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This Sunday we uncover how Jesus' encounter in Mark chapter 9 exposes that a lack of faith is revealed through a lack of prayer, reminding us that genuine trust in God always drives us to our knees. Reverend Wei E preaches the word.

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And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and the scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, What are you arguing about with them? And someone from the crowd answered him, Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able. And he answered them, O faithless generation, how long am I about? How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me. And they brought the boy to him, and when the spirit saw him, immediately he convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rode about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked him, asked his father, How long has this been happening to him? And he said, From childhood, and it has often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus said to him, If you can, all things are possible for one who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe, help my unbelief. And when Jesus saw that the crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying, You mute and deaf spirit, I command you come out of him and never enter him again. And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, he came out. And the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. And when he entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. This is the word of the Lord.

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I am very sure that all of us have had failures in our life at some point, right? And some of our failings are small, you know, so that's okay, that's manageable. But some are big failures, right? Some of our failures are very private, you know, so we have the luxury of kind of managing these failures privately. But some are very public, right? And make known to the people around us. In our passage this morning in Mark chapter 9, uh, we read about the disciples feeling having a very big failure, very publicly. Right? And that was terrible. It was embarrassing for the disciples, actually. And underneath this embarrassing scene, we we read about another story. Uh Mark weaves uh a quieter line underneath this uh scene where we hear a father desperately crying, I believe, help my unbelief. And these stories in Mark chapter 9, verses 14 to 29, uh they act like a melody and a counter melody, in like in the music, right? Most songs we listen to, there is a melody, right? The melody is the main tune of the song, it is catchy, it is memorable. Um and usually songs will have a counter melody, right? It is this second, uh secondary supporting line underneath that melody, uh, or that weaves around the melody to add depth and interest or to create uh to uh to provide uh contrast and support to the melody. And so both melody and counter melody uh will work together to add richness to a song. And in our passage today, right, we see these two stories working together like a melody and a counter melody, interpreting each other and adding death to the main theological point that uh the gospel writer Mark is trying to point us to, which is about faith and uh prayer. And so the story about the disciples is the melody here, right? This is the main uh story. Uh we start and end with the failures of the disciple, how they failed and how they exasperated Jesus, even. And the counter melody is found in the father of a demon-possessed son who uttered the iconic phrase, I believe, help my unbelief. Right? And we'll see how both of these work together to teach us about faith and prayer, uh, specifically about how these two components actually come together in our lives. And so we uh first open um by listening in to the the the melody line of uh of this passage, right? Uh it is the surprising failure of the disciples. We open with Jesus and the three disciples, uh Peter, James, and John coming down from a literal mountaintop experience. Right? The passage right before this is the transfiguration of Jesus. So now Jesus, Peter, James, and John, they are coming down, coming back to the other disciples. Um and as they are coming down, they are greeted with a really embarrassing scene here. And uh in uh chapter 9, verse 14, we read first, when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them. Right? By now, crowds gathering around Jesus or his disciples. It's a common sight, right? There's nothing surprising there, right? You would probably think, oh, these disciples must be doing more of Jesus' ministry. Uh, they're probably preaching the gospel here, they're healing the sick, they're casting out demons. That's why there's a crowd coming to them. Uh, but something else was happening instead. Right, verse 14 continues to tell us, and scribes arguing with the disciples. Now it goes on to say immediately, all the crowd, when they saw Jesus, were greatly amazed and ran to Jesus and greeted him. And he asked them, What are you arguing about with them? And someone from the crowd answered him, Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever he seizes him, he throws him down and he forms and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I ask your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able. Um the father had a son who was demon, uh possessed by a demon who would violently afflict his uh the boy physically, right? Uh, this demon was destructive towards the boy, and the father was desperately seeking help. He must have heard about this Jesus going around, you know, uh performing all these miracles. He wanted to meet Jesus. Uh but instead of meeting the boss, he he meets the the subordinates, right? The disciples, right? Uh, which would have been fine, you know, given their track record. Um, except this time around, they could not cast out the demon. It is very astonishing that the disciples failed. Um, they were healing the sick and casting out demons just fine before this, right? But now they are suddenly powerless to do so. And in fact, this is the first time recorded in the Gospel of Mark that we see the disciples failing at um you know uh casting out demons and healing the sick. And one could could really surmise that the father of the child now is is feeling despondent, bewildered. No, were these not Jesus' disciples? Were these not the ones who had the authority from Jesus to go around to heal the sick, to cast out demons, and now they can't do it at all? So what is the father supposed to do now? Is there really no hope for his sons, uh for his son? And so to rub salt to the disciples' wound, the