In our gospel lesson there is a man who has been through so much that he is not even sure if Jesus can help. After telling his story he says to Jesus: “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” His lack of certainty is insulting to the Son of God
And Jesus responded to his language of doubt: “If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.
The man had just showed the desperation of the suffering he had seen his son go through. It was not just his son’s suffering, but his whole families’ suffering and his suffering in particular as a father. How helpless he must have felt! What father am I?
This evil spirit has taken away my son’s voice, and it seizes him- and what unspeakable torment to see your son seized to stiffness, foaming at the mouth.
How unimaginably helpless it must feel to have a spirit you cannot grab with your hands and wrestle away, a spirit you cannot see, but for its terrible results- The evil spirit did not hesitate to try and destroy ‘let us throw the boy into the fire to burn him and then into the water to drown him.’
There is a Christian addiction recovery speaker who tells her personal life story of incredible suffering and God’s abundant grace and healing. She calls her story “Healing Neen.” Which was a nickname her family gave to her. It starts terrible and then only gets worse. It starts with a young girl living in an apartment in Baltimore with her siblings and a drug addict mother. From a young age she begins to care for her siblings far more than her mother, she wears clothes that are never washed, and sleeps in bedding that even if soiled, stays on the bed. Dangerous people are in her home all of the time. Once while going out to get some food she is noticed and she and her siblings are taken into child protective services for the first time. However, the full extent of her needs are overlooked and the period of foster care eventually ends. The abusive assaults from house guests during parties and serial boyfriends continue.
She endures assault and violation weekend after weekend and she understands that if she allows herself to be treated in the worst ways possible she can hide her younger siblings and stave off the terrible desires of those in her home so that they would not even bother looking for her siblings.
As the world brings more evil to her, you can imagine how her shame and self hatred grows. Instead of school papers and activities she learned how if she drank the alcohol left over in cups around the apartment after a party that she would not feel her troubles so much. The problem of trying to treat pain through sources besides Jesus only got worse into young adulthood for Neen.
How helpless we feel when we hear such stories. Cannot children have a better fate?
We have our own experiences of difficult life circumstances. In some cases, it is what others have done to us that reminds us of how helpless we are, living in this fallen world. In the midst of the pain and dysfunction of living in a fallen world we wonder, “Jesus, do you have the power to heal me? When we are not sure if Jesus can help us with the full extent of our problems, our uncertainty is the sign of our unbelief.
Jesus told the man that indeed he has the authority to help. “All things are possible for one who believes.” All things are possible specifically for those who believe in Jesus. All things are possible because Jesus has the power to heal us and to save us.
The man answered Jesus, and specifically he cried out to Jesus: “I believe, help my unbelief!”
Is this your prayer as well? “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” Do you believe that even though life can be full of disappointments and challenges, that Jesus has the authority to save you?
Do you believe in Jesus as your Savior in all things even in the midst of the failures and struggles that bring doubt and bring unbelief? Do you believe that even though your faith is imperfect and filled with too much unbelief, that Jesus loves you and forgives you anyways?
The phrase wait for the LORD is found all throughout the Bible. We heard it in our Introit today: “Be strong and let your heart take courage, all who wait for the LORD!” And once again in the Gradual we have been hearing this past month: Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.
If we wait, we can see the LORD’s provision for us in time. This is part of belief, to wait in hope. To believe is to trust in faith that the LORD indeed delivers us out of all afflictions. Unbelief is to assume that God only helps in some ways and not others, to put our own human capabilities in the spotlight as far as our estimation of how many afflictions we can actually be delivered from.
When the man asks for help with unbelief, he is not talking about doubt or skepticism as to whether the events of the Bible are true or whether Christianity is a trustworthy approach to life. Instead, he is describing unbelief as relates to the helpless situation of his son. It is the unbelief that struggles to see how things in life can get any better.
Do you have things in your life that are so hard where you question whether they can get better, that you question whether Jesus can help? Have you ever wondered what causes you to give up so easily? What makes the power of Jesus so lacking in your estimation? What keeps you from being persistent in prayer? Is it a doubt as to whether Jesus has the power to make a difference?
Jesus cast out the evil spirit. He performed what the disciples were first unable to do.
This failure was perhaps an injury to their pride and they ask why they could not drive it out. “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
Specifically, prayer to Jesus, as in only Jesus has the power to clean out the most formidable spirits. Prayer is not about having faith in yourself, as in how good you are at praying, or wondering if your prayer would be more effective if you could manage to sin less.
Have you ever concluded your prayer has not been answered because there is something wrong with you? This is not what Jesus means when he instructs us to be diligent in prayer. We are to be diligent for one reason only- because Jesus has the authority to answer our prayers.
1 Timothy 2:5 “Indeed there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Through our Lords crucifixion and resurrection any barriers that stood in the way of our prayers has been removed. Although we sin daily, we come before the Lord in prayer with complete righteousness, wearing the robe of Christ’s righteousness given to us in Holy Baptism.
Jesus has the authority to help us and He uses the church to give us this help. We can know with certainty that the authority of Jesus to forgive sins is carried out by the power of the Holy Spirit through the pastoral office. After his resurrection Jesus gave the disciples this authority because He cares for us.
How amazing it is that right here today, as God’s Word is spoken, God’s kingdom is coming to us and changing us. Right here in our midst the evil spirits flee from the power of Jesus.
In the beginning of the sermon we heard a small slice of the afflictions experienced woman called by the nickname Neen. After going through a series of failed rehab stays she experienced something unprecedented in her life.
A counselor at a rehab clinic cared about her enough to see her, not just as another junkie from off the street, but as a person redeemed by God. This counselor gave her hope that her life could be defined by more than one reaction after another to abuse and neglect.
I watched Neen tell her life story last year through a Zoom video presentation and even though the audience for the presentation was secular, she made no hesitation to talk about the hope the love of Jesus gave her, how Jesus makes all things new no matter the affliction, no matter the sin.
Although the gravity of sin coming from every direction in our fallen world seems so strong, we must never lose sight of the fact that Jesus has overcome Satan and Jesus reigns in this world. By His resurrection Jesus showed that he has authority even over the full weight of all of the sins of the world!
No matter the afflictions we face as a church, we need to keep in mind Jesus has not abandoned his Church, He has not abandoned you. Your sin does not separate you from Jesus. Our sorrows do not reign in our lives, and they will persist only for a short season. Jesus reigns!
Remember Revelation chapter 21:4 “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, , neither shall there be mourning or crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Jesus has the power to help us, and He does and he will help us in all our afflictions. Amen.