Mark 9:14-3414And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them. 15And straightway all the people, when they beheld him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him. 16And he asked the scribes, What question ye with them? 17And one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; 18And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not. 19He answereth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me. 20And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming. 21And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child. 22And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us. 23Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. 24And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. 25When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. 26And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. 27But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose. 28And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out? 29And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting. 30And they departed thence, and passed through Galilee; and he would not that any man should know it. 31For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day. 32But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him. 33And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? 34But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest. (Mark 9:14‑34)
There are two subjects in these verses of scripture that I will call your attention to this evening. First, there is the scene after the transfiguration, after the glory that He was exalted to upon the holy mount; there is the scene on earth, indeed, there is what we might call earth. We were dwelling upon heaven last week, and I trust through grace we got some little of the blessedness of heaven, the glory of Jesus, the Father’s voice singling Him out as the special object of His own ineffable delight, His beloved Son. But in our verses tonight we are in a different position altogether; we are on earth, earth with its discordant sounds, its miseries, its sorrows, its griefs, its heart breaks, for that is what goes to make up this earth. Do you not know it? Are you not passing through it? Do you not know that in this world death and sorrow are always at home? Ah, friends, we have got to leave it to find where true joys are; they are not here: we have got to leave the place here in spirit and in faith to find the joys that never fade, the place where the sun never goes down at noon; it is where Jesus is. How one’s heart enters into the saying of a poor colored woman that I read of some time ago to one that was in constant distress, and whom in her simple way she tried to comfort. Her heart never was in the clouds and gloom of earth, it was always bright; in her deepest distress there seemed to be sunshine ever in her heart; and her owner (for she was a slave) asked her once how it was that she seemed to be so little affected by all the difficulties and trials through which she passed; her simple reply in her own native way of expression was this, “Massa, it is always bright where Jesus is.” O friends, to live there! Alas! we too often visit there; some of us perhaps do not even do that much. But oh! to live there, to abide there! Now that is what this scene on earth brings before us; but I would like to say one word before we look at it together about the Lord’s charge after the transfiguration was over, so as to complete what we had before us already.
You will observe in the closing verses after the account of the transfiguration, when the Lord came down from the mount He charged His disciples that they should not speak of those things that they had seen till after He was risen from the dead; and then we are told that the mention of the resurrection seemed to have been like a piercing sword that went through their hearts. They reasoned with themselves what the resurrection from the dead must mean.
I believe there were two reasons in connection with that charge. First of all, He enjoins the silence which would deepen in their souls the impression of the scene of glory that they had just visited There is a wonderful power in silence; we lose so much by the noise and clamor of sounds either of others or of ourselves. There is an expression in silence far more eloquent than the sweetest notes that ever passed from mortal lips: and I believe He desires to leave, in that enjoined silence upon their hearts, the deep impress of the scene He had passed through. They were not to speak of it; it was to permeate down, as it were, into the very depths of their moral being, until the Son of man was risen from the dead.
But there was another reason, and that was, it was introducing that great subject of the Son of man’s rising again from the dead, and it was that which had pierced them through. It was not the mere fact of the resurrection in itself there would have been no question whatever in their minds with regard to resurrection; every well-taught Jew and every good and pious Jew believed in the resurrection; but it was the fact of His resurrection; “till the Son of man be risen.” It was not the fact of graves being burst open, or what is called, and indeed very incorrectly called, the general resurrection, for there is no such thought in scripture; I am quite aware there is in popular thought; but we have to learn from scripture. More properly speaking, there is a sectional resurrection: there is a resurrection of the just and there is a resurrection of the unjust; but a “general resurrection at the last day,” you will not find within God’s word. What really touched them and moved them was the fact of His resurrection; and I will tell you why. It scattered the dreamy thoughts of their hearts; it blasted their illusive hopes that all was to be made good by a living Christ, a Messiah known after the flesh amongst men. That death of His of which He spoke before, which was so abhorrent to their nature, which they stumbled over just as much as some stumble over His glory today, that death of His was implied in His resurrection. It slew the living hopes of their hearts, it broke up all their vain dreams, it brought this great fact to them with its momentous consequences, that their Master after all was to die. They could not understand it, they could not conceive such a thing. It threw their hopes the other side. God grant that, through His grace, you and I may so enter into it that it may have the same effect with us, a more real effect than it had with them. The purpose of it was to turn the mind the other side; and that is where He wants us. His resurrection opens up glories beyond; it closes all hopes this side the grave, shuts out all expectations this side the tomb, but it opens up vistas of glory, scenes of permanent blessedness beyond. Do you enter into that? Do you appreciate it? Does your soul take in that fact? Thank God, our blessings are beyond the grave! Thank God, all that is stable and eternal has been established in the immutable blessedness of the cross, and comes out in all the magnificence of the risen One Himself, in whom we are before Him. There is something exceedingly precious the more we dwell upon it in the fact that everything now comes out in resurrection. You know how you walk through country scenes in the spring-time of nature, and when you see everything ready to burst out, there is something very attractive to the heart in the fresh bloom and bursting forth of life in spring, after the long, dreary winter. Who would go back to autumn leaves, and to the fading scenes, beautiful as it were in death, of autumn? There a beauty in nature’s death, but what is it to the freshness and verdure and blessedness of that which spring pictures for us, namely, resurrection, resurrection out of death and beyond the tomb, the blessedness that is connected with the life beyond. How little it is entered into! Now that was the Lord’s purpose, in connection with this charge, to throw their hearts the other-side. And I believe He wants to do it now, and we are very slow to let Him do it, and slower still to follow Him. But these two things connect themselves with the charge: first, the deepening of the impression of the scene of glory upon their hearts; and secondly, to throw their hearts and expectations beyond the grave to the other side into which resurrection introduces them.
