Introduction
This is the word of the Lord
14 And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him,
15 said, “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.
16 And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.”
17 And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”
18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”
20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
22 As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men,
23 and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed.
The following are the words of a song that for a while when it came out was an anthem, a heartbeat of this generation. It has a wonderful melody that evokes a great deal of emotion in the hearts of many listeners. You must have heard it yourself. I want to read to you the lyrics of this song as I begin. This is from the song ‘This is me’ which was part of the movie, ‘The Greatest Showman’ that came out in 2017.
I am not a stranger to the dark
Hide away, they say
‘Cause we don’t want your broken parts
I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars
Run away, they say
No one’ll love you as you are
But I won’t let them break me down to dust
I know that there’s a place for us
For we are glorious
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be, this is me
Look out ’cause here I come
And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me
Another round of bullets hits my skin
Well, fire away ’cause today, I won’t let the shame sink in
We are bursting through the barricades and
Reaching for the sun (we are warriors)
Yeah, that’s what we’ve become (yeah, that’s what we’ve become)
I won’t let them break me down to dust
I know that there’s a place for us
For we are glorious
and I know that I deserve your love
there’s nothing I’m not worthy of
This song wasn’t viral by accident. It was appropriately rewarded because it spoke with clarity about the pulse of our culture.
There are two opposing premises when we consider the doctrine of man (the reality of man’s existence), and all of us must choose one of these two premises.
• The first premise, the one that this song echoes is that we, as man, are inherently a good people, but circumstantially corrupted by the experiences and influences of this life.
It suggests that we are not a bad people prone to doing bad things but rather that we are a good people influenced to do bad things.
In this view, the solution to finding good is to push away whatever seems to be the bad influence and to look deep within themselves. The sharp words, the guilt tripping, the shaming, the accusing aspects of society have, in their opinion, scarred and defeated their self-morale. It makes them feel as though there is no good in them. They feel completely undone, and so, their effort is to send a flood ignorance and resistance and to drown em’ out. – “I don’t care what you think of me, I am who I’m meant to be, this is me”
• The second premise is the opposing premise, the one that the Bible teaches, that we, as man, are not inherently good, but an inherently evil people, our flesh always tending to sin, and our circumstances and influences are only fuel to the fire that has been ignited since our birth.
Psalm 51:5 ESV
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Ephesians 2:3 ESV
3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Romans 2:14–15 ESV
14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
According to this premise, the man does not look for answers by searching his own depths, but by abandoning his flesh he turns to look elsewhere. This then is the first work of the Spirit in the heart of a true seeker of God. And when he finds the cross of Christ, the burden upon his back is removed. Henceforth, he searches not his own heart by searches after the heart of Christ.
Luke 18:10–14 ESV
10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
When the world teaches you to make much of yourself, the Bible teaches you to abandon yourself and cleave to Christ. You and I have to pick a side. Too many professing Christians have fallen prey to this broken view of the world and so, have a bad working theology that confuses them instead of comforting them. They lack in stability.
• The former premise will defend the authority of man at all costs, and the latter will call him to account for his sins. The former truly hates the man in the name of love, and the latter truly loves the man in the name of hate. To the world, because the man is the centre of life, he is always exalted.
The Kingdom of God is not a democracy. The word democracy is coined from the words ‘dêmos’ meaning people, and ‘kratia’ meaning power or rule. The Kingdom of God is ‘God-ruled’.
Luke 6:39 ESV
39 He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?
This song then, this anthem of the world, is the anthem of the blind. The emotional extravagance and impulse of the song is not a testament to truth but an evidence of our corruption in understanding reality. It is an evidence of how corrupt our hearts are that we revel in our sin, we rejoice in our self-exaltation.
• The tragedy of this world is that they don’t recognise that there is only One who truly loved us just as we were.
Romans 5:8 ESV
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus came to love us by condemning sin and redeeming us, not by excusing sin and reassuring us that all is well for us to continue as we are. He receives us just as we are, but not to keep us as we are but to transform us by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12)
2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Therefore, the song should actually go like this,
I am not a stranger to the dark
Hide away, they say
‘Cause we don’t want your broken parts
I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars
Run away, they say
No one’ll love you as you are
But He won’t let them break me down to dust
I know that there’s a place for us
For He is glorious
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
He spent his blood, to drown ’em out
He is brave, He is bruised
He bore what I was meant to bear, this is He
Look out ’cause here He comes
And He’s marching on to the beat He drums
So, I’m not scared to be seen
I repent, I make my apologies, for this is He
Another round of bullets hits my skin
Well, fire away ’cause today, He won’t let the shame sink in
We are bursting through the barricades and
Reaching for the Son of God (we are warriors)
Yeah, that’s what we’ve become (yeah, that’s what we’ve become)
He won’t let them break me down to dust
I know that there’s a place for us
For He is glorious
and I know that I don’t deserve His love
For there’s nothing I’m worthy of
Do you see the danger of this world’s perception of reality? They want to replace God with you.
The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9)
The story of Babel is the story of a people who went out in to make a ‘name’ for themselves. As one kingdom, they wanted to exalt themselves beyond any other kingdom, even God’s. They were building a tower, a testament of their strength and power, to rise to the halls of God. This was an open challenge against God by a people who made much of themselves.
