WHERE IS THE MAN FOR THE DAY?
Text: Matthew 17:14-20, Mark 9:14-29
OPEN WITH PRAYER AND THANKSGIVING
Before we begin this morning, I want to read to you a quote from Charles Spurgeon. I’ve read it before, but it’s so good it bears repeating. It’s from a sermon he gave in 1888, and he begins by saying, “Everybody admires Luther. Yes, yes, but you do not want anyone else to do the same today. When you go to the zoological gardens you all admire the bear. But how would you like a bear at home? Or a bear wandering loose about the street? You tell me it would be unbearable. And no doubt you’re right. So we admire a man who was firm in the faith, say 400 years ago. The past ages are a sort of bear pit or iron cage for him. But such a man today is a nuisance and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot or give him a worse name if you can think of one. Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and their compeers had said, ‘The world is out of order but if we try to set it right we shall only make a great row and get ourselves into disgrace. Let’s go to our chambers, put on our nightcaps and sleep over the bad times and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better.’ Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of error. Age after age would have gone down into the infernal deeps and the pestiferous bogs of error would have swallowed all. These men loved the faith and the Name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on. Note what we owe them and let us pay to our sons the debt we owe our fathers. Look you sirs, there are ages yet to come. If the Lord does not speedily appear there will come another generation, and another. And all these generations will be tainted and injured if we are not faithful to God and to His truth today.”
Now did ya’ll catch what Charles Spurgeon was throwing out there? Let me modernize it for you a bit. He’s saying, “Everybody admires guys like Martin Luther for taking a stand. For being uncompromising in his faith… But why is it when someone does something like that today, that the world, as well as – the Christian community comes down on him. “Wow, this guy is such a rigid, unloving, uncaring, intolerant person! Doesn’t he know that if you want win the approval of the world and get things done, you’ve got to be compromising?” That’s the way the world and the Church views a person like that today. But had not Luther, and Calvin, Knox, and even Spurgeon himself done what they did, we very well could’ve had centuries of error and false teaching… and if we ourselves don’t stand for the truth, and start proclaiming the truth, then generations down the line, our grandkids, and great grandkids, are going to pay the price.
Let’s take our Bibles and open them up to Luke chapter 18… and I’m actually going to read two passages this morning, and the first one, here in Luke 18, is just to get your feet wet, and the other one, from Matthew 17 is the text for the sermon.
So Luke 18:7-8 (READ). Now that question that Jesus asks there in the last part of verse 8 should disturb the heck out of you. And people say, “Well it’s hypothetical.” Yes, but still, why ask it? Even hypothetically? Now let’s turn to our text. It’s Matthew 17:14-20 (READ).
So let’s set the stage here. Jesus, James, John, and Peter have just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration. They’ve had this amazing experience, and as they’re coming down, they see the other disciples and a crowd of people. And a man kind of makes his way through the crowd and approaches Jesus and says to Him, “Lord have mercy on my son, for he has seizures and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” And notice what Jesus says, “You faithless and twisted generation.” Then of course He tells the man to bring his son to Him, and in verse 18 Jesus rebukes the demon and the boy was healed instantly.
Now afterwards, the disciples come to Jesus privately and ask Him why they couldn’t cast it out.
And that’s a logical question.
You see, prior to this Jesus had commissioned the 70 to go out, to preach, to heal the sick, and to cast out demons… and you remember they returned to Jesus rejoicing saying, “Even the demons obey us in Your Name Jesus.” So they’ve done some exorcisms before. They’ve been successful at casting out demons before, so why not this time? And Jesus tells them, “It’s because of your little faith.” In-fact, had they been listening to Him, they would’ve known that. He said, “Oh you faithless and twisted generation…” But then He goes on and tells them, “If you had faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you could move mountains! You could do amazing things.” And He even says, “Nothing would be impossible for you.” Now there’s two ways theologians have understood this, and I think we can take both of them as accurate.
First of all, a mustard seed is tiny. I mean, it’s a tiny little seed, but it grows into a significant sized plant/bush/tree. I was reading about them on a gardening site, and it said that a mustard bush can grow up to 20 feet tall… all from one tiny little seed. So one way we can look at this is to say: If you have a genuine faith, that is growing as it should, God can use you to accomplish great things. The other way to look at it, and again I think it’s just as valid is to say, that if all you have is a tiny grain of genuine – true – real faith – God will use you in amazing ways.
Now Church Jesus says to the disciples – If you have that kind of faith, you can move mountains. And He was no doubt talking about literal, physical mountains.
Now let me give you a disclaimer here: I am not a proponent of the Word of Faith Movement. In-fact you all have heard me say it many times, that stuff is heresy. So I’m not out and about rebuking tornadoes or hurricanes, or corona virus or any of that nonsense. But having said that, I believe with all of my heart, that if we have faith like a grain of mustard seed, God can do amazing and miraculous things through us. Of course there are other factors in play as well. Remember 1 John 5:14? “If we ask anything according to His will He hears us.” So it’s got to be God’s will first and foremost.
