This sermon explores what it truly means to have faith, especially when faced with everyday realities and doubt. Journey through the story of a desperate father in Mark 9 and discover how faith isn't about perfect certainty but about recognizing our need and the "clues" pointing to Jesus. Learn how embracing questions can strengthen belief, and why ultimately, faith is about trusting in Jesus Himself, even amidst unbelief.
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We are a welcoming and growing multigenerational church in Doncaster East in Melbourne with refreshing faith in Jesus Christ. We think that looks like being life-giving to the believer, surprising to the world, and strengthening to the weary and doubting.
Transcription
Bible Reading: Mark Chapter 9, Verses 14-29
Our reading this morning is from Mark chapter nine, beginning at the 14th verse.
When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and the teachers of the law arguing with them. As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him. What are you arguing with them about? He asked. A man in the crowd answered. Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, Nash's his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not. You unbelieving generation. Jesus replied, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me. So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell on the ground, rolling around, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the boy's father, how long has he been like this? From childhood, he answered. It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us if you can. Said Jesus. Everything is possible for one who believes. Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief. When Jesus saw that the crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the impure spirit. You deaf and mute spirit, he said, I command you. Come out of him and never enter him again. The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently, and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said he is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up. After Jesus had gone indoors, the disciples asked him privately, why couldn't we drive it out? He replied, this kind can only come out by prayer.
Hear the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Sermon
Good morning everyone. My name is Megan and I'm really pleased that we're able to do this series called finding Faith. as we celebrate Easter and as the church celebrates Easter around the world. We celebrate these events that are really powerful, but they're so outside of our everyday experience. And so when we consider can I be a Christian? We're faced with what we might feel is an enormous hurdle to jump over that we have to go from everyday life, our eating and drinking Monday to Sunday, life, to believing in things that seem almost impossible. And so this morning, I want to step us into what it might be to put your trust in something that you cannot see, and whether that hurdle is actually as high as you might think.
Faith Beyond Sight: Learning from Thomas
The great thing about the shape of the scriptures is that straight after Easter, we get some experiences of deep doubt. Now this is Thomas, and he's really digging in there, just really getting in there because he said, I won't. This is a Caravaggio painting. This isn't actually a photo. Just letting you know because he said to Jesus or he said to the disciples, I'm not going to believe in a risen Jesus until I get to see him and touch him, see the wound, touch it. Really get in there. That's the paraphrase. Dig around. And he does get the opportunity to do that. But Jesus says something that speaks not so much to Thomas, but to those of us who will come after. He says to Thomas, because you have seen me. You've believed that really? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. At the very start of the Christian church, the resurrection of Jesus, people really seeing him. Jesus looks to you and I, who will need to live by something called faith. We will need to believe in things that we do not get a chance to fully dig around in. And Jesus says that those of us who are able to put our trust, whether it be faltering early or strongly without having seen, will be blessed.
So I want to ask the question today. What does it look like to have a little faith? Sometimes when people say, just have a little faith. They are telling us off. Don't you trust me? Don't you think I can do it or be more optimistic? Stop being so negative. Come on. Live in hope. Wouldn't you rather believe that something good would happen? But when it comes to faith in Jesus, well, we have the opportunity to admit that it can be quite hard. If someone says, just have a little faith. We look at the scriptures and we say, actually, it's way easier said than done. Life rarely makes faith easy. So we have this story. It's an amazing story and I just am privileged to share it with you today from Mark chapter nine.
From Mountaintop Revelation to Valley of Despair
And the context is when it says when the disciples joined the others, they'd actually been up the mountain with Jesus and they had experienced Jesus transfiguration. Again, not a photo. Different Caravaggio person painted this one. The picture of Jesus with Moses and Elijah in clothes that were dazzling white. And in Mark's Gospel we hear at the Transfiguration. A voice comes from the cloud saying to the disciples, Peter, James, and John, this is my son, whom I love. Listen to him. This is the most incredible revelation of Jesus. And you would think then this is going to sustain them this moment. Just have a little faith. I've got a lot of faith. I've just seen this person absolutely transfigured in front of my eyes. I can see that he is the king. And I've heard the father tell me it is his son and to listen to him. But as soon as they come down off the mountain, they find themselves in, well, the same existence that you and I find ourselves in every day. A life of confusion, disappointment, pain, suffering, argument, helplessness. They come down and they find that they're arguing. The teachers of the law and the disciples are arguing. And Jesus says, what are you arguing about? And a man says, teacher, I brought you my son. Bringing him to the disciples is, the same as bringing him to Jesus. They were his emissaries who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, Nash's his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not, from the top of the mountain, right down to some of the most painful things that. Maybe if you're like me. Become barriers to faith. Powerless disciples. People arguing about theological matters. No one can agree. Pain in a family member. And of course, seemingly very unjust suffering.