We have got now to the verses we read; we have left Tabor and we have got down to the bottom of the mount—come back, as it were, into this world. I have spoken to you a little, and I will not dilate on it longer, of the contrast be- tween earth and heaven. That is the first thing that strikes the heart in reading these verses. We must know a little of heaven in order to be able to form the contrast and appreciate it. We do so cling to this earth; I do not say the world, I am not speaking at all now of the moral character of things, of the moral stamp that is upon all that is here since the rejection of Jesus Christ; but I am speaking of the solid, literal earth that our feet walk on. We are drawn to it and we cling to it with an awful tenacity; slow to let go, slow to allow the moorings that tie us there to be parted. We must know something of the joys of heaven, the scene on high, in order to form the contrast. But when we do, when the contrast stands out before us, it is then we are made sensible of what this world is. You know we form our opinion of everything in the way of contrast. There is something bright and blessed and beautiful, and you contrast it with all that is passing and transitory and gloomy; but you must know what you contrast with. And therefore I say we must know a little of those blessed joys to be able to form the contrast with the scene that is here and its sorrows. That is the first thing in these verses.
The second thing that comes before us, and very blessed it is to think of it, is that when they came down from the mountain, and got into this place of distress and misery that is around us here, the countenance of Jesus—I say it with holy reverence—was resplendent with the glory that He had just been in; His face retained the traces of that glory which He had readied as a man in all its height upon the holy mount. That is what those verses really bring before us, and hence we read, “And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them. And straightway all the people, when they beheld him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him”—“did homage” is really the force of the word. They were struck; there was a grandeur, a dignity, and a glory, that still lingered over that beautiful face. Oh, how little we are up to a scene like that! Amazement seized them; the force of the word is “exceeding terror,” “great dread laid hold upon them” when they looked at the reflection of the glory of Tabor still lingering upon that blessed face, as He came down to the bottom of the mount. I do not say for a moment that there were not glories that belonged to Him in His own Person, glories that were specially and peculiarly His own in connection with what He was. But as I was saying last week, He reached this eminence and height of preciousness to God on the holy mount; it was an ascending scale with Jesus Christ from Bethlehem to Tabor, up and up, until He reaches the very highest point, and then it was descending, down and down, to the depths of Calvary. And when He comes back from that scene He still wears that glory, and it was that which struck terror into their hearts. I have been greatly interested in looking at the disciples in the opposite scenes of His life. You will find that in Gethsemane they slept, and on Tabor they were afraid. Oh, how little up to His sufferings and glories we are! We hardly ever seem to be at home in either scene. In His sufferings they slept for sorrow. So do we; it is nature’s resource, selfish sorrow, self-consideration, self-ministration. They sought the resource of sleep in their sorrow; on the mount they were afraid, His visage terrified them, the glory repelled them. I think it is very convicting to our hearts to think how little we are up to either of these things. There is one great reason for it. No one could be at home in the glory till the Savior was there. And He must be there as having finished the great work done on the cross; He must be there as the Man who bore sorrows and griefs and pressure and judgments unutterable, to make that glory a home scene for you and me. It is not the mere fact of glory in itself, but it is who is there. If my Savior is there, the strangeness of the scene is gone. Is your Savior there? Is your great and mighty Friend there? Is the dearest object of your heart there? Is your portion there, Christian friends? That is the question. If the One who is One among a thousand, who is “chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely” to your heart, is there, the strangeness is out of the glory scene. That is the reason why they were afraid here; that is the reason why terror settled upon their hearts; there was no one there who had borne the judgment first. Afterwards it made all the difference. I bring that in because I believe it is a very important point in connection with it. The cross underlies everything; there must be judgment borne, death vanquished, the grave robbed of its victory, the whole question of sin settled, man as a responsible being ruined and lost, displaced, before our hearts can be at home in the glory of the One that has done it. When it is done, then you will find the contrast. I give you Acts 7 as an illustration of it. There is a man at home in the glory, in fact he has got no other home. Stones on earth, the hatred and malice and sullen malignity of hearts that could not do anything too much against Jesus Christ, were Stephen’s portion; but he found a home where no stone could ever reach him, he looked up and saw Jesus in the glory of God. You see the contrast at once; there was a Savior in glory then. In the scene we are looking at tonight there was no Savior as yet in glory; He was on the way to it, He was not in it yet; and hence they were afraid.