scribes were around to catch their failure. Right? This they were always getting around, always trying to undermine their ministry and Jesus' authority and all. But now the disciples have failed. Now is the time to jump in and come discredit them all together. So they were just the disciples and the scribes were just arguing back and forth. Right? A huge crowd is around observing this quarrel. And we have the father looking on and just trying to understand what really is going on, right? And if anyone actually cared about the actual problem he was facing, and so, frankly speaking, it was uh not a good look on the disciples, and really that's not the worst of it, right? When Jesus finds this out, Jesus himself was exasperated uh by what was going on, and nothing, I think nothing stinks more than having Jesus reprimand you. Uh, what Jesus said next was actually very passionate and very cutting to the disciples. He says this in uh verse 19 O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Um, it is a bit ambiguous here. We don't uh it's not super clear who Jesus was referring to, but he was uh referring to just the disciples or the crowd or everyone when he says, Oh faithless uh generation. But given that this is a reaction to the disciples' failure, and later on we'll he will again talk about their failure, um it is very likely that he was actually primarily referring to his disciples, but of course, with the whole crowd in mind, everyone, but especially the disciples here, were part of this faithless generation. And the language Jesus used here echoed God's indictment of his people, the Israelites in the Old Testament. So, yeah, just very quickly, we read in Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 20. Um God said, I will hide my face from them, I'll see what their end will be. And here we see uh God's indictment on a generation, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness. Right? This was a faithless and perverse generation. Back in the time of Deuteronomy, uh, in Numbers 14, then we read, The Lord said to Moses, How long will these people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs they have done among them? And so we see Jesus borrowing phrases and terms, indictment of God from the Old Testament, to now bemoan the fact that these were a people who were faithless. How long must he bear with them? So imagine instead of hearing, well done, good and faithful servant, we hear you faithless generation. But isn't it strange that they had no faith?

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Right?

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They did just fine a while back, and now they are faithless. So, what is going on with the with the disciples? And we actually get a clue in from Jesus' explanation at the end where the disciples ask him privately why they couldn't cast out the demon. Uh, in verse 29, this is the end of today's passage. Jesus tells them that this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. So this is a bit confusing. Uh at the beginning it says they had no faith, right? They were faithless. At the end, they say they didn't pray. Right? So, did the disciples lack faith or prayer? And the answer is yes. The answer is actually both. They were lacking both in faith and prayer. And really, this passage suggests that faith and prayer are intricately connected. And we could put it then negatively, right? They were faithless because they were prayerless. To say that they failed to pray is not to say that or they fail to take some time, just close their eyes, bow their heads, and pray before they try to cast out their demon, they just do the act of praying, right? That's how we think prayer looks like, right? Uh, but it is really rather a way of saying that their posture was not right before God. They were turned away from God. Um, more explicitly, they no longer depend on God or they no longer place their confidence in God's strength. Their confidence was in themselves. Right? They were given authority before, they have done this before many times already, many, many successes, right? Ten out of ten, the demons come up. So they were confident in themselves now. They didn't need to pray, they didn't need to rely on God anymore. They didn't, and they did not see that the power given to them before was not to be used at their discretion, right? But they didn't see all this, they thought, I can do it, surely. And so instead they became arrogant, full of themselves, blind to just how weak and powerless they really were. But because of their pride and their self-reliance, prayer has become obsolete. The thought of needing God has vanished, and unbelief or faithlessness has set in. And so even today, many Christians are found faithless. Not that we don't believe that there is a God, not that we don't believe Jesus is our Savior, not that we don't believe the Spirit lives in us, but that we have simply separated much of our life from prayer. We have uh gone from turning to God and relying on Him to relying on ourselves for most part of our lives. After all, we can do a lot of things by our own competence, right? We have earned our place in society by our own merit. We have performed well enough, whether at home, in our families, or in church. We have performed to a good standard, and it's all because of me. And if I can do all these things, where is the need to pray? And that church itself is a kind of unbelief where consciously or subconsciously we think, I actually don't really need God in many of these areas in my life. I don't need God to help me out. And all we really need is just to rely on ourselves, or so we think. And this is the line that we need to pay attention. The the the father tells Jesus, if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. If you can do anything. He thought he would meet Jesus, but he met his disciples, right? Who were confident but they were important to do anything. Uh, and instead of you know just figuring things out, just arguing with the scribes. And now he finally meets Jesus. But at this point, it is so difficult for him to believe in Jesus, if at all. And all he can master is if you can do anything. You compare that with the leper uh in Mark chapter 1, verse 40, right? Uh or read out for us, but this leper, he came to Jesus in great faith and he said, If you are willing, you can cleanse me. Right? Whereas one said, You are willing, not questioning Jesus' ability at all. Here we have a father, right, full of doubts, but still wanting to believe, and say, if you can, if you have the ability to do so. And it sounds almost insulting, at least because this person is Jesus, right? So it sounds at least uh kind of insulting. So Jesus