The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand—The Book of Matthew · Pastor Adam Wood · Matthew 17:14–21 · November 9, 2025

Transcript:
All right, we're gonna be back in Matthew chapter number 17. And this evening, we're gonna look at verse number 14. We're also gonna be looking at Mark. So if you wanna get Mark chapter nine, we'll go back and forth a little bit because of course this portion of scripture has parallel passages in Mark and Luke in particular. So let's read 14 through verse 21. Matthew 17, 14 through 21. The Bible says this, and when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man kneeling down to him and saying, Lord have mercy on my son, for he is lunatic and sore vexed. For oft times he falleth into the fire and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil and he departed out of him. And the child was cured from that very hour. 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 you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove. And nothing shall be impossible unto you. How be it, this kind goeth not out, but by prayer and fasting. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you again for the chance to meet together with your people at our church meeting. Thank you for those that have come out, those listening in as well who can't be among us today. We pray for your grace to be upon them who are suffering ailments and are just having affliction right now. Give them grace, give them patience. And Lord, give them healing, if that be your will to do. Lord, we look to you. Even as we study the word, we acknowledge that without you we can do nothing, not even understand and certainly not benefit from your word. Lord, we need your spirit to teach us individually, personally in our heart for our particular situation. It might be Lord that we need these words of scripture, not for right at this moment, but for later for something that might come up. Lord, but help us and grow our faith as we look at these things tonight. We just acknowledge our need of your help. Lord, I need your help. So please help me to say the right things that your people need to hear from your word. In Jesus' name we ask, amen. Now you'll notice in verse number 14, this man brings his son to Jesus. The Bible does not say anywhere, not in Matthew, not in Mark, not in Luke, that this son was a child. In fact, there's an indicator that this man's son was actually an adult because Jesus asked him, I think it's in Mark, Jesus asked him how long it had been that he was afflicted with this problem. And the man said of a child, which indicates to us that he's probably no longer a child. And so this is apparently a grown man and he's had this condition a long time. And verse 15 says this, the man says, Lord have mercy on my son for he is lunatic and sore vexed. Now notice that word lunatic. That's kind of a bad word these days. And it's one of these words, it's kind of politically incorrect and it is becoming more and more politically incorrect. Compared to what you used to be able to say, you can't say anymore. I know words, I've kind of had to curtail some of the words that I used growing up because they have gone out of favor. Not necessarily because they're evil in and of themselves, but because of the associations with them. And all of us, as we grow old, like I don't grow old, but like all of you do, those things change, vocabulary changes. So this word lunatic, but let's look at it from the scripture. We wanna look at it from the Bible. Remember our Bible was translated in 16, finished in 1611, so 400 years of history. Sometimes definitions change. And so that's not a surprise to us. We're not shocked by that. But the word lunatic, let me give you the definition of the word lunatic. It does not mean what, as it's commonly used today to just insult somebody where you're a lunatic, it's not that at all. It means this, a person showing signs or symptoms of serious mental illness. Well, that's helpful, as we'll see in a minute. In early use, which is where we're at here, 1600s, specifically of a type characterized by periods of remission and relapse, attributed to the phases of the moon. And so I don't know that that was very helpful, but what's, so basically what you see from this is it was thought, now this is not what the Bible is saying. The Bible's using the word, okay? But it was thought typically that these episodic issues of what would be called today mental illness, it was the fact that it was episodic like the phases of the moon, because it was thought that the moon affected people's mental health because of the way it pulls the ocean tides. That's how it was assumed. This is going back to like shortly before Christ, Aristotle and the Greeks and things like that. But anyway, that's where it comes from. In fact, the word that is translated lunatic is the word that means moon struck, moon struck. That's where the word comes from. That's the etymology of the word. Now what's interesting is that word is put directly into English, in the English equivalent. Luna is the word for moon, tic means moon struck. They actually took the word from the original language, Greek, and put it directly into English in the exact English equivalent. Now why does that matter? It matters because if you consider the other words, for instance, the ESV puts this word as seizures. The New King James version and the American Standard version put the word as epileptic. Okay? What's also interesting though is that the New American Standard version of 1977 and the New American Standard version of 1995 have lunatic, which is interesting. If it's such a bad, terrible, old, outdated, old, outmoded translation, why did they put it in there in 1995? It's a perfectly fine translation. It's a perfectly fine way to put it. In fact, the word seizure or epilepsy, or epileptic in this context is a problem. Here's why. Because if you look at verse number 18, look what it says, and Jesus rebuked the devil. So what was the true cause of this, I'll say young man, this young man's problem? It was an influence, it was a satanic influence, a satanic possession of some kind. And so by putting the word epilepsy or putting the word seizure, it doesn't state it, but it implies that somehow people that are afflicted with an actual physical neurological condition like epilepsy, that is being caused by the devil. But that's not the case. And I'll show you the distinction in just a minute. Now in the book of Mark, and we'll go there in just a minute, in fact, you might already be there. So if you can flip back to Mark, I wanna show you what Mark says about this young man's condition. Mark chapter nine, verse number 18, or verse 17 to start, Mark 9, 17 says this, and one of the multitude answered and said, "'Master, I have brought unto thee my son, "'which hath a dumb spirit.'" Dumb meaning can't speak. But notice he uses the word spirit. So from the beginning in Mark, he identifies the cause as this is a matter of demonic activity, verse number 18. "'And wheresoever he taketh him, he tarreth him, "'and he fometh, and gnasheth with his teeth, "'and pineeth away.'" So this is a description of these episodes with this young man. Now in Luke, in Luke chapter nine, verse 39 says this, "'And lo, a spirit taketh him, and suddenly cryeth out, "'and it tarreth him, that he fometh again, "'and bruising him, hardly departeth from him.'" All right, so this is a description of, this is a craze, this young man is thrown to the ground, is in a fit of some kind, foment at the mouth, crying out much like the demoniac of Gadara. No...