But more than that, this child not only seems to have what we might call epilepsy or something today. Actually, no, it's not just a neurological condition. Not that. It's just just. But here we see that there is great destructiveness in what is happening. That there is evil involved in this boy's condition, because not only is he suffering these convulsions and fits, but the father says from childhood it has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. Come down the mountain and you find arguing, you find powerless disciples, you find pain in a family, you find unjust suffering, and you find evil, deep evil that is trying to destroy human life. And so faith is not easy. But to overcome those barriers, there is need. The father is in the midst of all of those challenging things, and yet his need drives him toward Jesus. Still, he is desperate. He is willing to take whatever step it requires to have his child cared for, healed, and saved.
The Five Thresholds to Finding Faith in Jesus
We sometimes think that putting our faith in Jesus. And you may not feel that that's you yet, go is just a matter of being undecided to a follower of Jesus, right? I have to move from being undecided about him to saying, yes, I'm going to follow him. But actually what? People have discovered that in this day and age, people have to cross five different thresholds in order to find faith in Jesus. You might see yourself in one of these thresholds. You might think of people that you know, people that you love.
- The first one is moving from distrust to trust. And that might look exactly like undecided to follower of Jesus. But it's not talking about Jesus. It's talking about distrust of Christian people too trusting a Christian person. So it is not possible, or really possible for a person in our post-modern, particularly in the West, to encounter more about Jesus if they entirely distrust Christian people. So a relationship of trust, a friendship, a colleague, whatever it is with a Christian person is the first threshold to cross.
- The second is going from indifferent to curious. So you can trust a Christian person, but you can be quite indifferent to why they are a Christian. What it means for them to have faith. but it if you cross the threshold of becoming curious about why they embrace this particular spirituality, then that's the second step.
- But the third and the fourth steps, they require need. They require a recognition. That there is something that could be better. So, in step three, a person needs to move from being closed to change in their life. This is how it is. I'm comfortable with how it is. I don't, you know, that's great for you. But here is my bounded set of life two. Hmm. Maybe there could be something. Maybe I could change. Maybe. Maybe there is a better way. Maybe I have needs that are not being met or not being met in the way that I think they were designed to be met, a need. Suddenly you can be open to change.
- And then the fourth threshold is moving from wandering. I'm kind of I'm open to change, but I'm not focused on where I'm going to find that change to seeking.
- And it's this threshold, I think, that we see the man with his son. Crossing in the story in Mark nine, he has heard about Jesus. He is now open to change. He has a need. So great. And now he is seeking out the one focused thing that he believes will help him to meet that need.
Blaise Pascal, philosopher, said, in faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't. In this world of pain and arguments and hypocrisy, it is hard to believe. But when we know we have a need, we can find, even in the unseen, enough light to move forward, to seek.
Faith, Reason, and the Clues Around Us
But you might think a quote like that really is just about wishful thinking. Or do you have faith just because you want to believe? Just because it's it's better for you and your mind that you believe in a God. And it's not based on any rational decision. Well, no, we have to know that faith is not the opposite of reason, of rationality, of evidence. There's a there's one of the reasons why I think we see it, in the New Testament, that Thomas is allowed to experience the risen Jesus because there is no need to deny that this can be built on historical evidence. But it isn't easy for us to find absolutely certain proof. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with admitting that. But what we will find are many, many clues to the existence of God and the trustworthiness that Jesus was who he said he was, and that he did rise from the dead.
Now, Matt and Eunice talked about some of the clues that they see in their life. Matt talked about the beauty of creation. Eunice talked about seeing the need of her clients and people around her, and knowing that there is something that could meet that need in Jesus. Both of those are clues that they experience. They might not be proof to everybody, but they are clues. Here in this story, we actually see plenty of the clues that you and I work with all the time.
