This class session focuses on the righteousness of the heart and how it contrasts with expressions of anger and contempt. Anger and contempt have ravaged society and family. Our hope for the future lies in the righteousness of the heart, which comes through faith in Christ.
When I was a boy, I wanted to be just like Mickey Mantle. In 1961, he had 514 at bats and he hit 54 homeruns. That means he hit a homerun one out of every 9 or so at bats. He was walked 126 times – he still holds the record for the most walks in a career. Pitchers were terrified of him. He could hit from either side of the plate and hit more homeruns with his left hand than his right, even though he was a right-hander.
I wanted to be like Mickey Mantle. Once, when I was practicing hitting left-handed, I drilled a long one over the garage, just like Mickey. Then I heard glass breaking. I ran around the garage and saw that I had broken the window in my neighbor’s home. He had moved in just days before. When I looked through the broken window, I could see him sitting in the chair right next to the window, tossing my ball up and down. That was how we met.
I wanted to be Mickey Mantle. He was 5’11” and weighed 195 pounds in his prime. I weighed 190 (after eating two hamburgers, a hot dog, and a banana split), but I was 6’5” in my prime. He could see a mile. Without my glasses, I could see about 6 inches. I wanted to knock balls out of Yankee stadium just like “the Mick,” but I wasn’t built like him, couldn’t see like him, couldn’t run like him, and didn’t think like him. I was never going to be a Mickey Mantle.
Is it that way in the spiritual life too? If you are not born with an aptitude for it, will you never be good at it? If you were raised in a home where no one talked about God and his kingdom, no one showed you how to pray or read the Bible, is it too late?
It is not too late. But the time to start is now. You might never be a Mickey Mantle (or a Miguel Cabrera). but you can excel at being you in the kingdom of God. You will never excel at being you anywhere else.
You have what it takes. but that does not mean you won’t need to change. I’m sure that Mickey and Miguel had what it takes, but they still had to learn, adapt, practice, work. Do we think it takes less to succeed in the kingdom of God? You might be thinking, “But this is by grace!” Absolutely! But grace inspires effort. So, Paul could say in the same breath, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).
You can become more that you have ever imagined (1 Cor. 2:9) and know God in a way that is richer that you’ve yet experienced. God’s grace will help you learn, adapt, practice, and work. And that will flood your life with hope.
I was going to preach today on the Lord’s Prayer, but I realized that many people are unable to pray that prayer to any real advantage. They can recite it from memory, but they can’t pray it from their hearts. It takes a certain kind of person to do that – the person Jesus depicts in the Sermon on the Mount, So, today is a set-up day: we will look at the Sermon to learn how to become people who can pray the Lord’s Prayer to great advantage. And then, next week, we will look at that magnificent prayer itself.
Many people come to the Sermon with the idea that in it Jesus gives us a bunch of new rules that are even harder to follow than the ones Moses gave. Then they either grimace and go to work or they say things like, “No one can do these things—that’s why we need Christ’s righteousness, not our own.” Both approaches are unhelpful.
Jesus is not laying down a new, more difficult law that supersedes the Law of Moses, nor is he giving us rules that we can’t possibly follow so that we will be forced to trust in his righteousness rather than our own – as if we have any righteousness of our own! In the Sermon, he shows us what a life of faith in him looks like. Or, put another way, what it looks like to live as children of the heavenly Father.
When we come to the Sermon, we are liable to focus on the things we need to do but fail to notice the beliefs and values that make the doing of them possible. So, we try to pray for our enemies – because Jesus tells us to do that – without loving them. We recite the Lord’s prayer, but we have no desire for his kingdom to come. We give to people in need, as Jesus taught us to do, but we resent them for it.
If we approach the Sermon this way, we’ll either become disgruntled, hypocritical legalists or sophists who explain away any Scripture that doesn’t fit our practices. Today, we look at what Jesus told us to do, why he told us to do it, and how faith fits into it – for faith is everywhere present in this teaching.
In Matthew 6, which is where we are going to focus our attention, Jesus issues five major directives, and then gives secondary directives that illustrate how to carry them out. The first of those five major directives is (verse 1), “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.” Jesus then uses giving, praying, and fasting to illustrate how this could be done.
The next two major directives form a couplet and are about where and where not to invest your time, energy, and thought. Those directives are (verse 19): “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth … but (verse 20), store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” (Where you store your treasures – that is, where you invest your time, energy, and thought – is one of the major life choices all of us must make.)
