Hope for Insufficient People

6 · The pastor unpacks Mark's detailed description of the boy's condition

Now, Mark gives a lot of details about this, more than even the other Gospels. We learned that the boy's demonic oppression was severe. It wasn't just a mild— this was a severe thing. It absolutely controlled him at times. He left— He had no control over his body at times. And it was prolonged. This wasn't a week or a month. This was, it seems as though it was year after year after year. This boy couldn't, on a normal day, on a good day, couldn't even communicate fully with those around him. And often on his worst days, he was in grave danger. And so this, we see that this demonic opposition, this demonic oppression is absolutely powerful, has this boy absolutely under its dominion.

7 · The pastor identifies the disciples' core mistake: arrogance rooted in self-sufficiency

And one of the things that comes out against that backdrop is the arrogance of the disciples. We're gonna see this as we go through the text, but notice here, the disciples' mistake was thinking that they in themselves had sufficient power to match the demonic opposition in front of them. In essence, the disciples marched up to the situation, they see what's going on and they think, I got this. Or even worse, you know, maybe watch this, you know, and put their hand out. And they utterly failed. Where do we go when we find ourselves insufficient facing an overwhelming outside world? This can come from a few different places. It can come from the devil, from demonic attacks, spiritual opposition. Scripture says, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Devour. This is real. We want to acknowledge this is what the Bible teaches.

8 · The pastor illustrates spiritual opposition with a pastoral anecdote — a new believer's sudden encounter with intensified temptation and spiritual resistance

I remember a new believer a few years ago came to faith, and the first week it just seemed like everything was going great. He opened his Bible, he was like, oh my gosh, the Lord's showing me things from the word. And it was like within a month, his experience was, man, I just feel like everything is hard now. You know, all of a sudden these tempting situations are coming up all the time. Sometimes when I open the Bible, it just I don't feel what I used to feel, and in all these different angles. And I think I just told him, Betty, that's spiritual opposition. You've set your faith to follow Christ, and the devil hates that. The world hates that. There's an opposition now that we deal with. Second, there is the world itself, right? There is opposition to our faith, to following Christ in the world around us. They can come from many angles, just from culture, from family, from work. The world exerts pressure on us. It desires to pull us toward pride and lust and sinfulness and push us away from the things of the Lord. And then there also is an element of just suffering here. There's an element of suffering. This family is simply suffering. What do we do when we face overwhelming suffering?

9 · The pastor uses a second pastoral story — a family facing terminal illness — to illustrate the collapse of self-sufficiency

I remember watching— A family who got a bad diagnosis, or one of their family members, a really hard diagnosis, a hard road, and their immediate response is, 'We got this. We're gonna fight this. We're gonna do this. We're gonna figure this out.' And so they researched many treatments, and they went out and looked for many things, and then about 6 months later, they got to the point where they just, they almost admitted on Facebook, 'We can't fight this. We don't know what to do.' Right? What do we do in those situations? Now, here's what's important. The reason I'm spending time here is we have to see that Scripture is utterly honest about our human condition. It doesn't try to puff us up and just say, 'You know what? You got this. You can do this.' If you Google, like, inspirational quotes, what you'll find is, 'You got this. You can do this. You're stronger than you think you are,' you know, and, 'You're getting stronger every day,' blah, blah, you know, stuff like this. And even in the church, in the Christian walk, there is a type of arrogance sounds commendable, right? Because we take verses like, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,' right? And the emphasis that we put is, 'I can do all things,' and then forget the rest of the verse, right? It's, 'I can do this. I am victorious. I'm a victorious Christian. I'm an overcomer. I am an overcomer.' Listen to that and think, 'That is right. I am an overcomer,' right? And what happens is we look at ourselves and we look at the world around us and we think, 'That's beatable. That stuff out there, yeah, I can overcome that because it's not too much and I'm a lot. I'm sufficient for this.' But here's the problem. You live long enough and you will be overwhelmed. You will be burdened beyond your ability to bear up. You will find yourself insufficient. And that type of Christianity that's just, 'You can do it, you can do it,' what happens when you can't?

