As most of you know, our family went to Santa Barbara, CA to spend the holidays with our kids. And it truly was a great time that we had there together. The weather was fantastic, we had all our children under one roof, the house we stayed in was cool, overlooking the ocean. You just couldn’t ask for a nicer time together. And I have to admit, that just the thought of getting on the plane to come back to Delaware during the middle of the winter here was kind of tough. Little did we realize just how tough it was going to be. The weather alone here has been almost unbearable.
The questions we always get after going away like that to California is usually very similar. “Why don’t you guys move out there? You would be close to your kids. It’s such a beautiful place, the weather, the waves are great, why don’t you move out there?” And the truth is, such thoughts are tempting, especially when the temperature is in the single digits like it was last night. But the reality is that we believe this is where God has called us to live and work and minister. And it is far better to live here and be in the Lord’s will, having the blessings of God upon us, than it would be to live in what we think might be paradise and not have the Lord with us.
So in that regard, I was struck by the opening phrase in today’s text; “As they were coming down from the mountain….” As a Christian, there will be more time spent in the valley than on the mountaintop. God has not called us to live on the mountain top but to toil in the valley. We need those mountaintop experiences from time to time, but they are not intended for us to live there, but to equip us to live in the valley.
You may remember what Peter said when they were on the mountain during the transfiguration, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” “Let’s stay here and build tabernacles.” Peter was thinking, this is Paradise. Let’s stay right here. Let’s keep this going. There is no need to go back down the mountain. And I think most of us could identify with that. We would love to stay on the mountaintop. We yearn for the mountaintop experiences. Troubles and trials and heartaches are not something we want to experience. We want to avoid trials. Though God may occasionally take us to the mountaintop, yet He then leads us through the valley of death.
The Lord could not stay on the mountaintop. He had to come down the mountain and suffer and die on the cross in order to effect the salvation of mankind. Christ was in heaven with the Father before He came to earth. He left heaven to suffer and die on the cross. Peter and the disciples needed to see Christ transfigured on the mountain, and to hear the divine decree from the Father, and see the shekinah glory come down from God, but all of that was intended to equip them to be able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
So as they came down from the mountain, the Lord gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen. Why? Because they had a flawed understanding of the gospel. They had gotten a glimpse of the glory, they knew the theology of the glorious kingdom of the Messiah, but they did not understand the suffering of the cross that had to come first. So many Christians only want to see the glory. They are all in for getting stirred up by a rousing concert, or being whipped into a ecstatic frenzy in a camp meeting, or healed at a miracle service. But not many want to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
Thus Jesus said, wait until the Son of Man has risen from the dead. Dying must have seemed so incongruous with what the disciples had just witnessed. It must have taken all Peter’s resolve not to blurt out, “Not so Lord. May it never be. We will not let you die.” They did not realize that though Jesus had come as the Messiah, yet He came to die. Salvation could not happen without the cross. The glory of the Kingdom of God could only prevail on earth if it was preceded first by the suffering of the King.
Mark said they seized upon that statement, wondering what rising from the dead meant. They might have thought it referred to the general resurrection. They wanted to focus on the glory. He wanted them to focus on the cross. Hence they ask about the glory of the Messiah, and how the prophecy stated that Elijah must come first. He, on the other hand, responds by asking a question of HIs own about the prophecy concerning the suffering of the Messiah. Vs.12 “And He said to them, ‘Elijah does first come and restore all things. And yet how is it written of the Son of Man that He will suffer many things and be treated with contempt?’”
That illustrates a good point. The gospel must be taken fully and completely to be the truth. We dare not capitalize on certain texts which we find appealing, and leave others dangling which are not quite to our liking. The disciples were undoubtedly referring to Malachi’s prophecy concerning Elijah who would prepare the way for the kingdom to be inaugurated by the Messiah. The language of Malachi evokes a picture of the glorious kingdom of the Messiah.
Malachi 3:1 "Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming," says the LORD of hosts.”
And then in Malachi 4:1-3, 5-6 it says "For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze," says the LORD of hosts, "so that it will leave them neither root nor branch." 2 "But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. 3 "You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing," says the LORD of hosts. ... 5 "Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. 6 "He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”
All of that prophecy indicates the Lord establishing His glorious kingdom by judgment and power, and that Israel will participate in that glory. But Jesus understands that there is another aspect of the gospel, that is that the Messiah will suffer and die so that He might bring about salvation for all men.
Jesus was probably referring to the prophecy in Isaiah 53 where it says in chapter 3 vs 3 “He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. 6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” There were other such prophecies in the Old Testament, such as in the Psalms which talked of the suffering of the Messiah, but the theology of the Israelites had conveniently overlooked them.
