The Fight for Belief (Mark 9:1-29)

Intro

Running the Race, long and hard. 

Recap of Mark

Back in February we began going through the gospel of Mark. From February until right before Memorial Day, we worked our way each Sunday through Mark, seeing Jesus and his public ministry among the Jewish people. 

In our time in Mark we have already learned that Jesus is the beloved Son of God, and we will continue to be reminded of that. We have seen that Jesus is one who has authority over nature and sickness. He is one who teaches with great authority. 

And yet, even with his great authority, Jesus has already begun to have those who opposed him. They questioned him, they doubted him. 

And when we were last in Mark, we saw Peter confess that Jesus is the Christ, the long awaited Messiah King who had come. And Jesus affirmed this and then began to tell the disciples that he must suffer and die and be raised from the grave. And it is at the end of this teaching where we jump back into Mark this morning. 

Main Point

The battle for faith is often challenging Christian, yet Christ is there to help us to fight for faith as he points us more to himself.

Points

1. The fight for faith in waiting for future glory

2. The fight for faith in the midst of present sufferings

3. The fight for faith in the need for constant dependence

The fight for faith in waiting for future glory

The Kingdom coming with Power

The fight for faith is real and hard. Faith is believing in the unseen, and it is challenged by the ongoing pressures of the world around us on a daily basis. The battle for faith is not won in a moment either, but slowly through time. One particular part of our battle for faith comes in the midst of waiting in the unseen. Awaiting future glory. In particular for the first disciples, they were struggling to grasp the reality of Jesus, the Messiah King sharing that he would suffer and die. In order to help them begin to rightly grasp the Kingdom of God, Jesus here in Mark 9:1 tells his disciples that some standing with him will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come with power. He shares this as a means of encouragement to the disciples, that they themselves are going to see the kingdom of God come with power, at least some standing there.

Some scholars take, some here, to refer to Peter, James, and John who go up the mountain with Jesus and see the Transfiguration in the next scene of Mark’s gospel. However, I think if you follow with me that he here is referring to the 11 with the exclusion of Judas, the one who will betray him. Jesus has already begun to tell the disciples back in chapter 8, verse 36 what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? In other words, it is alluding to Jesus selling Jesus for silver and forfeiting his soul in the coming betrayal. But then, next week, we will be looking at Mark 9:30-32 which will tell again of Jesus’ coming death and resurrection and that he, the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men. Who will deliver him? Judas. Then in Mark 14:10-11 we see that Judas went to the chief priests to betray Jesus. Judas is going to be left out of seeing the Kingdom of God come with power because of his betrayal and his taking his own life. 

But, the other 11 are going to see the Kingdom of God come in power in Jesus’ resurrection, his ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:6-9 says:

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

However, not only is this promised power to come and be seen by the disciples, Jesus then takes his three closest disciples up a mountain with him 6 days following Jesus telling of his coming death and resurrection for the first time and this coming power. As they get to the top of the mountain by themselves, Jesus becomes transfigured. Think of the word metamorphosis here, meaning to change. Jesus is transformed from what he was wearing to being suddenly radiant and intensely white. It even says there in verse 2, that his clothes were as no one could even bleach them. In other words, they are purer than pure white.

Here as Jesus is transfigured, again, that is changed, he reveals the fullness of his glory. For Moses, as he was in the presence of God on Mount Sinai receiving the law, Moses face shined after being in the glory of the LORD. Here though with Jesus, he is not like Moses in being a man before God, he is being described with the complete glory of the LORD. For these pure white garments are what we see again in Revelation 7:9-10 which says:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with pal branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!”

The transfiguration of Jesus is revealing to the three the fullness of Jesus and his glory as the Only Son who has come to reveal the glory of the LORD. And as Jesus is transfigured, Moses and Elijah appear and begin talking with Jesus as we see there in verse 4. Moses being the human author of the first five books of the Bible known as the Torah, the law. Elijah was a prophet of the Lord who was taken up in a whirlwind to be with God. Elijah was a prophet who challenged the false prophets of Baal. Their appearance was not to show them being equal with Jesus, but that he was the fulfillment of all that they pointed too. Jesus came to fulfill the law, Jesus was the final prophet in which God had come to reveal himself through. Jesus was to be the focus here. Unfortunately, Peter misses this with what he says in verse 5, it says…

