Moving Day
(Message #10 in the Series: View From God’s Mountaintops)
Matthew 17.14-21 September 24, 2000
14And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, 15Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatic, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. 16And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. 17Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. 18And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour. 19Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? 20And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. 21Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
Sixteenth Century artist, Raphael’s rendering of The Transfiguration shows the complete focus of Matthew 17; in the heavens is depicted the celestial glory of the Lord Jesus - below, the demented son which the disciples could not heal.
In this one picture we see the answer to the mountains which need to be moved in ministry. While you are on the mountaintop with Jesus in worship, the valley of difficult ministry is preparing the test.
James, Peter and John went up with Jesus to pray on the mount of transfiguration. Down below a lunatic child was brought to the disciples of Jesus for them to heal. They were powerless.
Such is the experience of many churches, ministries and christians today. Mountains block our service. Finances are low. We, like Moses, can’t do public speaking. We don’t know how to heal the hurts, our training is stunted. We cannot see a clear opportunity. Like the disciples, we want to…but we often blow it!
WHY?
As we look at this text this morning, there are a number of touchstones about serving God which we should examine. I am convinced that much more ministry would be accomplished (without the frustration the disciples encountered) if it was our practice to put the horse of preparation for ministry in front of the cart called pursuit of activity.
Here’s what I mean: Notice verses 19-21 - Jesus is questioned after the incident - Why couldn’t WE do that? Jesus gave three touchstones -
1. Their unbelief
2. Their lack of fasting
3. Their lack of prayer
The bottom line - there is no lack of power on the part of the Father. There is no lack of willingness on the part of the Father to work through us. There is only our lack of readiness to receive, because of the spiritual vacuum created by our own unbelief, lack of fasting and prayer.
I asked my pastor, L.B. Thomason, years ago about whether seminary was necessary. His response was, Well, I’ll give you the same answer my grandmother gave to me. If you want to chop wood, you can use a dull axe - but you’ll chop a whole lot more, and easier if you use a sharp one. Preparing to serve God at any level is just good common sense, and is borne-out by this text.
The question before the house, then, becomes:
How can I be spiritually ready to serve god?
There are at least three answers to that question that flow from the text:
Simple Trust
The boy’s father came to Jesus
In the account, the demented boy’s father came to Jesus. This is an act of simple trust. It is also an activity we are prone to overlook in our sophisticated era of solve anything technology. My children trusted Elizabeth and me simply and tacitly, especially when there was a boo boo. When they got hurt, their first order of business was to come running to Dad or Mom, finger raised high. They may have been wailing like a banshee, but they knew where to get help. It wasn’t on their mind to search the net, consult a surgeon or cast a spell - they came to the Dad!
He came worshiping
Lord, was the first word we hear from this man. The man knew what kind of mountain he was facing. His son was sore vexed, according to the KJV. Literally, the father was informing Jesus his son was experiencing such torment that he was worthless. He had no hope. He brought him to the disciples, but even that proved fruitless.
This loving father had no doubt many years of helplessly watching his child destroy himself. The word lunatic means moonstruck, or crazy. He would put his body in flames when he saw them, or deliberately fall into the water to drown. This passage describes the classic symptoms associated with demon possession.
The father knelt at the feet of Jesus and asked for the Lord to have mercy on his son. This is the simple trust of worship which says: We are all out of strength to do anything here - please help! Friends, that is the one prayer God will always hear.
One way we can be ready to serve God, spiritually is with the simple trust of coming to Him in worship. One mother recalls about going to a youth event,
We were enjoying a series of youth crusades at our church. It had been an exciting time as our youngest child and then our middle child made a public declaration to follow Jesus.
During the final night of the crusade our oldest son very slowly made his way to the altar. Following the service Dad commented on his decision. Our son replied, Yes, it was very hard to make it down front.
It seems our son took the speaker's instructions of every head bowed and every eye closed literally--making his way to the altar without looking.
Entrance to the kingdom is by simple trust
We are not told to close our eyes and leap in the Christian faith; it is just the opposite. Blind faith is how you wind up in a ditch. Followers of Jim Jones, and the Hale Comet cult all wound up dead. We are to come to Him, worshiping and in simple trust that He is God. He has given us that capacity:
8But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; 9That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Romans 10:8-10 (KJV)
Simple trust in Jesus is an entryway into the kingdom. It is an essential for carrying-on the work of the kingdom too. It is the answer for the disciple’s failure of unbelief as they attempted to minister to the demented boy.