- Now, the first one, of course, is that mountaintop experience. Beauty, the sense of transcendence, the experience of are something far bigger than us. It could be beauty, as in a natural mountaintop. But here there's this spiritual experience that the disciples have had. And when they come down, actually that spiritual experience is, shared just a little bit. I don't know if you caught verse 15, it says, as soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him. We don't actually see that very often, that reaction. But the great spiritual experience that had happened on the mountaintop, just like when Moses would come out of the presence of God and the people would see him shining. The people looked at Jesus with wonder, and they were compelled to come to him. So there are clues in life when we have these spiritual experiences, when we find ourselves drawn to the person of Jesus, when we see beauty, majesty and vastness that is just so beyond what we can imagine would have come from nothing.
- But we also see a few other clues here. There are people who are arguing. Now, that doesn't really sound like a clue. Maybe. but the presence, in human beings of rational thought, of the attempt to see patterns, analyze things, and engage with one another on things that are really important. In fact, things that are not just what we can see or touch. Actually, that is a clue to us being something more than just another animal in the animal kingdom and an ordered universe in which you feel you can put together some rational set of beliefs and you can compare it to another one. Actually, that also is a clue, because science comes out of a universe that we believe can be predicted, that is ordered, that we trust, that the results that we get from our experiments are actually trustworthy.
- And the the final clue is the deep love and compassion that the father has for his child. Now we know that, the natural world wants to look after its young so that there is a propagation of the species. And you could say that that has nothing to do with God. But in the natural world, when there is a child, an offspring of an animal that is so unwell, you don't invest every resource that you have to care for it and love it. You don't see in the destruction that is coming, threatening it at every moment, the work of evil, because life itself is so precious. There is a clue here, in the great sense of unjust suffering and the pain that the father is feeling, that we were not simply made as animals that were a collection of random whatevers. But there is something deep within. There is unseen love and need and hope and compassion and sacrifice. That makes no sense. So we may not see proof, but boy, do we see a lot of clues.
For me too, I find that, this book and there are parts of it that I still have questions about, but this book helps me to understand what I see everywhere in the world. C.S. Lewis said, I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it and I think this is trustworthy, but because by it I see everything else. When I look around a world that is selfish and in pain and yet hopeful and has love and wants to see a future and really just wants to have money and is, you know, full of comfort and yet deep injustice. This makes sense of that for me. So faith is not easy, but our faith can be formed. Looking at the clues and feeling our need and faith can handle doubt.
Faith and Doubt: Building Spiritual Antibodies
For me, I have always allowed myself to feel, and maybe I shouldn't say aloud myself as though I had some control over it. I have faced many crises and I have felt them deeply. I don't know whether I've allowed myself to do it or not, but boy, has it happened when something has challenged my faith. I have been so privileged to not really have deep, deep loss or suffering to challenge my faith. A lot of my crises of faith have been around my own sense of God's presence, whether he is at work, and then they have been intellectual and academic. So how do I know that Christianity is the one true religion? That has been a big thing for me throughout. Because I think spirituality is important. But how do I know Christianity had people turn up at the door to tell me about, you know, being witnesses of Jehovah? And I have felt that crisis and I've I've done a lot of looking into world religions and I have felt that crisis. I've looked at the way in which the Bible seems to be out of step with some of the things that we think are human rights. The quality of the of of the sexes. And I have felt that crisis. But what I have done and I didn't, put these words to it at the time. But what I have done is push into each one of those crises. Learn more. Never given up until what that crisis has done has created in me antibodies that have made my faith stronger and healthier.
So Tim Keller says, a faith without some doubt is like a human body without antibodies. People who blindly follow their religion without questioning it are extremely vulnerable to crises. And so every time a crisis of faith has come and I expect them to continue to come, you might be in one right now. It is so useful to me. To think that God. God says that doubt will make my faith stronger if I use it. If I do what a healthy body does and recognize the pathogen full on and explore it and whatever I have to do, you know, whatever protein needs to, show itself on the surface of my T-cell. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I do that, and it might take some time, and then I can move forward to the next exposure to some pathogen. You might remember when. I don't know if it was a it was because there was a new technology, but suddenly you could buy these massive packets of Dettol wipes, you know, the terrible for the environment. And I feel like there was a time as an adult when that wasn't a thing. And then suddenly the supermarket was full of these disposable, sanitizing wipes, and it was way before Covid. And so you'd be thinking, I got to get my whole house. And this is perfect, you know? Free to air TV where you always see ads that'd be of that movie. My house is going to be so clean. And then, of course, the backlash. Well, if your house is too clean, your child's going to die because it'll never be exposed to anything and its immune system will be so, and you will have wrecked it. And you have to let it play in mud. Well. Let us feel that backlash for our faith. Feel the uncertainty. Feel the questions. Talk about them. Name them. Articulate them. Touch the mud and see how your faith can be strengthened. So we come towards the end of this story.
