Lord, I Believe; Help Thou Mine Unbelief!

And nothing shall be impossible unto you. How be it, this kind goeth not out, but by prayer and fasting. Let’s pray together. Lord, thank you again for the chance to meet together with your people at our church meeting. Thank you for those that have come out, those listening in as well who can’t be among us today. We pray for your grace to be upon them who are suffering ailments and are just having affliction right now.

Give them grace, give them patience. And Lord, give them healing, if that be your will to do. Lord, we look to you. Even as we study the word, we acknowledge that without you we can do nothing, not even understand and certainly not benefit from your word. Lord, we need your spirit to teach us individually, personally in our heart for our particular situation. It might be Lord that we need these words of scripture, not for right at this moment, but for later for something that might come up.

Lord, but help us and grow our faith as we look at these things tonight. We just acknowledge our need of your help. Lord, I need your help. So please help me to say the right things that your people need to hear from your word. In Jesus’ name we ask, amen. Now you’ll notice in verse number 14, this man brings his son to Jesus. The Bible does not say anywhere, not in Matthew, not in Mark, not in Luke, that this son was a child.

In fact, there’s an indicator that this man’s son was actually an adult because Jesus asked him, I think it’s in Mark, Jesus asked him how long it had been that he was afflicted with this problem. And the man said of a child, which indicates to us that he’s probably no longer a child. And so this is apparently a grown man and he’s had this condition a long time.

And verse 15 says this, the man says, Lord have mercy on my son for he is lunatic and sore vexed. Now notice that word lunatic. That’s kind of a bad word these days. And it’s one of these words, it’s kind of politically incorrect and it is becoming more and more politically incorrect. Compared to what you used to be able to say, you can’t say anymore. I know words, I’ve kind of had to curtail some of the words that I used growing up because they have gone out of favor.

Not necessarily because they’re evil in and of themselves, but because of the associations with them. And all of us, as we grow old, like I don’t grow old, but like all of you do, those things change, vocabulary changes. So this word lunatic, but let’s look at it from the scripture. We wanna look at it from the Bible. Remember our Bible was translated in 16, finished in 1611, so 400 years of history.

Sometimes definitions change. And so that’s not a surprise to us. We’re not shocked by that. But the word lunatic, let me give you the definition of the word lunatic. It does not mean what, as it’s commonly used today to just insult somebody where you’re a lunatic, it’s not that at all. It means this, a person showing signs or symptoms of serious mental illness. Well, that’s helpful, as we’ll see in a minute.

In early use, which is where we’re at here, 1600s, specifically of a type characterized by periods of remission and relapse, attributed to the phases of the moon. And so I don’t know that that was very helpful, but what’s, so basically what you see from this is it was thought, now this is not what the Bible is saying. The Bible’s using the word, okay? But it was thought typically that these episodic issues of what would be called today mental illness, it was the fact that it was episodic like the phases of the moon, because it was thought that the moon affected people’s mental health because of the way it pulls the ocean tides.

That’s how it was assumed. This is going back to like shortly before Christ, Aristotle and the Greeks and things like that. But anyway, that’s where it comes from. In fact, the word that is translated lunatic is the word that means moon struck, moon struck. That’s where the word comes from. That’s the etymology of the word. Now what’s interesting is that word is put directly into English, in the English equivalent.

Luna is the word for moon, tic means moon struck. They actually took the word from the original language, Greek, and put it directly into English in the exact English equivalent. Now why does that matter?

It matters because if you consider the other words, for instance, the ESV puts this word as seizures. The New King James version and the American Standard version put the word as epileptic.

Okay? What’s also interesting though is that the New American Standard version of 1977 and the New American Standard version of 1995 have lunatic, which is interesting. If it’s such a bad, terrible, old, outdated, old, outmoded translation, why did they put it in there in 1995? It’s a perfectly fine translation. It’s a perfectly fine way to put it. In fact, the word seizure or epilepsy, or epileptic in this context is a problem.

Here’s why. Because if you look at verse number 18, look what it says, and Jesus rebuked the devil. So what was the true cause of this, I’ll say young man, this young man’s problem?

