Luke 9:37-43 Jesus is the Son of Man: Jesus Does what He does

Luke 9:37-43

Jesus is the Son of Man

Jesus Does what He does

 

All right, please turn with me to Luke chapter 9. If you do not have a Bible, please see me after the service and I can get one into your hands as our gift to you.

We are in the middle of this chapter of Luke’s Gospel and Jesus is the midst of changing his direction and focus from ministering to the region of Galilee to heading down towards Jerusalem. But in that change, Jesus doesn’t take his eyes off of what he has been focusing on, which is the people. Individuals. The negative affects that sin has had in this world.

Jesus and the inner three disciples, James, John and Peter, went up on the mount and they saw the transfiguration, the majesty of God reflect from and out of Jesus, the Son of God. They saw Jesus speaking to Moses and Elijah, the embodiments of the Law and the Prophets, THE most import people (aside from Maybe Abraham) in the Jewish culture and religion. And they saw Jesus as greater than and the fulfillment of both.

So, we are going to pick up right where we left off as we always do. This morning we are going to read Luke chapter 9, verses 37 through 43. Ill be reading, as always, from the English Standard Version, though the important thing is for you to read for yourself in your Bible, whichever translation you prefer.

Luke 9:37-43, the Holy Spirit inspires Luke to record:

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him. 40 And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41 Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42 While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy and gave him back to his father. 43 And all were astonished at the majesty of God.

May God Bless the Reading of his Word.

 

 

So, the very next day. Luke will sometimes be very specific with the timeline in his Gospels. Sometimes he will be very nonspecific as to the timeline as well. This is one of those very specific times. The very next day from James, Peter and John seeing the glory of God, the very next day, the descend down the mount.

I want you to think of a major happy moment in your life. More specifically, a moment in your spiritual life where you felt closest to God, where you witness an event or a moment of clarity where God was as real as he has ever been, where Jesus is as real as he has ever been to you.

That’s where Peter, James, and John, Jesus’ 3 closest friend, were after the passage we looked at last week. They were up on a mountain alone with Jesus, they saw an amazing preview of Gods glory peeking out of Jesus during his transfiguration. They heard God the Father speak audibly, confirming the Jesus was God the Son, and that they needed to listen to him. They had some private teaching with Jesus, and they started down the mountain. They were on top of the spiritual world, confused about some things to be sure, but on top of the spiritual world.

And as they descend, there is a great crowd awaiting them. More accurately, there is a great crowd awaiting Jesus. Mark tells us that there was an argument going on, but that doesn’t concern Luke.

Instead, we see that Luke records that a man, a dad, calls out to Jesus. Please, look at my boy. My only Son. Please see him. Don’t let him go unseen, uncared for, unhealed.

He tells Jesus what’s wrong with his son and it’s a heart-breaking scene for a father to see, especially over and over. One commentator describes the boys’ issues thusly:

When we piece the Gospel descriptions together, we get a heartbreaking picture. When the demon seizes the boy (Mark 9:18, Luke 9:39), the child screams (Luke 9:39). The spirit throws him to the ground in convulsions so that he foams at the mouth (Luke 9:39). He grinds his teeth and becomes stiff as a board (Mark 9:18). Many times, he had been cast into fire and or water by the evil spirit (Mathew 17:15), and he is covered with scars. Even worse, the spirit has made him deaf and dumb (Mark 9:25). The poor boy lives an aquarium like existence. He can see what is going on around his pathetic body, but he cannot hear or speak. His father concludes here in Luke, “It…shatters him, and will hardly leave him.” (v. 39) – literally, “it is crushing him.”

 

As a father, especially to think about that on Father’s Day, it had to tear this dad up. HE tells Jesus, I asked your disciples to heal him, but they couldn’t. This would appear to be the other 9 Apostles while the inner three were up with Jesus. Some things we know and some things we don’t. The Apostles were given authority to cast out unclean spirits back at the beginning of Luke chapter 9. So why couldn’t they help this dad and his boy? It appears, as most commentators agree, that the Apostles were forgetting that it was Jesus who was casting out the unclean spirits through them. They were trying to do it by there own power, through there own methods. They were trusting the methods and the process as opposed to trusting Jesus. That’s what appears to have happened here. Scripture doesn’t spell it our for us, BUT scripture is clear that the Apostles were not able to do this because they lacked faith.

Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Jesus shows us all what appears to be frustration. If so, we know its righteous frustration of course. Jesus is without sin, so we know that anything he did and anything he said was righteous and sinless. I don’t know a better word for it, so I’m going to use frustration even though it doesn’t feel quite right. But who was he frustrated with? Again, it appears that it is the Apostles specifically and the generation around him generally. He knows that once he is gone, which is what he and Elijah and Moses were discussing by the way, that some of these healing’s won’t happen. He knows that his Apostles are very imperfect people and all his followers, us included will have moments where we lack the faith that Jesus is referring to here.

The faithless and twisted generation that Jesus references here goes all the way back to Moses and the Israelites. And it fits all the way to today as well. There will be no faithful generations until the LORD comes back.

Each generation fulfills and upholds beliefs and values that go against what God has clearly told us he desires. RC Sproul writes:

The culture into which Jesus came was twisted. It was distorted. The values they held dear were things that were noxious to the LORD God, and what was precious in the sight of God was despised in their culture. Theirs was a twisted culture because it was a faithless culture.

When human beings fail to trust God, they twist their lives into all kinds of crazy shapes.

Sound familiar? It sounds quite a bit like today. IT is the same with every single generation that has come about since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There is no perfect generation. There is no “Christian” culture or nation.

Sproul continues:

Consider our own age. The sanctity of life has been twisted; the sanctity of marriage has been distorted. We are twisted. We’re distorted and therefore faithless.

The world we are living in is in terrible shape. I know it seems as if it’s worse than it’s ever been. But it’s been in terrible shape since the time of Jesus, and thousands of years before. During the first century we see atrocities such as King Herod killing all the boys aged two years or younger. We see an occupied people try to come up at revolt for their freedom and end up crucified, lined up along the road for miles upon miles as a deterrent to others who might thing that silly word, “Freedom.” We see Jesus, according to the ruling authorities at the time, a crazy man claiming to be God, be crucified. We see the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. Compare that to today, and roll the White House, the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, the Liberty Bell, The Statue of Liberty, and whatever else you want to throw in there. Roll them all into one and let some other country take over and destroy it. Completely destroy it, Leaving not even one stone on top of another. We see the Jews organized almost a genocidal search for “heretical” Christians, stoning them to death if they would not renounce Jesus as LORD.

The world was terrible then and its terrible now.  World Wars 1 and 2, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Japanese Internment camps here in America. Vietnam, 9/11, Taliban, Isis. Turn on the news. People were looking for a savior then and they are looking for a savior now. Even after we know Jesus is our Savior, we look for saviors within the world as well. Even as the First Century Jews were looking for a Warrior King to free them from Roman Occupation, we look to flesh and blood people to save us.

I have bad news. They can’t. Donald trump can’t save us. Joe Biden can’t save us. Barrack Obama can’t save us. George W Bush couldn’t save us. Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, FDR, Lincoln and Washington couldn’t save us. And yet we keep expecting them too. Sometimes we do so consciously and sometimes we do so practically.

 

 

But Jesus is not going to let the lack of faith around him prevent him from pouring out grace and mercy on those who need it. He tells the dad to bring the boy to him.

Dr Luke describes what we see as the boy is brought to Jesus. The unclean spirit, the demon messes with the boy one last time. He knew the boy was going to Jesus. He knew he was going to be healed and the spirit was going to be cast out. So, he gave the boy another episode. TO me, this story reads as if the boy had legitimate medical conditions that the unclean spirit was triggering, as opposed to the boy being possessed or the symptoms being caused purely by the spirit, but that is just conjecture.

What we do see is the demon trying to do as much damage as possible while he can. As one commentator notes and many of us can attest, especially those of us who came to Christ later in life than childhood:

The demon made one last desperate attempt to keep him away from Jesus. Stan never gives up any of his victims without a fight, and often it is right before someone comes to Christ (whether literally or spiritually) that he makes his most violent assault.

 

That’s what we see happen here. But when Christ calls someone to Him, he will never be denied. When Christ calls someone to Himself, that person is already secured, in the long-term perspective. It’s called the Effectual Call of God, or Irresistible Grace. In short, the effectual call is understood as God’s sovereign drawing of a sinner to salvation. The effectual call to a sinner so overwhelms his natural inclination to rebel that he willingly places faith in Jesus Christ. 

(https://www.gotquestions.org/effectual-calling-call.html)

 

          Jesus sees what is happening to the boy and rebukes the unclean spirit. He sends him away and then heals the boy, fully and completely. No more convulsions. No more foaming at the mouth. No more deafness and dumbness.

 

And Jesus reunites father and son. Now, I don’t know if this was intended to be THE point, but it fits. Jesus unites and reunites his true spiritual family. The Father, God and his sons and daughters, the children of God will be united through THE Son, Jesus Christ, by the work of the Holy Spirit.

This unity is despite our differences. This unity is not uniformity. He has purposely made us different, as scripture points out, different parts of the body, different spiritual gifts, different callings. This unity is also, and maybe most especially, despite whether we like each other or get along.

This unity occurs when we eliminate gossip, slander, anger, unforgiveness from our church body, from within each other. This unity only occurs when we make the conscious decision to act loving towards each other regardless of anything else, because this is what Christ calls us to.

At conference, one of the speakers gave this illustration that has struck me and stuck with me. We know that the church, which is all believing individuals, is the bride of Christ. How would you feel if someone was talking to you, telling you how much they loved you, liked you, respected you, wanted to be your friend, but, they said, I just can’t stand your spouse?

That’s what it is like when we complain about a fellow Christian, even if its just in private with God. I love you but hate your spouse. That’s what its like when we fight with each other and refuse to love and respect each other. How long would you let that go on, if someone was saying how much they didn’t like your spouse? How long can we expect Jesus to let us continue to talk bad about his spouse?

 

Spiritual warfare is all over this story. And its all around us today. Just as it is shown trying to separate father and son, it is working hard today to divide the body of Christ. It is not solely a battle between unbelievers and believers either, unfortunately. Even we, as family, as followers of Christ, even we can act in the enemy’s interest. Even we can do things that go against the same Jesus that we claim to and attempt to follow.

We remember just a few weeks ago, we saw that Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ. In Matthews recording of that story, when Peter heard Jesus say that He, as the Messiah, must go to Jerusalem and die on the cross, Peter tried to convince Jesus not to go, that he didn’t have to go and die. Jesus’ response, “Get behind me Satan.” Peter was doing the work of the enemy in trying to support and save Jesus.

When we fight, when we argue, when we complain about fellow Christians, we are doing the work of the enemy, creating division and disunity within the body of Christ.

 

Now, Luke ends this section beautifully and with a bow on the top of both of the last two sections we have looked at. Verse 43, And all were astonished at the majesty of God. God revealed his majesty up on the mount at the transfiguration to the inner three Apostles. Here, he shows his majesty through Christ to the rest of the Apostles and the crowds and especially the father and son in this story.

It is revealed to all who will see it. His majesty shines on the mountain top and it shines down in the valley. God won’t let us not see his majesty. In our lives, it will be easy to see God’s glory and majesty, his grace and his mercy when we are spiritually up on the mountain tops. But it is harder to see when we are down in the valleys of life. But its still there. All we have to do is see it.