Fear in seeing glory

Peter in his being terrified as noted in verse 6, mistakes the presence of Moses and Elijah to be permanent with Jesus. Hence the desire to build the tents for the three. It is this in this terrified state that Peter and John and James miss the point, they miss why Moses and Elijah are there to further show Jesus’ glory and authority over both of these faithful servants. But it is in the midst of this being terrified that the fight for faith

But, notice where the fight for faith begins to struggle here, the fight for faith comes in missing Jesus as the prominent figure in the storyline of the Bible. Christian, if you are looking for heroes in the Bible, there is but 1, and that is Jesus. For it is Jesus and Jesus alone who the whole Bible is pointing us to over and over again. This happens to Peter as he is fearful and speaks, saying let's make tents for the three in Jesus, Elijah, and Moses. Fear causes Peter to put equal honor in all three. Moses and Elijah were faithful servants of the LORD, but both were not God’s promised one who came to deliver God’s people from sin, Jesus is. And Jesus alone is the prominent figure. And Jesus alone is going to dwell with Gods’ people, not Moses and Elijah.

And the same dangers appear for us as we become terrified and respond in fear, we miss the point of God’s means. We miss the point and begin to look in the wrong places and the wrong people and the wrong means. In the church over the last decade or two, the church in fear of being left behind by an ever changing culture has sought to be relevant. In this process the church has looked for charismatic, motivational speakers. The church has tried to become appealing to the lost in order to attract them. The attention has turned from Christ inward to the individual and making church about them. And all of this is rooted in our eyes shifting from Jesus to other places. In the race to be relevant, the church has lost her way to being first and foremost the bride of Christ!

Brothers and sisters, in seeing the glory of the LORD, our attention must be on him alone. For it is with our attention on the Son, then our priorities will be straight, our mission will remain in tact. But the moment we begin being lured away into the schemes of the world, we will miss the point of Jesus glory having been shown and revealed. It was revealed that we may make much of him in all that we do, declaring the greatness of who he is and what he has done. And this is done not by us shallowing Christianity to make it more appealing, for in doing so we lose the depth and beauty of Christ. No, to put the full glory of who Jesus is, we must go deeper in our theology, we must go deeper into the knowledge of God, and then rightly and clearly declare the truths of who God is to the watching world from the tips of our tongues so that their ears may hear and believe. In our fight for faith, our eyes must stay focused on Jesus, lest like Peter and the others we miss the point.

Listening to the Son

Therefore, we must listen to the Beloved Son. This is exactly what the LORD shows us in verses 7 & 8, it says…

As Peter seeks to make three tents for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, God steps in with the cloud overshadowing them and his voice speaking, telling them that it is Jesus who is the Beloved Son, and that they are to listen to him. 

You see Christian, our great duty is to hear this Beloved Son, to listen to his marching orders, not our own. The temptation is for us to think we are our own and that we call the shots. However, the reality is that we have never been our own. God made us in his image and we are his creation. Therefore, he is the one who calls the shots. And then, for those of us who are in Christ, we have been purchased from sin and death by the blood of Jesus. Therefore as we are in Christ, it is he who has bought us and called us to follow Him. Thus, we need to ensure that we are hearing the words of Jesus ringing out through the pages of the Bible and holding to them, abiding in them, and following his voice. 

But also notice, not only are we called to listen to the Son, after the cloud fades, what is left? Jesus alone! Elijah and Moses don’t remain, showing that they don’t have a permanent standing. And Jesus doesn’t leave in glory and abandon the disciples. He stays with them and comes down the mountain. He will complete his mission at the cross for our sakes, to deliver us from sin and death. Jesus, the Beloved Son is there with us and will never abandon those who are his.The disciple of Jesus has the assurance that Jesus will be with them always to the end of the age. Christian, as we fight for faith, let this rich truth give us strength and comfort in the midst of the battle as we await for glory in Christ’s return. For even now, he is with us through the gift of the Holy Spirit, let us take heart in that.

The fight for faith in the midst of present sufferings

But, our fight for faith isn’t over just in battling waiting for glory, there is a fight for faith in the midst of present sufferings that we now turn our attention to in our second point this morning. 

Jesus, Peter, James, and John begin coming down the mountain there in verse 9 after the transfiguration. And as they are coming down, Jesus instructs them that they are to tell no one what they had seen, until he, the Son of Man, had risen from the dead. And it is here that becomes another stumbling block for the three. And they began questioning what this rising from the dead meant. The disciples still couldn’t grasp the necessity of the Son of Man, the Beloved Son having to die and go to the cross. And as they begin questioning it, notice what they ask in verse 11. “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?”