10 · The pastor signals a structural shift from insufficiency in facing external opposition to insufficiency in one's internal resources

That's the first thing we see. Second, we are not only insufficient outside, we're insufficient inside.

11 · The pastor reads Mark 9:19-23, presenting Jesus' rebuke of the 'faithless generation,' the dramatic demonic display when the boy is brought to Jesus, and the father's desperate plea: 'If you can do anything…' Jesus challenges the father's conditional faith with the statement that all things are possible for one who believes

Verse 19, 'And he answered them,' speaking to the disciples here, 'O faithless generation, 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 it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. Just symbolically showing how utterly oppressed he is. Verse 21, and Jesus 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.

12 · The pastor unpacks Jesus' rebuke

Now, Jesus' lament, O faithless generation, is aimed here at the disciples, right? They had been with Jesus a long time. They still didn't get it. And he calls them faithless. But what's funny about that is that's an interesting choice of word because I think they were full of faith. They had marched right up to a demon, tried to cast it out, undissuaded by how dangerous or crazy it seemed. They were full of faith. The problem was that they were full of faith in themselves. They had placed their faith in, 'I can do this.' Jesus is pointing out they were faithless toward God. Their faith, it wasn't as though they didn't have, you know, they needed level 100 faith to beat a level 10 demon. And they only had level 50 faith and they needed to level up their faith. No, no, no, their faith was in a totally different thing, which was themselves. And Jesus says that they were— they did not have their faith in God. You see that layer when Jesus rebukes them for not using prayer even in this whole encounter. Their faith was misplaced and utterly lacking where it was most needed.

13 · The pastor shifts focus from the disciples to the father

Their faith was woefully insufficient in God. And you see this illustrated even more poignantly in the father himself. The father is beaten down, he is desperate, almost, he doesn't even initiate with Jesus, Jesus initiates conversation with him and almost reluctantly, he says, 'If you can do anything, help us,' right? And then Jesus replies, essentially says, 'If you will believe, your son will be healed.' But what we see is that the father's store of faith is insufficient. And Jesus points out this problem, the dad doesn't really believe in God's power, doesn't really believe in Christ.

14 · The pastor makes a critical theological distinction between doubt (open questioning) and unbelief (closed rejection)

Now, I wanna clarify something that I think is super important here. Doubt and unbelief are not the same thing, okay? Doubt is when you say, is this true? Unbelief is when you say, 'It can't be true.' And the father here is not just doubting, he's not just wondering, 'Does Jesus, does he have power? Is he really the Messiah?' in a genuine, open way. He's, the assumption in his statement is, 'I don't think you can help. You can't help, but in the event that somehow you could, please help.' Right, this is unbelief, not doubt. Doubt. The father is not saying, 'Help me see,' but rather, 'I don't see it. I can't believe it. I don't think it's true, but in the chance it is.' Now, here's where I think we need to look at our doubts and our unbelief as Christians. I think often Christians are afraid to look inside their hearts when they have these places of doubt. If, like, a doubt comes into their mind, like, 'Is God really even powerful? Does he really love me?' It's almost like we do, like, 'Nope, I'm not gonna think about that. Not even, not.' I'm not going to acknowledge that that was even there. That's, you know, and I think we need to become good at diagnosing where we have doubts, where we genuinely are wondering, man, can the Lord do this? I need to search the scriptures and see what he's like versus I don't think God can. Right? Those are very different things. Don't try to ignore your doubts. Direct your doubts. Pull your doubt out of the shadow, as it were, and say, hey, what questions are you asking? Let's go get those answers. But we also should not, when we see unbelief, allow that to stay either. We shouldn't just be okay with unbelief.