It was an influence, it was a satanic influence, a satanic possession of some kind. And so by putting the word epilepsy or putting the word seizure, it doesn’t state it, but it implies that somehow people that are afflicted with an actual physical neurological condition like epilepsy, that is being caused by the devil. But that’s not the case. And I’ll show you the distinction in just a minute.

Now in the book of Mark, and we’ll go there in just a minute, in fact, you might already be there. So if you can flip back to Mark, I wanna show you what Mark says about this young man’s condition. Mark chapter nine, verse number 18, or verse 17 to start, Mark 9, 17 says this, and one of the multitude answered and said, “’Master, I have brought unto thee my son, “’which hath a dumb spirit.’” Dumb meaning can’t speak.

But notice he uses the word spirit. So from the beginning in Mark, he identifies the cause as this is a matter of demonic activity, verse number 18. “’And wheresoever he taketh him, he tarreth him, “’and he fometh, and gnasheth with his teeth, “’and pineeth away.’” So this is a description of these episodes with this young man. Now in Luke, in Luke chapter nine, verse 39 says this, “’And lo, a spirit taketh him, and suddenly cryeth out, “’and it tarreth him, that he fometh again, “’and bruising him, hardly departeth from him.’” All right, so this is a description of, this is a craze, this young man is thrown to the ground, is in a fit of some kind, foment at the mouth, crying out much like the demoniac of Gadara.

Not too much different than that, but here’s what I want you to see. This is what is very important. The cause of this is identified by the Lord Jesus in the text of scripture, okay? And that’s gonna be very important. We should have no, whatever he’s doing, whatever, maybe if you would say symptoms that this young man is experiencing and manifesting, we know the cause. And the cause is more important than the symptoms.

The symptoms, so anyway, let’s look at one other thing in Mark, Mark chapter nine, look at verse number 22. And oftentimes it hath cast him into the fire and into the waters to, what’s it say? Destroy him.

“’But if thou canst do anything, “’have compassion on us and help us.’” So we know that, we know from the passage that this young man’s afflicted with some sort of, you could say mental, but ultimately it’s demonic. And he has these kind of fits that would, on the surface, appear like maybe a seizure and things like that. But we know that it’s demonic in nature. And we know that because of what the goal of this unclean spirit is.

What is this unclean spirit seeking to do? It is seeking to destroy the young man. That’s why he’s being cast into the fire. He’s being cast into the water to drown him. He’s trying, the spirit in him is trying to burn him. It’s self-destructive. That’s the difference. If you’ve ever seen someone that has had a seizure, a physiological seizure, which is a neurological condition, that is not, that’s not the case.

It’s not self-destructive. It’s not like an attempt to cause self-destruction. It’s an illness, right? And that as a key distinction, we don’t wanna confuse that. And the key indicator is even though on the surface, the symptoms are similar to something like a seizure or epilepsy or something like that, it is different in the fact that it is the self-destructive control of the devil. But if a person in our day were to look at a person that was experiencing these kinds of things, they would say, a medical type would say that this person is experiencing mental illness.

Mental illness. And the word mental illness, and I do wanna talk about this briefly, the word mental illness covers, this term covers a huge array of all sorts of mental, spiritual, behavioral, and emotional problems.

It’s a very large umbrella term. The word, it’s defined in this way. It’s a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior that reflects dysfunction in this physiological, I’m sorry, in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning, usually associated with distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important activities. You know what that is? That is an enormous bucket to put almost everything that deals with the mind or behavior or emotions.

It’s just a huge bucket. You throw it in the mental illness bucket, and you call it mental illness. But there’s a problem with that. Now again, if you were looking at this guy, you’d say, this young man obviously has some sort of mental illness. That’s what they would say.

Now the thing is, because it’s such a broad term, it covers things that are legitimate mental illnesses, what maybe we would say legitimate mental illnesses, as well as things that have spiritual causes. And it’s just thrown in the same bucket. And by putting the word illness on it, you have removed the responsibility of the individual. And that’s the problem. That’s the problem. Because after all, how can you blame someone for having cancer, or getting COVID, or the flu?