"I Do Believe; Help Me Overcome My Unbelief!"
And, so he he sees the boy. Jesus says, how long has he been like this? From childhood. If you can do anything. Take pity on us and help us if you can. Said Jesus, everything is possible for one who believes. Now, in some context, we read this story about needing to wind up our faith so that we can see answers to our prayer, especially healing. Everything is possible for one who believes. But what we find in this story, actually in the man's response and in Jesus response to the disciples at the end, is that that's probably not the right way to read it. What we need to read it as is everything is possible by Jesus, and you need to put your trust in him.
Because what happened with the disciples? Well, they'd been sent out earlier. They'd been empowered to heal and to cast out demons, and they'd been quite successful at that. And so what we see in Mark's gospel is this kind of ramping up of the powers of darkness and the brokenness in the world as it stands against Jesus. And here and one of the people I was listening to talked about it as a Mario boss battle. Like, you've kind of gone through a whole lot of stuff. And then here, that's for the youth. here at the end, what do you call. These. Bowser. Bowser. That's the thing. Yeah. Bowser. Thank you. Phoebe. Right. You've hit this boss battle. And all the confidence that the disciples have in themselves. And they've seen that their their ministry being successful, means nothing. And when they say, why couldn't we do it? And Jesus says, this kind can only come out by prayer. It's like, you can't do it. I can do it. You can't do it. But I can do it. If you can, said Jesus, everything is possible. For one who believes in me. Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.
Yesterday we were in the Alpha Saturday, and it was such a special day for me to be part of just a little, part of that course with those women who were doing it together at the moment. And we were talking about belief and unbelief. And and maybe the sense is for you like it was for some that they are opposites, but we have to admit that each one of us actually carries both. Even Christian people who are trusting in Jesus have all kinds of beliefs. And Jesus does not say that that stops his work for this man. He says, I do believe help me overcome my unbelief. And in that, in that prayer, Jesus rebukes the impure spirit. The spirit shrieks, convulsed, comes out. The boy looks so much like a corpse that many said he's dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up. Faith is not easy. But for the disciples they'd seen this kind of ability in the name of Jesus to break through some of the brokenness and the evil in the world. And yet here no. But Jesus. Not only can conquer illness, but here he conquers evil and death. And the man had some belief and some unbelief. Doubt is not the rejection of belief, but holding a belief with hesitation and uncertainty. This man had doubts and he had reason to. But he had followed his need and the many clues, and decided to trust with what he could. Doubt involves believing something with questions about whether it is really true or not. So as we conclude.
Faith is Trusting Jesus
Faith is not about being 100% certain. Being sure that there is 100% proof for everything that you want to trust. Faith is not even something in yourself that you have to wind up so that God will give you a healing. No, faith is trusting Jesus. Not yourself, not your faith, not your belief. Sometimes we look at something like Romans five and we think that faith really is about us. Since we've been made right in God's sight by faith and because of our faith, Christ has done this. But actually, faith is just this internal spiritual mechanism by which we receive the work of Jesus for us. It is the reaching out in heart and mind and strength and soul. And the text really is telling us that it's all about Jesus. We've been made right in God's sight by faith, but it's because of what Jesus Christ, our Lord, has done for us. Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege, and faith is simply the way in which we move into that that Jesus has done for the man in this story. His belief was mixed. Maybe yours is too. But really, he took the first step to Jesus, not the first step to transforming his life, not the first step to filling his faith tank. He took a step to Jesus. He didn't see the rest of the picture. But faith as we begin this series is about Jesus. The band are going to come up. I'm already up here, so that's useful. And we're going to take this moment. The next couple of songs are just to allow some of that. To speak to where we are. There'll be opportunities throughout this series for you to take a step. And I want to encourage you to take a step. Heart, mind. Will, what do you need to do? Are there antibodies that need to be built up? Are there doubts that you need to talk about, or do you need to know that it's about Jesus? So let's stand and sing. And this is about worshiping Jesus. But it tells us that it's about Jesus nonetheless.