We will see when God shows it to us. And we will see it easier and more often the more that we have seen it in the past. The more we see God’s majesty, the closer we will grow to him, being conformed to the image of his Son. And the closer we grow to him, the more we will see God’s majesty. I’ll end with 2 Corinthians 3:17-19:

Now the Lord[d] is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,[e] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.[f] For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

 

 

                            

2 Corinthians 2 Mans wisdom vs Gods Wisdom

 

Scripture Reading/ Call to Worship:

1 Corinthians 1:18-31:

 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
    and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach[b] to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards,[c] not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being[d] might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him[e] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

 

Sermon Scripture:

 

And I, when I came to you, brothers,[a] did not come proclaiming to you the testimony[b] of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men[c] but in the power of God.

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
    nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.[d]

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Luke 9:27-36 Jesus is the Son of Man: The Transfiguration

Luke 9:27-36

Jesus is the Son of Man

The Transfiguration

 

All right! Please turn in your Bibles with me to Luke chapter 9. As always, if you do not own a Bible or have need of one, please let me know and we will get one into your hands as our gift to you.

. Many of the events or stories that are recorded in the Gospels here are somewhat famous. Many people know, at least in general terms, of some of the healings, or the feeding of the 5000. Many know of the calming of the storm and the walking on water. These, even if they are incredibly hard to believe, as they would be for those whose eyes God has not opened to the Truth, they are easy to picture.

They are easy to know, again, in general terms, what happened in those instances, even if the meanings and importance are not always understood. However, of the miracles, works and stories that are easily recognized, there is one especially that it seems as if nobody really knows what to do with. Some people can tell what the big picture meaning behind it is, or why it happened, but to really know and describe what happened, the transfiguration is one of the hardest to picture and communicate.

But it is arguably, one of the most important events in Jesus’ life and ministry to take place, one of the most important events in Jesus’ life and ministry for the disciples to witness.

How many of your Bibles have those little subheadings that give you an idea about what a section is about, or at least the different chapters? I will bet if you have this, many of your bibles will include verse 27 with the passage we look at last week. And the way Luke is going to phrase it, you can see why. But it fits really well the subject matter we are looking at today, with verses 28 through 36.

And so, I read it last week in that passage, but I didn’t expound on it. And I’m including it this week as we will expound on it, including it in the context of the rest of todays passage.

So, lets go ahead and read this morning’s passage, Luke chapter 9, verses 27 through 36. I will be reading out of the English Standard Version, though I encourage you to read along in whichever is your preferred translation.

Luke, inspired by the Holy Spirit, writes:

 

But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.28 Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. 30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure,[b] which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34 As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One;[c] listen to him!” 36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

 

          May God Bless the Reading of his Word.

 

So, Jesus finished of last week by saying, But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.

There are a few opinions among theologians and bible scholars about what Jesus means here. What is it that will be seen as the kingdom of God coming with Power? Many, based on where this statement is, right before the transfiguration, believe that that is the event Jesus is talking about here.  Others say that the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the event, and still others say the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was given from Heaven unto all believers. There are good arguments to be made for each of those. And it might be one of those, but after doing research for this message, this passage, my view is that Jesus is talking about the temple being destroyed almost exactly 40 years after his death, after the time of him telling the disciples that some of them will see this.

RC Sproul explains the reasoning for this view: When these terrible events occurred in AD 70, the Christian Church was finally understood as an entity distinct from Judaism. It was no longer considered a subset or a sect within Judaism. The triumph of the Messiah’s church was made visible and manifest in power with the judgment of God on the Jews. And some of those present when Jesus prophesied the manifestation of the power of the kingdom, did in fact die between his announcement and the coming of the kingdom in power in 70 AD.

 

Sproul will continue on to say that he does know for sure that this is the correct answer, and I do not presume to know which one is correct, but I looked at a tiny bit of the evidence and decided I think this is the most likely. I encourage you to do the same, look up some of the evidence for the different views and see which one you think makes the most sense.

          8 days after telling the disciples that the Son of Man must suffer and die, and 8 days after he promised that the Son of Man will come in glory, Jesus leads Peter, John and James up onto a mountain alone. Peter and the brothers, the Sons of Zebedee, James and John are Jesus’ best friends, they are his inner core among the disciples, among the Apostles. They are his confidants. Often, scriptures shows that if it is not the whole group of Apostles with him, it is these three.

They go up on this mountain alone and Jesus is transfigured. It is interesting to me that Luke does not give any physical description of what happened to Jesus, not in a way that we can picture. His clothes turned dazzling white. His face was altered, but He doesn’t describe how his face was altered. Mathew tells us in his Gospel that his face shone like the sun. Pure light shone from him, not as a reflection like we see with the moon reflecting the sun, or with Moses’ face reflecting God’s glory in Exodus 34. This is one more piece of evidence to show that Jesus was who he said he was. But Luke doesn’t describe it specifically at all. I don’t think we were meant to know. This is, I think, one of the reasons that we have such a hard time with this story sometimes. We aren’t able to picture what happened very easily. As I mentioned at the beginning, those other stories, they are easy to picture, even if we don’t believe them. This, not so much. I think it would take too much focus away from the other things we are to take from this story if we had a clearer picture.

Now, one of the important things to notice is what words are used here. Mark says that Jesus was transfigured. The word in the Greek is metamorpho. Its where we get the word metamorphosis. It means to change into another form, to transform, to transfigure. Now what makes this interesting is there is only one place this word occurs in the New Testament where it is not referring to Jesus’ transfiguration. In Romans 12, verse 2, Paul writes:

 Do not be conformed to this world,[c] but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.[d]

 

Jesus was physically, visibly transformed up on that mountain, all those 2000 years ago. For a brief moment, his human body could no longer keep his glory hidden, but transformed into a preview of what we will see when he comes back in all his glory. Something happens to us, when we become disciples of Jesus Christ. We have a similar transformation inside of us.

Who we are before, who we are in the world is sin, is darkness? We live how we want to live. We do what we want to do and nobody else has any right to tell us anything differently. When we make the decision to follow Christ, to turn our life over to him, something has to change. We cannot expect to follow Jesus and have our lives stay the same. Something will change.

The Holy Spirit comes down brings with him a piece of the power of God. We cannot change ourselves. We cannot make ourselves better. We cannot, in the words of Pastor Alistair Begg, change our cosmic, spiritual grade from an F to an A. And we cannot change darkness into light. But God can. And Jesus can. To be sure, that’s what we see here, pure light coming off of Jesus.

We cannot change to darkness inside of us in light. Jesus does that for us, if we are willing to be used by him, to allow him. When he changes that, he expects things to change. He tells us to change things. Now, I say this often and I will continue to say it so that I will not be misunderstood. We cannot earn our way into heaven. Nothing we do can make us look better in Gods eyes than the darkness and sin he sees in us every time he looks at us.

But he changes us. He turns that light into darkness. And God no longer sees our unrighteousness. We are still just as unrighteous. Nothing about us has changed, nothing except that Jesus has covered us with his blood and the Holy Spirit has come and found a home inside of us.  Nothing we do from here on out makes us righteous. Nothing we do from here on out can maintain our right standing with God. We didn’t earn it and we can’t keep it.

But there is now a light inside of us, generated by the Holy Spirit. And Jesus says that this light is supposed to be reflected off of him and the Holy Spirit and be reflected in us to be shown to the world and the people around us. Jesus tells us in Matthew 5, in his Sermon on The Mount, verses 14-16:

 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that[b] they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

 

 

That light he is talking about is him. It is the hope of the world. It is the hope that even though we are undeserving sinners, who can nothing to change our selves, nothing good in and of ourselves, that there is a hope. That we can be transformed. Not that we will now be righteous, but that God will now see us as righteous.

          We have a question to ask ourselves right now. Are we reflecting the light of Jesus to those around us? I don’t mean are we talking about sin. I don’t mean are we reading our bibles. I don’t mean are we going to church every Sunday? I mean are we being a light, a beacon of hope for the people around us. Are we shining the true light of Jesus? Or are we hoarding it for ourselves?

Jesus was transfigured up on that mountain and who else do the disciples see with him? The Law and the Prophet. Moses and Elijah. They came as the two most revered men in the Old Testament. They came as symbols of the law that God gave to Israel and the prophets who told Israel about the coming Mighty Warrior King. They came to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of all this. The law was given to Israel to show the need for a savior, to show they could uphold the law all on their own. The prophecies were given to show that God had a plan all along and that none of it was an accident.

Jesus was the fulfillment of all of that. He was better than and above them. That’s why Peter wanting to build all three of them tents to stay in was a bad idea. Peter was putting Moses and Elijah on the same level as Jesus. He was putting the law and the prophets on the same level as grace and mercy.

Peter is once again like us today. Peter had an amazing spiritual experience. He got to see this moment, Jesus transfigured, Moses and Elijah. And he didn’t want it to end. He wanted to make camp up on the mount and have a permanent Bible Study with these three. He wanted to chase the feeling of the experience.

We often do that today. We don’t want to put in the work of studying the scriptures, praying without ceasing, dealing with the rough times, but still knowing that God is right there with us. We don’t always feel him, we don’t always see his hand at work, but we are told, and promised that he is with us til the end of the ages. We won’t have all our moments be mountain tops. We will have valleys. But our natural inclination is to avoid those valleys, avoid reality and seek out emotional highs, manufactured emotions that don’t last.

But God was quick to correct Peter. As the Glory of God as radiating from Jesus, heaven opened up and the Father said “This is my beloved Son;[c] listen to him.” God the Father was saying that Jesus was above Moses and above Elijah, he was God the Son. And we have the command to listen to him. What he says we are supposed to do. How he says we are supposed to live. And how we are to try to be like him as we spread the hope of Jesus to those around us.

Jesus gives us hope because he did for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. He paid the penalty for our sins. It cost him his broken body and his blood on the cross.

And today, being the first Sunday of the month, we are going to come to the LORDs table, we are going to celebrate communion, which is the remembrance of his sacrifice, his act of pure true love for us. We are going to this with partaking of bread and juice symbolizing his body and blood and with reflection.

Now, I ask that if you are not a Christian, if you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, please just pass the elements along. There is nothing magical about it. There is nothing special about it for those who do not believe that Jesus Christ gave his broken body and his blood for the forgiveness of our sins. There will be no pressure and no judgment.

stemming from that, Communion does not save us, it does not cleanse us, it does not do anything along those lines. It has no power to keep us clean or to restore our relationship with God, only Jesus can do that. This was given to us by Jesus for the purpose of remembering. Remembering who Jesus was. Remembering what Jesus did for us. Remembering how much he loved us and remembering just how big of a deal our sin really is. It is meant to be sobering and somber, but at the same time it is meant to be a celebration.

Thirdly, we are told that we need to come and participate with the right heart. As I said, we do this in remembrance of what he gave up for us, the sacrifice he made. We do this because we remember how big of a deal our sin is, that he died on the cross for it. We need to make sure that our hearts and minds have their hearts set on what’s important and that we seek God’s forgiveness and make our relationships are right with him. In addition to a tradition becoming too important and placed above the word of God, tradition can become bad is by it losing its meaning and becoming simply a ritual. Please take some of this time to reflect on what this tradition means and to make sure that you are prepared to receive. There will never be any judgment if you choose not to participate, and just pass the plate.

