Facing Life's Lows

The letdown

There’s a saying: what goes up, must come down.

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to Mark Frail Faith in a Strong Savior (9:14–29)

True faith is always aware how small and inadequate it is. The father becomes a believer not when he amasses a sufficient quantum of faith but when he risks everything on what little faith he has, when he yields his insufficiency to the true sufficiency of Jesus, “ ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’ ” The risk of faith is more costly to the father than bringing his son to Jesus, for he can talk about his son but he must “cry out” (Gk. krazein) for faith. True faith takes no confidence in itself, nor does it judge Jesus by the weakness of his followers. It looks to the More Powerful One (1:7) who stands in the place of God, whose authoritative word restores life from chaos. True faith is unconditional openness to God, a decision in the face of all to the contrary that Jesus is able.

Now I don’t know if you can prove that is always true, however I think there is a sense in which our Christian journey seems to be fulls of both ups and downs.

Sometimes you will be on a spiritual high. Maybe as a result of sustained devotion towards God. Maybe after some quality time with some deep mature Christians. Maybe you’ve just felt God speaking to you, through either a Bible verse or even a sermon.

Personally, I can recall being on such a spiritual high after some conferences I’ve been to.

If I go back to when I was a teenager, I attended a spiritual retreat called Chrysalis. This was the youth version of what some of you might know as the Emmaus Walk. I remember getting to the end of the week feeling perhaps closer to God than I ever had before.

But then do you know what happened?

Well, I went home. There was no great disaster or tragedy, but temptations were everywhere. At this time in my life, the Internet was only new, but with it came the temptation of pornography. Life was pretty simple, and so too came the temptation of idleness.

The reality was, it didn’t take long to come from a great spiritual height to a spiritual low point. You leave the people you shared the high with, and all that’s good seems to slip through your fingers.

The question I want to ask today is:

How can we face the lows that inevitably come after the highs?

Transfiguration

If you were here with us last week, I spoke about the transfiguration of Jesus.

This essentially defines what I’m going to call a mountain top experience.

If you’re unfamiliar with the account, Jesus took just three of his disciples up a high mountain, and while up there, Jesus was transfigured before them, his clothes turning to a dazzling white, and there beside him stood Moses and Elijah.

Peter, one of the disciples with Jesus, was particularly overawed by the situation, suggesting perhaps he should build three shelters for them. As I noted last week, it certainly seems to be Peter’s way of expressing how he wished this moment could last.

But in fact, it was only a glimpse of the glory and holiness that is to come.

The reality was, it didn’t last long, and then Peter, along with Jesus and the two other disciples had to descend the mountain, and would you believe it? There at the bottom of the mountain, after this amazing uplifting experience, they are confronted with the other disciples who have managed to get themselves in an argument with some teachers of the law.

It seems incredible, but perhaps for us completely relatable, that after such a spiritual high, your confronted with the worldly troubles that threaten to bring us down.

In a very real sense, the devil seems to strike after these highs, because he knows the threat that it poses to him.

Moses and Elijah

If I just pause briefly before I dig into the passage before us, we can see some parallels in this experience with the two other people who were transfigured with Jesus.

Take Moses first. Last week I considered some of the similarities between this transfiguration, and when Moses was up the mountain receiving the law.

Well, do you remember what Moses found as he descended the mountain?

Idolatry. The people had made for themselves golden images, and were basically behaving abhorrently. Moses went from the high of his mountain experience, to the low of seeing his people behave like pagans.

Then there’s Elijah. He too had a mountain experience. First there was the triumph at Mount Carmel, which was followed by a time of depression and running away.

But this led to another mountain experience, this time a bit closer to the other mountain experiences we’re looking at.

He finds himself up Mount Horeb, which is actually another name for Mount Sinai, the same mountain Moses went up, and while up there he witnessed a powerful wind, followed by an earthquake followed by a great fire, but then experienced God in a still small voice.

It was his mountain experience that drew him perhaps closer to God than he ever had before. But then as he comes down the mountain, he just gets more pain from the wicked King Ahab.

Jesus temptation

So you can see both Moses and Elijah, after these amazing mountain experiences with God, they are very closely followed by a time of great turmoil.

But if I can finish the trio with Jesus himself. Now of course he is in a different league here, but if I can go back to his baptism at the start of his public ministry.

Now it might not be a mountain experience as such, but certainly it was a time of great connection with God. But do you remember what this was followed by? Forty days of temptation in the dessert with the devil.

The point I want to make is that you should not be surprised when the low comes after the great spiritual highs. The question before us however is, how do we handle it?

Fitting question into series

Now last week I described how starts a turning point in this gospel. Now that the identity of Jesus has been established, this gospel moves into the question of what does it mean to follow Jesus.