If it’s an illness, you can’t blame them for that. You might be able to if they don’t wash their hands. Just a little bit. But, and so the label removes the responsibility. Now this is why this is important. You have things like depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse disorders, PTSD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, things like that. And you read through this, and you think, obviously these are all problems.

Brother Devin, I don’t know if Devin experienced any PTSD from being overseas, but PTSD is a very real mental thing. It is not a figment of imagination. It is a very real thing that people, not only combat veterans, but also other people that go through traumatic experiences experience. It is real. So not all of these are just, you know, in other words, we would be foolish to just say, oh, well, that’s just a bunch of medical gobbledygook.

But we would also be foolish to say, we would also be foolish to say, all of it is an illness that needs drugs to be treated. And that’s not necessarily the case either. Again, it’s a large umbrella term.

This son’s condition would be called a mental illness by modern terminology. But here’s what we have to understand, is that Jesus says what it is. And that is instructive to us. The Lord Jesus tells us the cause. He tells us. In Matthew 17, 18, as we read a minute ago, the Lord says that the cause of this man’s episodes are demonic, even though in modern terminology, it would be called an illness.

So that leads us to a conclusion. It is this, some things, the key word being some, that are labeled mental illness in our day, are demonic in nature. There are things that are absolutely demonic in nature. And others aren’t. Right? So we gotta be careful. We gotta be careful. Again, the scripture is our basis. The scripture is our foundation.

There are some things that are called mental illness, like a major depressive disorder, that can be caused by the sin of the sufferer. That is one real cause of depression in people, which is, depression is two weeks or more that is dysfunctional, where you can’t function in your life. But if a child of God, or even a person who is not a child of God, is under the weight of guilt of their own sin, that can cause that very depression.

And you know, therefore, the solution is, is confession and repentance. And people who are suffering that come out of it. But you know what? And this is what makes it kind of difficult, is that having thyroid levels that are out of whack can also cause depression, even if you’re not, even if you have no sin in your life. So you just have to be careful. You have to be careful and understand that this body that God has given us, which this body, I should say this being that is the human being, the body, the soul and the spirit is extremely intricate.

And it’s woven together. The Bible says, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And you can’t just tinker with one thing and it not affect the others. Indeed it does. Another example of this is substance abuse.

You know, it might be easy for us to say to a person who’s been drinking for 30 years, it might be easy to say, we just need to pour it down the drain. Well, substance abuse always starts with sin, right?

It always starts with sin, a temptation of some kind. But once you’ve been doing it 30 years, it’s like you’re incarcerated in sin. And you can’t just walk out. That’s why the Bible describes being set free and at liberty from the power of sin is because once it has its chains on you, you are not free to leave. It’s not that simple. And then when you think about a drug addict or a person who’s been drinking or something like, or prescription drugs or something like that, that affects the person’s body as well.

And so many times if they just quit cold turkey, then they’ll end up in the hospital. And that does absolutely happen. Even though that what started it was a sin. But by the time you get to the end, you’re in the dungeon. People don’t come out of the dungeon easily, right? Now, of course, in other words, I just want you to see that this is a complex topic.

But this particular instance gives us some clarity, some clarity with it. Now, some people say, well, if a person has mental illness, and this is how it usually goes, first thing you do, it doesn’t matter what the cause or what the symptoms are. It’s schizophrenia or major depressive disorder or substance abuse disorder. I’m just using the terminology. It is always, it is very frequently anyway, it’s pharmaceuticals that are the solution, right?

Just turn it, just give them drugs. And then all of a sudden this person who is exhibiting signs of demonic possession, all of a sudden calms down. Well, obviously, because the body and the mind and heart, the inner man and the outer man are connected. So if you start tinkering with the brain and it affects your moods and it affects your temperament and all those things, that’s absolutely possible.

