In this lesson, students learn about believing.
Devotion
Mark 9:24
“I do believe. Help me with my unbelief!”
What would you think if I were to tell you "I Believe my birthday is March 25?" You would probably ask why I'm not sure. We have been conditioned to think that the word believe means we are not sure.
Here is what Thayer's Greek Lexicon (dictionary) says about the word πιστεύω; pisteuo "the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of his soul"; thus it stands.
I might better say "I know my birthday is March 25." because I trust my mom who was there and tells me every year on my birthday the story of how I was born. I also have my birth certificate which supports her story.
In the creed maybe we should say, "I know...." because God has convinced us that what He says is true.
So when you speak of your beliefs, or your faith (which is the noun form of the same word) you don't need to talk about you, but about Him whom you trust--Jesus Christ who died for your sins. You have faith IN HIM that He died for you your sins. That is why you are going to heaven.
John 14:1 Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.
Have faith! How often have you heard that? Will your team win the championship? Have faith! Will I get the job? Will the weather be nice this weekend? Have faith!
The question is, faith in what or in whom? “Believe in yourself!” some would say. But we know all too well that we often fall short of the goals we set for ourselves. And we certainly don’t come close to the moral perfection God requires. “There is no one who does good, no not one!” Do you know someone who puts their faith in a generic optimism that somehow things always work out? That too is a flimsy foundation for faith. Then there are people who have faith in “faith.” In other words, they believe that as long as they trust in something, no matter what it might be, they will be fine.
God too says, “Have faith,” but He doesn’t leave that faith undefined and ambiguous. Through the Spirit in the Word, He creates a vibrant, living faith which looks to the Lord Jesus as its object. Just hours before laying down His life for us, Jesus told the disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me….I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:1, 6). Faith in Jesus is never disappointed because its object is the Son of God who won the victory over sin and death for us all. Through faith all that Jesus did and accomplished is yours. By faith all the power of God is on your side to defend and keep you as a precious child of God as you journey through life. By faith nothing is impossible. No problem is too great. No challenge insurmountable. No task unattainable. Have faith!
Devotion
Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the [Christian] faith…And the [Christian] faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit… (Athanasian Creed)
The Athanasian Creed; it’s pretty intimidating stuff. If you’re like most Christians, if you know anything about it at all, it’s that you spend a long time one Sunday a year (Trinity Sunday) confessing it instead of the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed. Only trouble is, as the creed confesses itself, you can’t be saved without believing it!
Long story short, all three creeds are the easy answer when someone asks you “what do you Christians believe?” All three creeds confess the Holy Trinity, and it’s true: you’re not a Christian if you can’t confess them!
Now there’s no way I can fully explain the Holy Trinity in the four short devotions I’ve been blessed to provide this week. I must confess, I can’t claim a perfect understanding of how our One marvelous God can be Three Persons in One myself! What I can do is show you why One God in Three Persons is what the Bible teaches, and therefore, why it’s so important.
All Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, were there in the beginning to create the universe and everything in it—including you!
The One true God was rejected by the first man and woman, condemning the whole universe to a fiery eternity.
Thank God that the Triune God works in concert to provide an “out” from spending eternity separated from Him. The only way you can join the Father in Heaven, is believing the Son, Jesus Christ took on human flesh, lived the perfect, sinless life that you never could. Jesus died on the cross to pay for every last sin you ever have or will commit—and rose again the third day to prove it’s all true.
You can’t believe any of this, unless the Holy Spirit gives you that power which comes to you through God’s Word in the Holy Bible—and that’s all you really need to know! If you believe our Triune God has done His work for you, you’re heaven-bound when you leave this dying old world behind.
In the meantime Christian, you have a job to do:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:19-20).
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Have you ever traveled by plane on a rainy day when a low ceiling of dark clouds made your flight a forbidding prospect? Yet once on your way, after a brief climb through the clouds, you emerged into a world of dazzling sunlight and clear blue skies. Having that experience for the first time is a revelation; from the ground it is hard to imagine the different world that exists not far away, above those dark clouds?
Still harder for the human mind to imagine is the unseen world that exists above the one in which we live. Here below we see a world that is filled with conflict, violence, and misery, and characterized by uncertainty, danger, and fear. But the Scriptures reveal another world where all is peace, with God reigning and with His holy angels carrying out His word. It is a world that offers peace and freedom from the uncertainty and fear of this world, for there dwells God who has reconciled sinners to Himself by the sacrifice of His own Son Jesus Christ.