The next subject is His question. He witnessed the disputation that was taking place between the scribes and His disciples, and He asked this question: “Why reason ye with them?” There was a moral dignity and glory in the putting that question; and silence meets it; no one replied; there is not one that breaks that silence, but at last misery breaks it. I do love to see the way in which misery broke silence upon earth. Here it was a poor broken-hearted father with not only a son, but, as the Gospel of Luke tells us, an only son. Ah! these “onlys” of scripture are very touching to the heart. Here a poor broken-hearted father in the misery and distress of his need, with his only son before his eyes in a sort of living death, a state to which death would be any day preferable, breaks the silence of these wretched scribes. I have a most profound contempt for scribes—I believe the world is full of them in principle today—they are as clear as the moon but as cold as ice. Look at them in the account of the birth of the Lord Jesus. They had the scriptures of the prophecy at their fingers ends as we say; they could quote them, but they had not a bit of heart for Christ. There are people like that today, friends, do not be deceived about it. They could quote the scriptures; it was demanded of them because they were the exponents of the mind of God in scripture at the time, and they quoted it all correctly, too; I venture to say there was not a prophecy misplaced nor a word out of its true order; but there it began and ended what did they care about Christ? He did not warm up their hearts; there was no fire of holy love to burn upon any altar to the new-born babe there; not a bit of it. God keep us from being scribes; it is a despicable miserable sort of character. Here when He challenges them, there is not a word in reply. But reply comes from where His heart was far more gratified; reply comes from need and distress. And how many a case there is like it in the world tonight, cases of moral possession. Here is a case of literal possession; here was a poor child, an only son, afflicted with a dumb devil; that is to say, a devil who could give sounds, but nothing articulate in them. That is the meaning of “dumb” there, because you will find sounds and cries uttered, but entirely inarticulate. This poor father comes and says, Look upon my child, my son: and then he relates the malignity of the devil, “Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to Thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.” I want you to fix your thoughts for a moment, dear friends, on these two things here; I would to God that we thought a little more of the terrific blinding power of Satan, the malignity of the devil, the sullen malice of a vanquished foe but with the most tremendous power. You little know the power that is exerted in Satanic wickedness in the world today. Now along with that, observe the weakness of Christ’s own, the inability to grapple with Satanic virus, the inability to use the power which they had so as really to act for Christ in such a scene as this. I beseech of you to think of it. I must say it plainly to you with deep grief, that I believe if there is a picture in God’s word which describes more solemnly than another the people of God, it is just that picture; “I spake to thy disciples to cast him out, and they could not. O how solemn it is! Satan’s power, Christians’ weakness, the feebleness of Christ’s own! And there does not seem even to be a sense of it: would to God there were. If you saw people lowly and humble and broken-hearted because they were so little able to stand against Satanic power, your heart would have some little cheer; but when you see them elated and heady and self-satisfied and self-laudatory, it just simply breaks the heart. Those are the two things that come together in proportion to the virus of Satan is the weakness of Christ’s own people. “I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.” They had no power.
Now look what follows. There are two things, of which the first I am going to speak to you about is too often passed over. Look at verse 19 for a moment. I do not interpret that verse in the way that people often read it. “He answereth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto me.” I see two things there. I do not believe that that was intended by the Lord of life and glory in the least degree as anything like a reproachful chiding of His poor disciples. I do not believe He intended, when He used those words, to send any iron or dart into their souls, however much they deserved it. But what I read in the verse is the suffering, and the grief, and the anguish, and the pain, of the heart of Christ “O faithless generation.” Ah! it was His own heart that was panged and pained. The dart went through that tender heart; as the verse of the sweet hymn expresses it:—
“That tender heart that felt for all,
For all its life blood gave,
It found on earth no resting place,
Save only in the grave.”