That’s not a surprise to us. But it also doesn’t fix the underlying problem in the case of a person who is being oppressed by the devil. So the effect of drugs does not prove that the affliction has no spiritual element and that’s what I want you to see. Listen to me now, please. In the medical industry, and I’m not against doctors, I’m not, like I have a doctor, he’s a great, he’s a Christian man, he loves God, he goes to Agne Row Baptist Church, he’s saved, he prays with us, all that.

I’m not against doctors. But the medical industry is atheistic. It is designed, it absolutely, purposefully excludes any spiritual element to anything. That is a worldview problem. That is a worldview problem. What I’m trying to get you to see is there are spiritual elements to things that are called mental illness at times. Not every time, but at times. And that’s what we see here. That’s what we see here.

The body and the inner man are inextricably connected such that even inner turmoil inside of our inner man affects our body, and the reverse is true. And the proof of this, one proof is Proverbs 17 verse 22 says this. A merry heart doeth good like a what? Medicine. But a broken spirit, that’s inner man, dryeth the bones, which is an indication of physical suffering. So there’s a connection in scripture between the body and its effect upon the inner man.

And there’s also a connection in scripture when I mentioned depression a minute ago. David, there are many times in the Psalms where if you pay attention, David was, it was what would be termed having a major depressive disorder. If you read the Psalms, you can see it. And oftentimes, the cause was sin in his life. That’s in the Psalms. That’s the Bible. That’s what the Bible says on it.

So again, the Lord has something to say on that. But I wanted to point that out because I wanna focus now on the tendency of this unclean spirit to destroy this young man. That’s what I want you to see. Look if you would mark one more time, mark chapter nine.

Mark chapter nine. Verse 22. Verse 22. And oft times, that’s the spirit now, have cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him. Now I wanna make a statement here because you see it here.

Thoughts of suicide and self-destruction are always devilish in nature. Thoughts of suicide and self-destruction are always devilish in nature. Those thoughts never, ever come from God. Now make that clear. Never, ever come from God. Now think about these, in this particular issue of suicide and self-destruction. The devil tempted Jesus to leap from the pinnacle of the temple to prove who he was. Remember that? In the temptation in Matthew chapter four.

That would have resulted in his death. How convenient. That was a satanic temptation. The demoniac of Gadara in Mark chapter five cut himself with stones. Remember when he was possessed of the devil, he practiced self-destruction, mutilation of his own body. He was possessed of the devil. Judas Iscariot, who is called a devil and one in whom the devil resided, he was directly controlled by Satan, committed suicide.

This is Judas Iscariot. John 8.44 says this. Jesus said, Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh it of his own. He speaketh of his own for he is a liar and the father of it.

Here in John 8.44, the Lord identifies the devil as the first murderer. The devil did not kill Adam and Eve. He didn’t raise a knife or a rock. He didn’t throw them into some pit. No, the devil did not kill, personally kill Adam and Eve, but he is the first murderer. The devil is perfectly willing to use us to perform his murder. That’s what you have to see.

That’s how it’s deceptive. The temptation of Adam and Eve, remember when the devil tempted Adam and Eve, you know what that was? That was a satanic temptation, but you know what he was doing? In truth, he was tempting Adam and Eve to commit suicide. Spiritual suicide. And that’s what they did. By disobeying God, he caused them to kill themselves spiritually. He didn’t force them. He didn’t kill them, but he tempted them to perform it against themselves.

This is, listen, I want to say something. People that have, many people that have suicidal thoughts that come in their mind, I know people personally that have had suicidal thoughts and those voices that they have heard urging them to do that thing are often voices of people they know. People they have known. And this is true in America and this is true in the mission field as well.

Urging them to commit suicide, those voices urging them to hurt themselves, urging them to harm themselves. Those voices are not from God, even if, and many of those people are like, well, I just think God, I think God would, it would be better if I could go be with God. So I’m going to kill myself. That’s not the voice of God.

But sometimes people have been deceived by the devil to believe that it is. Because that’s the devil’s work. That’s the devil’s work. It is clearly spelled out in scripture. Any suicidal thought, any self-destructive thought is devilish in nature. Now I don’t mean to say, by saying that, I’m not trying to say that every time a person contemplates suicide, they’re possessed by the devil. I don’t mean that at all.