Yes, it was Moses and Elijah who both had appeared in a vision with Jesus in the transfiguration. However, what the disciples were asking was why did it say that Elijah must come again in time and place. But of course the disciples had missed that indeed Elijah had already come in John the Baptist. The Spirit of Elijah that fell onto Elisha and now came and was in John the Baptist in his life and ministry. And it is John the Baptist who came as the forerunner to prepare the way of the LORD. We saw briefly this account of John the Baptist preparing the way back in Mark 1 as he was baptizing people with a baptism of repentance. 

And it was this same John the Baptist who had come and that they did to him whatever they pleased, referring to Herod beheading him and handing it on a silver platter to Herodias. And while Mark’s gospel doesn’t explicitly make this connection for us, Matthew’s rendition of this same account makes it very clear as it says there in Matthew 17:13, Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist. 

And the reality is, if they did these things to the forerunner, the one preparing the way for the Messiah, how much worse were they going to do to the Messiah himself? It is this that Jesus is getting at there in verse 12 in showing how it has already been said of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt. Of course one of the clearest places in Scripture that is laid out of the Suffering Servant is that of Isaiah 52 and 53. Where it is told that the Suffering Servant would be pierced for our transgressions, led like a sheep to slaughter. And yet, in the fight for faith this reality continues as a stumbling block for the disciples to grasp that Jesus must suffer. They saw Jesus as only one who was to come and be crowned King and conquer in re-establishing Israel. But that is not at all what Jesus came to do. He came to suffer in our place, that we could have life in him. 

Lest we think it was just Peter and James and John that struggled to get this, there are many still who struggle in the fight for faith in grasping the significance of the cross. There are some around the world, especially of the Muslim faith who have a stumbling block to get to the cross of Jesus. For they think that it is impossible for a prophet to suffer such a shameful death, and that it had to have been Judas on the cross. They miss that Jesus willingly went to the cross though to purchase us from our sin.

But more for many Christians, our battle for the faith in regards to suffering is that we miss the cost of us suffering as we fellow Jesus. If Jesus suffered, if John the Baptist suffered, how much more so still will we as his followers suffer? Many, especially in our current American Evangelical circles, think that coming to Jesus is a call to comfort and ease, not a call to suffer. And that is far from the case. Jesus told his early disciples that to follow him meant taking up their own crosses and dying to self as we follow him. We saw this back in May there in Mark 8:34. Christian, the battle for faith is going to be at the reality that to follow Jesus is a call to die. For some, this will be a physical laying down of their lives for the sake of the gospel. Peter did this, along with the other apostles except John who was exiled. Many throughout church history have given their lives as martyrs to follow Christ and declare his name. 

And while the call to be a marytr will not be the call for every Christian, especially in our context, the expectation will be that we as followers of Jesus will suffer. This is going to be a repeating theme over the next few weeks as we move closer and closer to the Cross. But for now, we need to see that our fight for faith is going to require that we recognize this call to suffer as we are called to follow Jesus. The cross is an instrument of suffering and shame. It is the cruelest form of execution in the world. Nail pierced hands and feet, lungs collapsed as weight is pulling down on the wrist and the only way to get breath is to push up on the nail through the feet. Eventually on the cross you suffocate to death. And it is this very cross that we are called to take up and to follow Jesus with. 

If we are to continue our fight for faith as Peter and John and James were being faced with in this conversation with Jesus, then we must too see that the Son of Man must suffer and that we will suffer as we follow him. Christian, count the cost to follow Jesus. But by faith see that this suffering is worth it. For it is by the suffering of Christ that we have salvation. It is by the suffering of Christ that we have been brought from death to life. It is by the suffering of Christ that we look forward to the day in which Christ will come again and bring us to glory with him forever and ever! 

Christian, in the moments of weakness and struggle in your fight for faith, remember all that Christ has already done for you, and keep pressing onward, even if it means that in doing so we suffer along with our Master, our Lord, our King. Fight for faith in remembering the nail scarred hands of our Savior and keep fighting!

The fight for faith in the need for constant dependence

And as we continue to fight for faith in the midst of suffering, we also have to fight for faith in our need for constant dependence which we now turn our attention to in our third and final point this morning. 