I read in that verse the griefs of Jesus, the pain of Jesus. And it is blessed to see it in that way; how He was touched, how He felt everything, how He was not unmoved by the circumstances through which He passed, how it entered into Him. In a Christian way it will help to illustrate for you a passage of scripture which is full of the deepest blessedness for our souls. It is put strongly in the epistle to the Hebrews; it is put in a double negative, and you know a double negative is far stronger than an affirmative. It says, “We have not a high priest who is not able to sympathize with our weaknesses.” The double negative makes it so strong there, as much as to say, “Thank God, we have a High Priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses.” Now this verse in Mark helps to cast some kind of light, by way of illustration, upon that beautiful verse in Hebrews. Here were His compassions, here was His heart touched and moved with the sense even of the inability of His poor disciples, as well as of the misery that they could not meet.
But now look again for a moment at the last two or three words of that verse; they are very sweet. If we have the sorrows of Christ, thank God we have the resources that are in Christ. Listen; “Bring him unto me”: think of that! O brothers and sisters in Christ here tonight, you have had some case of distress or sorrow or pressure or anxiety, you have had some loved object that your heart has yearned over, and you longed to see emancipation for them from the power and thralldom of Satan, and you thought, perhaps, I will take him to that person, I will take him to that man, he is a devoted brother, he is a mighty preacher; or, I will take her to that sister, she is a devoted woman, a prayerful woman; and you have gone and have come away heart-broken. Listen; “Bring him unto me.” O the blessedness of that! Let us learn where to take our difficult cases, dear friends; let us learn where to take our impossible cases, the impossibilities to our hearts, and the impossibilities to the hearts of others. Let us learn the resources that we have in a living Christ, a present Christ, a loving Christ, a mighty Christ: “Bring him unto me” He says. Thank God for that word! The Lord in His infinite grace give your hearts and mine to enter into the preciousness of it; “Bring him unto me.” Come direct; failure and breakdown and sorrow all round about, disappointment and vanity all round about, not a green spot, yet thank God Christ remains; He never disappointed anybody yet; “Bring him unto me.” All I can say in the face of that verse is, we are fools if we do not take Him at His word.
Well, they brought him, and no sooner did they bring him than the devil shows his power more. You may be assured if you want to get anybody to Christ, if ever the devil roared he will roar then. There is nothing that stirs up the fury of the foe, and there is nothing that moves his malignity like getting some one into connection with Christ. You try to bring an object of misery and wretchedness to Christ, and you will move all the hatred of hell and all the malignity of the arch-fiend. It was so here.
There is another little word. The Lord asks a question in verse 21, and I believe there was a deep tenderness in His heart as He asked that question of that father. I believe it was the probing of faith, the trial and testing of the man’s faith. “How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child.” Now see the effect here of that little probing by Christ upon the heart of the poor father. He says, “Of a child,” and then from giving the information he bursts out into a passionate appeal which his broken heart stirred up, and he says, “Ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.” That was a little bit more disrespectful in mode than it really was intended; yet, beloved friends, I am bold to say it is far more true, weak though it was, than many a prayer which you hear from the lips of people today, because it was real; there was downright reality of heart in it. It was not a made-up prayer—there is so much of made-up prayers, you know—it welled up from the soul of the man who, though weak in faith, still was genuinely true in the bottom of his heart. “If thou canst do anything,” he says, “have compassion on us and help us.”
Now mark the Lord’s reply; “If thou canst believe”; it is a blessed thing that He says, everything is possible to belief. The possibilities of faith are wonderful; I know no limit to them. “If thou canst believe”; it is not a question of My having power, but it is a question of your having faith. See how He brings the thing into its true place, its right position “If thou canst believe, all things are possible”—I am not disposed to limit that; I thank God, with all my heart for it; “all things,” not “some things”—all things are possible to him that believeth.” The poor father has the need of his own heart stirred now. It is not merely a need in his affections for his poor son, but now the need of his own heart expresses itself: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” I do trust you, I take you at your word, I cast myself upon you; but I know I am very weak in it. “I believe help thou mine unbelief.” O beloved friends, to me that is perfectly lovely, perfectly beautiful. There is a moral beauty and a moral grandeur about this moment that is reached in the history of this man that is beyond anything I know.