The fourth and fifth major directives are another couplet – they also go together. The fourth is (verse 25): “…do not worry about your life …”; and the fifth (verse 33) is “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness…” Jesus understood that you will never not worry about your life until you are busy seeking his kingdom and righteousness.
The five directives introduce three basic life questions, which you will need to answer for yourself. They are: Who is my audience? Where am I investing my life? What am I seeking? How you answer these questions will help you understand where you are in following Christ and what you can do next.
The first question is, Who Is My Audience? and the directive that goes with it is, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.” Jesus then gives three illustrations of how this could be done in his hearer’s lives. That he illustrates this in three different ways emphasizes how critically important this is for anyone who wants to be Jesus’s disciple.
He begins, “Be careful” or, as the NIV translates the same word elsewhere, “Watch out!” “Be on your guard,” or “Pay attention!” The reason for the strong warning is that this will happen unless we take steps to preclude it. Jesus is talking about one of the great obstacles to a genuine and fulfilling life of faith. The minute we start using religion (and all the things that go with it, like Bible knowledge, giving, praying, fasting, church attendance, positions of service, and much more) to impress people, genuine faith goes out the window.
Jesus knew that we must choose our audience. We cannot play to two audiences at once, not if one of those audiences is God. Trying to do so will simply make faith impossible. Jesus, on another occasion, asked some religious leaders: “How can you believe who are after glory from each other” – and the implication is that they could not – “and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44 PAR). We must choose our audience.
The issue here – it lies behind this instruction and practically all of chapter 6 – is faith. Faith cannot be sustained when we do what we do – especially when what we do is religious in nature – to receive people’s approval and the rewards that go with it. I believe that many Christians live in a state of low and deteriorating faith because they have chosen the wrong audience.
How do you know what audience you’ve chosen? Ask yourself some questions: Does my behavior remain consistent around both religious and irreligious people? Do I read the Bible when others don’t know about it? Do I pray when I am not in church? Do I volunteer to serve even when no one thanks me? Am I always looking to see if people notice when I do something good?
I love the story of the missionary couple who left Africa on the same boat as Teddy Roosevelt. They had served for many years with little recognition. When they got to New York Harbor, they could see thousands of people had lined the waterfront for a chance to welcome the former president home. But no one came to welcome them home.
They rented a cheap apartment in New York, but a dark mood had descended on the husband. His wife tried to cheer him up, but he was deeply depressed. He said to her: “We come home after years of sacrifice and no one comes to see us, no one cares, no one notices. But the president comes home after a safari, and thousands of people turn out to welcome him.”
His wife tried to console him, but he went into the bedroom, closed the door behind him, and stayed in there for a long time. When he came out, his demeanor was completed changed. He told his wife, “The Lord showed me that we haven’t come home yet.” God was gracious to that missionary. But think about the years he had wasted playing to the wrong audience. His self-doubt and depression didn’t begin when he arrived in New York, and it could have been prevented, had he played to the Audience of One.
The next question is Where am I investing my life? Faith-filled people who live their lives before God are people who invest in heaven and not on earth. Jesus issues a pair of directives in regard to this: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…” These twin commands are about where we invest our lives, which is to say where we spend our time, money, and thought in expectation of future benefit.
There is an inviolable principle that underlies Jesus’s thinking. Where we invest ourselves (that includes our money but is bigger than that) is where our heart will be set. This is not about our affections (not primarily, anyway), for the Bible does not consider the heart to be the seat of affection but the control center of life. This is about direction. The heart orients our life. It chooses our course.
Your heart always sets course for your treasure, and if your treasure (your investment of time, money, and thought) is with God, your whole life will be oriented toward him. But if you invest your time, money, and thought for an earthly return, your life will be oriented to things. And if that is the case, your experience will be one of chronic uncertainty, envy, anger, and diminishing hope.
The good thing is that we can choose to store up treasure (invest our time, money and thought) with God in heaven starting today. We don’t need to feel a certain way to do it. We can choose to do it, and if we do, our heart will follow our investment.
Just a word of warning (which Jesus offers in two different ways): you cannot choose both heaven and earth, God and Mammon (which the NIV translates “money” in verse 24). If you try, you will be continually off balance and will create for yourself all kinds of problems. You will be like a St. Louis driver who can’t make up his mind whether to vacation in Minnesota or Louisiana. He keeps changing his mind, changing direction, and colliding with the people around him. The on-again, off-again life is indicative of an investment problem.
