Fail Fast
Notes
Transcript
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
Unfortunately, not many of us have the tenacity that Thomas Edison showed.
Failure isn’t fun and is often painful and embarrassing.
Many of us are afraid of trying new things for fear of failure.
Failure can make us BITTER… or it can make us BETTER.
However with a view like Edison, we can learn from these mistakes and improve for the next time.
14 When they came to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and scribes disputing with them.
15 When the whole crowd saw him, they were amazed and ran to greet him.
16 He asked them, “What are you arguing with them about?”
17 Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you. He has a spirit that makes him unable to speak.
18 Whenever 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 couldn’t.”
19 He replied to them, “You unbelieving generation, how long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him to me.”
20 So they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, it immediately threw the boy into convulsions. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.
21 “How long has this been happening to him?” Jesus asked his father. “From childhood,” he said.
22 “And many times it has thrown him into fire or water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
23 Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’? Everything is possible for the one who believes.”
24 Immediately the father of the boy cried out, “I do believe; help my unbelief!”
25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was quickly gathering, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you: Come out of him and never enter him again.”
26 Then it came out, shrieking and throwing him into terrible convulsions. The boy became like a corpse, so that many said, “He’s dead.”
27 But Jesus, taking him by the hand, raised him, and he stood up.
28 After he had gone into the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
29 And he told them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer.”
Failure highlights us our need for Christ
v. 9:14-18
As a reminder, just before this, Jesus, James, and John had gone up to the mountaintop. While they were there, the disciples wake to find Jesus transfigured in His radiant, divine glory.
The see Moses and Elijah with him before they hear the voice of God saying, “This is My beloved Son, listen to Him!”
Now they come down and find the rest of the disciples surrounded by a crowd arguing with the scribes.
The father from the crowd says he brought his demon possessed son to be healed by Jesus. Since you weren’t here, I asked your disciples to cast the demon out and they FAILED!
I’m sure the scribes were piling on and using this to challenge the authority of Jesus because the failure of disciples reflected badly on Jesus.
However, when we experience failure, I hope we can be like this crowd.
In verse 15 it says, when they saw Jesus, they ran to him.
You might be hard on yourself or there might be people around you that enjoy pointing out all of your flaws and failures but you need to the One that will never fail. One who never makes a mistake.
Side Bar:
Now, we’ve talked about demon possession before and we’ve not only seen Jesus heal people but we’ve seen the disciples heal people from these demons as well.
Demons are real beings. Jesus clearly believes in demonic forces.
These demons want to inflict pain, suffering and death.
In our own strength, we are helpless against these beings.
When all human effort has been exhausted, we can turn to Jesus. Although, I would actually say that we should turn to Him right from the start.
v. 9:19-20
I want you to see the humanity of Jesus in this text.
I really don’t like all the paintings we have that are supposedly of Jesus. It has really distorted our view of who He is.
We often have a picture of Jesus being meek and understated. We tend to overly stress his love in a way that we don’t think he would ever be offensive.
In this text he is clearly frustrated and definitely offensive.
Oh myself! How long am I going to have to put up with y’all? Bring him here. Y’all can’t do nothing!
This correction wasn’t pleasant. It cut like a knife.
This was not just for the disciples but also for the scribes and the rest of the crowd. When will you learn?
In his commentary on Mark, Sinclair Ferguson says this,
“Mark vividly captures the pressures and frustrations of Christ’s life in these verses. On the mountaintop he had been faced with the spiritual short-sightedness of his disciples. Here in the valley he was confronted by their unbelief.”
What we see here is that Jesus tolerates them (and us by extension) in love.
You know what, when I read this, I can’t but be grateful for God’s patience with me. If I think about all the things that I do on a daily basis that displeases the Lord, he’s tolerant, patient, waiting on my very slow sanctification.
Failure highlights our need for faith.
6 Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Here’s a question.
How much faith do we need?
How much belief do we need?
Does our belief need to be perfect?
When it comes to accepting Christ, I find so many people who are paralyzed by this. They think that they need to have all their questions answered before they can submit themselves to Christ.
v. 9:21-24
This man believed but wasn’t completely sold. He still had unbelief. He still had doubts.
He had a little bit of faith. Was this enough?
20 “Because of your little faith,” he told them. “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
It’s not about how much you have, it’s about whether you have it or not. Choose faith!
Now, there are people who are known for the health and wealth preaching or naming and claiming that say you have anything and everything YOU want if you have enough faith.
However, scripture has some important qualifications.
Just before going to the cross, our Lord in the garden of Gethsemane says this:
35 He went a little farther, fell to the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.
36 And he said, “Abba, Father! All things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.”
Jesus lays out the example for us on what it looks like to want what God wants.
It’s not about YOU and what YOU want. As his children, we are to seek the will of the father.
14 This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
15 And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.
v. 9:24
Faith is not the absence of doubt. This is not blind faith.
I like certainty but I think many people, including Christians, have an unhealthy commitment to having certainty.
Some people have a good and solid confidence in what they believe and why they believe and that is fantastic! However, it is not a necessary thing.
Of course it is something for us to strive for. We want to get to God more and more with each passing day. We should take our questions to him and saturate ourselves in scripture prayer for answers to those questions.
A couple weeks ago, we took a quick trip to Missouri to celebrate my father-in-law’s 80th birthday. He is a great man of God and is one of the most loving people I know.
He reads through the bible multiple times a year, every year. He’s been doing this for a long time.
Whenever I see him, I always ask him two questions.
What are you reading about in the Bible right now?
What have you learned about God recently?
In the umpteen years that he has been reading the bible cover to cover, he is still learning about God. Isn’t that beautiful?
It should make sense though because our God is infinite.
Even though we have these 66 books bound together, there is so much detail and nuance that time over time we continue to learn about him.
When you first meet Jesus, you don’t have to know it all. You don’t have to have certainty to believe in Him.
You don’t have to be able to answer every apologetic question before you decide to follow Christ.
You don’t have to be able to prove that the exodus actually happened.
You don’t have to able to prove that Paul was the writer of Titus.
Or figure out who wrote Hebrews
You can commit yourself to Christ and choose to trust him and follow him. He will progressively reveal himself to you. Don’t let this be a barrier for choosing to follow him.
There is nothing else in life where you would set that kind of bar in order to believe and accept it.
We all have cell phones. When I dial a number, how can someone on the other side of town/state/country/world able to pick up and talk to me?
You believe it works don’t you?
When I type an email, how does it get from my computer to your computer?
You believe it works don’t you?
You believe these things but you don’t have every answer as to how it works.
While we absolutely need to have good reason for our faith, it does not require that we’re super theologians on day one.
Even in this man’s mixture of belief and unbelief, Jesus heals the boy.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus will do the same for you.
Just like Jesus casts out this demon, he has already cast out the penalty for your sin. He died so that you could have life.
As he takes the boy by the hand and lifts him up to new life, it is a picture of what will happen to Jesus later in the Mark where he rises from the dead.
It’s a picture of the way he raise us in the newness of life when we accept him and follow him.
Your failures have been wiped clean.
Jesus in his perfect power has washed it away by his blood.
Instead of failure, we can have victory.