And now comes the moment of power. When you come to the end of yourself, then comes the moment of power. And this moment of power is grand; there is wonderful glory about it. Look at the difference. There was excitement in the multitude; and that is what you will find in people today; it takes very little to excite people; it is an excitable age and an excitable moment we are in. But look at the quiet grandeur, the dignity, the glory of Jesus Christ here. He turns to the devil and He says, “I charge thee,” I whom thou durst not disobey, I who have all power over you, I who bound you by My own intrinsic perfection in obedience, and who will break your head in death by-and-by—“I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.” That is the moment of divine power; He spake and it was done. And then the foe shows his sullen hatred again; for he does come out, he could not do otherwise, he must obey, he must yield, he has met his conqueror; he does come out, but he leaves the traces of his malignity behind him. And that brings out one other little word here, and it is very sweet; “Jesus took him by the hand.” I love these touches. The very hatred of the devil is the background for the tenderness and compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ. He that commanded something to be given to eat to the daughter of Jairus, He that ordered the restored son of the widow of Nain to be handed over to his mother—I read the same heart here. You know that beautiful little touch in the Gospel of Luke, “He delivered him to his mother.” There is a sweetness in that; the raised up son is passed over to the poor widowed mother that had lost the last thing of all she valued in this world. So He stretched out His blessed hand here, and he raised him up. O blessed Jesus, would that we knew Thee better, would that we looked to Thee and that we clung to Thee more!
Now that is the scene at the bottom of the mount, and I pass over with only one word, the Lord’s instruction to His disciples as to their powerlessness. In verse 29 “fasting ought not to be inserted—you noticed that when I read the verse I left it out—it is a mistake of the translators to have put it in. It occurs in Matthew but not in Mark, and I will tell you why. It says, “This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer,” that what they lacked was simple, whole-hearted dependence, real surrender of everything for complete dependence upon Him; that was the lesson. And that is the lesson of service, that is what service means; and the Gospel of Mark is the gospel of service. Service is successful where it is dependent, and what awaits power is dependence. “This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer.”
The last subject is the way the Lord announces in the closing verses His coming passion. And when He speaks of His death as He does, what was to happen to the Son of Man, what He was to pass through, do you notice what is said? They did not understand it, and they were afraid to ask Him. And then a little while afterwards we are told He brought it out from them. “What were you disputing about by the way? what was it occupied your thoughts by the way,” He says to them. O, by the way they were occupied with what I am afraid occupies a great many Christians now, which of them should be the greatest. Ah that comes very home. Many a charmed circle on earth is supposed to be outside the region of that sort of thing is just the very arena of it. Eminence, position, that is what they wanted a human elevator to get a little bit high up in this world, that is what was in their mind. Now I want you to put these two things together for a moment. Mark what He says; He brings in the cross. The mind and thoughts of Jesus were upon the cross. The accomplished decease, the ignominy and the shame that He was to undergo at the hands of man, that is what was in the Savior’s thoughts. What was in their thoughts? Why, to be somebody; “who should be the greatest.” Do you notice how the two things come together here? O what a revelation, what a search-light the cross is! That is what searches us, and finds us out. I know no searchlight like the cross: it casts its bright flash on all that is within, sealed and hidden up, and often dressed up in some pious guise and form. That was the awful revelation that came out here; they were powerless in the presence of the devil, and they were faithless under the search-light of the cross; and all those awful principles that obtain in the world, ambition, jealousy, envy, variance, emulation, strife, all that was at home in their bosoms and in their hearts. That is the reason why the cross is brought in here. O what a detector! What an exposer! How it scattered their illusive dreams! How it broke up all their cherished projects! O what a revelation of them! These are the things that come to us. I am convinced this is the want, next to being established in the work of the cross, is to have a little more of the cross itself. It is the great need of the moment. Flesh can delight in glory, can talk even of perpetuating it, as Peter did on the mount; he could say, “Let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias”; do not let this be too transitory the flesh could even find its pleasure in it. But the cross: that is where the rub comes, that is the great detector, the great searchlight; it brings out everything. The Lord in His own infinite grace just bring His own blessed Christ and His cross before our hearts tonight, that as we look at Him in all these beautiful scenes we have traversed, the kindness, the sympathy, the pity, the con- sideration, the goodness of Christ, we may think of all these things. And do not forget that little word, “Bring him to me.” I am speaking to somebody here tonight—somehow or other I have a sense of it in my soul that there is somebody listening to me—who has some life sorrow, some impossibility. Listen to those words. “Bring him unto me.” Remember the love of His heart; remember the pang that went through His breast—“O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?”—I feel your faithlessness I feel this misery; I feel the wants and pains of the distressed I feel for the weakness of the church but the resource is in Me; “Bring him unto me.”
I leave that word with you. The Lord in His own grace apply His own word to our hearts this night, and draw us closer to Christ, and give us a better sense of what there is in Him, His infinite resources in the resourcelessness that we find in ourselves: for His blessed name’s sake.
(Notes of an Address.)