Next Step Christian Church
Worship 5/24/25
      • Bible Trivia
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  • Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble
  • Goodness Of God
  • Great Is Thy Faithfulness
  • Faith And Wonder
  • Jesus heals an epileptic lunatic demon-possessed boy that the disciples had too little faith to cast out. The tiniest mustard-seed faith is sufficient to accomplish miracles because it is plugging into the infinite power of God. Faith is built in prayer and fasting, echoing the prayer of the boy’s father: “I believe; help my unbelief.”

    Need a Penny, Take a Penny

    There I was, 16 or 17 years old, big time because I was buying my own food at the grocery store. Adulting. We hadn’t come up with that word yet, but that’s what I was doing.
    I have $20 in my pocket, I can get $20 worth of food, right? Not so much. Taxes. This was before snack foods were tax free and I came up short. There aren’t nearly enough pennies in the “need a penny, take a penny” thing. I need a few hundred pennies.
    So I have the embarrassing dance of deciding what to put back.
    Now I have this plastic card and I just wave it at the machine… so the fact that I can’t afford all the groceries becomes a hidden private thing between me and CitiBank.
    I want to do the things of God. Great things for God, with God… and I certainly want to do the things He has commanded me to do.
    That’s what we are all about. Disciples of Jesus, learning how to follow, how to be as he is, do as he does. Saved and redeemed and empowered by him to do so…
    What happens when we come up short on that apparently all-important currency? Faith.
    It happens to us.
    It happened to his own disciples, walking in his literal footsteps.
    They came up short at the cash register of faith.

    Recap

    Peter, James and John, the inner circle, follow Jesus up and see him transfigured before them. Glowing and glorious, visiting with Moses and Elijah… and all we can say is “Hallelujah!”
    This is the Son of God, a bit more of his glory revealed for just a moment. No tent, no church, no universe is big enough to contain it.
    Yet he lives in us, His Spirit in us, and He is building us together as a temple for his dwelling place.
    Hallelujah.
    Then they get to the foot of the mountain, and his disciples are busy.

    The Lunatic Epileptic Boy

    Matthew 17:14–15 ESV
    14 And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, 15 said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has seizures and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water.
    The Greek is literally “moon-struck”. It sounds like epilepsy, doesn’t it?
    I had a good work-friend in California, Aaron, severe epileptic fits. Would just help him down from his chair so he wouldn’t hit anything on the way down. Keep an eye on him, call the ambulance if it was more than a few minutes.
    Not going to lie, prayed over him every time because it looked awful.
    I have to reference the King James here, I love this. The NASB has “lunatic” as well.
    Matthew 17:15 KJV 1900
    15 Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.
    But in the telling of this story in Mark, the Father ascribes the behavior more directly to a demon trying to kill the son:
    Mark 9:17-18; 22
    Mark 9:17–18 ESV
    17 And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. 18 And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.”
    Mark 9:22 ESV
    22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

    Mental Illness or Demon Possession?

