Jesus Calls Forth Faith

GOLDEN TEXT: “Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” —Mark 9:23

MARK 9:14-29

THE Apostle Paul wrote, “Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” (Heb. 11:6) Jesus knew this, and in our Golden Text explained to the father who was seeking help for his boy that faith was a prerequisite to the blessing he sought.

Faith on the part of this father needed to be so strong that it would enable him to accept the Lord’s will for his boy. The divine will for the boy was that he should be healed, and since the father exercised the necessary faith, the miracle was wrought.

Jesus had come to earth in fulfillment of the messianic promises of the Old Testament. One of the first of these promises was given to Abraham when God said to him that through him and his “seed” all the families of the earth would be blessed. (Gen. 12:3; 22:18; Gal. 3:8,16) These blessings Includes the healing of the sick and the raising of the dead.—Isa. 25:8; Ps. 90:3; 103:3

It was not the purpose of God that the complete fulfillment of these promises would take place during Christ’s first visit to earth. Jesus’ chief mission then was to lay down his life as the Redeemer of fallen man from sin and death. During the thousand years of his second visit is the time when all the sick will be healed, and all the dead awakened.

Nevertheless it was God’s purpose that Jesus, in proclaiming the good news of his coming kingdom and its blessings, should demonstrate in a limited sphere something of what the complete fulfillment of the messianic promises would mean to the ailing and dying race. For this reason Jesus did heal some of the sick and raised some of the dead during the short period of his earthly ministry:

The affliction mentioned in our lesson was possession and control by an evil spirit: “Higher critics” or the Bible claim that this was merely a case of mental unbalance, but this is not true. There are many references in the Bible to these “evil spirits,” and their identity is revealed. Actually they are fallen angels, angels who disobeyed God prior to the Flood, and have since been restrained in what the Bible describes as “chains of darkness.”—I Pet. 3:19,20; II Pet. 2:4; Jude 6

Peter explained that these sinful angels were “cast down to hell.” (II Pet. 2:4) The Greek word here translated hell is tartaroo, meaning to “incarcerate,” or restrain. Their sphere of activity, seemingly, has been limited to the atmosphere of the earth, and even here they are denied the full liberty they enjoyed prior to their transgression of the divine law.

These fallen angels, being of the spirit nature, are invisible to the human eye, and capable of taking over the control of human minds which are surrendered to them. Their chief sphere of operation today is through spiritualism, and their main endeavor seems to be to prove that the dead are not really dead, that they are more alive than ever, and that the dead are able to communicate with their friends still living on the earth. Their deceptions along this line seem very plausible to those who do not have full faith in the Bible’s testimony that “the wages of sin is death,” and that the “dead know not anything.”—Rom. 6:23; Eccles. 9:5

The activity of these evil spirit creatures in Jesus’ day was: in taking possession of human minds. A number of Jesus’ miracles was the “casting out” of these spirits, and restoring to those thus possessed the normal control and function of their minds. These miracles illustrated the fact that through the kingdom of Christ, now near at hand, all evil agencies and influences will be restrained and eventually destroyed.

In the King James Version, Jesus is quoted as saying that the evil spirit which he had cast out of the boy, could be thus controlled only by prayer and fasting. However, the word “fasting” is not in the original manuscripts of the Bible, being one of the interpolations added by a copyist during the Dark Ages. There is nothing to indicate that Jesus fasted before casting out this demon. He had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, and otherwise had been busy in the ministry, but no mention is made of fasting. The earlier manuscripts of the Bible now available have revealed a number of interpolations. To know of these helps a great deal in a proper understanding of the Word.

QUESTIONS

Explain why it is impossible to please God without faith.

What was the purpose of God in sending Jesus to earth?

What purpose was served by the miracles performed by Jesus at his first advent?

Who were the “spirits,” or “demons,” cast out by Jesus?

| Home Page | Table of Contents |