'Then
came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out?
And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for
verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
nothing shall be impossible to you. Howbeit this kind goeth not out
but by prayer and fasting'--MATT. xvii. 19-21.
WHEN the disciples saw
Jesus cast the evil spirit out of the epileptic whom 'they could not cure,' they
asked the Master for the cause of their failure. He had given them 'power
and authority over all devils, and to cure all diseases.' They had often
exercised that power, and joyfully told how the devils were subject to them.
And yet now, while He was on the Mount, they had utterly failed.
That there had been nothing in the will of God or in the nature of the
case to render deliverance impossible, had been proved: at Christ's
bidding the evil spirit had gone out. From their expression, 'Why could we
not?' it is evident that they had wished and sought to do so; they had probably
used the Master's name, and called upon the evil spirit to go out. Their
efforts had been vain, and in presence of the multitude, they had been put to
shame. 'Why could we not?'
Christ's answer was direct and plain:
'Because of your unbelief.' The cause of His success and their
failure, was not owing to His having a special power to which they had no
access. No; the reason was not far to seek. He had so often taught
them that there is one power, that of faith, to which, in the kingdom of
darkness, as in the kingdom of God, everything must bow; in the spiritual world
failure has but one cause, the want of faith. Faith is the one condition
on which all Divine power can enter into man and work through him. It is
the susceptibility of the unseen: man's will yielded up to, and moulded
by, the will of God. The power they had received to cast out devils, they
did not hold in themselves as a permanent gift or possession; the power was in
Christ, to be received, and held, and used by faith alone, living faith in
Himself. Had they been full of faith in Him as Lord and Conqueror
in the spirit-world, had they been full of faith in Him as having given
them authority to cast out in His name, this faith would have given them the
victory. 'Because of your unbelief' was, for all time, the Master's
explanation and reproof of impotence and failure in His Church.
But such
want of faith must have a cause too. Well might the disciples have asked:
'And why could we not believe? Our faith has cast out devils before
this: why have we now failed in believing? 'The Master proceeds to
tell them ere they ask: 'This kind goeth not out but by fasting and
prayer.' As faith is the simplest, so it is the highest exercise of the
spiritual life, where our spirit yields itself in perfect receptivity to God's
Spirit and so is strengthened to its highest activity. This faith depends
entirely upon the state of the spiritual life; only when this is strong and in
full health, when the Spirit of God has full sway in our life, is there the
power of faith to do its mighty deeds. And therefore Jesus adds:
'Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer.' The
faith that can overcome such stubborn resistance as you have just seen in this
evil spirit, Jesus tells them, is not possible except to men living in very
close fellowship with God, and in very special separation from the world--in
prayer and fasting. And so He teaches us two lessons in regard to prayer
of deep importance. The one, that faith needs a life of prayer in which to
grow and keep strong. The other, that prayer needs fasting for its full
and perfect development.
Faith needs a life of prayer for its full
growth. In all the different parts of the spiritual life, there is such
close union, such unceasing action and re-action, that each may be both cause
and effect. Thus it is with faith. There can be no true prayer
without faith; some measure of faith must precede prayer. And yet prayer
is also the way to more faith; there can be no higher degrees of faith except
through much prayer. This is the lesson Jesus teaches here. There is
nothing needs so much to grow as our faith. 'Your faith groweth
exceedingly,' is said of one Church. When Jesus spoke the words,
'According to your faith be it unto you,' He announced the law of the kingdom,
which tells us that all have not equal degrees of faith, that the same person
has not always the same degree, and that the measure of faith must always
determine the measure of power and of blessing. If we want to know where
and how our faith is to grow, the Master points us to the throne of God.
It is in prayer, in the exercise of the faith I have, in fellowship with
the living God, that faith can increase. Faith can only live by feeding on
what is Divine, on God Himself.
It is in the adoring worship of God, the
waiting on Him and for Him, the deep silence of soul that yields itself for God
to reveal Himself, that the capacity for knowing and trusting God will be
developed. It is as we take His word from the Blessed Book, and bring it
to Himself, asking him to speak it to us with His living loving voice, that the
power will come fully to believe and receive the word as God's own word to us.
It is in prayer, in living contact with God in living faith, that faith,
the power to trust God, and in that trust, to accept everything He says, to
accept every possibility He has offered to our faith will become strong in us.
Many Christians cannot understand what is meant by the much prayer they
sometimes hear spoken of: they can form no conception, nor do they feel
the need, of spending hours with God. But what the Master says, the
experience of His people has confirmed: men of strong faith are men of
much prayer.
This just brings us back again to the lesson we learned
when Jesus, before telling us to believe that we receive what we ask, first
said, 'Have faith in God.' It is God, the living God, into whom our faith
must strike its roots deep and broad; then it will be strong to remove mountains
and cast out devils. 'If ye have faith, nothing shall be impossible to
you.' Oh! if we do but give ourselves up to the work God has for us in the
world, coming into contact with the mountains and the devils there are to be
cast away and cast out, we should soon comprehend the need there is of much
faith, and of much prayer, as the soil in which alone faith can be cultivated.
