Mark 9:20-24 "I Believe -Help My Unbelief"

          When it comes to true faith, we have a dilemma.  Our dilemma is that we might truly want to believe, but our experiences in life kind of put a damper on our faith –our ability to believe.  Let’s be honest.  We are skeptical by nature.  We really do want to grab a hold of all of the Bible's promises and believe them with all of our hearts, but when our experiences collide with the promises, when the physical world collides with the supernatural, we tend to think the physical is dominant.  But this is the very crux of what it means to be people of faith.  It’s not a matter of wishing harder –it’s not a matter of trying harder –it’s not a matter of setting aside our logic and our reason –it’s not a matter of hoping for the impossible –it’s simply a matter of believing that when the two worlds collide, the divine supercedes the mundane –the spiritual is stronger than the physical.  When we begin to grasp that, all things are possible.

         But even the ability to see these things with our spiritual eyes and receive them with our hearts is a gift from God.  There’s a story in the Bible that illustrates.

Mark 9:20-24

So they brought him to Him. When the spirit saw Him, it immediately convulsed the boy. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. “How long has this been happening to him?” Jesus asked his father.
“From childhood,” he said. “And many times it has thrown him into fire or water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
Then Jesus said to him, “‘If You can’? Everything is possible to the one who believes.”
Immediately the father of the boy cried out, “I do believe! Help my unbelief.”

 

          What I want to really call attention to is this desperate father’s simple prayer – a prayer Jesus answered –“I believe, help my unbelief.”  Sometimes that’s the best we can do –we come to God in obedience, ask Him to act, to provide, to heal, to restore, to fill and empower us to do the things He wants us to do –all the while knowing that it’s beyond our ability –yet asking God for the faith, the belief that is necessary to trust Him.  I have no ability to do the supernatural –but the Holy Spirit in me is, in fact, supernatural.  God, help me believe that when the two worlds collide, the supernatural overwhelms the natural.  I do believe –help my unbelief.

         If this is starting to make some sense to you, why don’t you pray that simple prayer out loud to God, right now.  “God, I do believe –help my unbelief.”

John 14:12 "Greater Works Than These"

I fully accept Jesus as my Savior, my Healer, my Sanctifier, and my King. So, I believe Him when He made the radical statement in John 14:12:

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

At first that seems like an impossible, almost insane statement. Think about it. Jesus, according to the Bible healed the sick and made the blind to see and the lame to walk. He cast our demons. He calmed storms. He knew what men were thinking in their hearts. He fed thousands of people with a little sack lunch of a couple of fish and a loaf of bread. Jesus did a lot of things that we would call miracles –things that normal everyday people like us can’t do. But Jesus did them.

And the normal explanation that most Christians seem to grab onto is that Jesus could do these things because He was God. The Bible teaches that Jesus is God –Jesus affirmed that He and the Father are one and the same –Jesus said that no-one can come to God accept through Him. So, we have grabbed onto the fact of Christ’s deity as an explanation of how He could do the miraculous.

But to attribute the miracles to His deity means we have to ignore what Scripture teaches about Jesus and what He said about Himself. For instance, In Philippians 2:5-7 we are told that even though Jesus was God, He did not consider equality with God something to be held onto and emptied Himself and became fully human. And in Galatians 4:3-5 we are told that Jesus was born as a human, fully under the law. In both John 8:28 and John 14:10, Jesus said that He did not act in His own authority, but the authority of the Father who dwelled in Him -He only did what the Father told Him to do.

So what the Scriptures tell us about Jesus and what Jesus told us about Himself is that although He existed as God before taking the form of a human, as a human, Jesus laid His deity aside and lived among us fully human. He didn’t do all those miracles as God, He did them as a human living in absolute right relationship to God. He not only did miracles, but lived a sinless life as a human empowered by the Holy Spirit, intimately connected to the Father.

We, of course, are not exactly like Jesus. We didn’t have the option to enter life sinless and without a predisposition to sin like Jesus did –that’s what the virgin birth was all about. That isn't part of our story –but, since through the shed blood of Jesus, His death and resurrection, we are forgiven and made right with God, and since we also now have the Holy Spirit to endwell and fill and empower us, we now have the Spirit-empowered abilities that Jesus had. Sinless Jesus walked and talked and taught and did the Father’s will through the intimacy made possible through the Holy Spirit. Although not sinless, we are forgiven of our sins and have the exact same Holy Spirit with us that Jesus had with Him. If we choose, as Jesus did, to walk in the Spirit, we can do the things that He did. That’s His promise. He said it clearly. We can choose to not believe it –but not believing doesn’t change the fact that the promise was made, and therefore possible.