15 · The pastor critiques a contemporary evangelical trend that celebrates doubt as spiritual maturity

I mean, there's almost an evangelical culture among the younger evangelicals, I think, at this point, that prizes these moments of doubt and unbelief. Like, oh, it's great that you, you know, don't think that God is really powerful enough. Yeah. As this— we're in this sort of— inspirational journey of faith and asking hard questions, but sometimes the hard questions are just masks for, 'I don't think God really loves me. I don't think God is real. I don't think he can help.' This passage calls us to turn away from that. It says unbelief is not good. Jesus invites us to lay it aside, to bring our questions, and to see him as he is. So if this is true, if we are insufficient to meet the challenges of the world around us, and when we look inside of ourselves, when we dig deep down in there, there's really not anything sufficient there either, what do we do, right? This passage means to bring us to that point, to hear this, that the cure for insufficiency, the hope for insufficient people is leaning on the sufficiency of Christ. The hope for insufficient people is leaning on the sufficiency of Christ. That's what we're going to see. First, we're going to see the insufficiency— the sufficiency of Christ inside us. Verse 24, 'Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, 'I believe; help my unbelief.' Now, this statement is profound. At first, it sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. The father confesses that he does believe in Jesus' identity and power. I love that in just this brief conversation, in these questions, in meeting Jesus, in being in his presence, that's enough for this man to go, you know what, I've lost faith in everything, your disciples and the scribes and everybody, but I'm willing to put my faith in you. His belief is kindled, right? But the man is also honest. At the same time he's confessing, I do believe, he also looks in his heart and sees there is still unbelief there. While there is the presence of faith, there is still the presence of unbelief. And John Calvin, commenting on this verse, says, this man believes, yet acknowledges himself to have unbelief. These two statements may appear to contradict each other, and here's, I love this, but there is none of us that doesn't doesn't experience both of them in himself. Right, this is us, this is you and me, even on our best days.

16 · The pastor emphasizes Jesus' response to the father's honesty: not rebuke but welcome

And here's what I want you to see, look at how Jesus responds to this man's honesty. He does not cast him away. This man does not, in saying this statement, this man doesn't get a rebuke like the disciples did. Jesus doesn't look at this man and say, 'Oh, faithless man.' Why? Because this man is believing and is humbly acknowledging his unbelief. And then here is the key. He is connecting those by saying, 'Help me here. I believe here, help me here,' right? He's throwing himself, in a sense, on someone other than himself for help. Jesus. And Jesus' response is to welcome him, to help him. Look, acknowledging our unbelief doesn't mean that Jesus looks at us and is like, 'Yeah, get out of here.' I love this statement in Isaiah that's said of Jesus in Matthew. This is a statement in Isaiah of God. A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. There are many times in our life, guys, where we just feel bruised, we feel beat up, we feel battered. We're almost afraid to go to the Lord because we feel like, no, he's just going to stomp the rest of life out of me. He's just going to rebuke me. Or I'm barely hanging on here. I'm a candle that's sputtering out and he's just going to— if I go to him, he'll say, oh, you should have believed more. And then no, no, no, this is— you see what Jesus is doing? It's almost like the picture is He bends down for the single blade of grass that's gotten disjointed and he rights it. He bends down at the candle sputtering and blows on it to bring it back. This is the posture of Jesus toward those who believe yet have unbelief.

17 · The pastor contrasts the disciples' posture ('I can') with the father's journey from 'If you can' (viewing both self and God as insufficient) to 'Help me' (recognizing self as insufficient but God as sufficient)

This man does something the disciples did not do earlier. He, feeling weak, feeling insufficient, feeling insufficient, outside of himself and inside of himself, asks for help, leans himself on the Lord. Look at the statements here. The disciples essentially showed up at this encounter and said, 'I can, I can, I can do this,' right? Their view is that they themselves are sufficient and God is unnecessary. I got this. This man says, At first, 'If you can.' So he views himself as insufficient, but also in the beginning views God as insufficient too. He's like, 'Well, I can't, and you probably can't either.' But he transitions to this, to his view of self being, 'Help me,' meaning he is insufficient, but God is sufficient. Right, do you see where he lands here?