The third major life question is: What am I seeking? and the twin directives that go with it are: “Do not worry about your life” (verse 25) but seek first his kingdom and righteousness” (verse 31). God installed a warning alarm in you to alert you whenever your guidance control system has locked onto the wrong target. That alarm is worry.
Worry is not normal—any more than a fire alarm is normal. It signifies that something is wrong. But if the alarm is going off all the time, we will come to think of it as normal and try to carry on doing what we always do. Worry is a sign that we need to stop doing what we have been doing and check our heading.
Many people react to worry in a counterproductive way. Rather than checking their heading, they try furiously to gain control of the situation. They think that if they can get a handle on what’s happening, the worry will go away. It never does.
Our building’s fire alarm system has a control panel that has its own, softer (but very annoying) alarm. I have silenced that alarm many times but silencing it does nothing to change the underlying cause that triggered it. If the cause isn’t addresses, the alarm always sounds again.
In the same way, people can silence worry’s alarm by engaging in distractions (that’s America’s favorite approach) or by taking medications (one in six of us are on antidepressants), but the underlying cause that triggered worry remains in play. I am not saying we should not silence the alarm in appropriate ways – that may be necessary and helpful. (Thank God for good medications!) I am saying that we are only prolonging the problem – and perhaps making it worse – if we silence the alarm but do nothing about the reason it is going off.
What can we do? We can seek God’s rule over us and his character within us – his kingdom and his righteousness. Doing so puts us in a place – the only place – where worry can be dealt with effectively. It also puts us in an environment where faith can grow. From there, we can pray the Lord’s prayer from our hearts, not just recite with our lips.
Let’s go back to the three basic life questions and try to answer them: Who is my audience? Where am I investing my life? What am I seeking?
Who is your audience? Let’s say you realize that you have been seeking applause from people rather than God, with the result that your faith is very weak. What can you do about it? Jesus counsels you to take up the practice of secrecy: to give, pray, and fast – or pull weeds around the church, visit a shut-in, help a stranger – without telling a soul. Every believer needs a secret life with God that just he and they know about. Doing good deeds in secret is a part of that. It frees us from pride and ignites our faith.
Where am you investing your life? Let’s say you realize that your life is disordered. You vacillate on things, waver, and cannot commit. You are enthusiastic about God for a while, and then you cool off. (That indicates an investment problem.) What can you do about it? Inventory your investments, giving special attention to where you spend your thoughts and your time.
If you are not yet invested with God, start now. It will help to have a stable investment instrument like daily prayer and Bible reading, church attendance, a small group, a church or other ministry venture. These need to be regular investments – daily, weekly, repeatedly.
What am you seeking? If you don’t know what you’re seeking, think about where are you looking? That will help you figure it out. You might look for car keys in the sofa cushions, but you won’t look for the car there. If you are looking in the refrigerator, it is probably not for jumper cables. If you’re looking everywhere but the church, the Bible, and in service, it is probably not God’s kingdom and his righteousness that you are seeking.
One last thing: if the worry alarm is going off, stop and ask yourself what you are trusting. Scholars say that “Mammon” (v. 24) means “that in which one trusts.” Putting your trust in something other than God will set off the alarm – that’s the way you were designed. Will you choose to trust God today?
One of the most influential teaching sessions in history took place on a mountainside – possibly because of the acoustics – and is known as the Sermon on the Mount. It is not a sermon in the modern sense of the word, and most contemporary churchgoers would not recognize it as such. While it imparts information, it was not Jesus’s goal to fill his student’s heads with data but to change their lives for the better.
When Jesus first gave the Sermon on the Mount, none of his hearers took notes and many of them did not know how to write. So, Jesus, like other teachers of the time, used words, images, and ideas intended for hearers rather than note-takers. The images Jesus used – the narrow way and the wide way, the house on sand, daily bread, treasures in heaven, the beam in the eye, and many more – are so memorable that they have long lived in popular culture.
The profundity of the teaching – the way it is organized, the brilliance of its insights, the unforgettable conclusion – can hardly be overstated. What contemporary readers, as opposed to first century hearers, might miss is that the sermon is intensely practical. Jesus intended this teaching to help people flourish under God’s rule and live richly satisfying lives with each other.
The way many readers now approach the sermon, including some well-known scholars, obscures its purpose. Indeed, for many years scholars approached the sermon as if it were a compilation of disparate instructions, sewn together by early editors, offering tidbits of insight and inspiration. Fortunately, the tide of scholarship has now turned, and academics are again valuing the sermon as a unit, and so appreciating its structure and flow.
