Mark this morning chapter 9 verse 28 and 29 will be our text verses this morning. Over the last couple of weeks we've learned that we will never get to a place where we don't need Jesus and that we'll never get to a place on this earth that we don't need faith. We're gonna add to that this morning and say that we will always, on this earth, need prayer as well. The disciples learned something about this from this incident that we've been reading about where they tried to cast out a demon but could not, and Jesus comes along and casts it out. And this is going to lead them to ask him a question as to why couldn't they cast that demon out? And our Lord's response is gonna direct them to something very important that we can't do without, and that is prayer. Let's read our text now, Mark chapter nine, verses 28 and 29. It says, and when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out? And he said unto them, this kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting. Let us pray. Our kind and most gracious heavenly Father, I just look to you this morning, oh Lord, for direction as to the preaching of this scripture goes. I pray, Lord, that you would open our eyes, open our minds to hear and to receive your word. and that we would learn much about prayer in the course of this service. And Lord, I just pray then that we would put that prayer to use, that we would exercise that which we learn, and Lord, that you would bless that. Lord, we thank you for this blessed privilege of prayer, and we thank you for Jesus, our Savior, and we pray this all in his name, amen. All right, let's look at our text now. We'll start with verse 28. We see the disciples come to him. They're, I think, embarrassed and a bit perplexed. And as soon as they can, they ask Jesus why it is they were unable to cast this demon out of the boy. And so our first point this morning is we need prayer to cast aside pride and replace it with reliance on God. They say in this verse, and when he was coming to the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could not we cast him out? Their failure had been very public. Their failure here had brought ridicule upon them. Their failure had cast doubt on their master in the mission. And their failure had filled them with self-doubt. I ask you this morning, have you ever failed the Lord? I'm sure we all would say many times, not just once, but many times have we failed the Lord by not doing what we were supposed to do. Why is it we fail the Lord? The Lord never fails, right? Even when we fail, he can still use our failure to accomplish his purpose. That's how great and mighty our God is. But we're not, and we fail, sometimes miserably. Why is that? Why is it that these disciples on this occasion failed? Well, I think the wording of their question gives us some insight into why they failed. I want you to turn in your Bibles to Mark 6, verse 7. We're gonna read some verses there. which we've already looked at, of course, previously, but we're gonna look at something that I think helps us understand their failure here. Again, the wording of their question, I think, helps us to understand this. They wonder, why could not we cast him out? They were there by themselves without Jesus, that is. He was up on the mountain for the transfiguration. So they understand they have failed. Why could not we cast him out? This question, I think, betrays their sense of confidence in their own strength and abilities. And I think this arises from a spirit of pride in past accomplishments. Now Mark chapter six, verse seven, and he called unto him the 12 and began to send them forth by two and two. and gave them power over unclean spirits. and commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only, no script, no bread, no money in their purse, but be shod with sandals and not put on two coats. And he said unto them, in what place, whoever ye enter into the house there, abide till ye depart from that place, and whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, when you depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. And they went out and preached that men should repent. Verse 13, And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them. So you see, they've been sent forth without Jesus, sent forth, it's kind of a training mission. They had watched him work, now he sends them out for that experience of doing these things themselves. And while they were out doing this, preaching the gospel and doing all these other things, they did cast out many devils, it says. And so I think they're looking back on that past success and they're glorying in that in and of themselves. They're beginning to pat themselves on the back, if you will, and say, look what we did. We are so prone to do that. When we serve the Lord and there is some measure of success in that service, it's not very long before we're beginning to attribute that to us, to me, to look, look what I did, look at this. and that is so wrong. We want to attach our names to these past successes and we want to attribute glory to ourselves when we should be remembering that anything that we do is by the wisdom and power of Christ and must redound to his glory. If you do anything or I do anything or we together do anything, it is because of Christ in us. therefore all glory should go to him. And when we start pointing at past successes in a way as to claim that success for ourselves, then what that fosters in us is pride, and it's gonna lead to failure. And these disciples are learning this lesson here. Any success that this congregation has had in the past, or will ever have, in our