{"id":2473,"date":"2017-07-08T21:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-07-09T04:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/?p=2473"},"modified":"2017-07-08T21:02:48","modified_gmt":"2017-07-09T04:02:48","slug":"mark-9-this-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/?p=2473","title":{"rendered":"Mark 9 – This Kind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark 9: 14-29<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark 9: 14-29
\nWhen they came back to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. Immediately, when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up to greet Him. And He asked them, \u201cWhat are you discussing with them?\u201d And one of the crowd answered Him, \u201cTeacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it.\u201d \u00a0And He answered them and said, \u201cO unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!\u201d They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. And He asked his father, \u201cHow long has this been happening to him?\u201d And he said, \u201cFrom childhood. It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!\u201d And Jesus said to him, \u201c\u2018If You can?\u2019 All things are possible to him who believes.\u201d Immediately the boy\u2019s father cried out and said, \u201cI do believe; help my unbelief.\u201d When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, \u201cYou deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.\u201d After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, \u201cHe is dead!\u201d But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up. When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, \u201cWhy could we not drive it out?\u201d And He said to them, \u201cThis kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong> \u2013 You might have noticed that the passage that was read and the passage I am looking at this morning are slightly different. I wanted you to see a little bit of the advantage we have by having four different renderings of the life of Christ.\u00a0\u00a0 As you would expect, different observers of the life of Christ saw and highlighted different things.\u00a0 Matthew was focused on the fulfilment of the OT prophecies and his stated purpose was to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, with a focus on the first century Jew.\u00a0 I can\u2019t imagine they saw the long term view of God, where God would preserve the writings of Matthew for literally thousands of years.<\/p>\n

The writing of Mark has a different emphasis, but no less inspired by the same God.\u00a0 Mark\u2019s key word is \u201cimmediately\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, in these few verses, that word (Immediately) is used THREE<\/u><\/strong> times.<\/p>\n

I have selected this passage for a principle we all tend to overlook.\u00a0 We moan and complain about it, but the principle is this \u2013 not everything is ordinary.\u00a0 It was a first century Heraclitus, a philosopher who is quoted as saying “change is the only constant in life.” We know that things are changing.\u00a0 Just look around, the world\u2019s values have changed so much in our lifetime that we wonder where they will be for our children and grandchildren.\u00a0 What used to be never discussed went from the locker room, to the board room, then found it\u2019s way to the occasional comic, and ended up being made legal by the courts of America.\u00a0 Your world and mine are obviously changing.\u00a0 The family has changed, morals have changed, things we once thought were absolute truths have moved into the realm of trying to accepting and tolerable.\u00a0 And what are the end results?\u00a0 You and I have been left to confront things we have never confronted before.\u00a0 My parents didn\u2019t have to answer the questions that parents are being asked today.\u00a0 My parents always had the fall back answer:\u00a0 Because I said so and the great number two answer, take it to bed.\u00a0\u00a0 And if the things that confront us are not enough, our faith is mugged and robbed by the attempts of science to explain away the existence of God and the authority of the Bible.\u00a0 Even from a very young age, our youth are taught to question authority.\u00a0 Now in some cases, that is a very valid warning, but when they are told to question the authorities that God has put in place to guide and protect them, then trouble comes riding in like an evil dictator.<\/p>\n

So why did I pick this verse?\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s look at the story behind the passage and I\u2019ll get to that.\u00a0 The story of this is fairly well known \u2013 it is found in Matthew, Mark and Luke.\u00a0 (Matt 17, Mark 9, Luke 9)\u00a0 Only Matthew and Mark recount the questions from the disciples after this event of the Epileptic Boy, but they all tell how the disciples were asked by a Father to heal his son.<\/p>\n

There are two people who you can feel saddened for is this passage.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The first would be the Father. Most of us know the pain of a child who is troubled and it is hard to imagine how, from the first moment this father heard of the healing ministry of Jesus and His disciples, his heart must have leapt with hope. \u00a0For some of us, the troubles of our children are superficial, but this Father had watched his son having seizures that effected \u2013 I am sure \u2013 the entire family.\u00a0 But Dad, dear old Dad, had a hope and prayer that maybe, just maybe Jesus could help.\u00a0 And when Jesus was not available, he brought his son to the disciples.\u00a0 Jesus descended from the Mount of Transfiguration \u2013 a remarkable event in and of itself \u2013 to find this man at the center of a crowd, failing the pain of disappointment in the disciples of Jesus and publicly accusing the disciples of being a collective group of failures.\u00a0 Their efforts were worthless and their impact \u2013 no different than the many healers I am sure this man had already visited.\u00a0 When confronted with this problem, they were ineffective.<\/li>\n
  2. The second group that you might feel saddened for in this passage is for the disciples. None of us like to fail, and most of all, no one likes to fail in public.\u00a0 A little about the time frame for this failure \u2013 the disciples would later have a ministry of healing.\u00a0 Luke shows the timelines as well as any of the gospels and this ministry of healing demons happens in Luke 10, but this event happens in Luke 9, so this is before they have actually gone out. But they have no doubt seen Jesus cast out demons and perhaps prior to this they have had some experience at this.\u00a0 But now, in public, they have disappointed both the father of this poor boy and those who were observing this disciples failure as a reflection of Jesus\u2019 ministry.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    So what some might consider a major setback in getting the message out that Jesus is the Promised One has quickly become a large crowd of people who are aware of the failure of the disciples.\u00a0 Jesus quickly quiets that discussion by healing the boy after a short discussion with the Father.\u00a0 Notice the cry of the father in verse 22 \u2013 \u201ctake pity on us<\/u><\/strong> and help us<\/u><\/strong>!\u201d.\u00a0 You can almost feel the pain of this dad for his son and the point that he was in this together with him in the boy\u2019s anguish.\u00a0 To turn around a phrase from Jeff Foxworthy, who says you might be a cowboy if, well, you might be heartless if you can read this account without some compassion for the Dad and the boy.<\/p>\n