    This is a great verse for exploring this question.
    Were these just mentally ill people, this boy has epileptic fits exactly as we know them today, and so far we have the father’s diagnosis… and he is using the language he knows to describe what is happening?
    Or is modern medicine actually treating symptoms in some of these cases like epilepsy or schizophrenia and there are spiritual root causes that must be addressed?
    I take the both-and approach. There is a spiritual reality and there are spiritual forces at work. Demon’s afflict and affect people and we are empowered by the Spirit of God to free the oppressed and cast out demons.
    AND there are physical ailments that can be helped and cured or treated with medicine. At no point in the Bible does anyone suggest not taking folks to a Doctor or to get medical care.
    When I encounter friends with schizophrenia, for example, I pray with them, I cast out demons in the name of Jesus, and I make an appointment with a doctor.
    I would suspect, though it does not say, that the Father has tried everything in this case. The boy is already on the best care available… which probably wasn’t much at the time. Not even bloodletting.
    He is desperate, and most people with this sort of malady would die and die young. it is the attentiveness and protectiveness of his family, of his father, that has kept him alive and out of the fire and water.
    And now he has brought him to Jesus.
    And here’s the best part, it doesn’t matter the details of the ailment: Jesus heals it all. He can. He will. He does.
    Matthew 17:18 ESV
    18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.
    Jesus speaks to it as a demon. He “rebuked it” and the demon came out.
    So in this case, was there demonic influence at work? Apparently. Absolutely. Jesus could diagnose and deliver perfectly.
    Was it exclusively demonic? Was there physical expression, effect or cause, at work? Was there epilepsy or something else going on?
    it wouldn’t make any sense for the text to say, it would be nonsense words buried and confusing to their audience for thousands of years. But whatever was wrong with the boy: Jesus healed it all.
    Jesus heals it all. Amen. Let’s go eat. Oh wait… there’s more.
    That is not the major focus of the story. I skipped some verses. The man brought the boy to Jesus, but Jesus was up the mountain at first… and the disciples tried first. Recall that Jesus has already given them authority to heal and cast out demons, and they have done so elsewhere.
    Matthew 10:7–8 ESV
    7 And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons…
    So the man brings his son…
    Matthew 17:16 ESV
    16 And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.”
    Hear what sounds like frustration in Jesus’ voice:
    Matthew 17:17 ESV
    17 And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”
    Now, who is he talking to?
    The man? There could well be a bit of that. Perhaps the man’s faith is lacking. In fact, we will see in Mark that is at least partly the case.
    But he is at least talking to his disciples. He will make that explicit in a second. They are from a “faithless and twisted” generation… and they are faithless and twisted. They are, as he so often calls them, “little-faiths.”
    And if they weren’t sure, once the eyes are off, the disciples, the 9 that didn’t go up the mountain with Jesus I’m sure, they take Jesus aside and ask him.
    Matthew 17:19–20 ESV
    19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”
    Jesus, we got to the cash register and it didn’t work? It didn’t do the thing! We didn’t get the demon out, we didn’t heal the boy, it didn’t work!
    And Jesus seems to say they didn’t have enough “faith-stuff”:
    Matthew 17:19–20 ESV
    20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
    Now, let’s pay close attention here. He just called them a “faithless” generation… that sounds like they have no faith.
    He says if you have “faith like a grain of mustard seed”, picturing maybe the smallest possible unit of measurement they had available to them. We might say “one atom” or “one molecule” of faith.
    It’s the “little faith” that throws me off. It sounds like a continuity verb, like “little money” and if I had just a bit more I’d be good to go.
    But what if that’s not right. What if “mustard seed” is the smallest unit of faith? Like the penny (or soon to be a nickel).
    This is a bit language heavy, but it helps me.
    ὀλιγοπιστία - little faith. We translate that “oligo” as little because we think of “faith” as a continuous thing, an uncountable noun, it grows fluidly larger or smaller. But “oligophilio” we would translate as “few friends” because we think of friends as discrete. If we said you have “little friends” we would mean that they are small people. You have few friends, Logan. You have 1, 2, 3… not a fluid growing amount.
    I might have little money. But I have “few” pennies.
    And Jesus’ example is discrete. Countable. Mustard seed. Small, but a distinct thing, that unlocks incredible power because it is connected, it points to the infinite powerful God. So the smallest tiniest bit is more than enough.
    In this way, faith is more like keys on a keyring. You have all these doors in your life, and you have keys to some of them. You have many keys or few keys, but each opens a door.
    God’s on the other side of that door, ready to do His will. Not mine, but always His. Will I open that particular door? It doesn’t take much, just the tiniest key will do it. But maybe I am a man of few keys?
    This helps me picture our definition of faith from Heb 11:1
    Hebrews 11:1 ESV
    1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
    I am sure of things or unsure. I am convinced or convicted… or not.
    And this fits with my experience of faith with God. There are areas of my life I find it easy to trust God with. I have seen him show up. I trust God to show in worship. I have faith, sure and convinced, that God can speak through me in a sermon. I trust Him with this, I’ve seen Him do it again and again before, I trust that he’ll do it again.
    It’s harder to trust God with the well being and future of my kids. My finances.
    This is weird: I have faith that I can cast out a demon from a boy having seizures. I have more doubt and struggle about the epilepsy piece of things. Is that God’s will that he be healed in this moment by my prayer or not? I come to that with more questions, not that God can do it, but that this is the moment, or that it is through me that God wants to do that. That’s a discernment issue… and a faith issue.
    In this case the blocker, Jesus is clear, is that none of those disciples had even a mustard seed of faith.
    I imagine one is totally distracted, not sure what is going on, their actual attention is on what’s for dinner once Jesus gets down the mountain. That isn’t faith.
    Another is dealing with disciples imposter syndrome. Jesus can do it, maybe Peter, James and John could do it, but I can’t do it! That isn’t faith.
    Another is puffed up with pride about how “they are going to do it” and “they will be the hero” and already hearing the accolades of the crowd. That isn’t faith.
    Maybe another is trying to do it “on their own.” That isn’t faith.
    Another is so focused on the theological and anthropological details of epilepsy vs demonology that they can’t be bothered with “minor details” like casting out the demon.
    Another maybe really doesn’t know if God can do it. That certainly isn’t faith.
    Another isn’t sure if God will do it, and they are so scared that He might not that they are afraid to ask. That isn’t faith.
    Not a mustard seed of faith among them.
    But here’s the bit that gets me. It wasn’t clear enough to the disciples that they immediately knew in their heart the “why” of it. They had to ask Jesus “why couldn’t we do it?”
    It isn’t about teasing the exact reason why none of your keys worked in the door. It’s about asking God for another key. A new key. God open this door. God give me this faith.
    For the Bible is clear: God gives us faith. Jesus is the “author and perfecter” of our faith. That is about him as the founder from the beginning, but also about him giving it and perfecting it within each of us. “Faith” is a spiritual gift, given by the Spirit within you 1 Cor 12:9.
    It isn’t, and is never, something you manufacture within yourself by “trying harder” or “saying the right words.”
    “This time pray, and don’t say ‘Maybe’!” Prayer can absolutely reflect our lack of faith, but the answer is not to get the words right, but to have faith.
    How do we do that?
    That comes to the most confusing bit of this encounter