Paul recounts to the church in Corinth what I now tell you as well, in 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26:

 

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for[e] you. Do this in remembrance of me.”[f] 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

 

          We have individual cups that contains both the wafers, which symbolize Jesus’ broken body on the cross. His Death that pays the penalty for our sins. It also contains the juice, symbolizing the shed blood of Christ, which purchases our eternal life in Christ, through faith.

First, we will take the wafer together. Afterwards, we will take the juice together and we will be united together under the cross and blood of Jesus Christ. I will pray and we will come to the LORDs table.

 

Luke 9:18-27 Jesus is the Son of Man: Who Do you Say He Is?  

Luke 9:18-27

Jesus is the Son of Man

Who Do you Say He Is?

 

 

          All right! Let’s go ahead and turn in our Bibles to Luke chapter 9. As always, if you do not have a Bible or need a Bible, please see me after the service and I can get one into your hands as our gift to you.

Earlier in the chapter, in verse 9, Herod, the puppet ruler of Galilee heard about many of the miracles and much of the teachings of this Jesus fellow. And he asks, “Who is this about whom I hear such things?”

Jesus was becoming well known. The stories of him have been spreading far and wide. He was becoming bona fide famous. Luke has been sharing these stories because, as he said in chapter 1, verse 4, “That you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”

So, Luke has been recording & teaching the signs and wonders that Jesus is preforming. He is recording and sharing the teachings that Jesus is speaking. And these signs and wonders and these teachings were causing people to pay attention and they were asking just what Herod asked, “Who is this?”

SO, with that question on our mind, we will go ahead and read our passage for this morning, Luke chapter 9, verses 18 through 27. Ill be reading out of the English Standard Version. Please follow and read along in your preferred translation. Luke, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, records the following words of Jesus. Luke 9:18-27, he writes:

Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” 19 And they answered, “John the Baptist. But others say, Elijah, and others, that one of the prophets of old has risen.” 20 Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”

21 And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, 22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

Thus says the Word of God.

So, as we have mention previously, including last week, The Apostles are not always the brightest bunch of light bulbs. They are very much like you and me. They miss the points that Jesus is trying to tell them. They miss what Jesus is able to do and who he is.

Jesus finally just asks them, and he starts with “Who do people say I am?” And we see some of the same answers, the same thoughts and suggestions we saw when Herod was wondering who Jesus was.

Some say John the Baptist. Not everyone saw John and saw Jesus and especially not everyone saw them at the same time. They both had ministries around the same time and they both called people to repentance and taught on and spoke of the Kingdom of God. But Some also knew that Herod had John the Baptist put to death. So, it couldn’t be him, unless he came back from the dead, which, of course, Jesus would end up doing but John didn’t.

Some thought Jesus was Elijah come back. God prophesied in Malachi 4:5, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. Many thought that Jesus, because of him appearing to be a prophet to many of them, must be Elijah coming back, paving the way for the great and awesome day of the LORD. Jesus says elsewhere in the scriptures that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of that prophecy, that John came in the spirit of Elijah. So, Jesus was not he.

So, who was Jesus? I think the Apostles got to the point where, to quote Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

We see the Apostles start to finally get it. Then Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”

Peter could see enough to now know that Jesus was the Christ, but he wouldn’t have a full grasp, a full view of what that actually meant, until after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Peter was beginning to see. Peter was where we all start in our Christian walk.  Before we come to Christ, before he opens our eyes to who he is, we are all blinded. Sin invaded this world, and invaded humanity way back in Genesis 3, when the serpent deceived Adam and Eve. His lies and deceit blinded them to the reality around them. It blinded them to the fact that they were wandering around a perfect garden, naked and unashamed, with unprecedented access to the God who created them, created the garden they were walking around in, created the world and the entire universe. They had access to God that we can only hope for.

The enemy’s lies and sin invaded this world, and we are all blinded by it. What are we blinded to? Everything. Truth. We are blinded to who God is. We are blinded to the fact that there is but one God and only one pathway, Jesus Christ, to God. We are blinded to the fact that we are sinners. We are blinded to the affect that our sin has on us.

We are blinded to who Jesus Christ truly is, despite all the powers, works and miracles he did and still does. Despite the evidence in our lives, in the world around us. We are blinded to who he is and what he can do for us. He came to save us from our sins.

As we see with Adam and Eve, sin separates us from God and blinds us to the truth. Jesus came to reunite us to God and to open our eyes, heal our blindness. Just as he did with Peter and the disciples.

In Marks Gospel, Jesus preforms a healing right before the records Jesus question to Peter. This healing was different. It was not the instant healing that Jesus normally did. He healed a blind man, but at first, the man could see, but could not see clearly. He saw men walking around but he saw them as trees walking around. Jesus then finished the healing, completely and totally fixing the man’s eyes and allowing him to finally see clearly.

 

Now, it’s important to see that the healing of the blind man is not just another healing. It’s not even just a healing that parallels physical blindness with spiritual blindness. We see that, although Jesus could have instantly and completely healed the blind man, he chose not to. I believe he chose not to heal the physical blindness instantly because he wanted show us a Truth. I believe he wanted to make clear that our spiritual blindness does not get lifted instantly, but gradually, in stages.

We start by seeing some of the evidence of God around us. We start by seeing parts, bits and pieces. We see that we are sinners. We see that we cannot do anything to open our own eyes. And we cannot do anything to reconcile ourselves with God.

The single biggest moment of our eyes being opened is when we, just like Peter did here, recognize that Jesus is the Christ, that he is the Messiah. That he is our savior and the only way to reconciliation with God.  When our eyes are opened to this point, we have a choice.

We all have a choice to make. You have a choice to make. When your eyes are open to the fat that Jesus is who he says he is, will you choose to acknowledge the truth that you now see? Romans 10:9 says, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Or you could ignore the truth and go on with your life. See, even when our eyes start to be opened, sin still has a powerful grip on us. It sits deep within us. It is us and it allows ourselves to be blissfully unaware, we can see the Truth, and ignore it, stamp it down and not allow ourselves to be confronted with it. The problem with that, is that if we never acknowledge the truth, if we never take the step and make the choice to confess Jesus as LORD, then we never get reconciled to God. If we never get reconciled to God, while that may lead to superficial, worldly fun, it means eternity separated from God. In layman’s terms, that means Hell.

But once we are confronted with the truth, once our eyes are opened to that point and we have a choice to make. A choice to open our eyes. A choice to make the confession of Jesus as LORD, to know that after we physically die, we will spend eternity with him in heave, Eternity with the kind of access to God that Adam and Eve had before the fall.

I say we have at that point a choice to open our eyes, because Jesus makes it clear that it is our responsibility to continue to have our eyes opened more and more.

Peter didn’t stop at this point. He didn’t see that Jesus was the Christ and sit back and wait for eternity in Heaven to begin. He continued to press forward. He continued to have his eyes opened more and more. He continued to grow spiritually. He screwed up. We will see an instance next week. We will see many more instances after that. But he went on to be the leader of the roman church. He went on to right two of the books of the Bible. He went on to preach at Pentecost and bring thousands upon thousands to Christ in the book of Acts.

We are not called to make a decision for Christ and go on living our lives the same. But our eyes are to continue to open, little bit by little bit. Jesus heals our spiritual blindness, and it will be healed completely when we get up to heaven, but our time on earth, it is a partial healing that heals more and more over time.

Paul talks in 1 Corinthians about our spiritual growth. The church in Corinth were believers, Jesus opened their eyes to who he was, but that was it. They didn’t do anything with their faith. In Ch 3, verses 1 & 2, he writes to them: But I, brothers,[a] could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready,

Hebrews 6:1 says “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,

          We are to continue to grow in and mature in our walk with Jesus. The more we run after him, the more we walk beside him, abide in him, in biblical language, the more we study his word, what he has for us, the more he will open our eyes to new and better things.

I know many of you here have been Christians for a long while. You have been reading your Bibles for many, many years. Some of you have a lot of it memorized. But if you are reading it still consistently, back me up on this, how often are you reading some passage you have read, no exaggeration, hundreds, if not thousands of times before and God shows you something completely new in that passage. Something that you have never noticed before in there. Jesus opening your eyes again, just a bit more. It never stops in our life.

We also need to remember the bit by bit that we start with. Paul talks about starting as spiritual infants, being fed with milk. Just like a growing child, after a long period of being fed milk, then we can move on to solid spiritual food. Remember that baby steps are still steps. And baby steps grow into big kid steps which grow into grown up steps.

Out of our growth, our walk and our maturing in Jesus comes works, comes fruit of the Spirit.

          We will give an account to God when we see him face to face. Paul assures us that if we get to the point where our eyes are opened by Jesus enough to make a decision to confess him as LORD, we will be saved from Hell. Period. But what we do after those matters and we will have to give an account of it. And yet, we will get to spend eternity in perfect heaven with him in perfect relationship.

I want to share two points of application I got from one of the resources I read for this passage.
First, we should never assume that, because we can see some truth, we know all truth. We need to be humble enough to realize that “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12). The time will come when we will see Jesus as He is, and then we will be like Him (1 John 3:1-3). Until then, let’s be humble enough to recognize there are things we do not yet see and understand.

 

And second, If we – and even apostles – do not fully understand the implications of what we see in the Scriptures or in Jesus, we need to be patient with others who do not understand what we think we understand. Sincere believers in Jesus who are seeking to follow Him as closely as possible will sometimes understand various things differently. We need to be patient with one another, always seeking better understanding ourselves and seeking to learn even from those who disagree with us. If we love only those who love us, what do we do more than others? If we are willing to learn only from those who agree with us, how will we ever correct our misunderstandings? Further, if we refuse actually to listen to them, why should we expect them to listen to us as well?

So, peter sees, his eyes are opened to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. But Peter still doesn’t understand what the Messiah would be. Jesus starts to teach them some of the things that they don’t understand. He knows that Israel does not have a full understanding of what the Messiah will look like, what some of the roles he would fulfill.

The rabbis, the religious leaders, would look at what we have as the Old Testament, and they saw the promise of the Messiah that God would send. The saw this conglomerate of what God was promising. They saw that the Messiah would be a King. And he is. They saw that the messiah would be a warrior. And he is. What they did not see was that he would suffer. And he would.

Now it’s very easy for us to look at the scriptures today and say, “How could they not see it?” We look at Isaiah, chapters 52 & 53, we see Psalm 22. I highly recommend you go and look at these passages if you haven’t recently. We look at them and we see such a clear view of who God told the Jews that the Messiah would be. He told the world hundreds of years before Jesus was born, how he would be born, how he would live and how he would die, and how he would not stay dead.

How did the Jewish Rabbis not see this? Well, in my research, it seems that instead of attributing these passages to the Messiah to come, the attributed them to Israel as a whole, symbolically, as them suffering in their wait for the coming Messiah.

So, Jesus starts to teach them. He starts to teach them as their eyes are now partially open. He teaches them that the Messiah MUST suffer. The Messiah MUST be rejected by the scribes, elders and the chief priests. The Messiah MUST be killed. The Messiah MUST rise again after three days.

