SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/31/2022 11:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Pleading
of the Father
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
17:14-15
Message of the verses: “14 And when they
came to the multitude, a man came up to Him, falling on his knees before Him,
and saying, 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic, and is very
ill; for he often falls into the fire, and often into the water.”
From the gospel of Mark we learn that some of the
multitude included some scribes, the Jewish legal experts, who were arguing
with the nine disciples who had remained below, and that as soon as the crowd
saw Jesus coming, “they were amazed and began to greet Him” (Mark 9:14-15).
We
can see from these verses that from somewhere from this multitude this man came
up to Jesus and fell on his knees before Him.
I suppose that only a parent can understand the grief and heartache that
this man felt. I have felt that
heartache when I found out our son had to eventually have open heart surgery,
and I was on my knees before the Lord praying for my son many hours before the
event happened. This man called Jesus
Lord, but we are not sure of his spiritual condition, but perhaps afterwards
this man did realize who Jesus truly was.
“The
words “Have mercy” translates the aorist imperative of deed, which means to demonstrate sympathy and compassion. In his deep anguish, the father pleaded with
Jesus to have compassion on his son and restore him to health” writes John
MacArthur.
I
found it interesting that the word lunatic used here means moonstruck, which
has something to do with the moon as we see the word lunar in it. This is based on the ancient belief that
mental illness or madness was caused by the influence of the moon. The Greek
word used here describes what we now understand to be various nervous disorders,
including epilepsy, that causes convulsions.
We
can tell from the description that the father gives that this boy was very ill,
indicating that his condition was unusually serious. It was so severe, that as the father explains
that he would often fall into the fire, and often into the water. I think that we can understand that open
fires were very common during this time period as they still are in different
parts of the world today. This boy also
would fall into the water, and the father was in fear that the boy would drown.
We
have to think that the boy’s father knew that this was no ordinary problem, but
was caused by demons. Mark tells us that
when he brought the boy to Jesus he said that he was being “possessed with a
spirit which makes him mute” (Mark 9:17).
In addition to having seizures the boy was not able to speak and
probably was deaf. This demon that possessed
him was very violent. The father
explains that “when the spirit seizes him he suddenly screams, and it throws
him into a convulsion with foaming at the mouth, and as it mauls him, it
scarcely leaves him” (Luke 9:39). Now
remember Luke was a medical doctor and gives us great information that he gets
from his field of medicine.
MacArthur
concludes “Every unsaved person is subject to the control of Satan, ‘the prince
of the power of the air’ (Eph. 2:2), and the more a person willfully sins and
rejects God the more he leaves himself open to Satan’s influence. But there is no indication that this boy’s
demonic affliction was due to any unusual moral or spiritual wrongdoing on his
part or on the part of his parents. For
his own reasons, Satan caused the demon to torment this particular child.”
10/31/2022 12:13 PM
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