But when a man is possessed by the devil, oftentimes suicide is in his thoughts. Because it is true. It’s true in scripture. There are people that had, I don’t know if you’d call it suicidal thoughts, but they had thoughts that death would be better than life and they were believers. Let me read these to you. And not insignificant figures in scripture either. Job 7, 15 and 16, listen to this.

Job says, so that my soul chooseth strangling and death rather than my life. I loathe it, speaking of his life. I would not live all way. Let me alone for my days are vanity. In Job 3 verse 20 he says this, wherefore is light given to them, to him that is in misery and life unto the bitter in soul which long for death but it cometh not and dig for it more than for hid treasures.

First Kings 19 verse four, listen to this. But he himself, Elijah, went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a juniper tree and requested for himself that he might die and said, it is enough now, O Lord, take away my life for I am not better than my father’s. Numbers 11, 15, Moses. Moses says, if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee out of hand.

If I have found favor in thy sight and let me not see my wretchedness. So the thought, the thought that I don’t wanna live anymore is experienced by unbelievers as well as believers. But the thought to murder yourself is an influence in some way or fashion or form from the devil who is trying to use you to murder you. That’s why we have to have clear understanding of scripture.

And that is exactly what this devil is trying to do to this young man. Now look at verse number 16 back in Matthew chapter 17. Matthew 17, verse number 16.

And I brought him, this is the father now, to thy disciples and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil and departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart and said, why could not we cast him out?

And Jesus said unto them, because of your unbelief. For verily I say unto you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, you shall say unto this mountain, remove hence yonder place and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossible unto you, howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. I wanna give you some lessons or principles on unbelief.

Lessons or principles on unbelief. We’ll need to be also, so hold your place here. We’re gonna look here and also look at Mark chapter nine. So if you can kinda do both hands, I don’t know if that’s possible, but if you can do that, it’ll help. The first thing I want you to see is there are two unbelievers here. And I don’t mean unbeliever in their personal faith in Christ, I mean unbeliever in the practical sense.

There’s two of them. You have the unbelieving disciples. Jesus said, verse number 20, they said, why could we not cast them out? And Jesus says, it’s your fault. Because the disciples were lacking faith. You know, it’s a sad day when the disciples of Christ, other people are affected and harmed and can’t get the help they need because the disciples of Christ are lacking faith. How many people on the mission field are not hearing about Jesus because of the disciples of Christ not having faith?

Not acting in faith and walking in. There are real world ramifications to the disciples of Christ not having faith in their savior. There are real world ramifications to that. It’s not a victimless type thing. It hurts people, it really does. But there’s a second, in Mark chapter nine, there’s a second person that the Lord says was lacking faith. And that is the father of the son. If you look at verse number 22 and verse 24, it says, in all times they have cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him.

But notice this, the father says, but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Verse 24, and straightway the father of the child cried out and said, with tears, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. You see that? The father admits he has unbelief. His question embedded in his question, in his request to the Lord Jesus is unbelief. He has the audacity to ask Jesus for something while at the same time not believing that he can do it.

So there are two unbelievers in this passage. Matthew covers the disciples, Mark covers the father. Doesn’t say anything about the disciples’ faith. Now, we’re gonna be looking at the text in a minute again. There is a difference to be made between believing with the head, which is intellectually, that God can do a thing and believing with the heart. There is a difference.

I’m gonna do a scientific study right now, okay? You ready? Everybody ready? All right, you gotta be honest now. How many of you believe that God can do a thing that God can instantly, totally, and wholly heal any sickness that any person has? Raise your hand.

You know what that is? That is intellectual belief. That is, our doctrinal statement says God is all powerful, therefore we must answer the question, yes. Okay? And that’s fine and good, because you gotta have right doctrine. If your doctrine said God did not have the ability to do that, you got a problem. You got a problem, because that’s not the God of the Bible. All right? But the problem is, that’s not the kind of faith we’re talking about.

