The Difficult Unclean Spirit

Mark 9:14-29.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, January 12, 2020.

This passage is the fourth story that Mark shares regarding a specific case of demon possession.  The first one is found in chapter one where the man in the synagogue of Capernaum is set free (We looked at this in February of 2019).  The second one is found in Mark 5 where Jesus sets the Gadarene Demoniac free from a legion of demons (We looked at t his in July of 2019).  The third one is found in Mark 7 where the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman is set free from a demon.

It is clear from these stories that the power Jesus had over evil spirits was very high on Mark’s list of reasons why Jesus was the Messiah.  They are placed next to many specific stories of various healings that Jesus did.  In fact, we have stated before that casting out an evil spirit can be seen as a special type of healing within a person’s soul.

As we look at our story today, faith is going to be a major issue.  Jesus emphasizes it several times.  What do you do when you realize that your faith is weak and yet you are facing the worst situation of your life?  The answer that God has for us is in this passage.  May God help us to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to us today.

The disciples cannot cast out an unclean spirit

In verses 14-18, there is a clear jump in the storyline.  In the previous verses, Jesus was with his disciples and in verse 14 he has not been with them.  We find out that it is the next day in Luke 9:37. Thus, Jesus is coming back to his disciples (perhaps he had been out praying) and he comes upon a chaotic scene.  It involves a situation where his disciples have been trying unsuccessfully to cast out an unclean spirit, or demon.

Part of the chaos is from an argument between the scribes and the disciples of Jesus.  No doubt, the scribes are jumping at the opportunity to castigate the disciples and the master that they follow.  Of course, they are not trying to cast out the spirit themselves.  It is easy to criticize others that we want to pull down, but often we do not have anything to replace it.  It would be better for us and for others if we would first take time to find the answer before we entrench ourselves against others who we do not like.  Arm-chair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen, but pretty much all of them would be instantly humbled and muzzled if they were suddenly put in the game in order to put up or shut up.  Of course, I am talking more about the argumentative attitude in this situation than I am about proper analysis and constructive criticism.  We know that the scribes are not trying to give them constructive criticism.

When Jesus asks what is going on, a man in the crowd pipes up and explains that he has brought his son to be set free from a mute spirit.  The man came to see Jesus, but Jesus was not there.  He only found his disciples.  It is important for us as disciples of Jesus to have enough of him within us that people who come looking for help always find him by proxy. 

Throughout this story, we are going to be given descriptions of the boy’s condition.  For now, we are told that the boy is unable to speak, or mute.  It was a common belief among the religious Jews of this period that a mute spirit was harder to cast out because they believed that you needed the name of the demon in order to cast it out.  On top of this, we are told that the boy has some kind of seizure from time to time in which he gnashes his teeth.  It would be easy to chalk this up to the ignorant superstition of those ancients who didn’t understand science and epilepsy.  However, we are not there to give a medical diagnosis.  Also, Jesus will be quite successful in setting the boy free from his malady.  Jesus clearly deals with this as a demon possession, and we should be very careful of cynically discounting the story out of hand.

We should also notice that it is significant that the disciples could not cast out the demon.  In Mark 6, Jesus had given them authority over evil spirits and sent them out to the cities of Israel by themselves in pairs.  They had been so successful in casting out spirits that they were bragging to Jesus about it when they returned to him.  So, this story is about more than a simple exorcism.

Jesus sets the boy free from the spirit

In verse 19, Jesus gives a rebuke to the lack of faith of “this generation.”  Though he is responding to the father of the boy, it is clearly about more than him.  The man does lack faith in God.  Little kids do not easily pick up evil spirits.  Something was going on in that home that involved messing with spirits in ways that God’s word prohibited.  The scribes also lack faith.  They refuse to believe that Jesus is the Messiah that was promised in the Scriptures and therefore also refuse to believe the miracles that he has been doing.  It was endemic within that whole generation, lack of faith in God.  Is it not endemic within our generation as well?  Do we not have trouble simply trusting God’s Word and acting upon it in faith?  Yes, yes, we do.  As we move forward, let’s put off to the side that Jesus clearly underlines faith as a critical component in the failure of the father, the scribes, and his disciples.

Jesus then tells them to bring the boy to him.  As they bring the boy to Jesus, he has a fit.  This is a good clue that a simple seizure or epilepsy is not the problem here.  If it was a simple medical problem then it wouldn’t have been triggered simply by being brought to Jesus.  We can call it coincidental.  Yet, such a comment sounds hollow in the face of the evidence that these triggered events happened frequently when the possessed were brought before Jesus.  Here we are given further description of what is going on with the boy.  He is “seized” by the spirit, falls to the ground, rolls around, and foams at the mouth.

