Word of Salvation – Vol. 25 No. 27 – April 1979

 

Down To Earth

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf, B.D. on Mark 9:14-29

Scripture reading: Exodus 32:1-26a, Mark 9:14-29

Psalter Hymnal: 301; 249; 5; 337; 409

 

Brothers and Sisters, boys and girls, young people, congregation of our Lord Jesus,

Coming down to earth from the mountain of glory was hard for Jesus – as long before it had been hard for Moses. Moses had been with God and had talked with the Almighty as a man with his friend. Upon coming down from that beauty and glory he expected to see a nation praising God after having heard the Ten Commandments from the very Mouth of Yahweh Himself. Instead he found that they had turned away from their Lord and were dancing around a calf of gold.

Oh how angry Moses had been. How he smashed the two tablets of the Law, made for his people by God Himself. In anger and frustration he felt: “What’s the good of it all!!”

When our text story begins, Jesus had been on the mountain with Peter, James and John, and He had been met by this very Moses, yes, and by Elijah too. It was Elijah who, one day, on Carmel, again a mountain top, had seen the glory of God come down in fire upon his altar in answer to his prayer. He had challenged nation and king in simple trust and prayer unto God, until all had cried out: “THE LORD, He is God! THE LORD, He is God!”

But only one day after, he had come down to earth with a thump when it appeared that Israel did NOT take notice and Queen Jezebel was after him to kill him just the same. Then he had lain down under a little desert shrub and asked God to take his life: “What’s the good of it all…!?!”

Now it almost sounds as if Jesus says the same thing. He came down from that mountain where He had met Moses and Elijah, where He had been clothed in the very glory of God and where the Voice of God the Father had sounded: “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased… hear Him!”

But now He came back to earth with a dull thud. Back into a world in which Satan seems boss and His own followers powerless. And it is almost as if we hear from Him the reaction both of Moses (when he smashed the tables) and Elijah (when about to give it all up as hopeless).

Look at verse 19:

“How long will I yet put up with you? How long can I stay with you…?” And in verse 23: “If you can… if you can…. you with your ‘if you can’.

It seems we hear a note of impatience, almost of annoyance and flaring anger. “What’s the good of it all!?!” Not that this was sinful rebellion against God, as it almost was with Moses (after all, the law tablets were GOD’s handiwork!) and rebellion as it surely was with Elijah, (for to want to die is a form of suicide).

No, but it does show clearly, does it not, that the fight against the devil and against our sin was never easy for Jesus. For it is the battle against the powers that made life on earth futile and that made our earth, God’s creation, subject to vanity. Especially after the highlight of God’s glory on that mountain, this was hard, this coming back to earth.

But after all, it is here, DOWN TO EARTH, that God’s salvation is worked out. The Gospel is no airy-fairy bedtime story. It deals with the hard realities in which we live, and where we may now rejoice and serve and have hope. We also can have our high points: beautiful Sundays, inspiring camps and conferences, solemn celebrations and times of beauty when almost heaven seems to have come down on earth.

But the reality of faith and the reality of God’s doings is usually experienced in the nitty-gritty down-to-earth: in a school curriculum, at a graveside, in places where people live and work and at times are close to despair. Where at times the devil seems boss… but, Alleluia he isn’t. Not any more!

The Word of God today concerns “DOWN TO EARTH”, and we hear of

1. Powerless Pawns,

2. Faltering Faith, and

3. Prevailing Prayer.

1. POWERLESS PAWNS

During Moses’ absence on The Mountain, Aaron had been confronted by the problem of Israel’s angry impatience – and he had not been able to solve it but had given in – with the golden calf as a result.

Here, too, Jesus’ disciples – that is, the twelve minus Peter, James and John – had been confronted by that father and his poor miserable demon-possessed boy. Ah yes, we’ll fix that sir, it’s only epilepsy, just wait and leave it to us, we will solve it for you…!

You see, Luke 9 tells us that they had already been sent out by Jesus before to heal sick people. They did it then, so, well, why not do it now!?!

We think we’re great problem solvers. Or we pretend to be anyway. We have inflation. But sure you can hear on the radio or TV some smart cookie who tells us that we here in Australia will show THE WHOLE WORLD how to fix that! One way in which we make this mistake is in the way we make an idol of science.

There is no problem that science cannot solve – or so we say. And we think we can do this by reducing the problem to just one aspect of it. “It’s only this…!” or “only that…!”

Maybe the disciples thought: Oh, this is ONLY epilepsy, we can fix that! Thus we say that the human spirit is ONLY brain cells, so ALL we have to do to cure a criminal from his badness is to cut through these cells and he becomes meek as a lamb. Lobotomy, we call that. Too bad this also reduces him to a vegetable.

Only this… only that…!

Love is ONLY sex. Fix that part up by removing inhibitions and giving young people handy technical “how to do it” booklets, and you have instant happiness and all your problems are solved.