Well-meaning people can approach the sermon in a way that is equally unhelpful. Wanting to be right, they focus on the things people are told to do but fail to notice the beliefs and values that make the doing of them possible. So, they try to pray for their enemies – because Jesus tells them to do so – without loving them. They recite the Lord’s prayer, but do not desire his kingdom to come. They give to people in need, as Jesus taught, but then resent them for it.
If we approach the Sermon this way, there is a good chance that we will either become disgruntled, hypocritical legalists or sophists who explain away any Scripture that doesn’t fit our practices. It is important to see what Jesus told people to do, but it is also important to understand why he told them to do it. It is also helpful to see what all this has to do with faith, which is important throughout the Sermon.
One of the governing directives within the Sermon is Jesus’s insistence that his followers eschew any use of religion to increase their standing among their peers. He says, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.” He then offers three real life examples of how this might happen.
The reason for the strong warning is that this will happen unless steps are taken to preclude it. Jesus is talking about one of the great obstacles to a genuine and fulfilling life of faith. The minute one starts using religion (and all the things that go with it, like Bible knowledge, giving, praying, fasting, church attendance – even “soul-winning”) to impress people, genuine faith goes out the window.
Jesus knew that everyone must choose their audience. They cannot play to two audiences at once—not if one of them is God. Trying to do so will simply make faith impossible. Jesus, on another occasion, asked some religious leaders: “How can you believe” – and the implication is that they could not – “since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”
The issue here is faith. It cannot be sustained when people do what they do – especially when what they do is religious in nature – to receive people’s approval and the rewards that go with it. Many religious people live in a state of low and diminishing faith because they have chosen the wrong audience.
I usually post a Following Jesus Today class midweek, but we did not have class this past Sunday so that class members could attend a Ministry Fair and learn about local and global ministries our Church supports. So, instead of a class, I thought I would post a H-E-A-R journal entry from earlier in the week.
H-E-A-R Journals are a regular part of the D-Groups – discipleship groups of 3 to 5 people – that happen at our church. D- Group members read the same Scriptures each week, try to understand and apply them to life, and respond to the truth they see. When they meet with their group, they share one of their journal entries from the week.
I read Mark 9-10 on Saturday. My HEAR journal follows. (This is not exegesis, but devotional thoughts based on a particular text.)
Highlight (Mark 10:51): “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
Explain: Jesus didn’t simply heal blind Bartimaeus. He first asked him what he wanted him to do. Jesus either did not know what the man wanted, or the man didn’t know what he wanted (think of the man in John 5 who had been paralyzed for 38 years), or he knew it would benefit the man to articulate his desire. Sometimes it is necessary to clarify our thoughts and set our hearts before faith can ignite.
Apply: It is good for me to think and speak to Jesus about what I want.
Respond: Jesus, I want to keep growing – more and more – in the knowledge of God. I want to be pure – sanctified wholly. I want to be humble, free of the demand that things go “my way,” ready to go a different way when I see wisdom in it. I want good work to do through my later years – work that I can share with Karen. I wanted never to be governed by fear or sin. I want hope to energize me until I die—and hope becomes sight. I want my sons and their families to experience you in these same ways. I want to bless people through my work. I want our church family to be united, fruitful, and joyful. I want to be free of deceit. I want to see you in the glory you had with the Father. I want more and more to want what you want for me.
(For more information on D-Groups, see Foundations, by Robby and Kandi Gallaty.)
“This kind comes out only by prayer.” Jesus said that about a stubborn unclean spirit, but there are many things in our lives that “come out” only by prayer: stubborn marriage problems, addictions, financial needs, and more. Learning to pray is necessary to a life in which we can do what we need to do when we need to do it.
The text of this sermon is included below for those who would rather read that listen.
When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him. “What are you arguing with them about?” he asked. A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.” “O unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?” “From childhood,” he answered. “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up. After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.” (Mark 9:14-29)
Our text ends with Jesus’s explanation that “This kind can come out only by prayer.” This kind: the difficult kind, the stubborn kind, the tough, intense, pernicious kind can come out only by prayer. He was speaking about an unclean spirit, but I believe there are other things that plague us that can only be effectively handled by prayer. There are marriage problems that will never be resolved except by prayer. There are financial predicaments, relationship impasses, job difficulties, health setbacks that can only be overcome by prayer.