If that’s faith at all, maybe it’s a kind of faith, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. That’s not the faith of a grain of mustard seed, because the faith of a grain of mustard seed is not the faith that says, yes, God can move the mountain and cast it into the sea. That is not the faith of the grain of mustard seed. The faith of the grain of mustard seed is the one that says to the mountain, remove thou and be cast into the sea, and it does.

You see, one is head faith, and one is faith in the heart. You with me? One is doctrinal statement faith, and one is practical statement faith. And that’s the one that says, we are the most practical faith in Christ. There is a difference. We operate, do we not? I say we, I’m including myself. We operate in the first pretty much all the time. We do. We operate in the first pretty much all the time.

But we gotta get to the second. We’re operating in faith in the heart. And that is where we are absolutely convinced, not just here, but we are convinced, fully persuaded, that whatever the thing is that is the subject matter of this question, of our request, that God can do it. That’s not just we say we think he can, but in our heart we are convinced that if he so chose, he could fix it like that.

There is a difference between thinking that in your head and being fully persuaded. Now I would dare say any of you that have been disciples of Christ for any length of time, know the difference. When you get down to pray, and a lot of what I’m saying tonight about faith is in relation to prayer. When you get down to pray, there is a big difference in praying in faith of the heart and prayer where you just have the head.

There’s a big difference. The prayer of faith in the heart when you’re praying about that thing is this, is not a prayer of sadness and a prayer of grief and a prayer of despondency. Sometimes we pray with, we’re sad. We’re praying and more, brother Wayne, we’re more lamenting our lack of faith and that the thing we want can’t happen, won’t happen. More than we are asking God to do the thing, right?

I know I’ve been there many, many times, many incalculable number of times. The prayer of faith though is the one that prays and says, Lord, I know that when it is your time and in your way, you can do what I’m asking. I have no doubt. You know, the result of that prayer is joy. You know why? Because you walk away saying, he got this. He got this.

I don’t need to worry about it. He’s got it. There’s a difference. This man came to Jesus with the prayer of, he even articulated his doubt, right? If thou can’t do anything. Well, that’s not the kind of faith that Jesus is looking for at all. There is a difference between believing with the head and believing in the heart. If you believe in the heart and you are fully persuaded that God can do the thing you ask, the question then is only a matter of God’s will to do it.

And when we know that, we are fully persuaded of that, we must entrust it to him, to his way and to his timing. But the question of ability is settled. You know what that gives us? Peace. Peace. If you walk away from praying about something and you’re in turmoil, I don’t think you’ve got the right faith going on. You’ve got the first, not the second, because you’re still in turmoil.

You’re still in turmoil about it. When you walk away knowing God will do it if it’s his will, in his way and in his time, and I don’t need to worry about it. That’s the byproduct of this kind of faith.

We see in Matthew chapter 17 that the disciples did not believe. Maybe they thought this case was just too difficult. But here’s what, look at Matthew 17 again. Look at verse 21. How be it, this kind goeth not out by prayer and fasting. So in verse 20, the Lord says plainly, you don’t have any, you’re in belief. That’s the reason you couldn’t do it, unbelief. But then he follows that up and he says, how be it, which is, even though that’s the case, this kind goeth not out by prayer and fasting, which is to say, even if the disciples, first of all, the disciples did not, they did not have faith.

That’s the first thing. They didn’t. But even if they had, it wouldn’t have worked. You see that? Isn’t this a little zinger in this? Even if they had had faith, it would not have been effective because this kind requires the exercise of faith in the form of prayer and fasting.

It still would have required much prayer and fasting. Therefore, even though we are confident in God’s ability to do the thing and we have the right kind of faith, that is no guarantee that we will get the instant results that we expect. It might be that the Lord wants our faith to be exercised in the form of patient prayer and fasting over a long period of time because that is also faith.

God is not a vending machine. Put your money in, press the buttons, pull the lever, out pops out an answer to prayer. He is not that way. And sometimes our faith is demonstrated by our long continuance and ceaseless prayer.

You see what he’s saying? Even if you had faith, you would still had to pray and fast. That’s what he says. Ouch. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just and you get the prayer requests out, but it’s not like that. It’s not like that. This is what faith looks like. Sometimes this is what faith looks like in practice. We continue to pray without ceasing, fully persuaded that God can do the thing we’re asking, even though the results and the answer is not forthcoming.