18 · The pastor uses a carnival strength-test analogy to illustrate the shift from self-reliance to dependence on another

Imagine, this is the way I picture this text in my head. Imagine you're at one of those carnivals, right, where you've got that contest where the kids try to hit the thing with the hammer and it goes whoop, and if it hits the bell, ding, you win a prize. Right, so imagine you're at the carnival and there's a kid and, you know, it doesn't matter how many tickets this kid pays, he's just gonna keep hitting this thing, doong, blunk, right? Ding, bloop, I just can't get it. Try harder, dig deeper. Okay, ding, bloop, like, it's never gonna happen. He's never gonna get it up here. The way that kid gets the prize is not by digging deep inside of himself or trying to lower, you know, the bell or something like that, is handing the hammer to his dad and says, I can't do this, Dad. I got one more ticket left. Can you get that prize for me? And the dad smiles and looks back and says, sure, son. Hits it, ding, wins, right?

19 · The pastor applies the text directly to the congregation

When we are insufficient, when we recognize our insufficiency, it is actually the doorway to strength because if it pushes us to lean on the sufficiency of someone outside of ourself, namely Christ. Christian, today, where do you need to lean your insufficient faith on the sufficiency of Christ. If you feel the presence of unbelief in your heart, doubts in your heart, the solution is the same: to acknowledge it, to ask the Lord for help, and to lean on the sufficiency of Christ. And let me just say, I think a gauge of whether you're leaning on the sufficiency of Christ is probably in your personal relationship with God and something that will be pointed out at the end of the text here: prayer. If you find yourself prayerless, it may well be you leaning on your own sufficiency or believing God too is insufficient rather than leaning joyfully on the sufficiency of Christ.

20 · The pastor steps outside the expositional flow to address a contemporary pastoral crisis: the deconstruction trend among young evangelicals

I've heard— yeah, I'm gonna just say a couple sentences about this. It's become a thing in the last few years that young evangelicals are deconstructing You guys heard this term, right? Like, guys, you know, people that have grown up in church, all of a sudden, they're like, I don't know if I believe what I believe anymore. I'm putting everything on the table. You know, I'm on this journey. I'm deconstructing, right? And I've watched a number of people, even friends, go on this journey of deconstruction. And what I've observed, this is just from the cheap seats, what I've observed is one of three things will happen with them. First, in deconstructing and, you know, questioning their faith and the Bible and all the church and all that stuff, they will— road 1 is to lean more and more on the sufficiency of their own reason and emotion and away from God. Meaning that while they're like, 'I'm not sure if I can trust this or that or that,' what are they doing? They're leaning themselves more and more on their own reasoning, right? Listen, man, I don't even remember events from a week ago well. Like, I have childhood memories that didn't even happen. I'll bring them out to my family, they're like, 'That never happened.' I'm like, 'Did I make that up? Was that a dream?' Right? I, like— when we lean ourselves, like, 'Yeah, I'm going to reason all of this out. I'm going to see, you know, what historic Christianity over the last 2,000 years hasn't seen. It's me. I've arrived. Here we go.' Right? Now, people don't think they're doing that. They think they're being humble. 'I'm just questioning. I'm just—' That is code for, 'I think I'm enough.' I have to figure this out, leaning sufficiency of self. Or second, I've seen some, heartbreakingly, look at Christ and say, look at the things of God and say, I don't think that's sufficient. Look inside themselves and say, and I'm not sufficient either. And it's the path to despair. It's a path to depression and just giving up. And I've seen some folks do that. What this text offers us is a better way to lean more and more on the sufficiency of Jesus, to say, I'm not enough, but you are. I'm not enough, but you are.

