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Because Your Family Matters
An Introduction to Biblical Child Training
Mark 9:14-32
The disciples had always been able to deal with demons before, but now they were dead in the water. Their attempts to cast the evil spirits out of the helpless child had failed.(1) As the little boy convulsed and thrashed on the ground, anger and frustration surged in both the father of the child and the powerless disciples. “This is not working. Where is Jesus? Couldn’t be us; we’ve done this before. It’s got to be the kid.” “Sir, there’s something wrong with your kid.” “You claim to be of God,” cries a desperate father. “Why can’t you heal my son?” Volume levels rise. “I told you, something’s wrong with the kid; he’s different. Live with it.”
This is a scenario that is repeated far too often in real life. Parents seek help training their children only to be told that there is no real help, no specific pattern to parent by, or model to learn from. When kids display deviant behaviors parents become angry and frustrated eventually passing blame on to society or just “life”, itself. Too often discouraged and despondent in the absence of real answers, we throw up our hands, label the child as abnormal or ill, medicate the kid, and live in the consequences as if it were our destiny. But wait, there’s something missing from this picture. Actually it’s more like someone than something. Watch carefully as Jesus brings new light and insight as to the real problems, new answers to all of this confused father’s questions, and healing to the troubled child.
Upon His return from the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus finds the disciples under the scrutiny of the crowd that has gathered. After getting a brief description of the problem from the boy’s father, the Lord turns to the crowd and the twelve and addresses them as a faithless and unbelieving generation.(2) Then addressing the demons within the boy, He casts them out and heals the child. The lessons to be learned here are numerous, so let’s unpack them carefully.
First, Jesus demonstrates the awesome power of God to intervene and rule over every situation in heaven or on earth. He heals the child. The intervention of God always goes beyond the ability of man to do anything. We must never forget or underestimate the power of God to step into any given situation and immediately turn it around. And we must never overlook the fact that life situations are purposely orchestrated by a sovereign God to grow us in wisdom, patience, and endurance.(3) Having healed the child, Christ then deals with the disciples and why they were unable to do as He had done. It is as important to God that the disciples understand why they couldn’t as it is for us to understand how He could. That’s where we come to this thing of unbelief.
Many have tried to make this scenario a power struggle between the demons and the disciples based upon Jesus’ statement that “these come out only by prayer and fasting”.(4) But there is so much more to be gained from a closer look. We are not in a power struggle with the Devil. He is a defeated foe, unable to touch the child of God without permission from God. We are actually in a battle for truth. And it is truth, or a lack of it, that determines the amount of victory over the world, the flesh, and the Devil we experience in our lives. That’s why Jesus said, “If you continue in my Word, then you shall be my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”(5)
Unbelief is the absence of truth in our lives. Unbelief is not, not believing. We all believe something about everything. The question is, “Is what we believe truth?” Unbelief is believing the wrong thing about something. And it doesn’t take long to figure out where the disciples went wrong and forfeited the power of God in their lives.
Choosing the Gospel of Mark because it is our most chronological gospel, we find that shortly before these events, Jesus had introduced the disciples for the first time to the idea that He was going to Calvary.(6) Prior to that, they all were convinced that He was the Son of God and that He was going to overthrow Rome establishing an earthly kingdom. That is why we see it documented so many times that they argued among themselves as to who would sit at His right hand when He came into the Kingdom. These were all men of like passions as we. They did, in fact, see Him as the Son of God, but they also saw this as an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new and coming earthly kingdom where they would be kings and princes. When Jesus corrected their theology, they refused to accept the truth (Peter even tried to rebuke Him.(7)) and chose to remain in their own self- serving unbelief. The next time they went into battle with the enemy, having abandoned their one true weapon against the enemy, truth, they were soundly defeated.
That said, you’ve got to love this father. First of all, I admire his courageous move as a father to bring his son to Jesus. That’s Godly initiative. Then his conversation with the Lord Jesus is nothing short of a sermon in and of itself. “Can you help me?” he inquires. “All things are possible to them that believe.” Jesus replies. And here comes the one-liner of the day: “I believe, help my unbelief.” In other words, “I will believe, but help me to know what to believe.” This man understood what the disciples never would on that side of Pentecost. To believe something is not enough. One must believe the right things in order for truth to prevail and victory to reign in the life of the believer. It does matter what you believe, and what you don’t know will hurt you until the day you die and your family after that. Truth is not truth until it is aligned with the truth of God. And faith is not faith until it is based in the reality of the truth of God.
It wasn’t strong demons that held the little boy in bondage. It was the unbelief of the disciples. Later when the disciples had Jesus to themselves, they asked Him why they couldn’t cast the demons out of the child. His reply, “These come out only by prayer and fasting,” was not a reference to the strength of the demons. It was an exhortation for them to let go of the things on earth (fast) and take hold of the things of heaven (pray) and align themselves once again with the truth of God. This was so important that the Bibles says that when they left there He took them secretly through Galilee so that He would have time with them to once again teach 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 on the third day.”(8) Jesus then took them aside to reiterate the truth they had rejected and take them out of unbelief, believing the wrong things about something, and into eternal truth that would produce life and blessing.
What do we know about child training? For most of us it is a combination of how we were raised and what we have read and seen in the world around us. Granted, there was a time when biblical teaching was such a part of society and the mores that governed it that we did very well with the next generation. Up until the early 1940’s sound child training principles were passed down from generation to generation. But in 1945 secular psychology took a turn with the publishing of a book called Baby and Child Care, by Dr. Benjamin Spock. When this book hit the newsstands, it sold a million copies the first year and has since maintained sales second only to the Bible. Psychological articles and publications have championed its principles over the years and kept it before the public despite the rise of a generation that is clearly out of control. Just before his death in an interview with a major television network, Dr. Spock basically denied the premise of his book and recanted his theories. How sad for those who trusted and are still trusting human wisdom over the eternal truth of God.
Beloved, we do not have to place our faith in human wisdom or even the “current wisdom” of modern psychology. We have the eternal truth of the Holy Scriptures, the owner’s manual for all of life. We have a plumb line, a plan, a model to follow, and a standard to live by that we can embrace and trust. This study is an exploration of that Truth. It is truth that we can trust to guide us as fallible, mistake prone, parents to train up young champions for Christ. Not just survivors, but thriving, vibrant, young men and women who are a pleasure to be around and that we can be proud of as they receive a heritage from above and live out a legacy.
Footnotes:
- Mark 9:14-32
- Mark 9:19
- James 1:2-4
- Mark 9:29
- John 8:31,32
- Mark 8:31
- Mark 8:32-33
- Mark 9:31