Pickled in Unbelief

Now, let's go over to Matthew chapter 17 and look at something that took place with Jesus' disciples while He was up on a mountain with several other of His disciples.

He didn't sound extremely happy about it.

Now, let me ask you this question: did the apostles of Jesus have faith? Yes. If anybody in the world had faith, it was them. They had been out there healing blind people, curing lepers, and even raising the dead.

Jesus was not telling them they had no faith, or that their faith was too little. He was making them aware that another force was at work, and that was the force of unbelief.

And this causes problems. Because if they couldn't heal people and cast out devils, then why would the people even bother to go out where they were? They would have nothing to offer.

And it's true today. If we can't help people, if we can't get people healed, if we can't meet people's needs, then what good is the church, other than basic fire insurance?

Yeah, we could help people stay out of hell, but that's about it. Is there any wonder that the church has become more and more irrelevant in today's society? People aren't thinking much about eternity. They're thinking about surviving day to day.

So then, if unbelief was a problem for Jesus' disciples, then it's a problem for us, too.

Now, Mark chapter 9 gives us a little more detail on this same event we just read about. Jesus said, bring him, the lad, here to me.

He wallowed on the ground, foaming at the mouth. And if you've ever seen that happen, it's a strange thing.

Notice how calm Jesus was. He just struck up a conversation with the boy's father. How long ago did this come on him? Of a child? Uh huh. Okay.

Jesus put it right back on him.

Is this suggesting that Jesus needed this man to be in faith to get the job done? The Bible says that in Jesus' own hometown of Nazareth, He could there do no mighty work because of their unbelief.

Lord, I do believe. Help me with my unbelief. The man was believing, with all his heart. But there was something else going on. There were these nagging thoughts that maybe there's nothing that can be done, that there's nothing to all this healing stuff.

Maybe it's a sham. After all, the disciples couldn't heal him. Or maybe God just doesn't want to heal my son. Or maybe this sickness is just too strong to cure.

Do you see how subtle unbelief is? It comes in the form of nagging thoughts of doubt and hesitation. Maybe what I'm believing isn't exactly correct. Maybe it's not God's will. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It's uncertainty and lack of confidence.

Remember, the serpent said to Eve, has God surely said? Did God really say that you're not to eat from every tree of the garden? And with the power of suggestion, he caused her to question and doubt what God had said. Very subtle.

And even though you have faith, when doubts come, you just can't seem to get the breakthrough, especially in a situation like this, where someone has been seriously sick for a long time. Unbelief becomes ingrained in us.

The man said, Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief. I have faith, Lord, but I'm struggling. My faith is getting weaker because of this unbelief that's nagging me. I have already seen your disciples fail to heal my son.

Faith and Unbelief Together

And here's another thought or belief that exists in our paradigm of things that just isn't true. And that belief is that you cannot have faith and unbelief at the same time. But you can.

Somebody gets prayed for, and nothing happens. And someone says, they must not have enough faith.

Well, they did have faith. They came to get prayed for, didn't they? That's faith. But maybe unbelief and doubt got the best of them. That's quite possible.

You can get healed even though those nagging thoughts of doubt are trying to stop you. But things would go better if we didn't have to deal with all of that.

Remember, in the story of Jairus, whose daughter was sick at home, the servants came and told Jairus not to trouble the master any further, because your daughter's dead. What did Jesus say? Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole.

Why did He say that? Because at that moment, there was a powerful temptation to fear that it's all over, and just give up and stop believing. But Jesus was saying, just keep on believing. Don't go into unbelief in your thinking.

Jairus had faith; he was believing, but he was also dealing with unbelief at the same time. The point is that you can have both going on at the same time, and still get good results.

It's not just that you either have faith or you have doubt, as most of us seem to think. You can have both.

Shock and Awe

Now, as far as the disciples not being able to cast the devil out of that boy, my personal belief is that the devil caused that young man to convulse so intensely when they tried to pray for him, that it shocked and stunned them so badly that their faith was shaken and they backed off from trying to cast the devil out.