Well, hardly. Man is more than a biological machine. You and I, we think this too at times. We feel not well, and think that JUST a drug, some pills, some tablets, maybe an injection, will mean a quick chemical shortcut to instant well-being. But no… it often is not as easy as that. Communists thought that the big trouble of mankind was just ECONOMICAL. Solve man’s economical problems and you will have Paradise on Earth.

But all we had was a revolution, and even Soviet Russia, after 50 years of this system, is far from glory!

You see, you cannot reduce MAN to one of his ASPECTS and you cannot reduce God’s creation to a closed system, either. Leave realities like God and Satan out of your thinking (and later we will see that, really, the disciples left God out) and you may then have as many clues as you want, but you haven’t got all the pieces together to solve the puzzle. At least the disciples hadn’t. They proved but helpless pawns – yes, because they did not play together with the King! The greatest professor, without the Lord, is but a helpless pawn when it comes to problem solving, until Jesus, the Son of God, the King of Glory, has come upon the scene and has said: Bring this thing to Me!

2. FALTERING FAITH

That is then, what the father of this boy does. Jesus begins by asking questions, like: How long has this boy had this?

Of course Jesus knew. But He thereby teaches the disciples a lesson: man is made in the image of God. He has to ask questions, analyse, investigate… find out.

Even though it is silly to try and solve our problems without the LORD of glory, that does not mean we can pension off the entire medical science, or whatever other human skills there are for healing and problem solving. Above all, He desires that IN IT ALL we take HIM – Him, the LORD – seriously.

Hence His second “outburst”. When the distraught father, tired and at the end of his hoping after the hopeless muddling and blundering by the disciples, says to Jesus: LORD, IF YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, PLEASE HELP, Jesus replies: “If You can!” – as if He means: “What a thing to say to Me!” But He adds, “All things are possible to him WHO BELIEVES, believes… trusts, yes, trusts ME, the Son of God.”

To this the father answers with tears and a loud cry, but in open honesty. “My faith,” he says, “isn’t all that much to write home about. I believe – yes, I have faith of sorts, BUT HELP ME IN MY UNBELIEF, my doubt, O God, help me.”

Then the faith of this man becomes but a cry to God… but an empty hand stuck out to heaven: “Help, O God, even help me to believe… what can I do without You?” And look, that is enough for Jesus. That is the kind of mustard seed faith He can do wonders with.

He knows better than whoever else that in spite of our hard work and good intentions we can be so weak and small. He knows that at times all that’s left of us is the cry “Lord help… help even my faith. I have trouble even seeing You, LORD, in this world of ours… This world where people make mistakes, and where I have my own sin, too… Lord in a creation that sighs in bondage, where Satan seems boss. HELP, I believe, but HELP me when I doubt so!”

And, his was not a prayer of theory. This was not just a bloke wrestling with a problem, like communism, or some other ism. This is not some student getting stuck in human talk. No, this is a father crying about his own boy, possessed by that evil power which one day throws him into the fire and then into water.

To see your own child, eyeballs turned up a ghastly white and foaming at the mouth and gnashing teeth, the helpless bitterness of it all, when you love that boy and he is like this and there isn’t a thing you can do!

But: “Bring him to Me” says Jesus. “In this sighing creation, full of devils, I will show you” says Jesus, “Who is boss.” Right here, down to earth, where we are, stuck, it so often seems, with sick children or broken marriages, with race problems or the loneliness of being a widow, whether the illness is epilepsy or that killer: cancer. Bring it to me, says Jesus. He speaks the Word of power to the demon and where it seemed all hopeless, there He makes new beginnings. When the boy lies as one dead He stretches out His hand and raises him – surprise of God – surprise of LIFE in a world of death. A foretaste of how, one day, this whole creation shall be, coming to life under its rightful and only King: The Shepherd King.

He is a Shepherd Who loves His sheep and came here – yes, down to earth, to bring them life and abundance. This miracle, too, is but a sign, a sign of things to come, a sign that Satan’s power is to end. The demon saw that coming and therefore he grew so violent when instead of the disciples the MASTER appeared on the scene. Satan is very angry, says Revelation 12, because he knows his days are numbered,

This sign, too, told this father and these disciples and us, that God’s idea is a world, a creation, brought into freedom and praise. And on it – on it at last – God’s people as the FREEDOM WORKERS, under Christ Jesus their King, making it all happen.

3. PREVAILING PRAYER

Therefore, now, my last point.

We are thinking of DOWN TO EARTH. What Jesus found coming from the mountain of glory: 1. powerless pawns, and 2. faltering faith. But the story does not end there.

You see, the disciples have a good question to ask. “Lord,” they say, “why couldn’t we heal that boy. We wanted to… but we could not. What was the trouble?”