There is something unexpected about this verse—but I am starting with the end of our text, and we really should begin at the beginning. We’ll return to that unexpected thing in a few minutes, but before we get to that, let’s see where we are; let’s get some context.
Jesus had taken Peter, James, and John up a very high mountain where they had an experience which, as far as we know, no one else has ever had. On that mountain, they stood in the presence of two of history’s greatest heroes, Moses and Elijah, even though they had lived (in one case) many hundreds and (in the other) more than a thousand years earlier.
But that was only the beginning. They saw Jesus transfigured before their eyes. They could hardly bear to look at him – he was as bright as the sun. The sight was awesome. They were confounded. Frightened. And then they heard the voice of God address them directly and they nearly came undone.
They never forgot what happened on the mountain. At the end of his life, knowing that his death was near, Peter was still talking about it. It was a mountaintop spiritual high. And yet this incredible, wonderful, unforgettable experience on the mountain was followed by chaos and confusion in the valley. That often happens.
The mountaintop is not an escape but a preparation. It is not a place to live but a place to be restored for service. Peter wanted to build shelters and stay there, but Jesus did not oblige him. We occasionally, by God’s grace, ascend the mountain but we inevitably, also by God’s grace, return to the valley – that’s where we live and do good.
Jesus took three disciples with him up the mountain, but he left the other nine in the valley to carry on the work. When they returned to the Nine, they could see that a crowd was gathered around them. It was not a happy crowd. There were experts in the Jewish law there and an argument was in full swing.
Because people were focused on the argument, the crowd didn’t notice Jesus until he was quite close. When they saw him, they ran to him. Something about Jesus caused the people in the crowds to marvel. Mark does not tell us what it was, but some people think that Jesus looked different after the transfiguration, the way Moses looked different when he came down from the mountain.
Jesus walked right up to the Nine and asked them what they were arguing about. It is possible that the experts in the law had challenged their authority to perform exorcisms. Whatever the case, before the disciples had a chance to answer, a man in the crowd interrupted.
He had brought his son to Jesus, but Jesus was gone. So, he asked the disciples – who were, after all, his representatives – to expel an unclean spirit that was ruining their lives. But your disciples, the man said, don’t have what it takes. The Greek is something like, “They lacked the strength to do it.”
I don’t think this distraught dad was the only person talking, for Jesus did not answer him;he answered them. I think that means that other people were all talking at once: the disciples, the teachers of the law, people in the crowd. There were accusations and recriminations – it was chaos.
Amid all the clamor, Jesus says (literally), “O unbelieving generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I bear with you?” Notice the word, “unbelieving.” It is important to the story. Jesus then says of the boy: “Bring him to me.”
When the spirit saw Jesus (I don’t know how a spirit sees – was it through the eyes of the boy or in some other way?) it convulsed the child. He fell to the ground, rolled around, and foamed at the mouth. Jesus immediately turned to the dad and asked, “How long has this been happening to him?”
The dad said, “From childhood.” Think of that. Year after year of anxiety and fear, always on high alert, always worried about what other people are thinking. And the great sadness the dad felt for his son in his torments, the helplessness, and then the hopelessness. And then someone told him about Jesus, so he brought him his son, but what he found were nine disciples who couldn’t do anything … except argue. For a moment, his hope had risen. For a moment, he could almost believe that Jesus would help. But this fiasco poured cold water on his flickering faith.
That is something to think about. Do you, a follower of Jesus, make it easier for people to believe in Jesus or do you make it harder? If knowing Jesus isn’t changing you, if you argue, get angry, and talk and act just like people who don’t belong to Jesus, you are making it harder for people to believe.
Listen to this dad’s words: “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” There is not much faith there – but there is a little. Faith figures largely into this passage, into Jesus’s teaching, and into effective prayer. The principle is this: “According to your faith will it be done to you” (Matthew 9:29).
Because the disciples knew how important faith is, they once said to Jesus, “Increase our faith!” Do you know how Jesus answered them? (I paraphrase.) “You don’t need great faith. You need genuine faith. If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and cast into the sea, and it will be done for you!”
Can so little faith really lift so heavy a mountain as a critically ill child, a critically ill marriage, and impossible job situation, an extreme financial need? Is it true that only a little faith is necessary? How can that be?