Their faith was working when they went to pray for him, but when they saw the sight of him convulsing in the dirt and foaming at the mouth, I believe they had some strong second thoughts. And that was unbelief.

Because what we see or experience affects our faith. And something like that was hard to unsee.

We need to understand that faith and unbelief are not the same thing. Unbelief is not a lower level of faith, but an opposite force.

They are forces that pull in opposite directions. We all have faith. But if our unbelief is as strong as our faith, then we won't make any progress.

Consider Not

Abraham didn't have more faith than we have. He just had less unbelief.

If he had considered his own body and the deadness of Sarah's womb, he would have been full of unbelief, and it wouldn't matter how much faith he had.

It says he didn't stagger in his faith through unbelief. Why not? Because he didn't consider his and Sarah's age. He couldn't afford to let that into his thinking. It would have hindered his faith.

Submerged in Unbelief

Now here's what I want to get to. I believe that most of us want to be strong in faith and do exploits, as the Bible talks about. Amen? But we're exposing ourselves to large amounts of unbelief, and allowing it into our hearts.

We listen to unbelief on the radio, we watch it on TV, we talk unbelief, we use it to entertain ourselves, we allow things to come in that disagree with the Word of God, and then when a crisis comes along, we wonder why it's so hard to have faith.

We've got mustard seed faith on one side of our heart, but a mountain of unbelief on the other side. And that creates a struggle.

There's a point to be made here, and that is that if we're going to have the promises of God working in our lives by faith, then we're going to have to live a different lifestyle than the world lives, and actually different from most Christians.

The Bible says in another place that the carnal mind is enmity or hostile toward God.

And if you're embracing the world's views, the world's entertainment, the world's perspective on things, you are probably carnally minded on a subconscious level and don't even know it.

Now, some of us might think I'm a little out of touch with what's going on in the world these days. And you'd be correct. I've missed a few decades of American culture.

When I stopped playing rock music back in 1979, I stopped listening to Top 40 music on the radio. I don't even know who the big entertainers are these days.

I don't know who the sports stars are. Just in the last few years I discovered that Mohammed Ali was a great boxer in the sixties and seventies, and I enjoyed watching some of his fights. But I don't think that boxing is even a thing anymore. It's mixed martial arts these days.

And so, if you want to talk about popular music or sports, I'm not your guy. I am shamefully ignorant of those things.

But I can say that I have spent a fair amount of time in the Word, learning about the kingdom. I still don't know much about it, but I'm in the process of learning.

You see, we're called to grow in the knowledge of God, to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, to be vastly different from the world. We are called to be holy, which means, guess what, to be set apart from the world.

The Bible says that He has called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light. It also says, "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14-15 KJV)

Now that's talking about not being unequally yoked with unbelief, but I believe it's a general truth where fellowshiping with darkness is concerned. We shouldn't do it.

Brother, you're sounding like some old-time Pentecostal holiness preacher. Well, the problem, as I see it, is that we've come to believe in our modern times that all that holiness stuff is obsolete.

You know, these days we can just do whatever we want to, and it's alright; it won't affect us, or at least that's what we think. But, guess what, it's still true that to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God.

Now I'm not saying to never be entertained, or never watch a ball game, or never go to a movie. But you may be doing too much of it if it takes up all your spare time. Reserve some time for the Lord and for Bible study.

What I'm trying to say is that if we want to be more effective with our faith and receive more of what the Lord has already provided for us in His promises, then we need to disconnect ourselves from the unbelief train.

The world is programmed to impart unbelief to us. The world doesn't believe in the things we believe in as Christians. After all, who is the god of this world? Satan. That ought to tell us something.

The devil wants to occupy us with entertainment until we run the clock out.

The world is going one direction, but we need to be going another way. The broad way of destruction and the strait and narrow way of eternal life lead in different directions.