    Prayer and Fasting

    Where is Matthew 17:21
    My Bible doesn’t have it. It has a footnote, that says “some later manuscripts add “This kind never comes out without prayer and fasting.”
    Now, I know it is weird to have the Bible point out things that are sometimes in there and sometimes not. What we think happens here is that the same story is told in Mark where Jesus does end the story that way. Mark 9:29
    Mark 9:29 ESV
    29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
    And the “and fasting” bit is added in later manuscripts there as well.
    The idea is some helpful scribe probably added a helpful note, cross referencing other details another gospel included, and some other copyist wrote it a little larger, and someone else mistook it for one of the verses. But we can see hundreds of earlier copies that preserves the original text.
    So it’s a story about how God preserves His Word despite human error… and these are the kinds of errors we are talking about when people talk about copying errors.
    Did Jesus say it? Yes. Is it original to Matthew’s original text or just Mark’s, that’s the only thing in question there.
    Now. Some take these verses and want to build a whole edifice of demon typology. Let’s examine what the types of demons are, categorize them, so we can sort them and apply appropriate demon removal strategies for each one.
    That’s a lot to build off just this verse. And nowhere else in Scripture do we get differing strategies for different demon types, or a sense of demon types… and Jesus himself doesn’t pray and fast here but just commands the demon out. And in Matthew he places the focus directly on their faith.
    I think praying and fasting when casting out demons doesn’t seem to work is a great idea. Pray Until Something Happens. Great Biblical principle. Persistent in prayer. That’s a win. Do it.
    But I also think prayer and fasting is a beautiful place to nurture your faith. In conversation with God, you learn to trust Him with more and more of your life. More of your self. Seeing answers to pray, your faith develops, grows, you get more keys, you open more doors, you trust God with things and areas you didn’t trust Him with before.
    If I put these two together, the disciples ask why they couldn’t and Jesus gives them a theological truth and a practical application. You couldn’t because you didn’t have even the faith of a mustard seed. At some profound level, you didn’t trust that God could and would do this through you here and now.
    In the language of Hebrews “you weren’t sure of what you hoped for and weren’t confident in the things unseen.”
    What do you do about that?
    Pray. Pray and fast.
    I have one more reasons for putting those two together. It is perhaps my favorite prayer in the Bible. It is an oft-repeated prayer for me.
    Because this mix of faith and doubt in me, I can’t always discern it. I can’t often separate out the pieces. I have enough faith to try… as the disciples did… but maybe not enough for it to work? Did it not happen because it wasn’t God’s will or will it still happen, just keep praying… or did I come up short and I need to call in the faith big guns?
    The father brought his hurting afflicted, lunatic son to Jesus
    Mark 9:22–23 ESV
    22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”
    I love Jesus’ response. Yeah man, I can. Do you believe? Do you faith? If you faith, then let’s do this.
    And here it is. With all the honesty, all the mess of his heart and mind, he brings it:
    Mark 9:24 ESV
    24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
    Same root word there. “Belief” = “Faith”.

    I Believe; Help my Unbelief

    Help me with my doubts1
    Help me with my distractions!
    Help me with my pride!
    Help me with my selfishness!
    Help me with all the things getting in the way of opening the door to Your Kingdom right now, here on earth. Open the door to your healing, to your love and forgiveness, to Your freedom from oppression.
    Sort out the mess of my partial everything.
    I have this much faith, this many faith, I don’t know what key goes to what door, I don’t how many mustard seeds worth.
    This is the equivalent of dumping ALL my pennies out on the cash register and just saying, “Please help!”
    Oh, author and perfecter of my faith. I belief. Help my unbelief.
    Help it in prayer and fasting. Help it in fellowship with the faithful.
    Help it in worship. Help it in times of doubt and darkness.
    Give me faith to trust what you say.

      • Matthew 17:14–15NIV

      • Matthew 17:15NIV

      • Mark 9:17–18NIV

      • Mark 9:22NIV

      • Matthew 17:18NIV

      • Matthew 10:7–8NIV

      • Matthew 17:16NIV

      • Matthew 17:17NIV

      • Matthew 17:19–20NIV

      • Matthew 17:19–20NIV

      • Hebrews 11:1NIV

      • Mark 9:29NIV

      • Mark 9:22–23NIV

      • Mark 9:24NIV

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Next Step Christian Church
pastordusty@nextstepchurch.org
(720) 663-9085
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