But to us the world above remains invisible, not accessible to us by means of our physical senses. And for this reason the people of this world keep telling us that God and heaven do not exist and that we are fools for thinking it does. Either that or they give a distorted view of it. How are we to know the true God and receive the blessings that He offers?
Our text tells us that faith is the window by which we see clearly into the unseen world above. By faith we know that there really is a God who loves us and looks upon us who believe as His own children for the sake of His Son. He really does hear our prayers when we cry to Him for relief from the suffering that we experience in this fallen world.
By faith we have confidence about the things that we hope for from the unseen God. We hope for Jesus to come again as He has promised. We hope to see this evil world brought to an end and in its place the new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:13) We hope to enter that new world and live with our Savior and all our fellow believers in perfect joy and peace forever.
Acts 16:29-32 Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" So they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household." Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
Now I know you don't go to Oprah Winfrey for your theology, but she has polularized what a large sector of our society apparently believes about faith. This is Oprah Winfrey's theology in a nutshell: "It doesn't matter what you believe or what the name of your god, it's all the same. We are all praying to the same god by different names. We are all going to the same place."
But that's not what Paul told the Jailer at Philippi. When asked the most important question, concerning salvation, Paul and Silas replied with one voice: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved." We understand that faith is not a rational decision on the part of man, but a gift of God. The Gospel of Christ is an invitation to believe that carries with it the power to affect that trust. What so many people don't get is that it *does* matter what the OBJECT of your faith is.
Those who place their confidence in a false god have built their hopes on a nothing. It does matter what you believe, and it does matter in whom you trust. When people come to us, we will not offer an empty profession like others. We stand in defense of the object of true faith, Jesus Christ Himself. He is the one who has fulfilled the demands the Law of God made upon us. He is the one who paid the price to purchase our release from sin, death and the devil. He is faith's object, the one thing to which faith clings.
Moreover, when Christ is the object of faith, then the fruits of faith will follow, for true faith is living and active. God help us to stand in opposition to the "Oprah Winfrey doctrine" and in defense of Jesus Christ, true faith's object.
Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone,
Who did for all the world atone;
He is our one redeemer.
Exorcising a boy possessed by a demon from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 15th century.
The lesson
14 When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt in front of him. 15 “Lord,” he said, “have mercy on my son because he has seizures and is suffering terribly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they were not able to cure him.”
17 Jesus answered, “O unbelieving and perverse generation! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” 18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and it went out of the boy, and he was cured from that hour.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why were we unable to drive it out?”
20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith.[b] Amen I tell you: If you have faith like a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. 21 But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”[c]
14 When they returned to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and some experts in the law were arguing with them. 15 As soon as all the people in the crowd saw Jesus, they were very excited and ran to greet him. 16 He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?”
17 One man from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who has a spirit that makes him unable to speak. 18 Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they could not.”
19 “O unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied. “How long will I be with you? How long will I put up with you? Bring him to me.”
20 They brought the boy to Jesus. As soon as the spirit saw him, it threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell on the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.
21 Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has this been happening to him?”
“From childhood,” he said. 22 “It has often thrown him into the fire and into the water to kill him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
23 “If you can?”[a] Jesus said to him. “All things are possible for the one who believes.”
24 The child’s father immediately cried out and said with tears,[b] “I do believe. Help me with my unbelief!”
25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was quickly gathering, he rebuked the unclean spirit. “You mute and deaf spirit,” he said, “I command you to come out of him and never enter him again!”
26 The spirit screamed, shook the boy violently, and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many of them said, “He’s dead!” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand, raised him up, and he stood up.
28 When Jesus went into a house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why were we not able to drive it out?”
29 He said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out, except by prayer and fasting.”[c]
aMark 9:23 Some witnesses to the text read If you are able to believe.
bMark 9:24 A few witnesses to the text omit with tears.
cMark 9:29 A few witnesses to the text omit and fasting.
37 The next day, after they had come down from the mountain, a large crowd met him. 38 Just then a man from the crowd called out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, because he is my only child. 39 See, a spirit takes hold of him, and suddenly he screams. Then it throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It hardly ever leaves him and constantly tortures him. 40 I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not.”
41 Jesus answered, “O unbelieving and perverse generation,[e] how long will I be with you and put up with you? Bring your son here.”
42 As the boy was approaching, the demon threw him down and shook him with convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43 They were all astonished at the majesty of God.
37 after transfiguration