Christ Jesus is our life, the life of our faith too. It is His life
in us that makes us strong, and makes us simple to believe. It is in the
dying to self which much prayer implies, in closer union to Jesus, that the
spirit of faith will come in power. Faith needs prayer for its full
growth.
And prayer needs fasting for its full growth:
this is the second lesson. Prayer is the one hand with which we
grasp the invisible; fasting, the other, with which we let loose and cast away
the visible. In nothing is man more closely connected with the world of
sense than in his need of food, and his enjoyment of it. It was the fruit,
good for food, with which man was tempted and fell in Paradise. It was
with bread to be made of stones that Jesus, when an hungered, was tempted in the
wilderness, and in fasting that He triumphed. The body has been redeemed
to be a temple of the Holy Spirit; it is in body as well as spirit, it is very
specially, Scripture says, in eating and drinking, we are to glorify God.
It is to be feared that there are many Christians to whom this eating to
the glory of God has not yet become a spiritual reality. And the first
thought suggested by Jesus' words in regard to fasting and prayer, is, that it
is only in a life of moderation and temperance and self-denial that there will
be the heart or the strength to pray much.
But then
there is also its more literal meaning. Sorrow and anxiety cannot eat:
joy celebrates its feasts with eating and drinking. There may come
times of intense desire, when it is strongly felt how the body, with its
appetites, lawful though they be, still hinder the spirit in its battle with the
powers of darkness, and the need is felt of keeping it under. We are
creatures of the senses: our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied
in concrete form; fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the
resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves, to
attain what we seek for the kingdom of God. And He who accepted the
fasting and sacrifice of the Son, knows to value and accept and reward with
spiritual power the soul that is thus ready to give up all for Christ and His
kingdom.
And then follows a still wider application.
Prayer is the reaching out after God and the unseen; fasting, the letting
go of all that is of the seen and temporal. While ordinary Christians
imagine that all that is not positively forbidden and sinful is lawful to them,
and seek to retain as much as possible of this world, with its property, its
literature, its enjoyments, the truly consecrated soul is as the soldier who
carries only what he needs for the warfare. Laying aside every weight, as
well as the easily besetting sin, afraid of entangling himself with the affairs
of this life, he seeks to lead a Nazarite life, as one specially set apart for
the Lord and His service. Without such voluntary separation, even from
what is lawful, no one will attain power in prayer: this kind goeth not
out but by fasting and prayer.
Disciples of Jesus! who have asked the
Master to teach you to pray, come now and accept His lessons. He tells you
that prayer is the path to faith, strong faith, that can cast out devils.
He tells you: 'If ye have faith, nothing shall be impossible to
you;' let this glorious promise encourage you to pray much. Is the prize
not worth the price? Shall we not give up all to follow Jesus in the path
He opens to us here; shall we not, if need be, fast? Shall we not do
anything that neither the body nor the world around hinder us in our great
life-work,--having intercourse with our God in prayer, that we may become men of
faith, whom He can use in His work of saving the world.
'LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
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O Lord Jesus! how continually Thou hast
to reprove us for our unbelief! How strange it must appear to Thee, this
terrible incapacity of trusting our Father and His promises. Lord! let Thy
reproof, with its searching, 'Because of your unbelief,' sink into the very
depths of our hearts, and reveal to us how much of the sin and suffering around
us is our blame. And then teach us, Blessed Lord, that there is a place
where faith can be learned and gained,--even in the prayer and fasting that
brings into living and abiding fellowship with Thyself and the
Father.
O Saviour! Thou Thyself art the Author and the
Perfecter of our faith; teach us what it is to let Thee live in us by Thy Holy
Spirit. Lord! our efforts and prayers for grace to believe have been so
unavailing. We know why it was: we sought for strength in ourselves
to be given from Thee. Holy Jesus! do at length teach us the mystery of
Thy life in us, and how Thou, by Thy Spirit, dost undertake to live in us the
life of faith, to see to it that our faith shall not fail. O let us see
that our faith will just be a part of that wonderful prayer-life which Thou
givest in them who expect their training for the ministry of intercession, not
in word and thought only, but in the Holy Unction Thou givest, the inflowing of
the Spirit of Thine own life. And teach us how, in fasting and prayer, we
may grow up to the faith to which nothing shall be impossible.
Amen.
NOTE
At the time when Blumhardt was passing through his
terrible conflict with the evil spirits in those who were possessed, and seeking
to cast them out by prayer, he often wondered what it was that hindered the
answer. One day a friend, to whom he had spoken of his trouble, directed
his attention to our Lord's words about fasting. Blumhardt resolved to
give himself to fasting, sometimes for more than thirty hours. From
reflection and experience he gained the conviction that it is of more importance
than is generally thought. He says, 'Inasmuch as the fasting is before
God, a practical proof that the thing we ask is to us a matter of true and
pressing interest, and inasmuch as in a high degree it strengthens the intensity
and power of the prayer, and becomes the unceasing practical expression of a
prayer without words, I could believe that it would not be without efficacy,
especially as the Master's words had reference to a case like the present.
I tried it, without telling any one, and in truth the later conflict was
extraordinarily lightened by it. I could speak with much greater
restfulness and decision. I did not require to be so long present with the
sick one; and I felt that I could influence without being
present.'