We might expect Jesus to have a sense of urgency at this point, but instead he asks the father how long the boy has been this way.  The father explains that this has been happening since childhood.  The words used in this story lead us to conclude that the boy is not a child and yet not an adult.  Most likely, he is somewhere in his teens.  The father also explains that the spirit often seizes him when he is around bodies of water or fire.  He will seize and fall into them endangering his life.  This is a very scary and hazardous situation that required the constant vigilance of his parents in order to keep him alive.

In verse 23, Jesus tells the father that all things are possible to him who believes.  He is challenging the man by giving him a general principle of this life.  If you can believe then all things are possible for you.  It is important to note that Jesus does not say that all things are guaranteed, but rather that they are possible.  Faith in God and His power is the foundation point for everything in our life.  If we waver there then we cut off all manner of good things from our life even before we begin to talk about healings and deliverance from evil spirits.  Until we believe in Jesus and his ability, we are stuck in a land of impossibilities and we are captives in the prison of our own making.  May God help us to grow in our faith, not because we think it will give us a guarantee, but because we actually believe that God can do all things.

At this point, the man gives a wise response.  He does believe.  Otherwise, he would not have brought his boy to Jesus in the first place.  However, he also recognizes that his faith is very weak.  Does that sound like anyone that you know?  These seemingly contradictory statements are not disdained by Jesus.  The man’s lack of faith is not a rebellious resistance to belief.  Rather, it is the response of a heart and mind that have been beaten down by life, failures, and hard circumstances.  Like the thief on the cross, he simply states that he needs Jesus to help his unbelief.  Instead of rebuking him for lack of faith, Jesus accepts this as a starting point.  If we think that we have great faith, we will find out whether or not we actually do as we go through the difficult things of this life.  At times, we may feel like we are facing something that is too much, or that God no longer cares.  In those moments, if we will confess our weakness instead of putting on a show, we can cry out to Jesus to help our weakness of faith.  Such a person will always find the Lord close by to help them.  The path to strong faith is recognizing the weakness of it in the first place, and our need of God’s help to walk it out.

At this point, Jesus rebukes the “deaf and mute spirit” and it leaves the boy.  The boy convulses even worse than he has already, and the spirit cries out in a dramatic scene that ends in silence.  It appears to the people watching that the boy has died.  However, Jesus goes to the boy, takes him by the hand, and lifts him up.  He is alive!  Wow, what a moment this must have been for the father.  The scene will jump again at this point, but let’s take a moment to imagine what it must have been like for the father and the boy to run home and tell everyone what happened!  What a powerful God we serve.  Never doubt it.  All things are possible for our God.  We can’t control and manipulate Him, but He is able in every situation.

Jesus completely changed the destiny of that boy in this life.  We don’t know the rest of his story and what he did with the freedom that Jesus had given him.  This is a challenge for all of us.  We may want something powerful from God, but what will we do with it if He were to give it to us?  Oh, God help us to trust Him more, not just for miracles, but even more for how we live our lives, make our decisions, and how we treat one another.

The story ends up at a house where Jesus and his disciples are staying.  They want to know why they couldn’t cast out this spirit like the other spirits that they had encountered.  Jesus had spoken earlier to the father about his faith, but here he speaks to the disciples about theirs.  Their faith was not as strong as it could be and should be.  This “kind” of spirit was worse, or stronger, than the others they had encountered.  It required prayer and fasting.  Jesus clearly does not mean in the sense of a procedure that you follow when an initial command to leave doesn’t work because he didn’t stop to fast and pray.  He is not explaining a ritual.  It is not so much about fasting and praying for a specific demon-possessed person, but rather about being a person who has been praying and fasting already before you run into the spirit.  Christians should be fasting and praying in general.  There are some things that we know we will encounter and can pray for them specifically.  However, there are many things that we cannot foresee.  Prayer and fasting does not give us some kind of hit points or spiritual power points that allow us to take out higher and higher demonic entities.  Rather, we should cue off of the faith comments that Jesus made earlier.  The disciples were weak spiritually because they spent little time in prayer and fasting.  If they had then their faith and confidence in the power of God would have been stronger.  We can too quickly give up on trusting God, and allow the fears and desires of our flesh to lead us away from faith.  This is not just a lesson about exorcism.  Jesus said the same thing in the garden before his betrayal.  He told his disciples, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.  The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  When we pray and fast, we strengthen our faith in God.  When we listen to our flesh (aka not fasting and praying) then we are strengthening our flesh.  Whether we understand it or not, some situations require greater faith.  It takes greater faith to cast out a more difficult demon and it takes greater faith to stand with Jesus when he is marching to a cross.  Let us hear the challenge of Jesus and respond through increasing our prayers and times of fasting, and thus increasing our faith in him.

Difficult Unclean Spirit audio