That’s faith too. And we have to be very careful about how we pray. Next thing I want you to see, look at verse number 17, Matthew 17, 17. Then Jesus answered and said, oh, faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? The Lord is lamenting. He’s grieved over their unbelief. Do you see this? In this case, unbelief of the disciples, probably also the unbelief of the father.

So let me say this. The head and faith in the mouth, but not in the heart is a grief to the Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s why. It grieves him because unbelief, hear me now, is a reflection of our estimation of the Lord, the object of our faith.

I’m gonna say that one more time. The Lord is grieved over our unbelief because our unbelief reflects our estimation of God. That might grate on us a little bit, but it’s true. It’s true.

Therefore, when we are faithless, we are actually revealing our estimation of God. What kind of God do you believe in? What kind of God, listen to me, what kind of God do you believe in? What kind of God are you praying to?

Are you praying to a God whose glory was manifested on the Mount of Transfiguration? Are you praying to a God who performed the solar eclipse just as nothing, nothing? Are you praying to a God who created our bodies in a fearful and wonderful way? Are you praying to a God who demonstrated his compassion when he came to the earth as a man in robe of flesh and died on the cross for you and for me?

What kind of God are you praying to? Listen, and unbelief comes in and we somehow think God is unable. We somehow think God doesn’t care. We somehow think God can’t do or won’t do whatever. All we’re saying is God’s little.

He can’t do it. That’s what we’re saying. We’re showing our estimation of God. This is true. This is true. Our God is little. Because when your God is big, you go to him and you say, Lord, you can do anything. This is nothing to you. You created the world. You uphold all things by the word of your power. This is nothing.

When your God is big, you can bring those things to him being fully persuaded that he can do it. That doesn’t mean you’re gonna answer results. That’s not the guarantee. But you can come to him with big faith because your faith is proportional to your view of God.

So what’s the solution when your faith is weak? Glad you asked. One of the best things we can do to increase our faith is to renew our view of the Lord.

To renew our view of the Lord. When we get a glimpse of his glory and his power, like on the Mount of Transfiguration, it is, listen now, much easier for us to believe that he can do anything we ask.

And you know where you get that? Were you listening this morning? Where do you get that new view of the Lord? Right here. Does that remind you of a verse in Romans chapter 10?

So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I didn’t make that up. That is what the Bible says. When you read, you say, well, I don’t like reading all this. There’s 16 chapters of names. When you read what God has done in history, when you read what God has said, you know what you learn? You learn more about God. And your view of God becomes more and more in line with what the Bible says about him.

And what the Bible says about the God of the Bible is he is big and he can do anything. And that way the word of God, the scripture, will help your faith grow.

This is why we need to be in the Bible with sincerity and attention and focus because God will teach you about him. He will detail his own character and attributes for you to see and that will in turn increase your faith.

Look at Mark chapter nine, if you would. Another principle here. Mark chapter nine. Look at verse 22 again. Here’s what I want you to see. It is entirely possible for faith to be mixed with unbelief.

This father is an example of that because this father, verse 22, he did come to Jesus. There’s some faith involved in that. But at the same time in verse number 22 also, he says, if thou canst do anything. So he did come to Jesus, that indicates faith, but then in his very request, he cast doubt on his faith in Christ. And so there’s faith mixed with unbelief in the same word, in the same sentence even.

And the Lord Jesus points that out immediately. It’s entirely possible. I would say probable. I would say frequent. When I come to the Lord and I have a request and I have something that I want him to do, most of the time there’s doubt mixed in with my faith, with my request. Can anybody, can I get a witness up in here? Yeah, it’s true. Here’s what we do.

Here’s what we do. In Mark, what does it say? He came to you, if thou canst do anything, and the Lord’s reply points it out immediately. Oh, hold on boy, hold on big boy. If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. See how the Lord turned that right around him. Hold on, you asked the wrong question. Right? And then the Lord follows up and says this, or the man in response to the Lord says, he with tears.