A little genuine faith on our part is enough, but only because it is joined to Jesus’s great faith. The one who “ever lives to intercede for us” also intercedes with us when our prayers align with God’s will—and his intercession makes all the difference. When we wear his yoke, he does the heavy lifting. When to this dad Jesus says, “Everything is possible to the one who believes,” the one who believes and for whom everything is possible is preeminently Jesus. The desperate father’s smidgeon of faith is joined to the faith and faithfulness of Jesus the son of God. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4).
The word of Jesus to this dad somehow revived the dying embers of his faith – a word from Jesus can do that – and he cried out, “I believe!” then immediately added, “Help my unbelief!” And Jesus did help his unbelief. If Jesus sees even a spark of faith, he will tend it, help it, blow on it until it becomes a fire.
I want you to notice something it took me a long time to understand. Within the same person at the same moment, belief and unbelief can coexist. That is because, as I often remind you, we are bigger on the inside than we are on the outside. People are a little like the old-style hard drive in your 1980s Tandy computer. They have bad sectors. They can be tooling along, trusting God and everything seems to be fine, when suddenly they access a bad sector – that is, they discover a part of their life where unbelief dominates – and their faith crashes.
Most of us struggle to face the fact that these bad sectors – these areas of unbelief – exist in our lives. And because we don’t face it, we don’t understand why our genuine efforts produce so little fruit for Christ.[1]
But Jesus is willing to help us. This prayer, “I believe; help my unbelief” is one that I have often prayed. And the Lord has helped me. And he will help you too.
Jesus aided this man’s belief and helped his unbelief by answering his prayer. Answered prayers greatly help our belief and systematically dislodge our unbelief. In this case, Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to leave the boy and never come back. But notice that the answer to this dad’s prayer did not at first seem very encouraging. The spirit shrieked, sent the boy into prolonged convulsions (the Greek says something like, “much convulsing), and then came out, leaving him lying on the ground, looking to all the world as if he were dead.
Sometimes things look worse after the Lord answers our prayers. We think, “This is your answer?” But if we stop trusting at that moment, we’ve stopped trusting too soon. With the fearful father looking on, Jesus raised the boy; he was finally free, and the father’s faith was helped.
Jesus then went into a house and his disciples went with him. As soon as they were alone, the Nine asked him (verse 28), “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” They had driven out demons before, but this time they failed. Why?
Pay attention to Jesus’s answer in verse 29; there is where we find something unexpected. “This kind can come out only by prayer.” Only by prayer. Not by rituals. Not by smarts. Not by determination. Not by study. Only by prayer.
Are we clear on that? Then, let me share an observation: Jesus didn’t pray. He said that this kind only comes out by prayer, but he didn’t pray … then. But he did pray, day after day and sometimes night after night, year after year. Jesus’s life was characterized by prayer. It was punctuated by times of prayer. Jesus is not, I think, talking about praying on the spot but about praying before you’re in a spot. This kind does not come out by praying loudly in the moment but by praying (as Paul would later put it) “on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Ephesians 6:18) from a life that is increasing in faith.
I’ve known people who seemed to think if they tried really hard to believe and spoke very loudly when they prayed, their request would be answered. I haven’t seen them succeed any more than the prophets of Baal succeeded when they tried the same thing. Prayer that has power is not the prayer of a moment but the prayer of a life – a life connected by a thousand cords to Jesus.
At four places in the New Testament record, we hear Jesus tell his disciples (and the people listening in), “When you pray …” Those words brought something definite to the disciples’ minds, something that might not come to ours. For them, “When you pray” referred to the three times every day when they said their prayers. That was their practice and Jesus didn’t put an end to it, though he did instruct them to do it differently.
You will never know the power of prayer if you only pray when you feel like it. Powerful prayers don’t appear magically in an emergency. They come out of a praying life. Larry Knapp and I were once stuck in a small village in Senegal when the taxi we were riding in broke down. It was our third car repair of the trip. I was anxious to get back on the road and get our 13-hour cross-country trip behind us – thirteen hours spent in the back of a small, crowded Renault station wagon in 100-degree heat. Finally, the car was ready. Together with five Africans, we stuffed ourselves into the car. The driver started it up but, before we could leave, the call to prayer rang out over the loudspeakers. Everyone, including the driver, bailed back out of the car, unrolled their prayer mats, and said their prayers, as they do five times every day.
It was three times a day for the people to whom Jesus was talking. When they heard him say, “When you pray,” they assumed he was talking about their regular prayer times. When you read Jesus saying, “When you pray…” does anything definite come to mind? Do you have regular prayer times? A twelve-second prayer before a meal is good, but it’s like a twelve-second fill up at the gas station. It won’t get you far.