Well, todays lesson fits into this nicely, you see, if you are going to follow Jesus then you can expect the lows, and you need to know how to deal with it.

So on that note, let’s dig into the passage in front of us...

At the bottom of the mountain...

Well, as I mentioned before, whey descend after this particular mountain experience, they see the disciples arguing with some teachers of the law.

At first, they don’t know what’s going on. However the fact that teachers of the law are present probably indicate that someone is stirring up trouble.

You’d normally expect the teachers of the law to be around the temple, but here they are, a few days walk from Jerusalem. We don’t know why they are there, but it doesn’t take too much deduction to assume they’ve come to investigate what Jesus is up to.

But thankfully when Jesus draws near, it brings at least a temporary reprieve to the argument, because we’re told they become (as the NIV puts it) “overwhelmed with wonder”, and ran to meet him.

But Jesus saw the argument and asks about it.

At this point a particular man speaks up - a man who presumably is not one of the teachers of the law, but as it turns out, the person central to this particular issue.

The boy

You see, at the centre of this dispute is boy that has been possessed by a spirit which among other things, has robbed him of speech. We’re also told in verse 8 that when this spirit seizes him, the boy is thrown to the ground, foams at the mouth, and while he gnashes his teeth he also becomes rigid.

Side note: word on demon possession

Now on a brief side note it’s worth thinking about demon possession. It can be one of those tricky things because in the bible it occurs quite a bit, but today we don’t seem to see it quite in the same way.

We can ask the question therefore, are they just calling demon possession things they didn’t understand, whereas today we might give it a different type of diagnosis?

Interestingly, numerous commentators will point out how the condition of this boy sounds a lot like epilepsy.

I would suggest however that this is not just a case of calling something demon possession due to lack of better explanation, rather the demonic is involved.

That being said

I believe that demonic possession still occurs today but is more prevalent when the occult or other nasty spiritual activity is in play.

It is possible that the demonic might use various ailments, such as epilepsy, but it is more than just epilepsy.

I’m happy to discuss further later, but I want to get back to my main point now.

Inability to heal

You see, in many ways the crisis here is actually not the demon possession, albeit, that would have been the crisis for that particular family, but rather the inability of the disciples to heal the boy.

The father of the boy tells Jesus that the disciples, that is, the nine that didn’t go up the mountain, were asked to drive out the spirit, but they were not able.

Presumably the argument that had been occurring at the start of this account had something to do with this failed attempt.

In verse 19 we get a hint of the frustration that Jesus must have felt. You can hear the exasperation in his voice when he says “you unbelieving generation... how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?

Jesus heals the boy

Now in verse 28, we’ll get back to the disciples inability to deal with this issue, thankfully, however, Jesus is going to take matters into his own hands. Which is good for us, because we get to learn a bit directly from the master.

So at the end of verse 19 he adds “Bring the boy to me”.

Well, the moment the spirit sees Jesus, he throws the boy into a convulsion.

Now this in itself is a bit instructive. You see, something that seems to be evident about the demonic, even when the demons know they’re about to be defeated, they still want to cause as much havoc as possible.

Often today when we see a flurry of negative activity, it’s because the demonic is worried about what is happening and wants to be as much a nuisance as possible.

But before Jesus does anything, he has a little exchange with the father.

Now by my estimation, I’m going to suggest that Jesus is actually fishing for something here. As will become evident shortly I think Jesus wants to see how much faith is in this man.

So Jesus asks him about how long this has been happening.

So the father answers and gives a bit more information. And then if I’m right and Jesus is fishing for some evidence of faith, we then get a three words that Jesus picks up on.

What the father goes on to say is: “but if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

But it is the words “If you can” which Jesus picks up on.

Now I find this interesting. You see, in these three words, we don’t find a full blown faith, but we do see a tiny little seed of faith.

And Jesus wants to help this man turn his faith up, so he reminds him: “Everything is possible for one who believes”

Is everything really possible?

Now I want to again briefly pause on this statement because Jesus makes a number of statements similar to this, but when understood with a self-focus, they can be well and truly misunderstood.

What Jesus is not saying, is that he is some sort of make a wish genie where as long as you have enough faith the you can have whatever you want.

Unfortunately, too often I’ve seen people upset because they think they mustn’t have enough faith simply because something they’ve asked for didn’t happen the way they wanted to.

The reality is however, bad things will happen even to people of great faith. Take any Biblical character you like, and regardless of how great their faith was, I’ll be able to show you some misfortune that they had.

But here is the amazing part, and is the key to understanding what Jesus is saying. God partners with our faith in a mysterious interplay between God’s sovereignty and our free will.

