[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 17:14–21 together with the parallel account in Mark 9:14–29. Delivered 10 August 1980, Montreal.]
Last time we looked at Matthew 17:14–21 and the disciples' failure to cast out a demon from the epileptic boy. Today we read the fuller account in Mark 9:14–29 in order to grasp more of the detail. "And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd about them, and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed, and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, 'What are you discussing with them?' And one of the crowd answered him, 'Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a dumb spirit; and wherever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.' And he answered them, 'O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.'"
Mark adds details that Matthew omits. When the demon saw Jesus, the boy was convulsed immediately — thrown to the ground, rolling and foaming. The Lord asks the father: "How long has he had this?" And the father says: "From childhood. And it has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." Notice that small phrase: "if you can." It reveals the father's state — he has already seen the disciples fail, and his faith has been shaken. He comes to Jesus with diminished confidence. And the Lord picks up on it immediately: "If you can! All things are possible to him who believes."
The father's response is one of the most honest and touching in all the Gospels: "I believe; help my unbelief." Here is a man who is both believing and not believing simultaneously. He has faith, but it is mixed with doubt. This is the tragic mixture that characterises much of what passes for Christian faith. I have seen this exact mixture in the attitude of Christian parents toward their children's vocations. Such parents are completely fine with their child going to church, becoming active in the congregation, even leading a Bible study — but when the child says, "I believe God is calling me to serve him full time as a pastor," the response immediately changes: "But you cannot live on a pastor's salary. You need to think about your future." At that point their actual faith is exposed: they believe in theory that God provides, but in practice they do not trust him with the most important decisions.
And this practical unbelief is almost entirely driven by selfishness. Most of what passes for parental concern is self-interest in disguise — concern for the family's reputation, for financial security, for a comfortable retirement. The same selfishness runs through the whole of popular Christianity. People go to church to meet nice people. They become active in the congregation to gain organisational experience. They would consider full-time ministry, but only if the salary were adequate — which reveals immediately that ministry is not a calling but a career option being evaluated alongside others. And some pastors are pastors simply because they could not find another job that suited them. I do not say all pastors have impure motives — there are genuine ones, and the genuine ones change history. But the great majority is not genuine, and this is the root of the church's powerlessness.
A small number of genuinely committed people always changes history. Consider Einstein: by conventional academic standards he was a mediocre student who barely gained entry into the technical university in Zurich, and even his performance in physics was not outstanding. But he had something that could not be measured on examinations — a quality of penetrating focus that led to the theory of relativity. The few who are genuinely committed, whose faith is undivided and whose consecration is real, are always the ones through whom God moves. The masses who come and go, whose faith is mixed with unbelief and whose motives are mixed with self-interest, produce nothing.
Now consider the Lord's statement: "This kind comes out only through prayer." Not "five Hail Marys" — that is not prayer. The kind of prayer the Lord means is a quality of relationship with God, maintained by a life of self-denial, in which the whole person is directed toward God without competing interests pulling in other directions. This is what prayer and fasting represent: a life in which the flesh has been disciplined, the appetites have been subordinated, and the capacity for concentrated focus on God has been developed. Two minutes of that kind of prayer — undivided, total, with real faith — is worth more than twenty hours of going through the motions. Peter's miracle on the lake of Gennesaret illustrates this perfectly. At the Lord's word, he let down the nets — trusting a non-fisherman's advice about fishing, in a lake Peter had worked for years. Far more of an obstacle to us than it might appear: he was being asked to set aside his own professional expertise and follow a word that contradicted everything he knew. That is faith in action.
# Faith That Moves Mountains — Matthew 17:14–21; Mark 9:14–29 (Part B) — The Two Mountains: Satan's Kingdom and Unbelief; Preparing God's Highway
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 17:14–21 and Mark 9:14–29, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 10 August 1980, Montreal.]
Peter let down the nets at the Lord's word, trusting a carpenter's instruction about where to find fish in a lake Peter had worked for years. The result was two boats nearly sinking from the weight of the catch. God says to us: take me at my word. I have been proving this for twenty-six years, and not one word of his promises has failed. When we step out in faith — not reckless presumption, but the obedient trust that follows a clear word from God — we discover that the impossible becomes ordinary. This is what Jesus means: all things are possible to him who believes.
Now what are the mountains? The Jewish rabbis used the expression "rooter up of mountains" as a title of honour for their greatest teachers — men who had such penetrating insight that seemingly insurmountable problems were demolished before them. Rabbi Ba Nachmani was known by this title, meaning that when faced with what appeared to be an immovable difficulty, his teaching resolved it. The expression "move mountains" was not first used by Jesus — it was already current in Jewish tradition to describe the power of spiritual insight working through a truly consecrated life. Jesus takes this existing tradition and gives it its ultimate meaning: the man of God, through undivided faith, literally moves the spiritual powers that oppose the kingdom of God.
The Old Testament confirms the imagery. Zechariah 4:7: "What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain." The great mountain there was the Persian empire — the seemingly immovable political power blocking the rebuilding of the temple. It was moved by the word of God working through one anointed man. Micah says that mountains will melt under God like wax before fire. Isaiah 40:3–4: "Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low." This is the great highway of God — a road cut through the wilderness from Babylon back to Jerusalem, for the exiles returning from captivity.
The church is that community of exiles. Peter says in his first letter that we are "exiles" scattered throughout the world (1 Peter 1:1). In his final greeting, writing "from Babylon," he identifies the present world system as Babylon — the place of exile (1 Peter 5:13). The writer to the Hebrews says: "You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem" (Hebrews 12:22) — past tense, by faith, even now. We are exiles making our way to Zion, and the mountains must be cleared to make the highway.
Now there are two specific mountains that Jesus refers to in the Gospels, and both are relevant to Matthew 17 and to the church's calling. The first is "this mountain" in Matthew 17, which is Mount Hermon — the mountain of the transfiguration, the mountain from which they have just descended. The demon-possessed boy was at the foot of this mountain. The disciples' failure to cast out the demon was precisely a failure to move this mountain — the mountain of Satan's kingdom, the principalities and powers of darkness. This is the first mountain that stands in the way of God's highway: the spiritual opposition of the evil one, which can only be overcome by pure, undivided faith in the hands of those who have walked the path of the cross.
The second is "this mountain" in Matthew 21:21, spoken after the cursing of the fig tree. The mountain there is the Mount of Olives, standing between Jerusalem and the road from Jericho. The fig tree represented Israel's unbelief — leaves of religious profession with no fruit of genuine faith. And the mountain of unbelief — the spiritual hardness of those who know the scriptures but do not receive Christ — is the second great obstacle in the way of God's highway. Zechariah 14:4–5 is striking: at the second coming, the Lord will stand on the Mount of Olives, and it will split in two to make a way into Jerusalem for the Lord and his people to enter. Even the physical mountain of unbelief will be moved at his coming.
The church is called to prepare that highway. It is the exiles' task to clear the road — to remove, through the power of undivided faith expressed in self-giving love, both the kingdom of evil and the mountain of human unbelief. This is why the church must be purified of hypocrisy: a church that is indistinguishable from the world, full of mixed motives and diluted faith, cannot move either mountain. It is itself part of the problem. Peter says in his second letter that we can hasten the coming of the day of God. The highway is prepared by the church that has walked the path of the cross — that has denied itself, taken up its cross, and followed Christ — and in doing so, has become the instrument through which mountains are moved and the way is prepared for the Lord to come.