    Now we come to the portion of the passage I want you to zoom in on like it was the last chocolate in box, and it just happened to be the kind you like.\u00a0 With the caramel, and nuts, and it\u2019s chewy.<\/p>\n

    The disciples came to Jesus to ask the obvious question.\u00a0 Have you thought about what the obvious question is?\u00a0 Well, if you have read ahead, you can see it.\u00a0 But they were probably all a little surprised that they couldn\u2019t cast out this demon.\u00a0 Had they suspected they couldn\u2019t do it, they would have told the Boy\u2019s father to wait until Jesus returned \u2013 they would have told the Boy\u2019s Dad that Jesus will be back, and he\u2019ll take care of this.\u00a0 Few things get the publicity like bad publicity.\u00a0 And in this case, a large crowd was gathered.\u00a0 But they get away after the event and they ask that question.\u00a0 That burning question that just won\u2019t rest.\u00a0 The kind of question you ask privately.\u00a0 The kind of question that is almost too difficult to bring up.\u00a0 \u201cWhy could we not drive it out?\u201d \u00a0The question they asked tells us that they have faced this situation before, at least they that they believe they had faced It before.\u00a0 Why did this spirit defy our ability to cast it out?\u00a0 What was so different about this thing that looked originally like it was a run of the mill problem and instead of success; we were confronted by failure and humiliation?\u00a0 Another way to read this is this: Man, we hate getting whooped and we were thoroughly whipped by that demon in the boy. \u00a0What happened?<\/p>\n

    Jesus\u2019 response is what I want to focus on \u2013 and yes, I just finished the introduction.\u00a0 So they ask a question and it\u2019s an important question, but Jesus\u2019s answer reveals something we don\u2019t think too deeply about.\u00a0 And Jesus provides a huge insight in the first two words used here.\u00a0 What are the first two words of his answer?\u00a0 Of course this is in English, I have no idea what His first two words in Greek were.<\/p>\n

    This kind<\/strong> \u2013 This kind<\/strong>.\u00a0 Jesus is doing something His disciples did not do \u2013 they weren\u2019t able to distinguish between a bad situation and a very bad situation.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t grasp the concept that not every problem that we face is the same as the one we faced last time \u2013 even though on the outside it might have looked the same.\u00a0 The disciples had no spiritual discernment in this situation.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t or didn\u2019t realize they were confronting something all together more powerful and more evil than anything they had ever confronted before.\u00a0 If you think about this in medical terms, it was truly a misdiagnosis.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t see that they were confronting something more powerful than their experience.<\/p>\n

    This is a very real danger in the lives of Christians in our day and age.\u00a0 We are not exhibiting the wisdom of discernment when we are confronted by a greater evil.\u00a0 We have joined the lethargy of the disciples of Jesus\u2019 day, who looked at evil and could not tell when things were very bad.\u00a0 And there are varying degrees of bad.\u00a0 Jesus saw this, and we should seek God\u2019s wisdom, that we might also see this too.\u00a0 We need to be people who can discern when we are in a wrestling match or an all out war against evil.\u00a0 Paul calls out different kinds of evil we wrestle with in Eph 6, where he tells us \u201cFor our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

    So why have I brought this up today.\u00a0 Here is the warning I see in this passage, and it\u2019s an important one.\u00a0 What you or I are facing today might look normal or average, but if the disciples could not discern when they were in the presence of a stronger evil power, it is quite possible you can\u2019t either. So when you in the battle, Jesus has given us instructions about how we can come out victorious \u2013<\/p>\n

    But before we go there, let\u2019s ask ourselves an honest question.\u00a0 Who might have paid the price if Jesus had not intervened in this situation?\u00a0 Who would have truly suffered if Jesus had not provided the healing the disciples could not?\u00a0 It was the boy and his father.\u00a0\u00a0 The failure might have kept the disciples up at night wondering what happened, but the boy and his father could have spent the rest of their lives struggling with something that the disciples should have been able to free them from.\u00a0 Jesus never said they weren\u2019t capable, but that the power to accomplish this was not within them.\u00a0 When you and I fail in the ministry that God gives us, when we try to face it without God\u2019s power, other will bear the cost of our failure.\u00a0 What is that failure?\u00a0 What is the thing we didn\u2019t do?\u00a0 We failed to first diagnose the evil we were confronting, and second, we failed because we were not spiritual prepared to win that battle.<\/p>\n

    We have concluded there are different kinds of evil in our world and in order to be effective against evil, we must have spiritual discernment to determine the power of the opposition. \u00a0 And we must rely on God for the power required.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Mark 9: 14-29 Mark 9: 14-29 When they came back to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. Immediately, when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[126,127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2474,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}