You see, faith is not just convincing yourself that something will happen. You see, I could convince myself that I’m an NBA superstar, but that not faith - that’s just what we call delusional!

Rather faith is about trusting God will do what is best. Understanding it from this perspective, absolutely we can say that everything is possible.

The Father’s response

But let me come back to the story. You see, after Jesus makes this statement, the father than says something that I think we can all relate to at times.

He says: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

Now I just love the honesty of this guy. Again, he shows us this tiny seed of faith, but recognises the doubt and recognises that he needs help with that.

Interestingly, we see something which should be very comforting to us. Jesus recognises that small amount of faith and he rewards him for it.

What I find interesting is that this shows that when something doesn’t happen for us, it’s quite likely not just because we haven’t mustered enough faith. In fact, Jesus says elsewhere, all we need is faith like a mustard seed.

We’ve sometimes turned that around to think, well maybe that means my faith must be smaller than that of a mustard seed. I suspect more accurately, it because you’re confusing faith with a vein hope of some self-focused want in your life.

All you need is just a little bit of faith that Jesus will do what’s best, and it will be done.

The miracle

As we look at the miracle itself, we get a curious little comment that Jesus seems to hurry things up when he sees a crowd running to the scene. Presumably this wasn’t the crowd from the start of this scene, because there was no mention that they left the crowd, but presumably another crowd aware of Jesus presence.

We then see Jesus command the spirit to come out, never to return, and the spirit, with one last effort to cause havoc caused the boy to convulse, before coming out, leaving him looking as though he were dead.

But Jesus takes him by the hand, and we see an amazing picture of restoration. Jesus delivered this boy from a debilitating spirit.

Coping with failure

Now, I want to come back to the question I asked earlier: how to we handle the lows that come after our spiritual highs.

Now in some ways, this is actually more than just the a low after the most recent mountain experience.

You see, if we think of it more from the twelve disciples, they’ve been on this longer journey, after which it’s just started to sink in that this is in fact the messiah they are with.

Now, along this journey they have seen some powerful things happen.

They have seen the natural elements respond to the word of Jesus. They have seen bread and fish multiply. They have seen the dead raised to life, many people healed.

In fact, more than that, they’ve even had Jesus send them out in pairs and gave them authority over impure spirits.

It has all just worked, and it was brilliant.

But then look at it from the perspective of the nine disciples left after Jesus goes up to the mountain.

They’re approached by someone in need. They’ve done this before. All they have to do is command the spirit to come out and that’s that. Only problem, their command didn’t work.

Now I believe the key to figuring out why this didn’t work for them, is also the key for why we struggle so much in the lows.

Asking the question

Thankfully, Mark records for us the part where the disciples directly ask Jesus why it didn’t work and we get an answer.

Now while Jesus answer is clear, it is easy for us to misunderstand the point.

So let’s first look at it.

You see, to the question: “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”, the answer was “this kind can come out only by prayer”.

Now this answer, by starting with “this kind...” seems to conjure up the idea that perhaps this demon was of a special kind that needed a different sort of technique. I think however that is not the case. I think instead when he says “this kind”, he is putting all spirits into the one category.

And so, by putting this back on prayer, Jesus is making a very simple yet striking point.

You cannot do this by yourself.

After all, what is prayer? What it isn’t, is some magic words that can be used to conjure up a special trick.

Rather prayer is our connection with God! By praying we recognise that we need God and we can’t do this by ourselves.

And so I want to suggest that at the end of the day, this is the fundamental problem that the disciples faced without Jesus.

They had done it before, and so they get this confidence as in, I am so clever because look at what is happening because of me.

In fact, I believe that this can be great danger we face when we get on those spiritual highs.

You see those spiritual highs are great because they are the feeling you get when you are really close to God. But the danger is that you start thinking that it is all about you.

It can be quite subtle, and often you don’t even realise you are doing it, but you subtly we start telling ourselves that we were very clever for spending time with Jesus. That our hard work in prayer has finally paid off. Without realising it, we’ve made our closeness to God about our ability.

When the inevitable low comes, we are then unable to cope.

The nine disciples learned a very valuable lesson on this occasion. Thankfully they had the master with them to show them how it should be done.

Conclusion

So the key to understanding all of this is that we can’t do it in our own strength.

The reality is, the highs and the lows will continue to come and go. You will have times when you feel really close to God, you will also have times when everything seems to be falling apart.

But even though these lows will continue, the lesson we should take from this is that you can never afford to take your eyes off Jesus. Particularly as things start falling apart around you, this is precisely the time you most need to keep close and pray!

Following Jesus is not a way to an easy life, but it is the way to a good life. Because even the greatest high and lowest low, we have someone with us for whom everything is possible.

Prayer is what is going to keep us connected, and faith will see it through.

Let’s pray...