The Healing of the Possessed Boy

The disciples tried to cast out a demon, but they couldn't do it and they asked her teacher. Why 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. Jesus taught his disciples. Sometimes there was a tinge of review. 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 returned to RC school series from the Gospel of Mark. If you're able and have your Bibles handy 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 dollars 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, one of the crowd answered and said teacher I brought you my son, who has a mute spirit whenever it seizes him and throws him down.

He foams the mouth matches his teeth and becomes rigid so I asked her disciples that they should cast about, but they could not. So the point of the discussion here was the competence 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. No justice. A little parenthesis. One of the reason why. Sometimes modern critics reject the testimony of the Bible is because they say the biblical authors ascribed 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 how I would 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 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 reach for language that would adequately express how agree Jesus this vile act was and repeatedly I heard the press describe the assassination of Kennedy in terms like this that it was us of tannic 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 present 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 the 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 frail FE is already there to exploit his power over his victim so I don't see any ultimate conflict between the accounts 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 fail in their ministry which is common in passing how common this is for the followers of Jesus to be power, less 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 on the Mount 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 Terry. There until I send the spirit after that the Holy Ghost will come upon you, and you shall receive our 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. Jesus responded to this and said oh 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 I don't have to put up with this new been with me your eyes have seen what angels wanted to look at. And still you are faithless and humanly speaking this way on Jesus that he had to exhibit such forbearance with his own pupils with his own students. Not to mention the multitudes who would also observe his ministry in this world and still people walked around with out faith so they brought this boy to him. And Jesus saw him immediately. The spirit convulsed him. He fell to the ground. He wallowed on the ground like a plague in the mud foaming at the mouth and Jesus watched this and he said to the four how long since been going on. How long is 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 listen what Jesus said in verse 23. If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes now that verse ripped out of its context has been use 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 the simplistic ministries called faith healing would 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 Told the story once before here of a young man that was a student of mine suffered from cerebral palsy. He was a dynamic Christian, a victorious Christian, a devout Christian and some of his students of the college came to him and said Harvey working 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 students it will.

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 your healed before you can be healed is like trying to give a blind man aside and tell them name and claimant 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 her eyes as I believe I believe I believe utterly of in her eyes.

I can't see a thing. So now all of a sudden the weakness is in them. They have no faith.

Nobody asked 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. That wasn't enough for Harvey first was Harvey's fault that he wasn't healed because he them the faith. So then the server and meet with you again and this time when you have an exorcism because your problem is that your 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. Spruill, do you think that I'm demon possessed.

I said no Harvey, I don't think that your 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 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. 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 they magic had an opportunity to 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 so I believe I believe I believe I believe I believe mobile Bobo, who I don't know whether you can't make a decision with your mouth to believe something. 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 suggests that all you have to do is make a decision and wall face will well up in your soul, not it doesn't work like faith comes by hearing, faith comes by the word of God. It is God who creates faith in the doubting heart of 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 though mine on belief. 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.

We move from faith to faith from life to life from grace. The great 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 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 who are assaulted with doubts and your face seems rocky and frail, tie yourself to the mast, 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 promise 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 deaf and dumb spirit, I command you come out of him. Enter him no more spirit cried out gave one last attack on the left, convulsing greatly and then came up with the boy became as one who was dead than many thought that he was dead. But Jesus took him by the hand lifted him up and he rose what you think happened to the father's face help though mine unbelief okay, stand has run belief now father now. The father looked at his son and his wholeness of the lifted cheeks, and he was filled with faith because Jesus did what he said he would do. That's what creates faith and I've always said about human relationships. It takes a long time to develop trust of people five minutes to destroy.

Who do you trust in this world. How much faith you have your friends, your spouse and 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 with 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 promise and he never will. He doesn't know how to betray his people. Finally, when they came in the house.

The disciples went up to him privately and I said well something what you did out there, but we tried it, the more house, it is that you are able to rebuke the Spirit them.

We fail. 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 Ernie's we have to plead with God, we have to make all of the means of grace that he is given his people make use of them.

Then you see God acting in behalf of his people. When I was in California might finish with this, our first conference was in the Korean Presbyterian church. They had like 10,000 members of this church. Then we went over for our conference on Saturday morning and we went into the parking lot at 730 and Saturday morning we could hardly get in the parking lot because of his massive traffic jam are all these cars leaving the parking lot at 730 the morning.

I should watch this of the people leaving us already. We have even started the conference. Then we found out that what was going on was that on Saturday morning at six 30,000 people were gathered for an hour of prayer.

They have a thousand people at the church almost every morning gathering at the church to pray for the things of God and I interviewed the pastor niece of 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's asked me how our church was us well, there we have prayer thing going in our church and handful of people are involved. We need to discover the power of kingdom focus prayer. That's what the disciples were learning in this Chiefs, the father of the possessed boy.

He 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 them humbly we receive that same compassion referred another important message from Dr. RC Sproul series from the Gospel of Mark, and you're listening to Renewing Your Mind. Each week on the Lord's day, we returned to the series and today went you give a donation of any amount to look in your ministries. We will send you RC'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. You can go online requested at Renewing Your Mind.word there are many other religion or resources that you can explore on our free mobile app you can listen to Renewing Your Mind.

There will also find articles, blog posts, podcast and video clips. Just look for ligand here in your app store connect something. The disciples will learn about humility the hard way what is says Dr. still recounts the story of the disciples argument over who would be the greatest that's next Sunday dear on Renewing Your Mind