21 · The pastor applies the sermon's framework to the church community

And let me just encourage us as a church with this: we want to be a if I could use this phrase, we wanna be a safe community for doubters in the Jude 22 way. Jude 22 says, 'And have mercy on those who doubt.' We don't wanna, like, praise sort of a journey of unbelief as like, 'Yeah, that's great.' No, but we wanna acknowledge people will have real hard questions. Guys, as a pastor, man, it's been heartbreaking over the last 10 years to walk with folks who, get a bad or hard diagnosis and who are asking questions like, does God really care? Does he love me? Why doesn't he do something? Is he even there? Right? These questions. But when the church— when we hear those questions, our response should not be, ah, like, I don't know what to do with that. Somebody says that in community group. No, we're to press in, have mercy, respond the way Jesus does. With love and compassion and invite them to lean on Christ.

22 · The pastor signals the final movement of the sermon, reiterating the thesis and preparing to conclude with the text's climactic demonstration of Christ's sufficiency

All right, one more point here. The cure for insufficiency is leaning on the sufficiency of Christ. Last, we're gonna finish the text off in verse 25.

23 · The pastor reads Mark 9:25-29 and expounds on Jesus' effortless authority over the demon

And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, 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, it 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 had entered the house, the disciples asked him privately, 'Why couldn't we 'Why could we not cast it out?' And he said to them, 'This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.' The disciples finally asked the question they should have asked in the beginning. What did we do wrong? And Jesus points out the simplest thing. You never even prayed. It's not as though they needed a complicated series of rituals and garlic and holy water Like, 'Oh yeah, we're gonna have to get an ancient relic to cast this guy out.' No, he's like, 'You didn't pray.' I mean, this is like, this is basic, but the disciples absolutely leaning on themselves did not lean at all on the sufficiency of God. But what Jesus demonstrates here is that he is more than sufficient for any power that overwhelms us, for any power that could overcome us, for any power that could overburden us. It does not overwhelm him. It does not overburden him. He is more than sufficient for all of it. And not only do we see that, you know, this dramatic scene unfold where the person is, you know, crying out and convulsing, notice what Jesus is doing. He is not screaming. He is not straining. He's not, you know, holding some electrical— 'Ah, if only I can do this for another,' you know, and then, 'Ah,' and it finally comes out and Jesus is wiping his brow. He says, 'Come out of him,' and that's it. That's the end of the battle. Look at how sufficient Christ is for anything outside of us. If there is a demonic power, if the devil roars about like a roaring lion, there is a a far greater lion roaring back, right? This is not somebody who trembles at the forces of darkness arrayed against him, but in Revelation speaks a word and with the sword coming out of his mouth slays his enemies. There is no power that can stand against him. The world, right, is not sufficient to overcome him. Jesus said, 'Take heart, I have overcome the world.'

24 · The pastor corrects a common Christian cliché ('God will not give you more than you can handle') by citing 2 Corinthians 1:8-9

Look, you know, have you ever heard that phrase some Christians say, you know, 'God will not give you more than you can handle'? Anybody say that, you know, in a quiet moment? 'God will— don't worry, brother, God will not give you more than you can handle.' That's not in the Bible. What's in the Bible is Paul saying, 'We were utterly burdened beyond anything that we could bear, but this was to make us rely not on ourselves but on Christ.' Right? When we get to the point where we're like, 'I am utterly insufficient. I have no path of victory here,' and lean fully on the sufficiency of Christ, we find him more than sufficient for what we face. So here's the question: Do we allow— when we feel the outside pressures of the world, we can do one of two things. We can either just, 'Oh, I'm going to strain back at the forces,' straining against me, or we can say, I'm insufficient, I'm just gonna despair, or the third thing this text shows us to do is to say, I'm not sufficient, that's overwhelming, but Jesus is more than sufficient for this. Maybe in a season of suffering you think, I will never be able to bear up under this. Amen. But in Christ, you can. Maybe you think, 'I'm not going to be able to walk through this. I am overwhelmed.' Yes, you are, but there's one near you that is not overwhelmed.