These aren’t just things that Jesus was going to do, but these were things that the Messiah MUST do in order to be the Messiah, our savior. The study note in my Bible says about the word “must”: Behind this small word is all the weight of scriptural prophecy and divinely ordained necessity (9:31, Luke 22:37, 24:7, 26, 44) Jesus’ predictions concerning his death and resurrection come out of his understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures.”

          And Jesus spoke this clearly. He did not speak in riddles, he did not speak in allusions or veiled references, he did not speak in parables. Here, talking to his disciples, who are now seeing him as the Messiah, he is teaching the things clearly, that the rest of the people around him, those who do not recognize him as the messiah, those who are challenging him, those who are hanging around because he is famous, teaching clearly to his disciples what others are not ready to hear.

So, Peter hears what Jesus is saying. He hears Jesus say that he is going to need to die. So, Peter, being a good Jew, and not fathoming that the Messiah would suffer such indignities, pulls Jesus aside.

Mark records in Chapter 8, verse 32 & 33:

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Mark says that Peter starts to rebuke Jesus. I don’t think I can adequately explain how strong the language is here.

The term rebuke here is usually saved for instances in the scripture of Jesus rebuking demons or unclean spirits…This was not as simple as Peter telling Jesus that he was wrong. Peter evidently was talking to Jesus, how Jesus spoke to demons. Peter still had a wrong image of who the Messiah would be. He expected a Political King. He expected a Military Warrior. He did not expect a Suffering Servant.

See, Peters eyes were open to Jesus being the Messiah, but his eyes, because of sin, were still subject to some blindness. Peter believed. Even when we believe, when we have the Holy Spirit opening our eyes to who Jesus is, we can still have some blindness. We can still be deceived. We can still get things wrong. The enemy can and will still trick us.

Peter was deceived, he was blinded to the truth of the situation. What Jesus said he MUST do, as the Messiah, Peter thought he knew better. He couldn’t conceive of it. He knew better. This conversation is recounted in Matthew 16 as well. In the NIV, it reads, ““Never, Lord!””This shall never happen to you!”

Peter would do whatever it took to stop Jesus from dying on the cross. He knew better than God what should or should not happen. Jesus recognized what this was and where it came from. He recognized that Peter was deceived by Satan, still blind in this area. See, Peter was tempting Jesus. He was saying, “You don’t really have to suffer, to be humiliated and scorned, You’re the Messiah, you should reign in Power instead…”

He was tempting Jesus the same way that Satan tempted him in the desert after his fasting. The temptation that Jesus could be the all-powerful, king of this world, if he just doesn’t submit to Gods will. If he would bow down to Satan. If he would refuse to be crucified and die for our sins. If he would refuse to follow the will of God, things would go so much better and be so much easier on him…That’s what Peter was tempting him with, and Jesus recognize it.

So, Jesus rebukes Peter. Again, this word is used very specifically in the Gospels. It has the connotation of control and having power over the person you are rebuking. That’s why it was such an issue that Peter was trying to rebuke Jesus. That’s why the demons that Jesus rebuked listened to him. And that’s why Jesus rebuked Peter here. And he rebukes Peter by rebuking Satan, who was the one driving the temptation.

Jesus showed Peter that he had his mind on the things of man, not on the things of God. In other words, he was looking at what made sense from man’s perspective, using mans, or the worlds wisdom, instead of trusting in the wisdom of God.

At this point, Jesus changes who he is addressing. He doesn’t turn away from his disciples or stop addressing them. But he had been addressing them privately. Now he turns to the crowds and starts to teach all who would think themselves followers of him.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, this passage is directly talking to you. If you are thinking about being a follower of Jesus Christ, this passage is directly talking to you. If you are not at all interested in following Jesus Christ, pay attention, this passage is directly talking to you.

Reread what Luke records:

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

 

There are only two teams. There is Gods team and there is Satan’s team. There is no in between. So first, you have to make a choice. Which team are you on?

Now, if you choose Gods team, you win, and Satan loses. But Satan is not a good loser, he is a sore loser, and he will do whatever it takes to negate your part on the winning team. And the thing is, he doesn’t have to do much. Jesus is telling Peter to set his eyes on the things of God instead of the things of man.

If you are focused on yourself and your life. If you are focused on having your best life now, you will not have your best life then. When your mind is on the things of man, your mind is not on the things of God. You live a life based on what the world tells you is the best life. You live a life based on the wisdom of man, the wisdom of the world. You live a life that bears the wrong kind of fruit.

We are not told to take up anyone else’s cross except our own. God has given us each different gift. He has given us each different passions and different ministries and missions to focus on. He has given us all a different cross.

And we can lie to ourselves and tell ourselves things like, “I’m focusing on being the best me I can be for God.” or “God loves me, so he is OK with what I’m doing,” or “I’m just following my dream.” As Todd Akin says, God never said ‘follow your dreams’ He simply said ‘Follow Me.’”

In order for us to be focused 100 % on God, we have to trust him Jesus has promised, not that this life here and now will be wonderful and perfect and easy and without trouble. Jesus has promised us that if we believe in him, if we trust in him, if we confess his as LORD and savior and believe it in our heart, that we will have eternal life with him in perfect heaven.

Jesus continues and contrasts the two choices by asking, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life. What he is asking us is this. If we have a good life now, a great life now, our best life now, according to man’s thinking, according to the worlds thinking, but we give up eternity with Jesus in heaven, what have we gained?

Nothing. Everything we have here on this earth is perishable, but eternity is imperishable. Man, us, you and I, we think in the here and now. As much as we might fight against, and often we don’t, we cannot help but be drawn to instant gratification. CS Lewis says, ““You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.”

          The way of the world, the fun that the world is having, the draw of everything we are being tempted with, it sucks us in. Jesus is that strongest spell that CS Lewis mentions. He will open our eyes to the blindness we have. and he will be the spell that allows us to wake from the evil enchantment of worldliness. Jesus finishes his teaching in this passage with a warning and a promise. He warns us that whoever is ashamed of him, he will be ashamed of in front of the Father on that day we come face to face with him.

But his promise is this. That the Son of Man will come in the glory of his father and with the Holy Angels. He starts his teachings in private with the disciples, warning & promising that the Son of Man must suffer. He ends it by publicly announcing and promising that the Son of Man will come in Glory.

Revelation 1:7, part of this morning’s scripture reading and part of the verse that was put on the reader board this week:

 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail[b] on account of him. Even so. Amen.

Luke 9:10-17 Jesus is the Son of Man: Jesus feeds the 5000.

Luke 9:10-17

Jesus is the Son of Man

Jesus feeds the 5000.

 

All right, let’s go ahead and grab our Bibles. Turn with me to Luke chapter 9. As always, if you do not have a Bible or you know someone who needs one, please see me after the service and I will get one into your hands.

We are walking through the Gospel of Luke, who has travelled with Paul, as his personal physician. He has heard Paul’s stories, he has heard Paul’s teachings, he has heard the Gospel and the stories of Jesus life and ministry. And now, he has gone back and investigated them, he has interviewed the people who were there, the eyewitnesses and he has confirmed everything that he now writes down in his Gospel.

Luke has been and will continue to record some of the miracles thar Jesus preformed in the early part of his ministry. We have seen the casting out of demons. We have seen Jesus teaching the Word of God with authority. We have seen Jesus heal sicknesses and diseases. And we have seen him bring people back to life after they have died.

And we remember the purpose for these miraculous signs and wonders is twofold. First is, as all things created are designed to do, is to bring glory and honor to God. Second, and more specific the Jesus earthly ministry is that these miracles were done to confirm the authenticity of Jesus Word, which was the very Word of God. These miracles were done by Jesus to show people that the Gospel is true.

Today we are going to look at one of the more famous miracles that Jesus performed. Along with the miracle of Jesus resurrection, thus is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels. Today we will be looking at Luke chapter 9, verses 10 through 17, Luke’s telling of the feeding of the 5000.

I will be reading out of the English Standard Version, as always and I greatly encourage you to read along in your preferred translation, reading for yourself, not relying solely on me, but reading the Word for yourself.

So, Luke 9:10-17, Luke inspired by the Holy Spirit records:

On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing. 12 Now the day began to wear away, and the twelve came and said to him, “Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 And they did so and had them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17 And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.

 

Thus says the Word of God.

 

 

So, we pick up with the Apostles coming back from their missions trip essentially. And they were so excited to tell him all about it, from the looks of it they just started talking all over each other as soon as the get to him. I picture this seen kind of like when you go pick someone up from the airport that was on an amazing vacation, maybe you haven’t seen them for a long time. You meet them at the gate, and they stop when they get to you and just start telling you all about it.

When that happens, what do you do? You try to either get them to walk with you to a different location, your car, your house, whatever.  Or move them off to the side so that you can hear all about the trip and they don’t have to wait to tell you.

That’s what Jesus does here with the Apostles. He tells them “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” The Apostles had just gotten back from a long, busy journey. Jesus had compassion on them and wanted them to rest, to sit and eat. So, they get onto a boat, once again finding solitude and rest away from the crowds, once again on or by the sea.

This is mentioned over and over again in the scriptures. When that happens, it happens for a reason. God tells us to spend time in rest. He tells us to spend time I solitude. He tells us to spend time alone with him. Time alone with Jesus. Time alone with the Bible, his word to us.

Have you found a place that you are able to be alone with him? Is it a spot in your home? A chair or a room or whatever. Is it a spot on your property? Maybe you are lucky enough to have a nice, quiet view. Maybe your porch. Or is it somewhere else. Maybe looking out at the lake. Maybe in the woods. Maybe its running or working out. Maybe its yard work or gardening. So, Jesus and the disciples went off in the boat alone, and heading to a desolate place where they could sit and rest and talk. But, as we saw last week, Jesus was becoming famous. People were flocking to him.

 

Mark tells us in his telling of this story, in Mark 6:34, “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.”

          This verse kills me. Jesus saw this crowd and had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a Sheppard. They were waiting to be herded. And he began to teach them many things.

Human beings are made like sheep in many ways. We are all looking for a Sheppard to lead us. And without one, we are really stupid, and will run toward danger, get caught in snares, unable to rescue ourselves. We all know there is something more than ourselves out there. We see it all around us. Paul tells us in the book of Romans, Chapter 1, verses 19 & 20:

 

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,[g] in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse

 

Now he is talking about specifically people who have rejected God, but he is also talking about human beings in general. God made us to look towards him, to be incomplete without him. And we feel this inside of us. We were made to worship. We were made to have something lead us, herd us like a Sheppard does with his sheep.

Think about the people in the world today. They are looking, they are searching and reaching out. They feel, they know, there is something more out there. We see this in culture and in society. We see that it is full of signs where people catch glimpses of the God of the universe, or his Son or his creation, and they just miss the truth in it, or they miss what it really means. But themes in art and music and TV and Movies, many of them point straight at Jesus. We see ideas that people have, we see the way people lift up others and it should all point right at Jesus. And we completely miss it.

We worship creation instead of the creator. We worship championship athletes instead of he who created sports. We worship our political parties, expecting our choice for office to save us, if only the other side would just get out of the way. But we worship them, looking to them to save us instead of towards the King of Kings who is our savior. We see these partial, incomplete glimpses that point us to all powerful, all knowing, all good, all just, all merciful and loving Lord of Lords, creator of the universe. And we settle for whatever is placed in front of us.