Can you see the implications that this has for us as Believers? Christians filled with the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus promised, will do the same Spirit empowered things that Jesus himself did. The sick will often be healed. God will speak to our hearts. Motives of the heart will be discerned. Miracles will happen. Those in spiritual bondage will be freed. The broken-hearted will be restored. The demonic will be confronted. The works of the devil will be destroyed. We will literally be the Body of Christ -His continuing presence -His ambassadors.

Kingdom Rights

Kingdom people have no earthly rights -we give up our rights for the sake of our King.

You think I'm wrong?  Ask Hosea why he is still married to an unfaithful prostitute?  Ask Ezekiel why he is lying on his right side (for 390 days)?  Ask Jeremiah what he is doing down in that cistern?  Ask dignified Isaiah why he is walking around naked?  Ask Joseph why he is in prison?  Ask Job what happened to his children?  Ask Paul what all those bruises and scars are about?  Ask Peter why he is upside down on a cross?  Ask our Lord and Savior, Jesus, why He -the Lord of all Creation, King of Kings, God of gods, is dying a criminal's death?  These are Kingdom leaders.  These are people living in God's favor.  These are people of influence.  These are people who manifested and walked in true spiritual power.

The incredible thing is that these people would do it again -they counted it a privilege to serve God, even under persecution, even when they didn't understand, even when death was the inevitable result.

Two things seem obvious to me.  First, most people don't really understand the Kingdom -they never did and they never will.  Second, those who begin to understand the Kingdom -those who even just scratch the surface of understanding -realize that the Kingdom, intimacy with God, the love of Father is worth more than life itself.

John 5:39-40, 45-47 "A Sad Plight"

“You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life....“Yet it isn’t I who will accuse you before the Father. Moses will accuse you! Yes, Moses, in whom you put your hopes.  If you really believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me.  But since you don’t believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”

 In Jesus day, many religious leaders searched and studied the Scriptures.  They had a high regard for Scripture.  They believed and taught that Scripture was given by God and inspired by God.  So, they memorized Scripture and quoted Scripture and argued Scripture.  They immersed themselves in Scripture -and yet, they missed something vital that ended up condemning them instead of saving them.  They missed that the entire Old Testament was pointing to the coming of Messiah (Jesus).  As a result, they rejected Jesus, and having rejected their one hope of salvation, were by default condemned.  A sad plight.

Today, many Christians have a similar issue with the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit.  Believing that all we need is Scripture, they immerse themselves in Scripture, memorize Scripture, argue Scripture, quote Scripture, and yet still deny what the Scriptures themselves tell us concerning the Holy Spirit.  Nobody reading Scripture could ever come to the conclusion that all we need for effective ministry and godly living is Scripture -the Scriptures don't teach that.  The Scriptures teach us and show us about lives lived in intimate communion with the Holy Spirit, receiving intimate and personal revelation through prayer, healing the sick through the laying on of hands, living in the everyday prophetic -words of knowledge and wisdom and insight, etc.  This is all part of what sets Christianity apart from every other world religion.  This is the difference between religion and relationship.  The Holy Spirit actually indwells us -lives in us.  Why would any Believer want to deny the awesome, intimate power that is inherent in the reality of God in us?

Scripture is wonderful.  It is God's word.  It is a gift from God.  It is useful for such things as teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.  Scripture is from God, but it is not God.  It is not incidental that God's plan for His people includes the Holy Spirit in us ministering to us and through us.  This reality makes it possible for us to literally be the Body of Christ.  

John 5:17-24 "Was Jesus God?"

The Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules.  But Jesus replied, “My Father is always working, and so am I.”  So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.
 So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does....Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent him.
“I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life."

The central issue of Christianity has to do with Jesus.  As Christians we believe that Jesus was/is the Jewish Messiah sent by God;  based upon the claims of Jesus and the eyewitnesses to His actions and teachings -and then later, our own experiences with God through Jesus, we also believe that Jesus was not merely sent by God, He was/is God.  Not that He is a different God than the Father or the Holy Spirit, but that all three persons -Father, Son and Holy Spirit comprise one God.

