respond to this powerful Messiah that now is on the way to Jerusalem and as a suffering servant gives a prophecy and He says, the Son of Man must be lifted up and die. In fact, this episode is framed between two of those predictions or texts. Jesus has to come down. He just came down from the beginning of chapter 9, from the Mount of Transfiguration, where He was transformed before His disciples into a glorious Christ, Son of God. And the disciples behold Him. And they were amazed by the glory of Christ revealed before their eyes. And yet now He is descending from the mountain and He is going down into the valley of darkness of a world full of forces of evil where He finds helpless disciples. He finds a world filled with this effect of sin over the mind, over the action, and everyone is confused. after the glory of the mountain peak. He goes down in the valley of our darkness. In fact, Italian painter Raffaello once painted this scene and he paints those episodes together. Jesus is on the mountain transfigured and then there is this demon, this young boy which is crawling and he's shaking together because They are tied together. Let us hear, therefore, from God's Word from verse 14 of chapter 9 of the Gospel of Mark. Hear now the powerful Word of God. 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 scribe, 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 wherever he sees him, it throws him down. 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. And 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. And then they brought him to Him. And when He saw him, immediately the Spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and waltzed, foaming at the mouth. And so he asked his 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. And Jesus said to him, If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. And immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. And when Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to its deaf and dumb spirit, I commend you, come out to 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 then many said, he's dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. When he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast it out? And so he said to them, this kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting. Let us therefore pray. Lord, we thank you for your powerful and majestic, transforming, life-giving word of God. And we ask You that now You enlighten our eyes as we meditate upon Your Word. Holy Spirit, we pray that You will use the preaching of Your Word for the comfort of Your people and for bringing more people into the sheepfold of Your flock. Help us, Lord, to realize our complete dependency upon You and our need to turn to You. We ask you this in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. So, as we read these words in the Gospel of Mark, we know that this is a record of these words that is among the longest, among the three synoptic Gospels. Mark is the one that focuses upon this episode the most. And as I said, after talking of the glory of this transfiguration, now he's going into the prediction of the cross and this valley of a battle, of a spiritual battle before our eyes. And yet, the disciples hear this prediction about the cross, and after three years of being with the Savior, they still don't get it. They still can't see. In fact, Mark describes the disciples throughout the Gospel as slow to heart, to understand, doubting. Christ has to lead these blind disciples on the way to Calvary. And although they are not enemies of the cross, they still fail. They still misunderstand. Essentially, they are helpless. without Christ. And that's us. Faith in Christ is the only thing that makes the impossible possible. It's our lack of faith that is mixed with a prayer to increase our faith in the struggle between faith and unbelief. That we need to cry out to Him in complete dependence upon Him. The first point that we see in our text is the faith's power over the forces of evil is, first of all, blocked by unbelief. And this we see from verse 14 to verse 19. Faith's power over darkness and this demon-possessed man is blocked by the unbelief of the crowd. Jesus is asked to problem-solve this confused crowd that approaches Him. He's coming down with these three disciples, John and James and Peter, and He finds the other seven disciples which are in a state of complete embarrassment. I mean, think of it. The Savior is coming and He finds me trying to minister and we're helpless. And completely impotent, surrounded by this chaotic chaos, the crowd is watching the episode, there are scribes that are discussing, they're arguing, they debate, they're doubtful, they are portrayed throughout the Gospel as enemies of the faith. So the situation is, bottom line, out of control. And what happens? Christ enters our chaos. Aren't we the same so often as Christians, as leaders? We may be well-intentioned, not necessarily enemy of Jesus, and we're fighting against Satan. And we are