Now what’s the point of all this that we’re talking about?
How does having faith like the grain of a mustard seed even tie in with Charles Spurgeon’s quote about being strong and standing for the truth like Martin Luther go together? Well let me just throw this out there to ya’. A mountain… a mountain is something that is big. It’s solid. It’s been there for a long, long time, maybe even thousands of years. By yourself, and in and of yourself – you’re not going to move it. It’s impossible. Now sure, you might get some machines and start digging, and over time, you might remove that mountain… or you might get the USAF to drop some ordinance on it and it’s gone, but again, that’s not just you physically. So it’s an impossible thing. Jesus was saying, “If you have faith, God will do impossible things through you.” Now let me just strengthen that argument a little more. So they didn’t have faith so they couldn’t move the mountain. They didn’t have faith so they couldn’t cast out the demon… now what is a demon? It’s a fallen angel right? It’s a spiritual being that has rebelled against God. And you see what this thing does to that poor kid. It causes him to have seizures. It causes him to be self-destructive and cause self-harm. Maybe even suicidal at times. So it’s not something that a person can physically remove with medicine, or by physical force. It takes the power of God. But without God, it’s an impossible thing.
What impossible thing are you facing in your life today? What impossible things is the Church facing today?
Can you, by yourself, no matter how impressive your physical and intellectual capabilities change a society and culture that wants to kill babies in the womb simply for convenience? Can you, by yourself, change a society and culture that affirms and even celebrates perversion and immorality and lifestyles that God calls an abomination? Are those mountains we’d like to see moved? Actually I’d say they align more closely with the demonic. They are great, demonic, mountains… we might even call them “High Places”. Strongholds within society, or beach-heads within society that have become entrenched, empowered, and even accepted.
So here is the day for the man… where is the man for the day?
My point is – is that there are those things… Things that are wicked, and evil, and so entrenched in our society and culture that it seems impossible to move or get rid of. So it’s going to take the power of God, working through the faith – of faithful Christians to change these things.
We can’t sit back and say, “Oh that’s a ‘Left Coast’ problem…” or, “That’s a problem in liberal, left leaning states but surely not here.” That is not only a naïve way of thinking – it’s a foolish way of thinking.
And I think we must be honest and ask ourselves – why is it that the Church, and Christians are so impotent? Why aren’t we seeing society, and culture being changed like we do in… lets say the Book of Acts? Well; if we’re going to be Biblical, we can say it’s because of two things… and those two things are actually tied together. First; we can say we don’t see that sort of thing happening because we are in the last of the last days – Satan is blinding the minds and eyes of the people of the world, he has been unbound and is running rampant. So we’re not dealing with your typical run of the mill demon here.
Turn with me quickly to the parallel of our text here in Matthew, to the Gospel of Mark…
Let’s see, Mark 9:14-29 (READ).
So you see there in verse 29 Jesus says, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” And I don’t know why the ESV removed “fasting” there, but it’s in some of the oldest manuscripts… Fasting and prayer, but even then Jesus ultimately tied it back to having true, genuine, mature faith. So… we’re in a time when the “kind” of spiritual wickedness we’re facing is ramped up. It’s evil on steroids. That’s the first reason we’re not seeing change like we do in Acts… and the second is – the faithlessness of God’s people. Matthew 17:17 – “Oh faithless and twisted generation…” Mark 9:19 – “Oh faithless generation.”
Are we a faithless generation?
Real quickly, turn with me to 2 Timothy 3:1-6 and look at what Paul tells Timothy. “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” Sounds like today right? But he goes on… verse 5 “Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people!” What are we to do? AVOID THEM. They’re obviously not walking in the light. They’re obviously not Christians… “For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions.”
You know; there’s a story told about a church… some time ago… in a small, rural community, and it just so happened that one day an enterprising individual decided he was going to build a liquor store on the lot across the street. The little church did not approve and so they began a prayer meeting, praying that God would get rid of that liquor store. And it just so happened that one night, a single bolt of lightning struck the liquor store – a fire started and it burned to the ground. The liquor store owner sued the members of the church. And as the liquor store owner appeared before the judge he told him, “They have been praying that God would get rid of my liquor store. Of course the pastor and the church members said, “We had nothing to do with this. It was just a freak, strange occurrence of nature.” And the judge, when he was rendering his verdict said, “I never thought I would see the day, when a liquor store owner had more faith and belief in the power of God, than a pastor and his church members.”
So let me end, where I began, Luke 18, with Jesus’ question: “… when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” Will He find faith in you and me? In His Church. We He find faithful, obedient, courageous Christians who are willing to risk it all and take a stand on the truth? I pray that He will and that we – all of us, will be among them.
Let’s Pray
CLOSING