There are two examples I want to give you. First is a personal example Hope shares. There was a time that she was questioning her faith.  She still believed in God, but was questioning the deity of Jesus, and walking away from Christianity, so she started to attend the local Jewish temple.  She was drawn back to a fervent love of Jesus at Temple of all places. It was there that she saw how clearly everything pointed to Jesus. All the prophecies that they would mention, all the waiting that they were doing, all the traditions and festivals they were celebrating, all such clear pictures of Jesus, how He was the answer to all their efforts and prayers. and It reaffirmed her faith and it broke her heart that they couldn’t see it.

The second example I want to give you is a commercial I saw a few years ago. It was a craftsman commercial. It may have been a Superbowl commercial, I honestly don’t remember.

Here is a portion of the transcript from that commercial, and pay attention to the language:

Our Fire to create is not lost. Nor can it ever be extinguished. Our passion to make is part of us. And needs only be fueled again. For we were born to make. Mold, build, shape, transform, incredible things. Coursing through our veins, the urge to create something out of nothing, and build a legacy for us all

Do you see this language? “Our fire to create,” “the urge to create something out of nothing,” “build a legacy for us all.” This is biblical, godly language. This commercial recognizes that we have these desires, these fires, these passions inside of us, built in. But before we are transformed by the Holy Spirit, we don’t give these things the right credit. We don’t give the credit for these passions, these instincts, these things inside of us, we don’t give the credit to God. We give it to nature and evolution, or we give it to human nature. We were built in the likeness of a creative, powerful God, and we trade that for copying the world.  God made us to be like him.  And as we just read in Romans, God has revealed himself to us. He has made himself know in his creation, so that when we look and when we reach out, it is to him. He is what we see.   If a craftsman commercial can see what we were made for, then we should as well.

 

 

 

The crowds were with Jesus, listening to him for the whole day and it was starting to get late. The Disciples were trying to think practically. They cared for the crowd and they knew that there was nowhere for them to sleep if they stay nor was there any food for them to eat. They wanted the crowd to be able to eat.

But the disciples are real people. And it seems that everything the do good or say right, they end up messing up and undoing all the good that they had just learned. We see them continue to give Jesus advise and suggestions on how to handle various situations.

Now, I don’t know about all of you, but I know I’m just as imperfect as the disciples. I think this is a tendency that we tend to fall into in our prayers sometimes, or more than sometimes of you are me. “God, if you would just do this…” “God, this isn’t working out the way I think it should…” We think we know enough to know the ways that God will work and the timing in which he will do it.

Jesus aint having that. He looks at the disciples and tells them, “YOU feed them.” I think there is a dual meaning to what Jesus is saying here. The Disciples saw a need, had compassion and tried to find someone who could fix the problem, someone who could provide for the needs that they saw. The disciples saw that these people needed to eat and wanted to send them to the supermarket or a deli or whatever.

One commentator shares the lesson he sees in this verse, writing, “As a Pastor, I am often asked by concerned parties to intervene and counsel some friend or relative. I usually say “No. God sent that person to you, not to me. Let’s talk about how you can provide the necessary help.” Invariably they find that they do have the insight and authority to deal with that troubled person. Jesus says to the disciples here, and to us, to believe that God has given us the resources to meet the needs with which we are presented.

 

          God puts specific people in our path, in our lives for specific reasons. And we are put into other peoples lives for a reason. But you are put into peoples lives in order to help them and to be a blessing to them. Sometimes, instead of spending so much time looking for other people help someone you know is in need, sometimes, you just need to step up and help.

Now, that is not a one size fits all rule either. Because we see the other thing that happens when Jesus tells the disciple that they should feed them. They know they are not able. They tell him, there is no way we can feed them. We don’t have the ability, the resources, the food or the money not feed all these people.

So even when we are put into the lives of people to help them in their time of need, we also need to realize and recognize that any help we do provide is not through our power and ability, but through Gods. It is through Gods grace and Gods goodness not our own.

So, Jesus shows the disciples that they are to feed those who are hungry right now and also that they do not have the ability to succeed with out Jesus power. Now, I mentioned at the beginning some of the types of miracles that the disciples had been witness to so far in Jesus’ ministry. Creating food out of nothing was not one of them. Feeding 5000 people, which is a misnomer by the way. The 5000 number is the official count, but in that time, they only counted the Men, so that is not counting the women and children. Scholars estimate a total of 15000-20000 mouths to feed there. But my point is that the miracle they were about to see was not something that they previously seen and therefore wouldn’t have expected.

He spends the day teaching them many things. He does this and he fulfills our spiritual needs. He teaches us, he takes time to be with us, spending all day with us. And then he goes and fills our physical needs. This group and 5000 men and countless women and children spent all day out in the middle of nowhere listening to Jesus

How would they eat this evening? Would they have the energy or the money to go to town and get something to eat? Or would jesus be their Shepard and provide for their physical needs. The disciples mention that they have 5 loaves and two fish. Not big french bagguettes and fresh caught Salmon, it is much more likely these would be more along the lines of big crackers and sardines.

 

We like shiny magic tricks. We like reasonable, logical explanations that take away the supernatural. We try to imitate them. Moses went into Pharoahs court and performed miracles. Then Pharahs advisors perform their own “miracles” or magic tricks or whatever they were.

But Jesus did not perform “magic tricks.” Jesus did not pre hide some food at this location and pass it out. The situation was not made up or exagerated. He fed these 20,000 people with a few crackers and sardines and had more left over than before they started. He performed bona fide supernatural miracles, proving the authority he had over reality itself. Jesus gave them, not only just what they needed, but he gave in abundance, so much so that the disciples collected 12 baskets full of pieces of the loaves and fishes. \

Now, there are many ways that people try to explain this miracle away. Just watch any program on the History Channel or A&E or whatever that they make on the Bible and its stories. You will always see someone on their explaining away the miracles in a scientific manner or moral manner.

Some say that Jesus knew they would be there and hid some food aside. Some say that some brought food and the miracle was that Jesus convinced everyone to share with those who had none. All the different theories have one thing in common, they eliminate the supernatural, insisting on only being able to explain things via the natural. The test is very clear what happened here. There is no other explanation for what happened if you are going to say that you are a Christian.

Jesus himself is supernatural. This story, this miracle testifies to his deity. It, along with all the other supernatural miracles Jesus did, just confirmed that he was the Son of God.

We see in this story allusions to Israel wandering in the dessert and Go providing their daily manna for their sustenance. We see in this the power of prayer, that God is able and often willing to answer our needs and provisions. And we see the necessity of our dependence and belief in Jesus.

 

Johns Gospel, especially in his recounting of this story makes it clear that Jesus is the bread of life. This shows us that we are all spiritually starving, and that Jesus is the food that will sustain us.

We are not able to feed ourselves and we are not able to feed others. All our spiritual food comes from Christ himself. Paul tells us in Ephesians that we are saved by Grace through faith, and that even that faith is a gift from God, so that none of us should boast.

 

JC Ryle wrote, “The heart of man can never be satisfied with the things of this world. It is always empty, and hungry, and thirsty and dissatisfied, til it comes to Christ.”

 

          Feed yourself on the bread of Christ. Pass the bread around to as many people as we can. Remember that Jesus works in the supernatural, some the results will often be unexpected. Don’t depend on others to help people that come into your path and into your life. Depend on Jesus to use you to help those around you.

 

 

Let’s Pray

Luke 9:1-9 Jesus is the Son of Man: Jesus Ministry Expands

Luke 9:1-9

Jesus is the Son of Man

Jesus Ministry Expands

          All right, lets turn in out Bibles to Luke chapter 9. We are continuing our walk-through Luke’s Gospel as he shows us that we can trust as true what we have heard about Jesus Christ. As always, if you do not have a Bible or you know someone who needs a Bible, please see me after the service and we can get one into your hands as our gift to you.

So far, we have seen Jesus traveling around the region of Galilee and a brief foray across the Sea of Galilee into the Gentile region of the Gerasenes. We have seen Jesus heal; we have seen him resurrect people from the dead.

We have seen him travel, minister and heal both the Jewish people and the Gentiles as well. And we have seen him give them to different commands after he was finished. To the Gentiles, specifically the man who was demon possessed, he told him to go back to his family and tell them what God had done for him.  TO the Jews, specifically to the parents of the girl he resurrected in the passage we looked at last week, he says not to tell anyone what just happened.

But most importantly, we see that Gods healing and life-giving power are on display to both groups of people and are available to both groups of people.

We also see, that despite Jesus telling people not to tell anyone about some of the things that he did, word was getting out, word was spreading. He was becoming more and more know and people were flocking to hear him and see him. We are going to see these crowds in the upcoming stories that Luke will share in chapter 9.

But here today, we are going to read and look at Luke chapter 9, verses 1 through 9. Ill be reading out of the English Standard Version, though I encourage you to follow along in your preferred translation.

Luke 9:1-9, Luke records, inspired by the Holy Spirit:

 

And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. And he said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics.[a] And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.” And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.

Now Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen. Herod said, “John I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?” And he sought to see him.

 

Thus, saith the Word of God.

 

Ok, so we see a couple of things here as we start off. First, it appears that the disciples in general and the Apostles specifically were not with Jesus 24/7/365 for the entire three years of Jesus earthly ministry. They had families, some still had jobs, they were not with him every second of every day.

We see that Jesus called the 12 to him. This is very likely when they went from being disciples to Apostles. And he gave them power and authority and he sends them out. He sends them out to preach the kingdom of God.

This reminds me of, among other places, Acts chapter 13. There, the church at Antioch knew that God had called Paul and Barnabas to His service. So, they fasted, prayed, laid hands on them and sent them out. This has that same feel. Jesus was calling the 12 to his service and he equipped them with power and authority and sent them out.

 

So, Ecclesiology is the study of the doctrine of the church.  How its set up, what it is, and who it is and who has authority. See, church leadership is no for whoever wants to be or whoever is popular or has the loudest voice or anything else. But it is a specific calling by God, calling by Jesus who is himself the head of the church.

Jesus chose these specific 12 to be the Apostles, plus Paul. It is their testimony upon which the church is built. And their testimony, starting with this assignment here is the testimony of who Jesus Christ is.

We see through the letters and through the book of Acts, we see the church being established. We see the church being put together and what it is designed to be and who is designed to play different roles. Different translations and different letters use different words, elders, bishops, but is all the same things. And Jesus gave us specific qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and in Titus chapter 1. The Bible is very clear on this. IF you think you are supposed to be in church leadership and you don’t meet these qualifications, your wrong.

Christ calls, Christ gives the qualifications, and the Bible is Christs Word.

 

Now, practically, it is not only the qualifications that you need, but training as well. That starts with Bible knowledge of course. Read your Bible, study your Bible, know your Bible. Study about your Bible, read about your Bible, know about your Bible. I went to school to learn about the Bible for a number of years, culminating in a master’s degree in the Bible.

And yet, my first sermon was a disaster. My first wedding, I forgot to tell everyone to sit down. My first funeral, not good. It took training. It took experience. It took practice. That’s what the Apostles are getting here from Jesus.

In a little while, In Luke’s Gospel, we are going to see Jesus leave Galilee and start his journey to Jerusalem and towards the cross. After his death and resurrection, he is going to tell the Apostles to take the Gospel to the ends of the world, teaching them all that Jesus command.