surrounded by the skepticism of people and unbelievers around us that are questioning us. And they say, give us a sign so that we may believe. And this is a situation that leads us to complete inability because we are not dependent And we do not realize that we desperately need Jesus. In fact, the crowds understand this better than the disciples. What do they do? They flee to Jesus as soon as they see Him. They're amazed, and perhaps they notice this light coming from the face of Christ, like Moses coming out of the mountain. In fact, Moses was with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration, right? And they see that glory, and now they say, He's going to solve our problem. And so they greet Him, and Jesus inserts Himself in the situation. And what does He say? What are you discussing about? What's the matter? Now, we don't know what the scribes were talking about. Perhaps they were mocking the disciples who were completely unable to cast this demon. Perhaps they were wondering. Perhaps they were criticizing because, again, Jesus was healing this man on the Sabbath. Or maybe they were asking, looking at one another, who can prevail against this shaking, this incredible demonic power? No one can. And yet the crowds who were mixed, perhaps some believers, understood, unlike the disciples, that Christ is the one we must run to. We must run to in our difficulties. Perhaps there are obstacles that continue to test our faith. Discouraging circumstances. Surrounding scoffers. Divine delays in your life. And yet we must trust in the Lord and lean not on our understanding. Do you believe that Christ indeed can be the solution of your problem? Wherever you are, whatever you may be going through, stop debating endlessly and depending upon men and mumbling over your situation which seems out of control and go to Him. Go to Christ with your problem, with your circumstances. Or you want Him to show up and say, oh Jesus, we were just talking about you. And we are actually, yeah, we are stuck. Don't just talk, but act. I mean, when we are sick, don't we go to the doctor? And how much with the Lord of the universe, this Son of God who was just transfigured in glory, The sad part is that this running crowd seems to get it more than often Christians do. In fact, no one has the courage to say to Jesus and answer His question until the father of this son finally says, I brought this child to your disciples. But, they're not able. They're not powerful enough. They do not have the strength to take off this demon. I mean, had not Jesus just given them authority over demons in chapter 6 of the Gospel of Mark, verse 7, verse 13? This is, you could say, a next level challenge. And what is the challenge for us? Because you see, we can receive things and God can use us, or we can... boast upon previous victories with God and something can happen, we can miss that He is the source of our power. He is the source and we must abide in Him. Christ told us if we do not abide in Him, we cannot do anything. Often we find ourselves like the disciples who are fishing in the Sea of Galilee and they didn't catch even a fish. And so, we must realize that we are helpless and unfortunately, We claim to believe so much about God and yet we experience so little of His power in our lives. Our heads are so full but yet our heart is empty. This week I was with your pastor Ryan and we went to this conference, pastor conference in Pennsylvania where the team was Again, without the Spirit, we can do much and many things, but unless the Spirit comes and enlivens us and equips us to face these challenging times, we cannot stand. And so, what does Jesus do? He rebukes, now in verse 19, this trouble-making, faithless crowd with a very harsh rebuke. He calls them a faithless generation. This is our Savior holy exasperation for their lack of faith, especially those nine who previously had done victories and they came and reported of their victories over the forces of evil in chapter 8. But now, Jesus says, how long? How long do I have to put up with you? See how He wakes us up. The problem is not that we need more faith. We haven't prayed enough. We haven't acted enough. No. Faith is not a point. Nor the fact that we need some more evidence to give to the skeptic people and quarreling atheists. The question is, are we placing our faith in the all-powerful God? Are we looking to Jesus? Or are we sinking in this Situation of storms of life. He needs to be your guide and He needs to be the one that comes right at the heart of our struggle and brings the solution to our problem. But also, He sends us a strong warning. My friend, beware of persistent doubt. Persistent doubt that leaves you in a state of continuous skepticism and your situation does not change. And it leaves you essentially like in an army without your shield of faith. You're going to face the attacks of the evil one over you, over your family, over all of your circumstances. And you have nothing to defend you without his faith. And there comes a