service to God, must be credited to the head of this church, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now back to these disciples, it seems that their attitude is, we have done it before and we will do it again, that is, cast out these demons, but why didn't it work this time? They're puzzled, why didn't it work this time? They should have pondered our Lord's words to the Father in the verses right before this that we previously looked at and realized that this is a matter of faith. Trust in the Lord and not in oneself. Now, I will say this, at least for them on their behalf, on this after the fact situation where they've gone into this house, they're alone with Jesus. It says they ask him privately. I will say this, they are at least examining themselves to try to figure out what's going on. And we ought to examine ourselves on a daily basis to make sure that we are in the Lord, to make sure that our motives are pure, to make sure that we have the right objectives, to make sure that we are working to give glory unto the Lord. We ought to be able to pray truly, as does the Psalmist David. A couple of Psalms I want you to look at. Psalm 139 first, go there, Psalm 139. In these Psalms, we get a sense of the right attitude and the right direction that we ought to have. Psalm 139, let's look down to verse 23 and verse 24. David says, search me, O God. and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Now I want you to know this is a bold prayer and this is not the kind of prayer that you should say lightly because the Lord will search you And the Lord will reveal to you any imperfections that may be there. He will try you to bring those imperfections to the surface so that they can be dealt with and so that they can be removed so that we can be refined as as much like gold or silver. So don't pray this prayer idly. But do pray this prayer. and do mean it, and do sincerely go before the Lord and ask this of the Lord, and then be prepared to hear what the Lord has to say to you. We need this in us. We are prone to error, we are prone to sin, we are prone to pride and selfishness, and all these things that are not what a Christian should have in them. And therefore, we need to work on this for these things to be removed. We need to go to the Lord about this. Now, go to Psalm 26 in verse 2, where David says much the same thing. Psalm 26 in verse 2. Here he says, Examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Try my reins and my heart. What do we use that word reins for? What are these reins? Well, think of a horse. If you're riding a horse, you have a halter on with reins. That's what you use to guide the horse, tell the horse which direction to go. Does the Lord have your reins in his hands? This though is more, really is a little bit more subtle than that. Because the answer to that is yes, the Lord always has our reins in his hands. Are you submitting to those reins, in the direction of those reins? Any of you ever been around a horse that wasn't very good at submitting to the reins? kind of had a strong mind of its own and wanted it to go its own direction. I had, growing up, I had a Welsh pony that my dad had bought for us to ride, for me and my little sister and little brother to ride. And he, Daddy got, He loved to use horses in the garden and mules and whatever. And we kind of got a little shy of horses and mules at one point. And he decided he'd try to use that Welsh pony to plow. And it didn't work. Because that Welsh pony definitely had a mind of its own. It was stubborn and hard-headed. I think it was more donkey than pony. And it was a disaster trying to get that pony to pull a plow in the garden. One day, though, Daddy had the idea. We did have another horse. He hooked that pony up beside that horse to pull a bigger plow. We needed a team. We needed two horses for it. And he noticed something. When hooked to that other horse, that pony, the Welsh pony, decided it wanted to work because it wanted to out-pull the other one. And it would out-work the other one. It would pull, and it would follow the directions that Daddy gave it. We're a bit hard-headed sometimes, aren't we? We're a lot like that pony. We wanna go our own way a lot of the times. And we need the Lord to work that out of us. We do. And he will. He will. If you don't submit to the directions that he gives you, he'll work that out of you. By submitting, I mean giving our thoughts, our desires, our affections over to the Lord, turning these things over to him. God will take any impurities in those thoughts and remove them. And the way he does this is through affliction and trial. It's through afflictions and trials that our faith is proven. Now, God doesn't need to know what your faith is. He knows. He gave it to you. Faith, that is. So it's not for God's benefit to see this. It's for us to see and for others to see that we are living by faith. That faith needs to be proven. Our obedience needs to be made evident. to ourselves and to others. And we need to ask this of the Lord. And prayer helps us do this. It's through prayer and meditation upon the word of God that we learn God's ways. We naturally know the way of the flesh. We naturally know the way of the world. We must be taught the ways of God. And we do that through Bible study, we do that through hearing preaching, but we take it further when we pray about the things that we're learning. And we get close to God and we learn what his thoughts are. And we learn, we seek his will in a manner. And the more time we spend doing that, the more submissive we become to the direction of the Lord. And the