Jesus said, “When you pray,” because he expected his people to pray. His disciples knew from watching him that the power to live well is gained, at least in part, through prayer. It’s no wonder they asked Jesus to teach them – men who had been praying all their lives – how to pray.
When Matthew tells this same story, he includes a part of Jesus’s answer that Mark leaves out. Mark records Jesus saying, “This kind comes out only by prayer,” but Matthew adds, “Because you have so little faith.” Faith is spiritual muscle that is strengthened (in part) by prayer. People who don’t pray don’t have the strength they need when they need it.
Jesus, whose faith in his Father was unbreakable, prayed regularly. He once went on a 40-day prayer retreat. He sometimes prayed through entire nights. He got up early in the morning to pray. And, no doubt, he joined his family, friends, and neighbors in the three daily times of prayer.
I am not suggesting that you go on a 40-day prayer retreat or spend entire nights in prayer (though I am not suggesting that you don’t, either). I do suggest that you have a regular prayer time each day. There is not a one-to-one correspondence between time spent praying and power, but there is a relationship. I can’t promise that if you pray three times a day you will have power to move the mountain of illness or financial need or marriage troubles. I can promise that if you don’t pray, you won’t.
Some people try to pray as they go – to pray when something comes to mind. That is good and we should do that. But in my own experience, I have found that I am much better at praying as I go if I have prayed before I left. The two kinds of prayer are symbiotic. The regular prayer time fuels the pop-up prayers and the pop-up prayers make the regular prayer time richer. If I cut out one, the other inevitably suffers.
There are difficult things in your life, in your relationships, in our church that will only come out by prayer. If you don’t pray, they won’t change. Learn to pray. Ask for help. Read books on prayer. Set a prayer schedule. But, most importantly, do it. Pray!
[1] Dallas Willard says something very like this – only says it better – in Renovation of the Heart.
To read some Bible scholars, one would think that Jesus viewed women through a twenty-first century feminist lens. Other equally-well regarded scholars, seem to think that Jesus looked at women through a pre-Nineteenth Amendment lens. It seems to me that people attribute to Jesus the view they want him to have.
It has been suggested, for example, that Jesus chose male apostles because God designed men for leadership in a way that he did not design women. On the other hand, it has been argued that the sex of the first apostles is immaterial. The important thing was not their sex but their number – twelve, like the number of Israel’s tribes – signifying the emergence of a new people of God.
But Jesus’s view was neither a post-modern nor a pre-suffrage American view; it was not an American view at all. The temptation to baptize our views in Jesus’s name must be resisted. We must go back to what he actually did and said and judge not just our views but our actions and words by his.
We cannot make sense of what Jesus did and said by looking through a twenty-first century American lens, whether liberal or conservative, egalitarian or complementarian. His contemporaries could not make sense of what he said and did by looking through their first century lens either. Jesus did not think of women – nor relate to them – the way his society did then or ours does now.
In first-century Israel, women – and for that matter, children – were treated as essentially inferior to men. Women, for example, were not permitted to testify in court, for it was believed that they were not emotionally stable enough to provide reliable testimony.
In first-century Israel, men had the right to divorce their wives “for any reason,” but wives were only permitted to divorce their husbands for two reasons: employment in a “disgusting trade” – one that made them ceremonially unclean – or heresy. A woman could not divorce her husband even if he was a violent, abusive, philandering brute.
Girls did not attend school and remained mostly illiterate. A famous late first century rabbi insisted that “The words of the Torah should be burned rather than entrusted to women.” The earliest extant mention of Torah study by women instructs: “And you shall teach your sons and not your daughters.”
Jesus lived in a world in which many rabbis would not even speak to a woman in public, much less teach one. The Jerusalem Talmud quotes: “Women’s wisdom is solely in the spindle.” In other words, a woman’s place is in the home.
Jesus lived in this world, but he did not adopt its views. The fact that Jesus accepted women disciples must have been a constant source of controversy—and gossip. In his public teaching, he addressed both women and men. Some of his dearest friends were women. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention women who followed him and “cared for his needs.”
Christianity is sometimes faulted for a low view of women. It is not because of its leader. Jesus not only taught women, the first person to whom he disclosed his messianic identity was a woman. The first person to whom he appeared after the resurrection was a woman. The people to whom he first gave the honor of announcing the conquest of death were all women. Jesus did these things because he was Jesus, not because he embraced the views of his time. Or the views of our time.