The remaining areas of failure is lack of fasting and prayer. The touchstone for this vacuum is…
Saturation Prayer
To saturate oneself in prayer is to do what Paul said, pray without ceasing. One teacher in a Christian School remembers that:
I frequently use (1 Thessalonians 5:17) to encourage the children I teach to pray without ceasing. One day after chapel, a young boy said, Mrs. Capehart, I am sorry I sneezed during your prayer today. I assured him sneezing was no problem but I appreciated his apology. He responded, Well, I know you like us to pray without sneezing.
Fasting is part of prayer. (It is the part most of us Baptists do without!)
How did Jesus go about having a prayer life? He did go often to the mountain to be alone. The Scriptures do not record much of a public prayer ministry in Jesus’ life; this leads us to an important conjecture: It is in the private closet - your personal one-on-one with God that the greatest preparation happens for dealing with the demons you will confront.
Prayerfulness Changes Perspective
Jesus prepared himself in private for the demons he would meet in public. A church member requested prayer for a neighbor woman who was having a difficult time and was feeling just miserable. Volunteering to take the request, a man fervently prayed, O God, bless this miserable woman!
What is unique about this incident is how the disciples had just come down from the mount of transfiguration. They had seen the transforming power of being alone with the Father manifested in Jesus. Even Moses and Elijah had showed up! Now they see that power go to work, and they still have to question it.
I have often seen that in myself - observing a wonderful miracle, and remaining largely unaffected. There is coldness in the land today; people are ready to criticize worship styles, music, Bible versions, and even preaching methodology. Even with a renewed interest in spirituality, and church going, there is a coldness that won’t surrender to prayer, bending a broken heart before the throne of God.
You and I live in a hurried world that has little time for quiet. There is a constant sense of urgency that is the opposite of prayer and fasting mode. With our continual, urgent, 6billion bits-per-second modality, we humans are depending on our own strength to solve everything. It is little wonder that most Christians can’t recognize a genuine urging from the Spirit of God - our Daytimers, Palm Computers and Internet Connections tell us more than we think we can get in the prayer closet.
Friend, prayer will change your perspective if you get alone with God. He will prepare you better than any Ph.D. for life.
Prayerfulness Changes Possibilities
A reality about living in this new technological millennium: we have stepped up the pace of life so rapidly, we have the least time any generation has ever had for reflective prayer life…and it shows! Is there a correlation that we have more crime, decreasing baptisms? What can change us?
Do you remember algebra? You have an equation such as: 1 + 1 = 2. Both sides have to equal. If you change anything on one side of the equation, the other side must also change. That’s how it is when God enters your life’s equation.
Consider the universe before creation. There were no possibilities. Then God said, Let there be…, and there was light, heavens, earth, man, and all the possibilities changed. The equation changes with the entry of God.
Israel was in captivity - God entered the equation and the Red Sea parted.
David invoked the God of Israel, and God directed a stone to take out Goliath.
Daniel stood tall praying (even though it was against the law) and the lions became kittens.
Mary was a virgin who prayed in accordance with God’s will - God overshadowed this obedient teenager, and Jesus the Messiah was born.
Jesus was killed, praying, Into thy hands I commend my spirit…and God raised Jesus on the third day, making our salvation a possibility.
And God is still entering time and space - He is still changing all the possibilities for those who will pray.
Surpassing Faith
What does it take to have great, or surpassing faith?
Like the two fellows in the cartoon, we seem to believe in faith, itself. We have faith in faith.
James, the half-brother of our Lord said that kind of faith is dead.
What is faith? It is a settled confidence that when I step toward God, He will receive me, and not incinerate me. That’s faith! You see, I deserve incineration. I earned it with my sin. But Jesus died to provide forgiveness for my sin, and I took him up on it. I took a step in His direction, and found Him waiting with open arms.
Surpassing faith is the faith that puts Jesus right in the middle of your life, whether it is in church, on an errand, working, changing a diaper. It moves the mountains.
There is a tale of a monk staying faithfully at his task of prayers. His prayer life is so strong, his faith so vibrant, he enjoys the sweetest of fellowship with the Lord. There is a call to come feed the hungry peasants. The monk is reluctant to leave his prayer closet, lest there be a visitation from the Lord while he is gone. Reluctantly, the monk leaves to fulfill his obligation to serve tables. Upon his return Jesus appears to the monk and gently reminds him, Hadst thou stayed, I must needs have fled.
Surpassing faith is knowing that Jesus is ever interceding, always knocking at the door of your heart, always loving you, always ready to help you. Surpassing faith is resting way back in His arms. Think what possibilities open for the kingdom when Jesus has believers who learn to trust Him - even just the little mustard seed kind of trust!
--Amen