The scene that Jesus and the three come to as they arrive down from the mountain is one of chaos. An argument had broken out between the other 9 disciples and the scribes. All because a boy with a spirit in him was unable to be healed by the nine. The diagnosis of the boy is given there in verses 17-18. The boy faces serious complications, this spirit is doing great harm to him. Even the disciples had not been able to help the boy. What is remarkable though is Jesus’ response in hearing this description from the Father. Notice his words there in verse 19…

This lack of healing seems to be rooted in the ongoing unbelief of those within Israel and not turning to believe in Jesus. For this is not directed at the disciples as it refers to a faithless generation. As Jesus deals with the disciples, he never uses this phrase, only with the crowds of those of Israel. And this is further made clear in the Father’s conversation with Jesus as the boy is brought near. For he says there in verse 22, he says, “if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 

The Father is consumed with doubt and a lack of faith in who Jesus is and what he is capable of. For Jesus makes this abundantly clear in how he responds there in verse 23 which says.... 

Belief is essential in coming to Christ. Friend, if you are here this morning and you have yet to believe in Jesus, you need to see that your only hope in life and death is to believe in the good news of Jesus, that he died for your sins and rose from the grave 3 days later defeating death, and that all who believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Will you believe this today? Failure to believe this will leave you were you are, in your sin and you remain separated from God for all eternity. Believe, for as Jesus goes on to heal the man’s son to help his unbelief as noted there in verse 24, I want to help you in your unbelief by showing you that Jesus alone can save you. That he is the one who glory comes from, he endured suffering to rescue you from sin, he alone is the one who pleases the Father. Therefore believe in him today for that salvation. This gospel message is your help in the midst of your unbelief. But don’t leave here in that unbelief, for you that help might not come again if your heart hardens or your life is cut short. Make today the day you believe in Jesus!

For even now, look with us as we see how Jesus heals this boy. This unclean spirit that had seized him, thrown him down, caused him to foam and grind his teeth, even caused him to convulse the moment he was brought in the presence of Jesus, Jesus rebukes and commands to come out of the boy. And it does. Jesus has authority over the mute and deaf spirit and commands it to remain far away from the boy forever. Jesus then there in verse 27 lifts the boy up by the hand and he arises. Jesus helped the Father in his unbelief, and friend he is helping you now by inviting you to himself. 

Likewise, brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus continues to invite us to himself to strengthen us in the midst of our fight for belief. He has compassion on us as we struggle with various doubts of the Christian faith. One of the biggest ways Satan can cause us to stumble in the midst of our doubts and wrestle with questions regarding the faith is to think that we aren’t supposed to wrestle with these doubts. That if we admit it, we somehow aren’t Christians. And yet, it is exactly in these moments that we need to cry out for help in the midst of our unbelief and ask for help as we fight for faith and belief. 

And Christian, it is in this same line that we help others in the midst of their battles of unbelief as we point them to the depth of who Jesus is. Therefore, we make more of Jesus, not less. We win people to Jesus as we marvel at the Cross and the depth of what happened there. We win people to Jesus by helping them in their unbelief by us being grounded in the knowledge of the gospel and declaring it clearly to them. We help other brothers and sisters in their fight against of unbelief by reminding them over and over again of their identity in Christ and that they belong to Jesus. We help them battle against sin by pointing them to the newness of life we have in Christ. And we remind them that Christ is here with us, that he has not forsaken us, just as we saw back in point one this morning.

We can learn much from the disciples even here in what they ask Jesus in verse 28. It says…

The disciples once alone with Jesus questioned why they had not been able to drive out the spirit. And notice his answer there in verse 29, it says…

Prayer is essential in driving out this spirit to show the disciples that it is not in their own strength that they cast out demons and spirits, but the power of God. The same power that was to come in the kingdom of God and would be eventually given to them, but not yet. This here is a good reminder for all of us in our fight for faith, it is not possible to fight for faith and faithfulness in our own strength. To live faithfully as a disciple we must be given to ongoing prayer and patience in the long work of sanctification. Sanctification is the ongoing work of Christ in us to make us more like himself. This work will be at work in the Christian life until we die. And as it is, we will constantly need to be dependent on the LORD through this ongoing work in us. Christian, if you think you can do the Christian life in your own strength, you are greatly mistaken. We will never stop needing Jesus in our Christian life. Therefore instead of gimmicks, instead of us trying to be relevant, instead of us trying to do things in our own strength, give me Jesus! For it is in this Jesus that power and glory come from. It is in Jesus that life comes through his suffering and death. It is in Jesus that death has been defeated. Therefore it is Jesus we need, and Jesus that we are to rest in. 

Let’s pray...