We cannot make Jesus a spokesman for feminism, egalitarianism, or complementarianism. These are constructs that are, at best, built from original source materials; they are not the materials themselves. Our goal must not be to fit Jesus into our framework, but to fit ourselves into his. Jesus will not ask us whether we hold progressive or conservative views, but whether we have loved and honored others. It is not our views that will be judged; it is us. It is our actual interactions and not our nuanced views of others that reveal who we really are.
When asked what was the greatest of the Old Testament’s 613 commands, Jesus answered: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). In this class, we look at what it means to love God – our cultural ideas of love may lead us astray here – and how we can do that with our hearts, souls, minds, and strength.
If you have been part of the class online, you may wonder where our co-teacher Kevin was. He woke up ill, and I missed having him with me – he is a great teacher! He’s fine now and will be back with us next week.
We want to know God’s will. God wants us to know his will. So, why is it so difficult to know his will? This sermon on prayer and the knowledge of God’s will is rooted in the Apostle Paul’s great prayer in Colossians 1:9-12. This is a prayer to pray for your church, your family, your friends, and yourself.
The researchers cite the “seemingly constant flow of disconcerting events” that have plagued Americans in recent years: a pandemic, a contentious election, the events of January 6, mass shootings, wildfires, and more. This non-stop drama fills the airwaves and repeats dozens of times a day on news media outlets.
According to McLaughlin, Gotlieb, and Mills, one out of six Americans engages in “severely problematic news consumption.” Within this group, almost three out of four experience mental ill-being “quite a bit” or “very much” and six out of ten report experiencing physical ill-being “quite a bit” or “very much.” This latter statistic represents a ten-time increase over other study participants.
What does this mean? It means that constant consumption of news media is making us sick – quite literally. In homes where CNN, MSNBC, or FOX News plays from morning to night, people are more likely to experience anxiety, lack of focus, difficulty sleeping, and relationship problems.
Participants in the “severely problematic” group were likely to agree with statements like: “I become so absorbed in the news that I forget the world around me”; “My mind is frequently occupied with thoughts about the news”; “I find it difficult to stop reading or watching the news”; and “I often do not pay attention at school or work because I am reading or watching the news.”
People in this group also experienced feelings of fatigue, physical pain, poor concentration, and gastrointestinal issues. Of the 1,100 people surveyed, more than four out of ten were deemed to have moderate or severe levels of problematic news consumption. The good news is that many people are able to stop or significantly reduce their news consumption when they understand that it is having an adverse effect on their physical and mental health.
The researchers describe one result of severely problematic news consumption as “transportation.” The term describes a mental state in which a person is “transported” into a story. Previous literature on the subject treated the relationship between a reader and a fictional narrative. Here, however, it is into a news narrative that people are transported. Their faculties are absorbed in the story and the immediate world around them recedes.
During the last few years, I have seen people break off relationships with family and church because they had been transported into pandemic-related stories, election stories, and war stories. This has happened among both liberal and conservative media consumers.
A critic might contend that something similar occurs among consumers of the Christian gospel. They hear the story repeated over and over. They dwell on the story, are transported into it, and it becomes their story. And Christians view this “transportation” as a good thing. They encourage each other to meditate on the story and repeat it often.
There is a difference, though. Transportation into the media’s news stories, so often used as propaganda, breaks relationships, instills anxiety, and creates a sense of insecurity. Transportation into the gospel has the opposite effect: it heals relationships, instills peace, and provides security.
Whereas preoccupation with news stories tends to isolate people from one another through fear and anger, preoccupation with the story of Christ encourages people to embrace others with love and acceptance. While both tell of gross injustice, the gospel shows how injustice is overcome by sacrificial love.
Of course, one must decide which story best reflects the real world. Is it the story of chaos, corruption, and danger that is told by media outlets in various ways all day long? Or is it the story of the God who has redeemed and will make new our admittedly broken and troubled world?
The Christian gospel does not ignore the evil in our world. If anything, it sheds light on its causes, which run much deeper than politics and economics. But, unlike the so-called news stories, the Christian story offers a reason for hope.
Jesus understood how humans were designed and how they thrive and his teaching reflects this. Understanding what he teaches about the human heart is imperative for anyone who longs for spiritual transformation in Christlikeness. The foundational text for today’s class is Luke 6:43-45.
The Way Home 