more we work out things like pride and selfishness, and we get those things out of us. We desperately need this. We desperately need to learn that we must rely on the Lord and not upon ourselves. Secondly, back to our text, verse 29. Now, we need prayer to engage faith. to engage faith, to bring faith into action. He said, this is our Lord's reply. He basically replies by informing them that they must pray. He said unto them, this kind, this demon, can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting. Now I'm gonna tell you, I don't think that Jesus is teaching here that there are some demons that are just so strong that the only way they can ever be cast out is through prayer and fasting. What I think he's teaching is more general. What I'm trying to say here and what I think he's saying to these disciples is that we need to learn how to pray before we try to do work for the Lord. How often do we jump into something without prayer? I just gotta figure that these disciples on this occasion, with Jesus up on the mountain, the nine that are left, this man comes to them and says, look, I have a demon, or my son has a demon, and we need this demon cast out. Here's what I think the disciples probably did. I don't think they stopped to pray. I think they got to think, you know what? We've done this before. We can do this. I can handle this. And they jumped right into it without praying. And I think that's what Jesus is telling them here. You need to pray about weighty matters such as this. You need to pray before you serve God. I don't think at all that he's teaching them that they need to develop some ritual of prayer and fasting before they can go forth and cast out demons. I think he's saying they just need to give attention to prayer and fasting and all things that they do for the Lord. In other words, if we approach a spiritual battlefield in our own strength and pride and self-sufficiency, we've lost the battle before it's even started. And we see numerous examples of that in the scriptures. The most recent thing we ought to look at is what Jesus had just taught this father in the verses just before this. What did we say last week? Faith bridges the gap between divine omnipotence and human weakness. Further, faith itself is experienced and exercised through prayer. You can't separate them. That's why we always need faith and we always need prayer as long as we're on this earth. Now, when we're eternally present with the Lord, it'll be different. But for here on this earth, we need to learn to couple faith and prayer together in order to do what we must do for the Lord. Therefore, prayer is one of the most difficult, but also one of the most important of all the spiritual disciplines. No wonder we're instructed in 1 Thessalonians to pray without seizing. If your prayers are limited to only praying when you want something, that's not a good prayer life. Now, we ought to pray and ask the Lord for things, certainly. But we ought to spend a lot of time praying for direction from the Lord. for us to be able to see where we need to exercise our faith, for strength to serve the Lord, for wisdom to serve the Lord. We need to pray often for these things. Our Lord himself often sought a solitary place to pray and focus his attention on the Father and seek direction from the Father? Should we not do the same? How different would our missionary zeal be if we spent more time in prayer? How different would our response to those in need be if we spent more time in prayer? How different would our love for others be if we spent more time in prayer? How different then would our worship be if we have spent much time in prayer? I want you to turn now to the book of Ephesians, chapter six, and turn there. There's several verses there we're gonna read through. So I wanna make one final point here this morning, and that is that we need prayer to fight spiritual battles. We need prayer to fight spiritual battles. Let's start reading with verse 10. This is the armor of God passage of scripture that you probably heard and read before, but I want us to look at it in light of what we're talking about this morning about prayer. Ephesians chapter six, verse 10. Finally, my brethren, Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. There are a lot of Christians, and probably often this includes you and I, who go out into spiritual battle without our armor on. Now for a soldier in the day and time that this was written, it was very necessary to have armor. It's kind of interesting that's come back again, and today's modern soldier wears all kinds of armor. But a soldier needs that for protection, for defense. The Christian needs this because we are in the midst of spiritual warfare. In fact, we're in the midst of great spiritual warfare right now at this moment. We can get caught up in a lot of things from a political viewpoint. But I'm gonna tell you, our problem today is deeper than the political problems we have. Our problem today is a spiritual problem. And there are so many people out there that have no regard for God. and the things of God. Worse even, they have a great hatred towards those things. And this often gets expressed in many forums, be it political or social or whatever. We must be armored because we must fight these battles in the right way, not to prove ourselves right, not to prove ourselves superior to others, but we fight on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ. We fight to defend his word and his honor. And we must have this armor. And let's look at it. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Question came up in our Sunday school class this morning. Do we really believe that there is a devil, that Satan exists, that he could come into this church and cause problems? Does he want to even come into this church and cause problems? We talked about those things. And I believe he does, he does exist, and he does do those things. I don't believe that he's God, though. I believe we can stand up to him. However, the only way we can do that is the way given us by the Lord to do so. He tells us here, we must put on this armor to be able to stand against the wiles, that's the schemes, that's the plotting of the devil against us. Verse 12, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, Now that gets expressed in these days, it seems, especially in the political forum, okay? Or social forums. We see a lot of violence and things like that. That's not our warfare. That's not the kind of wrestling that we need to be doing. We need to be wrestling against these principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Those things exist today. Just as they did in the day of Paul when he wrote this to the Ephesians. So we've got to stand against these things. We've got to wrestle against these things. So he says in verse 13, wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand. So not only do we need the armor to withstand in the evil day, when evil happens, when bad things happen, when we end up in these fights against evil, we need to be able to hold up and withstand all that, and in the end, be standing. When we go into those kinds of fights on our own, when we go into those kinds of battles, looking to what I've done in the past, looking to my own pride in who I am, my own self-reliance, we're not going to end up standing when the dust settles. That's just the fact of the matter. Christians have been beaten on a lot of things over the last several decades, and it's gotten worse and worse and worse around us. It's time more Christians stood up with the armor of God. It's time more Christians fought in the way God has directed us to fight. So we need this armor, verse 14. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, not just any old truth, certainly not the truth of this world or the truth of our flesh, none of which really is truth, but the truth of God. What God says is most important. What God says is what should carry the day. What God says is the ultimate standard of truth. People want to fashion truth to suit themselves. Let me take that one step further. There are way too many Christians who want to fashion truth to fit what they want. And they take the scriptures and they twist them to make some sort of a statement about what they want. It's not what the scriptures are for. The scriptures are an expression to us of what God wants. And through prayer, let's go back and tie this to prayer. We're going to at the end of this passage. Let's tie this back to prayer. It's through prayer that we come to understand what God wants. And prayer is a means by which God takes our mind, removes the things of this world, and replaces in our minds the things of God. That's a big part of prayer. Prayer, I've said this many times to you. Prayer is not about us going to God to change his mind about something. It's about us going to God so that he might change our minds to match his about something. So we need truth. And having on the breastplate of righteousness, where does this righteousness come from? From Christ. We need to stand in his righteousness. That protects who we are. The breastplate covered the chest of a soldier to protect the most vital organs in the human body next to the brain. And so we need the righteousness of Christ. to protect us from the impurities of this world, from the sin of this world. The only way we overcome sin is through the righteousness of Christ. The only way we triumph over death is through the righteousness of Christ Jesus. We need his righteousness. Verse 15, in your feet, shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Our feet take us where we need to go. We need to be going where we can share the gospel of peace. He says, verse 16, above all, taking the shield of faith. Wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. A dart is like a short spear that could be thrown, be set on fire and be thrown at a soldier in a battle. You need a shield to protect yourself from those, because I promise you, the devil is throwing fiery darts all the time. We need the shield of faith to protect us. A soldier relied on that shield. protection trusted that that shield would hold up against whatever the enemy threw at him and That's what our faith does for us. We hold it in front of us to shield us from the attacks of the enemy And take verse 17 and take the helmet of salvation and What would we do without salvation? The only way we can survive these battles is the fact that God has saved us, that we're his forever. The helmet of salvation which protects that other vital organ in our bodies, our brains, our minds, who we are, what we think. We need that protection, by the way. What does the enemy aim for, by the way, most? What does the devil aim for most against us Christians? Our minds. All he needs to do is get one evil thought in that brain, and sometimes that's all it takes to waylay a Christian. We need the helmet of salvation reminding us that we are the Lord's, and that the devil can't harm us. Ultimately, we need to remember that. And the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, A Christian who's not prepared to use the word of God in these spiritual battles is a Christian who will be failing miserably. You see, Christians sometimes want to resort back to physical things to win battles against evil. We must always turn to the word of God. I've seen Christians when faced with big questions, big moments where you need the Word of God, who shied away from the Word of God. Probably because their flesh didn't want to hear the Word of God. The flesh wanted to do what it wanted to do. Well, we need the Word of God. It is the sword of the Spirit for us. Now to what I really want to focus on, verse 18. We'll read the verse and we're gonna come back and break it down. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching there unto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Look at what he's saying about prayer. Praying always. We should always be prepared to pray. Now that doesn't mean that we spend every single moment with our heads bowed and our eyes closed praying. I especially recommend that you don't do that while you're driving down the highway, okay? but we need to, it's not talking about that, it's talking about always being ready to pray, all right? Always being ready to turn to the Lord in prayer about something, and not jumping in there with what we think we can do, but always seeking the Lord, praying always, with all prayer and supplication. Now that seems a bit redundant, doesn't it? Praying always with all prayer and supplication? Well, in part what he's talking about is taking opportunity to use all means at our disposal to pray and make supplication before God. Be it praying the scriptures themselves, be it setting aside certain times where we pray every day. That's good, that's a good thing to do. whatever it is, but using all the means at our disposal to pray and make supplication before God. In the Spirit, pray in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit will help you. I don't mean to imply anything like what Charismatics say in regards to this. I'm just simply saying, seek the Lord when you pray. If your prayer is all about you and what you want, you're not seeking the Lord. You're not praying in the spirit, you're praying in the flesh. Praying that which God has given us. Spiritual life. Connecting with the Holy Spirit of God. He goes on watching there unto. How often have you prayed about something that at the moment seemed really important to you and you prayed and you prayed hard about it. And as soon as you said amen, it's as if you forgot all about it. And you never start looking for God's answer to that prayer. When we pray, it ought to be with anticipation, eagerness even. Now the Lord may not answer at that moment. It may be a day, it may be a week, it might be a month or a year or a decade. But we still ought to look for the answer to that prayer. And we don't. Therefore, when God does answer the prayer, we don't see it. And that leaves us feeling like God didn't answer my prayer. Well, he did. You just weren't looking. Or maybe he answered in a way that you didn't you weren't really looking for you wanted something answered this way God chose to answer it another way Well, we need to recognize that that's important Because we need to understand and here's what we ought to be thinking then. You know what my way obviously wasn't best for me God chose to answer a different way. That must be what is best for me. Let me try to understand why god answered it that way So I'll know more about God and the way he thinks. That's how we all look at that. But we need to be looking to see these things with all perseverance. How many times have you had something really, really important and you prayed about it? One time. Or maybe two times. Perseverance in prayer is very important. If it's that important, take it to the Lord often. Continuously, until you do see the Lord's answer. And then he says, in supplication for all saints, your prayers ought to include something about other saints, about other believers, where you pray for them, you pray for God to protect them. You pray for God to help them. Maybe they have a very specific need that you're aware of. You pray for God to help them and to work in their life. But we ought to pray for others, I think, more than we pray for ourselves. But supplication for all saints. He goes on in the next couple of verses and specifically asks them to pray for him, that he might open his mouth boldly and make known the gospel, the mystery of the gospel, and that he might speak boldly as he ought to speak, we too ought to pray for one another in that regard. That when we have the opportunity, that we would be bold to speak the gospel, to preach the gospel to those who need to hear it. We are in the midst of great spiritual warfare. We are fighting spiritual battles whether we want to admit it and recognize it or not. And we need to make certain that we get with God on this. And the way to do that is through prayer. Let's bow our heads. Our kind and most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you, O Lord. for this beautiful thing of prayer, this way that we have that you have given to us to connect with you, to seek you, to seek your will, to seek your direction in our lives, to seek the strength and all the things that we need from you. And Lord, I pray that it would be more important to us, that it would be something that we would give more time and attention to and more effort to. that we might be prepared to serve you in these dangerous and evil days, to serve you in a way that brings you honor and glory, and to serve you in a way that edifies your people. Lord, I just pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. So I'll stand, what number shall we sing?