Brothers and sisters, if only we would be honest enough to go to God – to God’s Word more – with that kind of question! Instead of going round in circles, to seek the LIGHT OF GOD’S WORD, GOD’s POINT OF VIEW on our problems and pain… And then, not just to open the Bible when it comes to the question: how do I get to heaven, or how do I get peace in my heart, but: how can I do more for the poor people around me? How come, God, that we are so powerless in problem solving while the problems grow right over our heads – economic, scientific, political, social?

We are clearly running out of ideas on how to make sick people better and how to bring up unhappy kids. How can we get people to share, and how can we get them to live together on this planet?

And then Jesus says: you want to know why you didn’t get anywhere? I tell you: you can only get devils out by prayer. That means: by acknowledging GOD in all this. Prayer is that you bring the matter to the LORD, because you know that here in our down to earth situation HE matters, HE is relevant, HE is ready to help, and HIS light will get you out of your darkness.

Prayer is: to refuse to attack the devil ON YOUR OWN, to – yes – to want to be just a little pawn. But even pawns can be formidable on the chess board. You can be a pawn WHO CALLS THE KING IN, a pawn who works together WITH the King.

In the old translation you will find that this last verse says, that “these devils will only go out upon prayer and fasting.” Now there is nothing wrong with fasting and there are times that such EXERCISE for Christians is definitely called for. In a time that many people make a god out of their belly it can be very useful to learn to do without things even for a time, so we can better concentrate on the work of God’s Kingdom.

Yet I agree with the great majority of manuscripts which do NOT mention fasting here: we are NOT throwing the devils out by, as it were, forcing God and going on some kind of hunger strike. We do not need to get at God with those kind of attention-getters. The whole idea is rather than going about it the way of the Baal priests who cut themselves with knives and say, “Oh Baal, answer us… look at us, Oh BAAL, ANSWER US” that IN OUR PRAYER WE TAKE SERIOUSLY THE FACT THAT GOD IS CONCERNED WITH HIS WORLD, WE DO NOT LIVE IN A CLOSED SYSTEM but in a world which with all its problems is open towards the LORD of hosts, Whose Son came here – down to earth indeed – to break the work of Satan.

When you compare it with those Baal priests, how relaxed was Elijah’s prayer – just asking the Lord to show all these people that He really was there! Working at the same time, building that altar, preparing the sacrifice, even flooding it all with water. But how relaxed, how simple, just taking seriously the presence of the LORD God right there!

You know, there can be in some Pentecostal attempts at faith healing this frantic way of TRYING OUT IF GOD IS REALLY THERE. There can be this ASKING FOR SPECIAL SIGNS TO PROVE GOD, as it were, which really springs from a doubt, an inner uncertainty.

But on the other end of the spectrum there is the science, the board room, the school or the surgery where God is left out, and problem solving becomes the grim business of men left to it all by themselves. The Christian, however, goes about his work – yes, work! – eyes open, minds trained, hands busy… in an attitude of PRAYER. That is, he takes seriously the fact that God is involved from the beginning to end. He lets the light of the Word of God shine on it all and in that light the devils feel very unhappy. They cry out and flee, as they cannot stand that light.

Not that we always quote Bible texts. But the Word of God makes us SEE the problems for what they are, it SHINES on this creation and makes us see how matters really lie. And then we have a go at sickness and we have a go at education and then we have a go at economic and social problems – and because we pray – because we ask God’s wisdom – and the fear of the LORD is the key, the beginning of wisdom – therefore we can begin to heal, to restore, to erect signs of the coming Kingdom.

Thus we are busy and yet relaxed.

Thus we can face the devil and know that his kingdom has had it. We can proclaim joy to the world for the Lord has come – yes, come down to earth! Here! Our work makes sense. Our study has perspective – our children’s Christian education is equipping them for JUST THAT: a life of prayer and work, a life of seeing GOD IN HIS CREATION, seeing Him here. Busy already and never stopping until it is all finished.

It is getting pretty clear these days that Satan is real enough. But he will flee when confronted with Christians who have learned to take seriously the fact that the Lord God is at least as real and that Jesus is Conqueror and that He alone is LORD!

Jesus – Who came down to earth from that Mountain of glory because He had a road to travel… right to the cross. He had a job to do: to make peace between God and a sin-sick world. He did that job. Therefore He could afford to pray, right before that Good Friday, that God would – please – not take these Christians away from this·world.

No, God – Jesus prayed – keep them down to earth where the frustrations are like Jesus knew them Himself as Moses and Elijah had known them before. It is this earth where the devil is, but – He would pray – Father, I pray Thee that Thou wilt NOT take them away from this world, only that Thou wilt keep them from the evil One.

And it is in prayer, in constant contact with the LORD of glory, that we are so kept. Then we are both busy and relaxed. It is through us, then, that King Jesus makes this earth already taste the beginning of that peace and bounty in which fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains begin to repeat the joy!

That healing in which the very nations here begin to see and even show something of the wonders of His love.

AMEN.