actually picked up on that, right? In verse 23, Jesus said to him, if you can. But all things are possible for one who believes. Um I mean, I've been thinking about how Jesus said it, right? If I were Jesus, I'd probably be angry. What do you mean, if you can? Do you not know who I am? Do you not know who you are talking to, right? If you can. Uh but I imagine Jesus would have been a lot more gentle than me. And Jesus actually just glossed over the question of his ability. And instead, he just firmly redirected the father to simply put his trust in Jesus. And it is to this, uh it is to Jesus' prompting that this father uttered the iconic phrase, verse 24, immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe. Help my unbelief. And based on that weak but honest faith and prayer, Jesus cast the demon out and fully restored the boy. You know, this phrase I believe helped my unbelief. Um, it points to this tension that I'm sure many of us, if not all of us, have experienced before. Where both belief and unbelief coexist in our hearts, where they both make up the reality of our spirituality. And it brings us great comfort that despite being imperfect, Jesus accepts this father's faith. He did not ask him to go and study some more. Make sure you know everything, make sure you can come back without a shadow of doubt. Come back, then you can come back to me, and then I will heal the boy. He doesn't do that. Right? Jesus accepted it. Not just because it was a true and honest faith, but more precisely, because this man honestly brought even his unbelief to Jesus. And the the ironic twist in this whole thing is that this weak wavering faith was more than enough. Right? This weak and wavering faith was better than the disciples' faithlessness. And this father was the only one who really truly turned to Jesus and asked to be delivered from his unbelief, while his own disciples could not even see their own faithlessness in the issue. And the story of this father with the Faith then acts as this again, this counter melody to the story of the disciples. Where the disciples were confident and yet were found lacking. Right? Here is the father who was lacking in power, and yet power was given. Power was given so that his boy could be healed. And all this because he learned that he was totally powerless and thus had to totally depend on Jesus. And that is the opposite of the disciples who were dependent on themselves and were thus powerless. And so the tragedy of the disciples is not that they lacked ministry experience, it is that they no longer felt a need for God. And that danger is very close to us. When we hear both the melody and the counter melody of these stories together, we can better hear and appreciate the main thrust of today's passage about faith and prayer in our own lives today. Faith is not simply about what we intellectually ascend to, right? Not simply, no, I believe there is a God, I believe that it is the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Because more fundamentally, faith is about whether God is real and true in every facet of our lives. And it is about living our lives fully in God, where we can trust and depend on his power for everything. Where God is the main actor in our lives and he is the one who brings about everything beautiful, meaningful, and true. Not just some inconsequential deity we subscribe to as part of our spirituality. It is the kind of faith that says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And apart from Christ, I can do nothing. And what we learn from today's passage then is that the reflection of our faith is actually found in our prayer. Again, to put it negatively, faithlessness is signaled in our prayerlessness. When we don't come to Jesus in prayer, it betrays our unbelief, right? That actually we think we don't need God. We think that it doesn't matter if God really exists or not. And so the flip side of it all is that to have faith in Jesus, we must come to Him in prayer. But what does it mean to pray? Um, Henry Nolan has written extensively on the topic of prayer. Um, and I just want to read out a quote from him. Uh, it's a bit long, but um no bear with me. Henry Nolan writes, to pray, I think, does not primarily mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things. Or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts into thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him in a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. So, what he's trying to say here, I think, is that we tend to compartmentalize our lives, right? Um, and so certain segments will be about God, about church, about ministry. So we can add prayer there, right? This will be the Christian things, uh the Christian segments of my life. And then the other segments are mine and mine alone, my work, my family, my relationship, my children, my hobbies, and my leisure time. And no one is saying that is not how we should think about faith and prayer. Um he he writes elsewhere that to pray is to think about God in all areas of our life, right? Let me say that again. To pray is to think about God in all areas of our life, and that is what it means to think and live in the presence of God, to think and live in faith. And we thank God for the story of the Father because it shows us that coming to Jesus in prayer does not begin with a perfect faith, it does not begin with zero doubt, it begins with helplessness. So such a faith. Uh such so coming to Jesus in in prayer, um, we donate a perfect faith, right? Uh, if anything, actually most of us, even today, have an unimperfect faith, isn't it? But the father with the unwavering faith shows that Jesus accepts true and repentant faith. And through prayer, through us coming to Jesus with our helplessness, he invites us to put our faith and trust in him, even if we have doubts. So the disciples thought they were strong and discovered they were powerless. The father knew he was powerless and so discovered the strength of Jesus, and that is the paradox of the Christian life. Those who think they are strong often stop praying, while those who know they are weak cannot stop crying out to God, and maybe that's why this desperate father succeeded where the disciples failed. Because prayer begins where self-reliance dies. And so do not wait until your faith is perfect before you come to Jesus. Come like this father came. Even if you are doubting, struggling, weak, fearful, reach out to Jesus, and you can we can pray together with the Father, I believe, help my unbelief. And by so doing, we may depend on God and think about God in all the areas of our life so that we may experience, truly experience, his joy and strength in all of our lives. I believe for my unbelief.