So Jesus said Elijah did come already. He was speaking of John the Baptist. Jesus had already said in Matthew 11:14, “If you’re willing to accept it, or willing to accept the truth, John himself is Elijah who was to come.” And the angel had testified concerning John’s birth that John was coming in the spirit of Elijah as recorded in Luke 1:17 "It is he who will go as a forerunner before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, TO TURN THE HEARTS OF THE FATHERS BACK TO THE CHILDREN, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
So Jesus said in vs 13 "But I say to you that Elijah has indeed come, and they did to him whatever they wished, just as it is written of him.” They put John the Baptist to death. They rejected the forerunner and herald of the Kingdom of God. They would also reject the King when He came and do unto Him as they pleased. They would put Him to death.
There is a sense in which Jesus is teaching them through John the Baptist’s example, that if you would follow Him, you also can expect persecution, even death. This was certainly not something that the disciples were thinking about or looking forward to. In fact, later on in this chapter, Jesus asks them what they were thinking about, and Mark says they had been discussing who would be the greatest among them. They were in effect, fighting over the chief seats in the rule of the Kingdom when it came in with glory. They had no concept of the suffering that must come first.
But the fact is, that Jesus had been teaching them that if you wanted to be His disciple, you had to take up your cross and follow Him. In the previous chapter, Jesus said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” Not only had Christ come to take up His cross, but all who will be His disciples must take up there cross as well. We must die to self. We must die to this world. And very often, that means that we will suffer the loss of much of what this world counts as dear, for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus and being counted as one of His own.
According to the gospel, glory follows suffering. Paul says in Romans 8:17 and if [we are] children, [then we are] heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
The cross represents suffering, which is equivalent to a life of faith; believing in what is not seen. The cross and resurrection would mean that Jesus would be absent. He would not be physically with the disciples continually, whenever they found themselves dealing with the trials of this world. So it would be necessary to learn to live by faith, which is a type of suffering, putting to death the physical and learning to live in the spiritual. When the cross is borne now, then glory will come later.
And yet the irony is that we fully expect glory now. When the cross comes, we find it unbearable, untenable with our tightly held expectations of what glories we believe are guaranteed to be the day to day experiences of the Christian life. We misunderstand the reality of our calling. We misunderstand the gospel.
So they came down the mountain, and they find there a vivid illustration of what is often the reality of the Christian life as we walk through the valley. They found scoffing, sarcastic scribes. They found disciples that are impotent of any power to heal a demonized boy. They found a person that is held captive by the devil, that is incapacitated in regards to life. They found a demon that wanted to destroy this young boy and ruin his father’s life. And they found a crowd that is watching. What a picture of the world that is waiting at the bottom of the mountain, as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. There are the scoffers, ridiculing us for our weaknesses. We find that we are often impotent to effect real change in the world around us. We find loved ones that are caught up in sin and held captive to the devil to do his will. We see a devil that is bent on destroying lives and seemingly be successful at it. And we see a world that is watching, wondering why these so called followers of Christ are so powerless to do anything to help.
So Jesus is going to use this situation to teach His disciples how to operate in such a fallen, hopeless world. He is going to teach them how to live by faith. So He asked his disciples, “What are you discussing with them?” I think it was the equivalent of “What’s going on here?” And a man from the crowd answered, "Teacher, 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.”
Some commentators have said that this was a case of simple epilepsy. But I don’t think so because his father says he was possessed with a spirit, he was mute, and Jesus adds later that he couldn’t hear either. And Mark adds that it was a spirit which threw him to the ground.
Vs. 20 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. 21 And He asked his father, "How long has this been happening to him?" And he said, "From childhood. 22 "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!”
I want to point out that Jesus doesn’t ask these questions such as we see here in this text because He doesn’t know the answer, but because He wants to illustrate to the disciples the dire nature of the infirmity. He wants them to understand the complete hopelessness of the situation.
And that is important for us to realize as well. Before we can be successful in our walk of faith, we need to recognize the hopelessness of our condition. This young man and his father are a picture, albeit almost a caricature, of the sinful condition of the entire human race. I have often thought of this example in regards to the condition of an addict. They are so helpless many times to help themselves. The drugs or alcohol have completely taken over and the devil seems intent on destroying them. I think the hopelessness of the father is similar to the hopelessness of parents who see their child suffering the devastating effects of addiction.
But in reality, addiction is not so different than the effects of the sinful condition of us all. Though to us some sins don’t seem as destructive or damning as others, yet the fact is that Satan has duped us all to sin, and all sin is damning and ends in destruction.
So to the question, “If you can…” Jesus responds, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”
The first problem that Jesus identifies is that of unbelief. This is the real nature of sin; it is unbelief. Sin is not believing what God has said, and instead believing in your own interpretation, in your belief in yourself that you know what is best, that you can handle it, that you have it under control. Belief is simply surrendering control to God, who has the power to deliver us from sin on the basis of our belief in Christ.