time that this insult is so great that God withholds from acting. What did He do in Nazareth where His family, His own people? Matthew 13.58 tells us that He did not do many signs among them because of their lack of faith. In fact, He cursed Capernaum for having witnessed all of these signs and all of this. Preaching of the Word and yet had not repented. But secondly, our second point tonight is not only that faith's power over the forces of evil is blocked by unbelief, but now from verse 20 to 24 we see that faith's power over the forces of evil is tested, must be tested by the circumstances. In particular, by this unbelievable illness that we find in verse 20. It's such an illness, a shaking to the ground. It's hard to believe that this was a mute spirit that was causing, in the midst of all this crowd, all of this chaos. And yet, the situation is so harsh that Christ has to say, how long has He been so? All of His life. And now what happens? That Christ is asking those questions. He's giving a diagnosis. He knows what's the problem, but He is working with this Father, the Father of this Son, that has faced all sort of attacks from demons. This tells us that demons are real. You see, in our secular society, we have basically bought into the idea that, even among conservative people, demons are non-existent. And yet, in Christ's incarnation, demons were at the peak of their activity, in front of the Son of God, confusing people and trying to stir up chaos. And they are using our call to rejection of the supernatural to essentially make our witness to this world powerless. Powerless. Block it. And yet in verse 23 and 24, despite this unbelievable illness, we have an unbelieving faith. It is at this point that the father is desperate and he says, Jesus, if anything might be possible. Now He is not questioning that Jesus is compassionate. He says that, have mercy upon us, help us. He's not questioning His compassion. But, He has placed a condition. And that's what we often do. And there's a deeper diagnosis that Christ has to do here before He goes into the healing. And it has to do with the heart of that Father. He went left and right, this old man, seeking for man to solve his problems. He relied upon his own strength, and yet he has the Son of God who was transfigured right in front of his face, and out of his lips come these words, and he says, all things are possible for the one who believes. You see, the problem with our unbelieving faith is that we put conditions We keep doing it. How many times we put an if to our circumstances. We put God and ourselves in a box and we qualify our statement with maybe, perhaps, never, unlikely. You got to remove those conditions from your vocabulary, your thoughts, even your common sense at times. The real condition The only condition is that sometimes God does not bring a solution to our problem until we wholly lean upon Him. Until we come to a point of desperation. Until Christ deals with our deepest problem. The problem is not the severity of your case. Or that God is somehow unwilling to save or unable to save. The deeper problem that afflicts us in our human life is unbelief. We were reminded this morning of what unbelief does and the chaos that it causes in this world. But you cannot stir up faith from within. You have to leave your condition and turn up to Christ and look to Him. And you realize that this unbelief is deeply wrong. You will never bridge between your weakness and this all-sufficient God without faith. What is impossible for humans is possible for God. Faith is not concerned with having a specific deliverance from God, but it's saying to Him, O God, whether I am delivered or not from this circumstance, I place all my trust upon You alone. I will cling to you even if healing doesn't come." These words have pierced to the heart of this old man. All of his life he has looked elsewhere. All of his life. And now he is confronted to this double-edged sword of Christ and His Word. He cannot contain himself. He doesn't give up begging Jesus with a desperate call. He persists in pleading and he cries out to the Savior with a burst in tears and he says, I believe. Lord, I believe. I acknowledge your sovereignty. I believe. And you will think that this is enough? This is it? But he doesn't stop there. He cries out for help. He says, help me Christ. I have no other resource. I tried everything else and it didn't work. But then he says, help my unbelief. There's something wrong in this statement. It's a pretty deep contradiction. It's almost like a washing machine that goes up and down. And I believe, help my unbelief. How do we make sense of this? I am still struggling with doubt and yet I believe. John Calvin says on this, this old man declares that he believes and yet acknowledges himself to have unbelief. It's like a boy that is on the edge of his window and the house is on fire and there's firemen down there and they say, jump, run for your life. And He casts Himself and He throws Himself. It is a desperate call. Tears