And so, they are to go out and proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. And, like Jesus, their miracles, the healing and their authority over demons was to confirm that their testimony was true. And it was to show that Jesus had indeed sent them. They were like Ambassadors on a way. They were going out and speaking the words of their leaders, showing their power and authority that pointed back to their leader because it was given to them by their leader.

There was and has been no one like these 12 men. They were given very specific authority and very specific power at a very specific point in time to do a very specific job, to establish and build the church. There are no additional, modern day Apostles. Period.

Now, we get pieces of this job, pieces of this authority here today. We definitely get the same assignment, to proclaim the kingdom of God. But we fulfill our job, to build the church, in very different ways.

Philip Ryken, a Bible commentator writes, “We also, are called to heal- in other words, to minister to people’s material as well as spiritual needs. At certain times and in some places, this ministry may be miraculous, especially when the Gospel first penetrates a culture. In order to confirm the truth of his word, God certainly can and sometimes may heal people in miraculous ways. But whenever and wherever the church gets established, the church itself becomes the confirmation of the Gospel. How did people know that the Apostles were telling the truth about God’s kingdom? In part, because their miracles proved it. How do people know we are telling the truth about salvation, especially when they cannot see Jesus in person? People do not know this by our miracles, ordinarily, but as a community of Gods people we confirm the truth by our love, our suffering, and the sacrificial way we care for people’s needs.

 

          So, the purpose of the Apostles being sent out is to preach the Kingdom of God and to confirm the Gospel with their miraculous sings. When Jesus sends them out, he tells them to go without packing a lot of stuff or taking a lot of time to prepare. Just go.

 

He sent them out with the orders not to bring any supplies with them. Bring no staff, no money, no food, no extras. A question we have to ask here is “Is this passage prescriptive or descriptive?” What I mean by that is is this passage telling us what happened there? Or is it telling us something that we need to apply to ourselves as well.

In my opinion, in this case, it’s a little bit of both. I don’t believe that Jesus is literally telling us to not make provisions, plans and preparations. The scriptures clearly tell us often to take care, to plan ahead, to be responsible with our lives.

But Jesus also tells us clearly that to follow him means that we need to hold into things with an open hand, not with a firm grip. Jesus wants access to every part of our life. He wants us to not hold anything back from him.  When we surrender to him completely, leaving our bread, bag and money, leaving our job, our hometown, our pets, our country, holding them out to him in an open hand, he will take care of us.

 

Jesus told the Apostles to depend on the generosity of their fellow countrymen. Enter one house in town, stay there and then leave town. Don’t go from house to house within town. Part of the hospitality in Israel was making sure that you don’t overstay your welcome. So, this was also a way of Jesus telling them not to stay in anyone town for too long. Go in, share the Gospel, and move along.

 

So again, this is Jesus giving instructions for this mission specifically, not necessarily to all believers in general. Context matters. Jesus says the opposite in Luke 22. Paul spends a lot of time in his letters telling believers that they need to prepare and to live responsibly, to earn a living and to earn your keep.

Some people tend to experience paralysis by planning. Others tend to act without thinking or planning. Scripture shows us that both sides on this scale have their place and we need to use wisdom and discernment to read the situation and the context.

The Apostles go out and the sow seed, they preach the Gospel, and they move on. And for those who don’t receive the Gospel the Apostles are sharing Jesus tells them to symbolically shake the dust off their feet and move on.

This was a saying and a tradition that was well known in Israel. Some took this Idiom very literally. When they would travel out of Israel, and they came back, they would stop as they were going to come back into Israel and shake the pagan dust and dirt off their sandals so as not to contaminate the Holy Land.

The point was, go and share the Gospel, and move on. People will either accept it or reject it. There might be a progression that takes time, but there is no middle ground. The Apostles were to go and give everyone a chance to respond to the Gospel and then move on to the next. They went from village to village.

These, I think was a part of the basis for some of the mindset that was prevalent in Village Missions early on. The idea was that a missionary pastor would come to town and share the Gospel with everyone in town. After sharing it with everyone, it would be time to move to a different town and start over. Another missionary would come to town and do the same thing. Times have change and the so has the ministry philosophy for Village Missions. Now, the idea is to have a Missionary pastor become a part of the community, build roots and relationships, show the people that we really do love and care for the church and the community and limit that amount of turnover that happens. Again, showing that context and the situation determine what scripture demands of us in some cases.

As the Apostles did this, word was getting about this Jesus guy. Not about the Apostles, but about who they were testifying about. Who they received their power from.

Verses 7-9, show us that Herod started hearing about this Jesus guy and became curious. HE started asking that all important question, “Who is this Jesus guy?” Some said Jesus was an Old Testament Prophet come back. Some say he was Elijah, based on Old Testament prophecy. Some said it was John the Baptist, but Herod had John the Baptist beheaded, so that idea really spooked him.

Herod doesn’t get an answer just yet. But he sought to see him. He wanted to speak to Jesus, to see him in front of him and see for himself. WE are going to see Jesus ask this very question of his disciples in a few weeks’ time. Who do you say I am?

That’s the question that each and everyone of us must answer. Who do we say he is? This is literally the most important question we will answer in our lives. Either he is God, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ, or he is not.

If we know who he is, then and only then can we answer his call for us, whatever it is. We are all called to proclaim the kingdom of God. We are all called to do it with different gifts or different callings. Apostles then.

Pastors, Elders Deacons.

Evangelists, Shepherds, Teachers.

Gifts of Administration, Discernment, Exhortation, Faith, Giving, Healing, Helps, Hospitality, Knowledge, Leadership, Mercy, Wisdom and more.

 

These are the things that he equips us with and grants us power to do.

 

First, we answer “Who is Jesus?”

Then we answer, “What has he called me to do?”

Then we do it.

 

Lets  Pray

 

 

 

Luke 8:40-56 Jesus is the Son of Man Jesus heals two women

Luke 8:40-56

Jesus is the Son of Man

Jesus heals two women

 

 

All right! Let’s go ahead and open up our Bibles to Luke chapter 8. If you need a Bible, if you do not have a Bible, please see me after the service and I can get one onto your hands as our gift to you.

 

Often times when God tells us to do something, if we actually hear him, we hear what he is telling us to do and we go full bore, full speed ahead, let nothing get in our way. One of the things we will see today is that God doesn’t always tell us to act that way. Sometimes he wants us to take the scenic route. Sometimes he tells us to take one step at a time. Sometimes he tells us what the end goal will be, but he still wants us to go through HIS process, not our way, but his path, his plan, his way.

The problem is that if we do what he wants us to do, and instead of doing it his way, we do it our own way, then our plan is a lost cause. We cannot achieve God Will, Gods Plans without doing it God’s way.

Chapter 5 of the Gospel of Mark includes the story we looked at last week and the story we will look at this week. Matthew, Mark and Luke share an incredible amount of the same stories in the Gospels.  Mark 5 has historically been called the St Jude chapter. St Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. That is why we have St Jude s Children s Research Hospital, it is dedicated to incurable children s diseases, lost causes.

That’s what is seen in Mark Chapter 5, lost causes. Ns those are the stories Luke is sharing with us here in Luke chapter 8 as well.

We saw last week, the man who was possessed by many demons, who had been given up on as a lost cause by those around him. He lived in and spent his life in the tombs, exiled from everyone else. A Jesus made him new, made him right.

          This man was a lost cause to human effects. But Jesus showed that Lost causes in this world were not lost causes to the God the created the world with a word.

That brings us to this morning’s passage. This is a long section with three distinct parts so I’m going to take them a little at a time. Remember the setting. Jesus preaching all day on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, tired, he told the disciples to cross over the sea into the Gentile region. He got there, not the calmly, and was confronted by Legion, threw them out and the people in the area asked him to get back in the boat and go back. That’s where we pick up.

Overall, we will be reading Luke chapter 8, verses 40 through 56. But we will break it down into three sections, reading each one as we come to it. Ill be reading out of the English Standard Version and as always, I encourage you to read along and read for yourself in your preferred translation.

The first section we will be reading through is Luke 8:40-first half of v 42:

Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. 41 And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus’ feet, he implored him to come to his house, 42 for he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying.

 

So Jesus crosses back over the Sea of Galilee and immediately is crowded up by a large group of people. We have seen throughout Luke’s Gospel that these people are following him and waiting to see his works, his miracles and whatever Jesus can do for them. Many of these are followers only in the literal sense of the word, not in the discipleship sense.

From the crowd, one man, named Jairus, comes up to him. Jairus, it says here was one of the rulers of the synagogue. Now, rule does not mean “in charge” in this case. This is more like an elder if we try to compare to current day churches.

It is likely that Jairus was one of these caretakers of the synagogue. He was a man that knew the Jewish religion, customs, all of that and he comes now and falls at Jesus feet. We see in Mark 5 that he tells Jesus, “My daughter is at the point of death, but if you lay your hands on her, she will be healed.”

The word eschatology means the study of last things, commonly we say the study of end times. The root word there, eschatos, means “last, utmost, or extreme.” This is the word that Jairus uses that is translated Point, when he says she is at the point of death. As RC Sproul puts it, “He was saying she was at her utmost extremity. She was at her very end. She was at Deaths door. She was breathing her very last. It was not that she was very sick and in intensive care; she was at the end of hospice care.”
          This daughter was not yet a lost cause, but if Jesus delayed at all, she would be dead. And death, in Jairus mind, and the mind of others, WAS a lost cause. And so, Jesus goes with Jairus and that’s where we pick up the second part of the story, with Jesus going with Jairus to heal Jairus’ daughter who is on her death bed, and they go with no time to lose.

So, we pick up in the second half of verse 42:

As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. 43 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians,[f] she could not be healed by anyone. 44 She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. 45 And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter[g] said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” 46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” 47 And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. 48 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

 

So as the crowd is all gathered around Jesus, bumping up against him, walking with him, jostling him, one lady makes her way towards him. Now this lady has been bleeding for 12 years at this point. She had spent all her money trying all different remedies. She went to every doctor she could. She tried everything humanly possible, and nothing helped. Nothing worked. Nothing relieved the bleeding. Her condition was a hopeless cause.

I know a guy who was a similar hopeless cause. He was in prime health and no medical problems. He came down with a case of what the Doctors are calling Fibra Maialgia. For the last 20 years, he has been to every Doctor, every specialist. He has tried every treatment, all that Western Medicine has, and many, many things that alternative medicine has. Some days are better than others, but overall, things have just gotten worse over the last 20 years. This is a man of incredible faith. He knows that God can heal him. But so far, he hasn’t. I picture him in a similar situation as this woman here, at least mentally and emotionally.

Now it’s not exactly the same. The bleeding this woman has been experiencing has made her unclean. She is not supposed to be in this crowd. She can’t sit in a chair in someone’s home. She can’t do anything related to the synagogues. This wasn’t unclean in the same extreme as leprosy, which we looked at earlier in Luke, but it was unclean.

She was desperate. She was willing to do anything. She had heard about Jesus and knew that he could heal her. She knew about the power he had been showing. She knew that he had healed, and why not her? But she knew that she was unclean and so couldn’t just go up to him like normal. So, she decided to just touch the edge of his robe. Surely if this man had been casting out unclean spirits, calming storms, healing other who had leprosy and other sicknesses, then if she could just touch his robe, there would be enough power to heal her…
And as soon as she touched his garment, she was. The blood stopped and the woman felt that she had been healed. Once again, complete and instantaneous.