In a sudden moment, God confounded their tongues and sudden there was not much of anything that they could make much of in themselves.
The Golden Calf (Exodus 32)
People have always wanted to exalt themselves as God, or to exalt themselves by fashioning a God according their own design.
When Moses went up on that mountain to seek the face of the true and Almighty God, to receive his commandments for the people, the people at the foot of that mountain defaulted to the broken premise of this world, the fundamental corruption of sin – hostility to God and love of the self.
Exodus 32:7–10 ESV
7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.
8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ”
9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.
10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”
Thousands of years later, here is the Almighty God himself, descending a mountain like Moses once did, having shone his glory at the peak, now returning to the people at the foot of the mountain. What he then finds is the passage for our consideration this morning.
And this fundamental premise that I speak of is what I see addressed in this passage.
Exegesis
Matthew 17:14 ESV
14 And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him,
• crowd – Jesus returns to find a multitude gathered.
We know from Mark that the crowd comprised of his disciples, the scribes, and the common Jewish folk among whom were the demon possessed boy and his father.
Mark 9:14–16 ESV
14 And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them.
15 And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.
16 And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?”
Out of all that he saw, Jesus was drawn to the argument or dispute that the scribes were having with the disciples. This prompted his question, “What are you arguing about with them?” Has Jesus unlike Moses, come down to a faithful people? What was the debate about? Upon seeing Jesus the crowd pressed upon him and greeted him.
Upon making this enquiry, a man came up to him, kneeled and said,
Matthew 17:15 ESV
15 said, “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.
• Lord – We have seen many expressions of the Lordship of Jesus by the people who came to him for mercy. Here, we have reason to believe that this man did not fully understand who Jesus was, but at the very least, he recognised his superiority and that the hand of God was upon him.
Matthew 7:21 ESV
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Our verbal profession means nothing if our hearts are not true.
• have mercy on my son – Luke tells us that this was the man’s only child. He was seeking Jesus’ compassion.
• seizures – The boy suffered from epileptic seizures. But it was so much more than that. The word the father uses to describe the sickness of his son in the original Greek is a word that is translated ‘moon-struck’. In those days, severe mental sickness was seen as the influence of the moon upon the mind of the person. It is another word for insanity.
This boy wasn’t just suffering from seizures, but nervous disorder and severely irrational behaviour. The father rightly diagnoses it, and Jesus confirms it, that the boy suffered this way because he was possessed by a demon.
Mark 9:17–18 ESV
17 And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute.
18 And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.”
It made him ‘mute’ and ‘deaf’ (Mark 9:25)
• suffers terribly – The boy’s suffering was terrible to behold.
• into fire and into water – The demon would often seize the boy and throw him into the open pools or fire pits that were common around the land. This would have left him scarred and difficult to behold for the people who saw him.
Matthew 17:16 ESV
16 And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.”
• they could not – This was probably the debate the scribes were having with the disciples. This was probably a good point for them to accuse the validity of Christ’s ministry.
Matthew 17:17 ESV
17 And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”
• faithless & twisted – Hear the echo of God’s rebuke that we see throughout the OT.
Jesus directs this rebuke at all of them. The disciples, the crowd and the scribes. Just as the people pressed upon Aaron when Moses was up on the mountain, the people pressed upon the disciples when Jesus went up on that mountain.
And as Aaron lacked in faith, so did the disciples lack in their faith. They could not drive out the demon and help the boy.
The word for ‘twisted’ is ‘bent out of shape’. The minds of the people were so bent out of shape and they could no longer perceive or pursue the truth.
Faith is trusting in God, and faithlessness is trusting in anything or anyone else apart from God.
There are certain things that God has made us for as a human race. These things are the inherent yearnings of our souls. So, you see, the question is not whether we worship God or not, but which God we worship. For, we were all made for worship. When the Christian worships the true and living God, the Hindus worship idols that have no life in them, and the atheist worships the demos, the man.
In the same way, our problem is not an absence of faith, but a distortion of it. Our hearts tend to trust in ourselves or in others or in things in this world, instead of God. Matthew 6:24
Matthew 6:24 ESV
24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
The point being that we are always devoted to something.
• The scribes trusted in their self-righteousness and their knowledge, instead of trusting in God. They were hypocrites. They held on to the word of God outwardly and held on to man-made doctrines in their hearts that served themselves instead of serving God.
• The disciples were likely overconfident in their ability to heal given their experience in Matthew 10 where Jesus sends them out.
Matthew 10:1 ESV
1 And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.
This authority that Jesus gave them was failing because it works only on the foundation of faith – trust in God. They were trusting in themselves and not in God.
• How long? – God echoes back what the Psalmist cried out to him.
• Bring him here to me
Mark 9:20 ESV
20 And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.
Mark 9:21–24 ESV
21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.
22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
23 And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”
24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Jesus was the Son that was not spared by his Father’s mercy so that we can be. If you can? Do you know what Jesus has come to do? He came to do more than heal the moon-struck, he came to heal the world, to take the corruption of their flesh and give them the light of the purity of his righteousness.
Matthew 17:18 ESV
18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.
• The glory of the Messiah
Mark 9:25 ESV
25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
Matthew 17:19–20 ESV
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”
20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
• Faith – the reason that faith so small can do such great things is because of faith is trusting in a great God.