have come down. When we come to the end of our self, when God kills our pride, and God begins His work, no one is asking you to accumulate sufficient amount of faith to become a believer. You must risk everything, even with the little you have. You remove every ground of confidence in yourself. And you put all of your confidence in God alone. They can call you even a dog. Like they call that... Jesus called that pagan woman a dog. And yet she says, yes, I am a dog, but I am desperate for you, God. I am desperate. I'm craving even for a crunch of mercy from your table. This means, if you're like me, that in order to kill our pride, God has to bring us to tragic, humiliating circumstances. Sometimes God has to bring us to the end of ourselves in order to break our barriers of self-sufficiency and going from man to man to find a solution to your problem. Oh, it's time that we get on our knees and we cry, oh God, I need You. I am desperate. I give up my barriers. I risk everything. This is a frail faith. This is a comfort for many of us. True faith mourns over its own unbelief. False, pretentious faith boasts of great things in pride. Those two things are opposite. So the problem is not to say, yeah, I got everything together. True faith is mixed with doubt. And this is an encouragement for the discouraged believer. We need to ask our Lord, through His Spirit, to come to our aid, as He inserts Himself in your problem, and as your insufficiency is found by His sufficiency in Christ. We are all weak people. We all face this struggle. All of us, this unbelief is rooted in us, in our fallen human nature, and yet, call to get rid of it. And even as Christians, how many times we try to handle things on our own? How many times we find ourselves in our self-sufficiency, and over and over again, even as a believer, we go back to trusting in the old man? How many times we try to handle things on our own strength? And this type of faith, which is humble, which is weak, which is frail, which is desperate, is then comforted. There is encouragement for the doubting soul. There is encouragement that yes, indeed, true faith can be mixed with doubt. William Perkins, the famous Puritan, used to say, a will to believe is itself faith already. Christ is not limited by your weak faith. He says, those who come to Him, I will by no means cast them out. Despite this paradox going within us, as imperfect and stained with sin, our faith is already a mustard seed that is required. That's all that is taken. That is enough. And our third point is indeed that faith's power now overcomes by persistence. We come to the end of our text in verses 25 to 29, as Jesus' Word sends this evil away. He rebukes the Spirit in verse 25. "...Come out from him by his name and authority of the Son of God." Jesus expelled these demonic forces You remember that movie where this woman just started praying over her house that Satan will leave her family. And the division, the almost divorce that was coming upon her, and all of these things, and she prays in Christ's name. But disbelief and unbelief hinders. The problem is we are using His name, but we don't have that faith. And it happens like those disciples who try to cast demons in Acts of the Apostle, and the demon replies, I know Paul, I know Jesus, but who are you? This man did not approach with faith. The same casting of demons. What happens? All these demons come after them and just suck them out. But this child is now laying on the ground and the demon is gone. But people look at the child and they think he's dead, right? And we will skip over this verse 27. But the text says, This little child is now restored to sanity. He can hug his father and Jesus has become the home of this child. He arose. There's something deeper going on here. It's something that is not disconnected with the rest of the history of this Gospel, isn't it? Who's going to arise? Who is going to take over the power of death, and over darkness, and over the devil, and over the sting of death? Who is it? Whose power? Of whose resurrection? Of the Lord? of light which takes over the prince of darkness. Christ here is having already a foretaste of the coming victory over Satan at the cross. As He rises from the grave, Satan, you have no power. You have no power over death. This is the foundation of our faith, my friend. He arose And one day your fallen body and this dark that you see around us, and we see it growing and growing. We just witnessed last week a man enter into an office in Virginia Beach and he shoot people for no reason. Why? What is at work here? And yet, like the disciple, the disciples, hear this news of Jesus being alive. And what do they do? They look at the women, Magdalene and other women and say, Oh, you are out of your mind. You are out of your mind. No, Jesus is alive. We have victory. And Jesus' prayer has sent those evil away. And we have a note in our text that is not present in other Gospels that I briefly would like to look at. Verses 28 and 29, there is a