Now comes the interesting part. Jesus did not consciously heal this woman. The power of God flowed out of him. Look at v. 46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.”

Jesus realized something happened, but he did not know what happened. He did not make the choice, yes woman, I heal you. See, If Jesus were only God, he would know. He would know the woman was coming up, he would know the woman was touching his garment, and he would say or thing, Yes, woman, I choose to heal you.

But Jesus is not just God. Jesus came down from Heaven and he became a man, a human man. When he did that, he voluntarily, temporarily set aside some of his divine powers. He did NOT set aside his divinity. He is 100% God and at the same time, 100% man. He was not pretending to be human. He was not pretending notto know. Much of the previous passages in Mark, are really trying to show us Jesus’ divinity. I believe one of the reasons this passage is here is to counter that by emphasizing his humanity.

Now, as a man, Jesus was more in tune with God the Father and the Holy spirit than any other human. And so, even though the disciples couldn’t believe that among all the hustle and bustle and bumping and jostling, that Jesus could tell that one specific person touched his garment, Jesus stopped, turned and asked who it was that touched him.

Now this lady was afraid! She had touched the edge of his garment and he felt it, he felt the power go out of him and into her, healing her. She didn’t know what he was going to do to her. She had been unclean and touch him. So, she goes and throws herself down at his mercy. Now most of you know the Gospels well enough to be able to predict Jesus move here. Does he rebuke her in any way? Does he tell how wrong she was, as an unclean woman to go up to him and secretly tough him? Does he tell her how she should have approach him and asked for the healing in person?

No, of course not. He says to her “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, Mark adds and be healed of your disease.” Jesus dd three things for the women with this statement. He publicly identified her. This is important because of the next two things he does. He commends her faith. She had the faith to go forward and reach out, to keep reaching out to God in as many different ways as possible. And finally, Jesus declared that she was healed. This made the healing complete; this made her clean. And it was public, so everyone saw.

Jesus took this lost cause, this woman who had this medical issue for a large chunk of her life.  He took this lost cause and he redeemed it. He showed his authority over it. And he showed his humanity.

Now, do you remember where we were in our story. Jesus had been on his way to see Jairus’ little girl, who was knocking on deaths door. They hadn’t a moment to lose. Jesus took a few moments with this lady and we pick the story back up with v 49:

 

 While he was still speaking, someone from the ruler’s house came and said, “Your daughter is dead; do not trouble the Teacher any more.” 50 But Jesus on hearing this answered him, “Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well.” 51 And when he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him, except Peter and John and James, and the father and mother of the child. 52 And all were weeping and mourning for her, but he said, “Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping.” 53 And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. 54 But taking her by the hand he called, saying, “Child, arise.” 55 And her spirit returned, and she got up at once. And he directed that something should be given her to eat. 56 And her parents were amazed, but he charged them to tell no one what had happened.

 

So, the few moments Jesus took to interact with this woman came with a price.  The little girl had not been a lost cause. She had been deathly sick, but she had still been alive. Now, we get word, from someone in Jairus’ house, that the girl had died. This is where we wonder about the timing of Gods plans. In our heads, why would Jesus let himself to get “Sidetracked” from his mission to heal the letter girl.  We see afterward that Jesus was allowing the opportunity to show his authority of sickness and death. To show that he was who he said he was.

The person who came from Jairus’ house told Jairus, don’t waste Jesus’ time anymore. I can just picture Jairus’ reaction, just crest fallen, all the air let out of him, looking down and over at Jesus, saying, “I guess there is no reason for you to continue the trip to my house.”

But Jesus says to him, do not fear, but only believe. Jesus, Jairus, and Jesus’ inner three, Peter James and John, went on to Jairus’ house. When they got there, everyone was mourning the girl’s death, weeping and crying. Jesus Asked them why? The child is not dead, only sleeping.

This of course led them to mock him, and I can understand why. The girl was dead! These people didn’t know that Jesus was God. They knew him as a man. A powerful man, yes, but a man. So, Jesus was alone with the three disciples, the mother and Jairus and the dead girl and showed that his words had power. He took her by the hand and told her to get up.

What happened? “And the girl got up immediately. The key word here, once again, is immediately. Just like with the healing of Peters mother-in-law, she immediately got up and started moving about. Not just woke up but got up and started walking. And as any of us would be, they were amazed. Now there are two quick things I want to point out in the last few words of this passage.

The first thing I want to point out is that Jesus told them to get the girl something to eat. I believe he did this for two reasons. First, the girl was probably hungry. I’ve never been raised from the dead, but even though she didn’t do anything to cause it, it was all Jesus all the way, it had to be taxing on the body.

But I think it was also to show that, though this girl was raised by the supernatural power of God, this girl and her body was still a human body with human needs. Though she was miraculously healed, her body still needed food to continue living.

We forget that sometimes, don’t we? When God does a miracle in our lives, we often forget to follow up and take responsibility for going forward from that point.

Second, Jesus tells them not to tell anybody about this. This is in direct contrast to what he told the man who had Legion in him, that man he told to go tell all his friends what the LORD had done for him. This was not the first time either, that Jesus told people not to go around telling others about the miracles he did.

Why was this? Well, for the most part, his ministry was to the Jews. He was in Israel, and they were who were living there, He was the Messiah for God’s chosen people, and that was the Jews. But Jesus knew the grand plan, he knew what would happen when it came out that Jesus was proclaiming himself to be that very Messiah.

He knew that once the Jewish authorities realized what he was saying about himself, that it was only a matter of time before they killed him. He knew that now was not the time, so he told people not to publicize his work until he was ready. But in the Greek region, he was setting the groundwork for the Gospel coming to all nations, to all people. That’s why it was able to come to us.

John, early in his Gospel speaks to this, that Jesus came to the Jews first, to Israel first, and they did not receive him, Jesus them humbled himself even more, offering himself to the world. John 1:11-13 reads:

11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

 

Jesus tells us that as God’s children, we are to humble ourselves, we are to remember to humility of Jesus and the sacrifice, the price that the forgiveness of our sins cost. And we are to celebrate the new life, the eternal life with Him that has been given to us and secured for us.

 

 

 

 

 

Luke 8:26-39 Jesus is the Son of Man: Demon Possessed Man

Luke 8:26-39

Jesus is the Son of Man

Demon Possessed Man

 

All right, lets go ahead and turn in our Bibles to Luke chapter 8. IF you do not have a Bible or you know someone who needs one, please see me after the service and we can get one into your hands as our gift to you.

It is interesting to me, when we read through the Bible, there are parts that are more difficult to believe, more difficult to imagine, and like this week, more difficult to explain. Most of the time, what sections these are for each of us depends on our spiritual background, what church or religion we grew up in. It also depends on where we were born. For example, the story we will look at today, will be harder for those of us born in Western society to come to grips with than those who were not.

In the Western world, I see two main things that define the way we look at scriptures. Both will be address in this passage. First is that we tend to go to one of two extremes when it comes to Satan, demons and the spirit world.

According to C.S. Lewis, There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist and magician with the same delight.

The first extreme is that we give them not enough power. We dismiss demons, we dismiss Satan as if he doesn’t exist, he isn’t real. One of the greatest quotes, this is by an old poet and I was unable to find his name again so forgive me, but in one of his poems, he said, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” Scripture shows us that Demons, Satan, angels are real, they are real, they were real then, and they are real now. They also have power. They can influence people and things of this world.

The other extreme is that we give them too much power. Anything and everything that happens is because to the devil. We end up putting him almost on par with God. We think of them as two sides to the same coin. That God is the good God and Satan is the evil God. But again, going to what the scriptures say, Satan is not even close to the same level as God. He is a created being, falling under the authority of God, the creator. He will be defeated, and Jesus won’t break a sweat doing it.

The second thing that we tend to do in Western society when reading the scriptures is to make them about us. They are not. First and foremost, the scriptures are about Jesus, his power, his authority, his love for us, his death for us, his manhood and his godhood. Now, often there are secondary features of the stories in scriptures that we can apply to ourselves and our lives. But the most important thing to remember is that we and any application to our lives is secondary.

 

Before we get to this story, lets catch up with where we are coming from. Jesus has spent the whole day preaching and teaching and was naturally exhausted. He told the disciples that they were going across the lake instead of finding some place to sleep. During the boat ride, Jesus did sleep, at least until a huge storm came out of nowhere. The disciples woke Jesus up and he told the storm, literally, Be muzzled, and the wind and the waves were instantly calm. The disciples were afraid and asked, “Who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey his commands?”

So, we will go ahead and read this morning’s passage, Luke chapter 8, verses 26 through 39. I will be reading out of the English Standard Version. Please follow along and read in your preferred translation. Luke, inspired by the Holy Spirit records this passage:

Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes,[c] which is opposite Galilee. 27 When Jesus[d] had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” 29 For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.) 30 Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. 31 And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. 32 Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. 33 Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned.

34 When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country. 35 Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 36 And those who had seen it told them how the demon-possessed[e] man had been healed. 37 Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. 38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.

 

May God Bless the Reading of his Word.

 

 

SO, I struggled with that while preparing this sermon this week. This story is easy to repeat, easy to recount. The story itself is pretty straightforward. But I’m not the only one who struggles with this passage. RC Sproul, in his commentary of Marks Gospel on this same passage, says this: “I cannot help but ask a speculative question: Why did the Holy Spirit choose to inspire the Gospel records of this event? In other words, what value is there in this text for us?”

 

We are going to try to answer that question this morning.

 

So, Jesus finishes up an exhausting day of preaching and teaching, sleeps for a little bit on the boat, the disciples wonder about him and fear him, but he gets to the other side of the sea and steps of the boat and is instantly confronted with this man.

Essentially, Jesus, a Jew, walks into, possibly, the most unclean situation possible. This man was demon possessed, he had unclean spirits inside of him. He was a wild man. The people had tried to contain him, but he had unnatural strength. He was breaking the chains and shackles that the town had tried to use to control him. He was aggressive and when he was exiled to the tombs, he would take that aggression out on himself; self-mutilating himself with rocks and stones. In a word, the man was chaotic. He was also helpless and hopeless.

The people of the surrounding area couldn’t control him or tame him, so they exiled him to the tombs, which added another layer of uncleanness. The Israelites were not allowed to touch dead bodies, based on God’s commandments. In an effort to not even get close to that and to be even more Holy, or more safe from the accidents or temptations, their tradition was if you touched anything related to death, be it coffins, tombs, etc. that meant you were unclean. This man was living in the tombs.

This man was also a gentile, not a Jew. He was unclean from birth. He did not know the true God, even before the demons got a hold of him. And yet, he saw Jesus from far away and knew instantly who he was. He ran up to him and fell down before him. How did he know?

He knew because of the unclean spirit inside of him. The spirit knew exactly who Jesus was, the Son of the most High God. See, demons, fallen angels, whatever you call them, they know the scriptures. Their theology is solid. Angels, demons and Satan know the scriptures from Genesis through Revelations. They know that God is God and Jesus is the Son of God. They know they can’t win.

They fight and they try to destroy as much of Gods kingdom as possible, but they know how things will turn out and they show that here. Jesus tells the spirit to come out of the man, and the spirits throw the man on the ground, and start begging for mercy.