That’s why Jesus starts out the conversation by saying, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?” It’s not just the lack of faith of the disciples who could not heal, it’s not just the small faith of the father, or the unbelief of the crowd, but He is speaking of the unbelief of a generation, of the human race. The greatest unbelief is holding onto the lie of the devil that we can make our own decisions. That we can determine for ourselves good from evil. That we can know how to live life according to our terms. That’s the sin that Eve was tempted with. She was tempted to determine for herself what was good and evil. To be wise like God. We think we know better than God what is good and evil. And so we decide for ourselves, and the result is that we fall for the devil’s lies and eat of the forbidden fruit and as a result we are damned. And then the devil takes liberty through our sin and destroys us.
Belief then is not just believing that God exists, or even that Jesus exists. The people there that day could see Jesus. They believed He was real. But belief is believing that Christ is the Son of God, and that only through Him was their deliverance from sin, when one submits completely to His Lordship of their life.
And by extension that doctrine of faith speaks to the time when Christ would die and be resurrected and no longer be with them on earth. What the Lord was trying to teach the disciples, is that belief, or faith, is believing in what you cannot see. Heb. 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” After His resurrection, when He would no longer be there with them, there would be a need for an increased faith on their part, to believe that He was with them, when they no longer could see Him. Faith is living not on the basis of what we can experience on a physical level, but living according to the word of God, believing what He has promised, when there is no physical evidence to support it.
So the answer of Jesus to their unbelief was that all things are possible to him that believes. Such a broad, all encompassing statement. We have to be careful not to make it a doctrine that stands alone, isolated from other scripture. But we need to recognize that it is meant as an explanation of the doctrine of faith. In other words, what is possible to him who has faith? All things. The Bible says that whatever is not from faith is sin. So faith is the means of righteousness. Romans 1:17 says, The righteous man shall live by faith.” And then in Romans 4:5 it says, “faith is credited as righteousness.” Romans 9:30 says “righteousness is by faith.” So it is clear then that all things, all good things, the life which is from God, is available by faith.
Now the answer of the father is a great answer and one that speaks for all of us; “I do believe; help my unbelief.” A little faith is all that is required for receiving more faith, when that faith is centered on Jesus Christ. In other words, to him who has, more shall be given. We see that expressed in Romans 1:16-17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.” Our faith in Christ’s righteousness, results in our righteousness, which increases our faith, as we go from faith to faith, that we may do even greater works.
Now Mark goes on to record how the Lord delivered this boy from the power of the unclean spirit. And it’s worth noting that the demon screamed and threw him into such terrible convulsions that the boy seemed to have died. You know, as we saw in our study of Daniel a few weeks ago, there are some demonic angels that are more powerful than other angels. Jesus Himself seems to infer to the disciples when they ask why they could not cast him out, that there are varying degrees of strength in demonic forces, by use of the phrase, “this kind.” As if to infer that there are various kinds. Ephesians 6 gives us the same sense of hierarchies of demonic forces.
But the point of this miracle is not to teach about demons, because Jesus has authority over all demons, stronger or weaker as they may be. But the point is to teach the disciples the necessity of living by faith, especially in light of the fact that He would soon be leaving them. So when they ask Him why they could not cast out this demon, He says, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.”
What Jesus is teaching is not a prayer formula for casting out demons. Notice that Jesus Himself doesn’t pray to cast out the demon. So there is no formula. What He is teaching is the necessity for a dependent relationship with Jesus Christ. The King James Version adds, “prayer and fasting.” More modern translations don’t include the phrase “and fasting.” But the important thing is not whether you eat or don’t eat, but that you have an intimate, continual relationship with the Lord that is exemplary of the principle of “faith to faith.” Where you are in a continual, constant communication with the Lord, dependent upon His leading and guiding in all situations. And that relationship for us is only achievable through faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And faith is expressed through prayer, as we talk to the Lord and commune with Him.
If you will remember, at the transfiguration God gives the disciples the first key to being able to walk through the valley when they would come down from the mountain. God said, “This is My Beloved Son, listen to Him!” The first key to our walk when we come down off the mountain is that we rely totally upon the written word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to listen continually to the Word.
The second key that we see illustrated here is that we must understand the doctrine of the cross must be central in our lives. Not just the atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins, but the cross that we must bear as well, as we die to the world and walk by faith in the power of Christ.
The third key is that of faith. Believing and trusting in His power and His promises that will not fail, in spite of what the world seems to tell us.
And finally, the last key is to stay in communion with the Lord through prayer. Prayer is the connection back to God, it completes the circuit of our faith through which we have power in the darkness. This world is a dark place. But we are called to be lights in a dark world, to be lights on a hill. The world is watching. We are to be working for the kingdom. We are to carry on the business of the kingdom until the King returns. And if we are to be successful we must stay in the word, listening to the Lord through His word. We must take up our cross, realizing that glory follows suffering for His sake, and dying to the lusts of the world. We walk by faith and not by sight, and we must maintain prayer without ceasing as we rely constantly on the leading of the Holy Spirit.
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