discipleship lesson after the episode. As the disciples come back home, they're around the table and they're reflecting, and they say to the Master, why couldn't we cast this demon out? Now, we could expect a clear-cut answer from the Savior. Well, because of your unbelief. In fact, He called him. He mixed them with this faithless generation. They failed over and over. They are slow to heart. In fact, in Matthew 17, 20, the same episode, it says, because of the littleness of your faith. But there is also something else that is said in our text, which Jesus says, this kind of demon cannot come out but by prayer and fasting. Now, the disciples had no time to fast. The immediacy of the urgent situation was before their eyes. What is Christ pointing here? He's giving us a principle. And the principle again is this, that what does fasting and prayer point to? to our dependence, to our need to depend. How many times we become bold because of previous victories in our life, over sin and over... ministry or whatever, and because of these early successes, we end up like Saul, who was a military guide, and he thought he was going to rely on his strength, and he dies on the field, abandoned by God. Or Samson, who had those long hair, and yet, he did not know that the Lord had left him because of his sin. We start to depend on our power, and we start to use Methods, the flesh, we neglect to pray and we fail and then we wonder why we are in this chaos. Do you know that the devil has 6,000 years of experience over us? It's too powerful to respond. No, we are humbly dependent upon God. This is the only way to see His power enact. in our churches, in our situation, and also by constants. It's not just some sort of like, yeah, dependence, but also constants. Perseverance. Perhaps you have encountered a situation that seemed impossible. You don't see any exit door and then you give up. You just come to a point of just, situation is out of control. and you fell into the valley of this pond. You sink deep and you smell your fears. Before you go deeper, I ask you to reach out. Reach out to Christ. He's always there to come, to intervene. Realize that your sorrow cannot be healed in any way but by the power of His blood that was shed for you on the cross. This is the only way to get through restoration in your life. Christ has more than enough. to help us and defeat any power of evil that comes against us. He enters right at the heart of our struggle and He brings a solution. But the question is how dependent are we from Him, from His action? And we must pray for increase of faith, knowing that He sees the invisible, If we believe in Him, we will see invisible, we will believe incredible, and we will receive impossible answers. But we must do as we sing tonight, like those words, just as I am, without one plea, with many adults. Oh God, I come. This is God's invitation to sinners. Nothing is perfect, my friend. And faith will be mixed with doubt. And yet, with that little mustard seed, you come and you reach out to Him. Because the devil wants you away from God. And he will do whatever he can, so that you say, I'm not worthy, I cannot come, he will not receive me. No. This faith is the real power. Faith in Christ as the object of our faith. So what to do with our unbelief? Throw it away. Get rid of Him. Don't keep Him like a burden in your shoulder that keeps you down and sinks you and leaves you paralyzed like those disciples. Unable to do anything. Get rid of it. What to do with our faith? Cling to it. Grasp it. Reach out to it. Even in the worst desperation, even with the worst contradiction in your life, this is where God meets you. Take it to Christ. Be honest with this struggle. And Christ comes to help you in your unfirmities. This is what happens when faith in Christ, my friend, makes the impossible possible. Let us pray. O God, we thank You for Your Word tonight. And we thank You, Lord, that You show us constantly the complete mistake of relying upon self, relying upon our own strength, relying upon anything but the Lord Jesus Christ. We cast ourselves tonight on Your mercy, O God. We come just as we are, and we pray even tonight for souls who are seeking, who are struggling, who have gone through the warfare between doubts and fears and obstacles, O God, We pray that You draw us in. And You indeed draw us in. You indeed do not cast us out. Help us not to play, Lord, with unbelief. Help us not to play with these holy things as toys and realize at the end of our life that we have not indeed known this Christ that we proclaim. Lord, we wonder at the severity and yet the mercy of Your Word. And we pray that even tonight You will bring new souls to the knowledge of this faith and salvation that is found in Christ and His perfect blood. It is the only thing that can cast away all the doubts and all the fears. And so we pray that this will be a reality wherever we come from. Whatever our condition, young and old, Lord, draw us to Your Son, Jesus Christ. It is in His name that we pray. Amen.