25 · The pastor reads Mark 9:30-32 and makes a redemptive-historical connection between the healing of the boy and the cross

But here's where the text ends. The text ends in verse 30 where it's— with another glimpse to the cross, where Jesus again teaches his disciples, saying to them, 'The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after 3 days he will rise again.' He will rise. And they did not understand the saying and they were afraid to ask him. They still keep missing the connection between what Jesus is doing and where he is going. But what Jesus is doing, oh, on the cross, did you notice that language? This young boy, they thought he was dead and he took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. Jesus is going to the cross to raise up every oppressed, overwhelmed, burdened sinner that will turn to him, and he is more than sufficient to do it. Look, our sins, our guilt before the Lord are overwhelming, are overburdening, that we cannot stand up under the weight of it, and the justice of God bears down on us. And yet Jesus stands on the cross, more than sufficient to pay for every sin, more than sufficient to pay for every debt, and he pays it all that he might do to each sinner that turns to him what he did for this young boy.

26 · The pastor applies the gospel directly to believers and non-believers

Brother or sister, if you feel overwhelmed, take heart by looking at this boy. Wait, you think I'm dead, I can't move. Good, that's exactly where Jesus works his best. And if you don't know Christ, brother— I mean, I don't know, I can't call you brother yet, but I hope to. If you're not in Christ, look to Christ today. If you're overwhelmed, look to Christ today. We as a church, we're not here to tell you, 'You can do it,' give you a pep talk and send you back out into the world. That out there, psh, way beyond our ability. but we know somebody whose ability far exceeds that of the world's, that of the devil's, that of anything that could be thrown at you, far exceeds even your own insufficiency of faith. Turn to him.

27 · The pastor returns to the track story to provide a final, vivid illustration

Let me just end by saying this. We— I only got to experience the thrill of victory on the track field a handful of times and it was always the same way. The only time I ever came in first place, even in practice, was in one particular race. You know what that race was? The relay. That's right, Lisa. She's like, yeah, I can see where this is going. It's not hard. So I remember, you know, here's what the coaches would do, God bless them. They would put me on the team to sandbag the strongest runners. So they'd put like all of their like A runners, you know, together with me, And then all the other runners. And what would happen is I'd be somewhere in the middle, maybe, you know, I remember being third. I'd run third often in practice. And I would do my level best. I would dig deep and I would lose ground and I would be passed and the person would keep going and keep going and keep going. And there were times I thought, I'm just gonna give up, this is so stupid. But I knew I could see Matt or whoever in front of me, if I could get the baton to them, It didn't. It was so fast. It didn't matter. They could be 50 yards ahead, 100 yards ahead. No problem. The baton goes into their hand. We win. Right. And that's what, that's what we got to remember, Christians, that our path to victory is not, we're going to do this. It's hand the baton off, man. He's going to get it done. Amen.

28 · The pastor closes with a pastoral prayer, inviting the congregation to examine their hearts for doubt and unbelief, to be honest about those struggles, and to lean on Christ's sufficiency

Would you stand? Let's pray. Lord, as we end, as we are about to sing, Make my heart believe. Lord, we just take a moment here. We want to quiet our hearts and we just ask, Lord, help us see if there are areas of doubt and unbelief in our hearts. Lord, help us to turn away from unbelief, but help us to look honestly at our doubts. Lord, places where we wonder, are you really there? Do you really care about us? Do you really love us? Is this really going to work out for our good? And for your glory. Lord, I pray that we would be honest about those things, we'd invite others into those things. But as we sing, as we close, that we would lean on the sufficiency of Christ today. Lord, there is no person in history that has not prayed or sung 'Help my unbelief' or Or make my heart believe that you have turned away empty. Bruised reeds you do not break, faintly burning wicks you don't snuff out. So, Lord, as we sing, oh Lord, may we cast ourselves on the sufficiency of our King. Amen.