He says, Lord, I believe, there’s faith, help thou my unbelief, there’s unbelief. They’re together. How is that possible? I don’t know, but there it is. So the man believed enough to come to Jesus, but in his request, he’s also acknowledging his own unbelief and he’s doing it with tears. So let me tell you something, when you feel, when you have that unbelief in your heart and you know it’s there, the first thing you need to do is you need to recognize it.

He said, help thou my unbelief. The second thing you need to do is you need to take that unbelieving heart to Jesus. Hear me now. Lord, you know my heart, you know my doubt, help my unbelief. You see, the problem is when, the problem is this, when we have unbelief, our tendency is to not take it to Jesus.

Our tendency is to not take it to Jesus, but what we see in this passage is we must bring our doubt to Jesus and we must confess it to him. He knows our heart anyhow. I mean, we can fake it, but he knows our heart. He knows if there’s doubt or faith or a mixture of the two. And we also know that doubting is a sin, is a sin to be confessed.

So we must come to Jesus with our doubt and confess it to him. We must not, however, let our doubt stop us from bringing that request to him. It’s better to bring a faulty, faithless request to Jesus than to not bring a request to him out of unbelief.

It is better to bring a faulty, faithless request to Jesus than not bring him a request at all because of our unbelief. Mark 9.24 says this, help thou mine unbelief.

Ask Jesus to help you believe. Isn’t that profound? It’s like, it’s not profound. It’s very simple. When will we learn, right? When will I learn? Every problem you have, no matter what kind, bring it to Jesus. Sin, bring it to Jesus. Doubt, bring it to Jesus. Health, bring it to Jesus. Emotional, bring it to Jesus. Personal, bring it to Jesus. Relational, bring it to Jesus. In the church, bring it to Jesus.

At your work. He is the answer. Bring your unbelief to Jesus and ask him to help you believe. Too often our tendency is to remain stuck in unbelief and not bring it to him, as if Jesus has no power to help us, which is itself more unbelief.

Go back to Matthew if you would, and we’ll finish here. So you have two unbelievers. You have the disciples that believe to heal him. If they did, it wouldn’t work, because they had prayer and fasting, but anyway.

Then you also have the father. Nobody believes Jesus can do this. There’s only one person in this narrative that believes that Jesus can do it, and who is that? Jesus.

It’s Jesus, okay? It’s Jesus, okay? And yet he still healed the son. You see that? Nobody believes, and yet Jesus still does it, despite all the unbelief. You see, if the Lord only ever responded to perfect faith, none of us would ever get help.

The only kind of faith that the Lord ever responds to is imperfect faith, because that’s the only kind that we have, if we’re honest. If you look at verse 20, Jesus said unto them, because of your unbelief, for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

Let me ask you a question. Did the disciples have faith of grain of mustard seed? That’s a resounding no, okay? The faith of grain of mustard seed is like the smallest, right? In other words, if you had this, just this much, you could do anything. Nothing would be impossible. That’s what Jesus said, right? They didn’t even have that. That’s the point. That’s his whole point of saying it.

His whole point of saying it is to show, using that analogy, is to show that they did not have even that much, and yet the Lord still did the thing the Father required. Isn’t that amazing?

Isn’t that amazing? We come to him with practically no faith, with our puny request, with almost no faith at all. We’re just weak and faulty and failing, and just, we have nothing to offer him. Our faith, whatever particles, atoms of faith that we have is not impressive, and yet he still does it.

Listen, the Lord wants us to exercise great faith, but it’s not about our faith. It’s about the God who, out of compassion and grace to us, hears us and answers us. That’s what it’s about.

We don’t have faith like grains of mustard seeds, because if we did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation about this kid not getting into this, young man not getting healed. We wouldn’t be having this conversation about unbelief, right, if we just had a little bit, but we don’t have that. This is the truth of it.

So we should take heart in the Lord’s compassion. He knows our frame. He knows our weaknesses, and he knows our faults, and he will still help us, and he will still answer us.

It is amazing. It is amazing. The scripture is full of examples like this. Let’s pray.