I am amazed sometimes how little faith I have. You would think after God has supported my family and I for over 17 years in missions, I would get that God can provide for us. Seriously, God brought in $15,000 just so we could move here to Taiwan. Yet, just the other day I was doubting and stressing over the money we would need to do a family outreach trip here in Asia. Sigh! I would like to blame my Jewish roots, and say that as a people group we excel at worrying, but the reality is that we all struggle with this at times. I can hear my own pathetic thoughts, “God, I know you created the universe, but I just don’t think you can come up with a few thousand bucks!”
The stories we are looking at today are what happens when exorcisms go wrong. In one, the problem is extremely obvious, people are trying to use Christianity like magic. The other is the kind of passage that keeps Bible nerds up all night, for several reasons. Let’s take the easy one first, Acts 19:11-17. Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva saw the power that Paul the apostle had in his ministry in Ephesus. Evil spirits were getting cast out right and left. These guys claimed to be “Jewish exorcists” which may seem odd to you. In modern times, Judaism as a majority does not practice exorcism, and many Jews don’t even believe in it. In Paul’s day, everyone believed in evil spirits, and the Jews were no exception.
Unfortunately, these Jewish exorcists seem to have been influenced by a pagan worldview. They attempt to use the name of Jesus and Paul like a magic spell, believing that the power was in the name alone with no connection to their personal beliefs or lifestyle. Wrong! I love what the demoniac says to them (oops, that sounds bad to love what a demoniac says) in 19:15, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” He then proceeds to open a can of rear end kicking, and the Jews leave buck naked and beaten up. This failed exorcism is to show one thing: Christianity is not magic! You can’t just use their God’s power like a mystery cult. Without your own personal faith and relationship to Jesus, you end up running away naked and smacked down.
Building on this lesson, Matthew 17:14-21 (also in Mark 9:14-29 and Luke 9:37-43) contains the only other “failed exorcism” story with the disciples. A father brings his young son to Jesus and complains that the disciples couldn’t cast the demon out. The demon is tormenting the boy with seizures and often throws him into both fire and water. The father’s faith is at an all time low after the disciples can’t do it, so he says to Jesus in Mark 9:22, “if you can do anything…” Jesus rebukes the lack of faith, which brings the famous statement of the father, “I believe, help my unbelief!” There is something not quite right with that, and eventually I will figure out what that is.
Jesus immediately casts the demon out, and everyone is amazed at His power. The disciples, completely embarrassed, approach Jesus privately to find out what they did wrong. Jesus’ answer in Matthew 17:20 says it is “because of your little faith”, but His answer in Mark 9:29 is that “this kind can only come out through prayer.” Well, which is it? Not only does the contrast of answers cause us difficulties, but most Bibles will offer a footnote to both passages saying “some manuscripts add BY PRAYER AND FASTING. That is a big difference if fasting is added, so was that part of what Jesus originally said or not??? In dealing with manuscript differences, the conservative rule is to follow the careful research of the translation teams. Here, most translations I can find choose to put “fasting” in the footnote, showing that they do not have enough evidence to consider it part of the original work. There are too many ancient manuscripts of Matthew and Mark that don’t have that inserted. When dealing with something like this, the last thing we want to do is build a whole teaching out of it without other clear passages! (so much for my best selling book, “Fasting for Casting”).
That leaves us with trying to put together Jesus’ two answers of prayer and faith. Because of Jesus’ initial response to the father and crowd “O faithless and twisted generation”, it seems clear that the main issue is one of faith. Even though the disciples had seen Jesus do miracle after miracle, and they had also seen him move through them to cast out demons, in this one occasion, they doubted. Maybe it was something about the boy’s appearance or manifestations; maybe it was simply a “bad faith” day for them. They were human, and like us all, they lost faith when confronted with a supernatural battle. Perhaps the comment on faith points to their using Jesus name like the sons of Sceva. Instead of “praying” and “believing in faith” for the demon to come out, they simply tossed out Jesus name like a magic spell. They weren’t looking to God for the power, but thought they now had the “anointing” all by themselves.
Spiritual warfare is a war that lasts our whole life here on earth. We have to know that some times, we have the faith to see Legion cast out. Other days, one puny, little demon can send us running as we cry out to God, “I believe, help my unbelief!” We must never forget though, that our power to cast out demons isn’t magic, but comes from our relationship and faith in Jesus. Since I definitely would prefer NOT to get stripped and beat up by a possessed guy, I for one am going to try to remember this.
The Bible Nerd 