Many people assume that Jesus never claimed to be God.  This is wrong.  The religious rulers of the day decided that Jesus had to be executed because of these very claims.  In our passage today we hear Jesus saying that God is His Father, that He does everything that God does, that we cannot worship God without also worshiping Him, and that spiritual life is only found in Him.

Since Jesus made these outrageous claims, we cannot believe that Jesus was simply a good moral teacher.  Good moral teachers do not claim to be God.  Good moral teachers do not redirect glory and worship from God to themselves.  Good moral teachers do not claim to hold the power to forgive men's sins and offer eternal spiritual life.

Either Jesus was who He claimed to be -in which case He was a good moral teacher, a prophet, the Messiah, and God -or He was a treacherous liar of the worst kind.  I believe He is who He claimed to be.

John 5:8-13 "Keeping the List"

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”  At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,  and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

One of the problems with legalism (religion based upon rules) is that it always ends up as keeping a checklist of does and don'ts rather than allowing attitudes and behaviors to be shaped by love for God.  Legalism does not produce either intimacy or relationship -the best that can be said is "I kept the rules."

Because life is complicated, however, and every contingency can not possibly be covered by a list, rules need to be interpreted.  This where legalism becomes a slippery slope.  Because keeping a list of rules does not produce intimacy or relationship, legalists cannot use knowledge of God or God's heart or God's character as a basis for interpreting God's rules.  Instead, they must interpret the rules with their own unspiritual understanding and thinking -which usually results in more rules that are not necessarily God's rules.

Even worse, legalists seem to think that the best way to prove their zeal for God is by forcing their new man-made rules onto everyone else.  What always results eventually is people sincerely believing that they are serving God by imposing rules that are actually contrary to God's desires.   We see an example of that in this story.

God's law was simply that we should not work on the Sabbath -and instead keep it set apart as a day to remember Him and worship Him.  The temple leaders decided that Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath was work and that the healed man picking up his mat and walking home was work.  Instead of their hearts being moved to worship such a compassionate, loving, merciful God (as evidenced by the healing), their hearts were moved to anger because they believed rules had been broken.

In the big picture, this legalism trap can be avoided by actually learning to love God and love others -by making what Jesus called the greatest commandment primary.  Jesus said if we could love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves, the law would end up being fulfilled.  

We might wonder, then, are God's rules and laws irrelevant?  Not at all.  They set the proper boundaries for our lives.  It's just that we cannot interpret them correctly by adding new rules -we only interpret God's rules correctly in light of His love.

John 5:1-8 "Healing Choices"

After this, Jesus went to Jerusalem for a religious festival.  Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool with five porches; in Hebrew it is called Bethzatha.  A large crowd of sick people were lying on the porches—the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.  A man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus saw him lying there, and he knew that the man had been sick for such a long time; so he asked him, “Do you want to be well?” The sick man answered, “Sir, I don't have anyone here to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am trying to get in, somebody else gets there first.”
Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.” 

 This has always been an interesting passage to me because of the sick man's response to Jesus.  Local legend said that an angel occasionally stirred the waters of the pool of Bethesda (Bethzatha) and that the first sick person to enter the water after it had be stirred would be healed of any physical ailments.  The Bible doesn't teach that this was true, just that the local people believed it.

Evidently, this particular man who was an invalid and could not walk had been coming to the pool for 38 years.  Jesus saw him laying there beside the pool on a mat and was moved with compassion.   He asked the man, "Do you want to be well?"

We would think that the man would say, "Of course I want to be well!  That's why I'm here.  I want to walk and run and jump. Yes, I want to be well."  But that's not what the man said.  Instead, he responded with an excuse of sorts.  he explained why he would never be well..."I don't have anyone to help me..."  

It seems that his physical condition had become his identity.  He was the poor lame man with nobody to help him and that's just the way things were.  In this story, of course, Jesus healed him anyway.

As I read this, I am reminded of how much we are just like this lame man.  We have all sorts of physical, spiritual and emotional problems that Jesus is willing to heal.  He asks, "Do you want to be well?" And in our hearts we put up walls and refuse to hope and decide not to risk exercising the faith to believe that Jesus has something better for us than our current damaged, broken condition.  We have taken our identities in sin and shame instead of in Christ.  Yet Jesus continues to ask us, "Do you want to be well?"

Sometimes the right response is simply, "Yes, Lord Jesus, I want to be well."