David Hathaway I want to deal with a portion of Scripture that troubles many people, and it’s in Mark 9, where you have two very contrasting experiences. First, Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration with His three closest disciples, Peter, James and John. Moses and Elijah appear – it was an incredibly powerful experience, but as they come down the mountain, Jesus tells the disciples, “Do not tell what you have seen, until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.” And they questioned one another, what might the ‘rising from the dead’ mean? At this point in the ministry of Jesus they had no real concept that Jesus was literally going to rise from the dead and what this would mean for them.
Jesus is dealing with the father. It’s the father who has the doubt, who’s accusing Jesus, “YOUR disciples couldn’t heal my son!” Jesus answers the father, straight down the line, saying, “You belong to a faithless generation. How long am I going to be here with you? How long must I put up with this? Bring the boy to Me!”
For us in our Christian faith, Resurrection is the major issue. When we repent of our sins and come to Christ, we die to the old life, we’re born, ‘resurrected’ into a new life – and this new life WILL RISE FROM THE DEAD. Whilst the Pharisees accepted Resurrection at the end of the age, the Sadducees didn’t! So it was a great controversy surrounding the ministry of Jesus. Today, I don’t feel that in the Church we are being taught enough about what Resurrection is and what happens when we die.
To me as an evangelist, this is quite strong. We’re dealing with a clear case of unbelief in the father, who is one of the ‘faithless generation’. But the disciples also! Without Jesus being with them, they couldn’t deal with this boy, even though we know from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that they had already been commanded to heal the sick. And it’s clear that’s what Jesus expected them to do whilst He was up on the mountain! So now Jesus has to take over. As soon as they bring the boy to Jesus, the evil spirit throws him on the ground and the boy starts foaming at the mouth. Jesus asks the father, “How long has this happened?” The father replies, “Since he was a child.” The issue here is, because the disciples couldn’t do anything, the father now doubts even Jesus, he’s questioning, desperate, “If You can do anything, have pity on us and help us…”
But there’s another issue. Jesus had left nine of His disciples at the bottom of the mountain. When He and the three closest of His disciples came back down, Mark 9:14, He saw that a great crowd had surrounded the other disciples, and the scribes – part of the religious hierarchy of the day – were questioning the disciples. What was going on? As soon as they saw Him the people came running excitedly to Jesus, and He asked the scribes, what were you questioning My disciples about? What’s wrong?
To which Jesus says – not to the disciples – but to the father, “If you can believe ALL things are possible to him that believes!” I find this a fascinating and remarkable way in which Jesus is speaking. Quite honestly, it’s a challenge to the Church. It was a challenge to the disciples. But at this point the challenge was to an unbelieving father who had seen the failure of the disciples! Yet Jesus still said to him, “If you can believe – EVERYTHING is possible!” This is incredible, tremendous. EVERYTHING! ALL things are possible to him who believes!
It was one of the crowd who answered. He said, “Master, I brought my son here. He has an evil dumb spirit who takes him, tears him and throws him into the fire and the water… I asked Your disciples to cast out this evil spirit – and they could not!”
This is a tremendous challenge to the Church! It’s not just a challenge to the boy’s father, it’s now a challenge to the disciples themselves, who are there, listening in to the conversation! I want to challenge Christians today – everyone who reads this – on this very issue: our God is a God of miracles – NOTHING is impossible with God. I’ve had to take this challenge – many times – in my own life. My ministry is not just as an evangelist, but to prove that God is a GOD OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.
So this father is coming to Jesus with questions and doubts. It’s the same today. There is doubt and questioning in the world, and in the Church. Unbelievers don’t understand, they reject what we believe, regarding Christians as something of a strange sect. Even Christians have doubts and questions… What was the response of Jesus? Jesus answers the father bluntly, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you, how long am I to put up with you?” I’ve always assumed that the disciples were in part the object of this challenge, but in actual fact, here they weren’t. Here
12
I’ve proved it in my own life. In 1961 I wanted to go to a World Conference to be held in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost – it would be the first time in 2000 years! I couldn’t go because I didn’t have the money. I couldn’t afford the air ticket. So I said, “It’s land most of the way from England to Israel. I’ll drive by car.” And I did! But in order to do this, I had to test this very issue with God that NOTHING is im-
possible. Everybody said, “You can’t do it. You can’t go behind the Iron Curtain. You’ll be robbed by bandits in Turkey, shot as spies in Syria. And when you get into Israel, it’s impossible for you to get out.” You don’t understand today what it was like in the communist countries, you don’t understand the hostility there was then in Syria and Jordan towards Israel. The British Foreign Office threw everything at me. But I stood on this, that even though I would be the first person in the world to drive all the way from England to Jerusalem and back, NOTHING WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD. There’s something more in this than just ‘faith’ – the REALITY of God is that NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! God is so great, so powerful – all wisdom, all might, all power, all knowledge, everything is in the Hands of God! With God, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! So what was the reaction to Jesus’ challenge? The boy’s father cried out, with tears, “Lord, I do believe – but help my unbelief!” I sense that the Church is going to have to respond in this same way. So much could happen today in the Church – if we had the faith to go out and DO IT! But people don’t understand faith. Faith is ACTION. Faith is seeing the impossible – and going out and DOING IT! You know what happened in this case, you know that the evil spirit came out, and that Jesus healed the boy. Of course, afterwards the disciples came to Him privately and said, “Why couldn’t we do this?” Jesus said, “This kind can come out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” So many don’t see the connection, but it has been an outstanding feature of my ministry, that faith sometimes has to have prayer and fasting to make the impossible possible. Both times I had cancer in 1964 and 2002/3 – the miracle didn’t happen quickly. Both times it took three months – of prayer and fasting. Why? For the impossible to happen! Faith comes by hearing, faith comes by acting on it, yes, but it has to be linked to prayer and fasting to build that faith. Faith doesn’t just come ‘out of thin air’… Let me take you to Mark 6, three chapters earlier. Jesus comes to His hometown. On the Sabbath day He taught in the synagogue, and many were astonished at Him, “Where does this man get these things from? What wisdom has He got whereby He works such mighty miracles? We know Him, we know who this Jesus is! Isn’t He the carpenter? Isn’t He the son of Mary? And we know His brothers and sisters. He’s just a carpenter – how does He know all this?” And because they ‘knew’ Him, they despised Him. And Jesus said,