Why would you beg someone for mercy? Because they had the power and the opportunity to do something to you that you don’t want done. The power and opportunity to destroy you.  That’s what the unclean spirit is doing here.

It knows that Jesus has ultimate authority over him/it/whatever. It knows that Jesus can order it out of the man, and it has no choice but to obey. He thinks Jesus is coming for it and he begs that Jesus not to torment of them. Jesus then asks the name of the spirit. The response is “My name is Legion, for we are many.” As I was looking at this this week, I found that a Roman Legion can be anywhere from 3000 to 5600 to 6000 troops depending on what commentator and historian you ask. Ultimately it means, “A lot.”

This man has a lot of demons inside of him. He was out of control. He was hopeless and he was chaotic. The demons knew they were not long for this body, but they also knew that it was not time for the final judgment, the final battle, the moment when their ultimate defeat would occur. So, they asked Jesus for something. Since it was not the time for their destruction, but they had to leave that body, how about sending them into that heard of pigs over there?

Now the herd of pigs is another unclean aspect of this story. As you likely know, the pig is one of the unclean animals that God command the Jews not to eat, to touch or to have anything to do with. One of the things this is showing is that this further shows that we are not in Jewish territory anymore. We are in Gentile territory. And this man and these demons recognize who Jesus is. And they would rather be sent into a herd of pigs than to deal with anything else Jesus could do to them.

Now Jesus does a couple of things here. Number 1, he once again demonstrates his authority over the spirit world. He gives Legion permission to go into the pigs. The 2000 pigs then run over the cliff and drown themselves in the Sea of Galilee. They couldn’t do this without Jesus’ permission. If he had said no, they wouldn’t be able to do this.

Jesus is also showing the proper order of dominion. He is showing how important each and every one of us are to him. Jesus put people above animals. The soul, the body, the well-being of this possessed man meant far more in the kingdom of God than the herd of pigs. It was more loving, more merciful and more just to send the unclean spirits into the pigs and have the pigs drown than to allow this unclean gentile to continue to suffer. His redemption was more important than animals. Every human soul matters. Every human soul is created in the image of God and deserves to be thought of and treated as such.

Now the death of these two thousand pigs had some repercussions. The men that were in charge of these pigs ran off and told everyone what happened. Crowds came from the country and the city to see what happened for themselves. And what do they see? Notice that it doesn’t say anything about the sight of 2000 dead pigs floating in the sea. It doesn’t say anything about the money that the dead pigs cost their owners. It doesn’t say anything about the effect on the water supply that 2000 dead pigs would have.

No, what it says is that they saw was this man, if they even still considered him a man. This man who was running wild. This man who was terrorizing everybody he would see. This man that was breaking chains and shackles and beating himself with stones. They saw this man calm. The saw him dressed. They saw him sane. And it terrified them.

Showing you how bad this man had been, the sight of him in this new, calm, sane state was way more shocking than the sight of 2000 dead pigs floating in the see. This scared them more than any emotion or reaction about the dead pigs.

Jesus’ power is scary. This is second story in a row that the scriptures show us this. Last week, the disciples saw Jesus calm the wind and the waves and they were frightened. They were afraid because of the power of Jesus. The demons, Legion were afraid of Jesus power and would rather be sent off into a herd of pigs that end up drowning than face the wrath of Jesus.  Now here, this community, this town or whatever. They see that Jesus has transformed this man from the out of control, chaotic, wild, demon possessed man into this calm, well dressed rational man. And they were afraid.

I said this last week, but I think it bears repeating. The word here for fear is not the same word used in situations like Proverbs 9:10 or Psalm 111:10, which both say, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;” That word is along the lines of awe or reverence. No, the word here for afraid, means afraid or fear, or frightened. These men were scared of the power of Jesus. His power is scary. We are going to come back to that in a moment.

But first I want to finish this story. The people of this area were so scared they told Jesus to get back in the boat and go back across the sea. The man that Jesus had rescued, saved, changed, whatever word you want to use, the man ran up to Jesus and wanted to go with him. He wanted to learn from him, serve him, travel with him and be one of his followers and disciples. Now, what would be better than being a new believer and having Jesus standing right there… A chance to learn from the man that just transformed your soul. A chance to follow him and serve him. What would be better, more noble, wiser than that?

Jesus said No. Instead, what he said to the man was this, ““Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”  Jesus once again shows us that no matter how great our plans seem to be, no matter the motivations behind our plans to worship and serve the LORD, if that’s not what God has for us to do, it is wrong for us to do it. The same thing happened to Peter as well. At the transfiguration, Peter, James and John were with Jesus, and in addition to seeing the transfiguration, they also saw Moses and Elijah. In Matthew 17. Peter has an idea and says: And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” We don’t see any rebuke here or even Jesus’ answer, but we know that it’s a no. There are other plans that God has for the besides hanging out with the Messiah and the two greatest prophets of the Old Testament.

Jesus has better plans for us than anything that we could come up. The problem is that his plans can be scary. They can be hard. What would have been easier for this man to do. Get in the boat with Jesus, follow him like the rest of the disciples, or to stay where he was, to go back home to his family for the first time in who knows how long? The go and be able to have simple conversations with people he growled at and chased away, let alone telling that what the LORD did for him. To live day after day, knowing what he did to these people, terrorizing them and knowing that many of them didn’t trust that he had truly changed. Jesus’s way is the harder way. Matthew 7:13 & 14 read “13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy[a] that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

          Jesus’ way is hard, and it can be scary. His power is amazing. We see the stories here, written on paper, but they were real events, happening to real people, real miracles. Jesus, while he was here on earth, voluntarily limited the power that he accessed. He was still God, and he was able to do anything, but he limited himself to what God the Father sent him to do. And even with that, look at his power, that scared these people.

Do you get scared when you see God’s power? I know what most people will say. Not all, but most will say, “I’ve never seen God’s power work in that way.” I say that you have. If you are a child of God, you have seen it. Jesus transformed the man in this story from a demon possessed, ravaged man and he transformed him into a man who could reflect the image and glory of God, who could go out and show his friends, his family and those around him the mercy that God showed on him.

That is the power that scared these people. That is the power that he exhibited in you. You may not have had legion in you. But you and I were in the same spiritual and eternal condition that this man was, before Jesus transformed him. You have seen that power take place inside of you. And if you have seen that power, Jesus says to testify to that power. God is calling you to do something difficult. It will be accomplished with the power of Jesus, not through us. It will not be done in our comfort zone. It will be scary. It will be what God has called us to do.

If you have not witnessed that power of Jesus in your own life, in your own heart. You have the opportunity to see it. My guess, and that’s all it is, a guess, is that you are not filled with legion. But, as I said, you are in the same eternal condition as this man was. Jesus can change that. But it’s going to be scary and fulfilling and rewarding and incredible. It will not be like you see on TV, where you become a Christian and everything bad in your life goes away and things all fall into place and life is good. No, it will be hard. There will be spiritual warfare going on all around you. It’s not going to be “safe.”

CS Lewis addressed this in his book, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Aslan is the Christ character type in the book and one of the kids is going to be taken to him. The kid asks if Aslan, a lion, is safe. This is the response. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

          Jesus limited his own power as he was here on earth, now that he is ascended back into heaven, he has unlimited access to that power. If it was that scary then, how scary powerful is he know? If he is that powerful and that good, which side do you want to be on? The time to pick sides is now. It won’t be easy, but it will be right. It won’t be safe, but it will be good. Take this opportunity to see God’s power work in you for the first time, securing you eternal security. Take this opportunity to remind yourself of when God’s power worked in you, changing you what you were, to who you are now. And then listen to what God is telling you to do. And do it. He has you in his hands. Even if it’s scary and hard and dangerous, you are in his hands. If you are in his hands, you will be there for all eternity. He is not safe, but he is good.

I don’t know what specifically God has planned for you here and now in this life. I know that if you are Gods, I know what he has for you eternally, but I don’t know his specific plans for your life here and now. I do know that it will be scarry. It will push your boundaries. It will pull you out of your comfort zone. And it will be worth it.

 

Let’s Pray.

 

Luke 8:22-25 Jesus is the Son of Man: Jesus Calms the Storm

Luke 8:22-25

Jesus is the Son of Man

Jesus Calms the Storm

 

 

All right, lets go ahead and turn in our Bibles to Luke chapter 8. Luke Chapter 8, as we have seen and we will continue to see, has some of the most famous moments in Luke’s Gospel and in Jesus’ ministry overall. Today’s passage will be one of those as well.

 

Jesus has been going around, mostly in the region of Galilee, bringing the word of God, introducing the kingdom of God, and giving proofs that he is who he says he is. He is the Messiah that was promised throughout the Old Testament.

We just finished up, looking at some of Jesus parables. These parables lay the foundation for how to become a part of the Kingdom of God and what that should look like in our life. Jesus is going to return, over the next couple of passages to showing, once again, his authority over all of creation. Showing it in as many different manifestations as we could think of. We have seen and will continue to see that Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, does some teaching, then some practical, physical examples of his power and his authority. We just spent a few weeks looking at some teaching, some parables and whatnot and now we will spend a few weeks on some of his deeds and miracles.

So, let’s go ahead and read our passage for the week, Luke chapter 8, verses 22 through 25. As always, Ill be reading from the English Standard Version. I do encourage you to read and follow along in your preferred translation, whether that’s King James, NIV, NASB, New Living or any others. Ok, Luke chapter 8 verses 22-25, Luke, inspired by the Holy Spirit, writes:

One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So, they set out, 23 and as they sailed, he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. 24 And they went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. 25 He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, Jesus just finished up a long day of teaching and preaching. We know this from Marks Gospel, where, in Chapter 4, Mark records some of the same events as Luke chapter 8. Jesu told the parable of the soils and talked about not putting.

our light under a bushel. HE then says, At the end of that day, Jesus got into the boat…

 

So, he was tired. I can tell you from experience that preaching drains the energy from you. Jesus was tired. It was the end of the day, into the evening. Now instead of stopping, looking and finding a place to sleep and hunkering down for the night, he said, let’s go across to the other side of the lake.

On the other side of the lake from them, being in Galilee, was Garasenes in Decapolis, the Ten Cities. These cities were Gentile Roman instead of Jewish.

So, Jesus and the disciples were on their way over to Gerasenes and all of a sudden, a great storm came up. It came seemingly out of nowhere and the boat started to fill with water. This would not be a completely unexpected event in the Sea of Galilee. My Study bible notes: “The Sea of Galilee is 700 feet below sea level, thirteen miles long and eight miles wide. At its southern end is a deep, cliff lined valley. The wind tunneling through the surrounding hills and through this valley can whip the lake into sudden storms.”

          So, this would not have been completely unexpected on the disciple’s end. Storms came up and came through often. But we see from the disciple’s reaction, this storm was stronger, more violent than the normal storm. The waves were breaking the boat and the boat was filling with water. These men thought they were going to die.

Have you ever been in a near death experience? It can be terrifying. Now, again, some of you men have been soldiers, sailors, you have served in the military. Some of you have been in combat. That’s a near death situation. What happens? Your training kicks in and it helps get yourself out of that situation or survive it. For many of us, we have not gone through training like that for whatever our experience is. What happens for us? Any training we may have had, any faith in getting through it safely flies right out the window.

When we think we are about to die, without enough training, we freak out, we do illogical things, and we may do or say things we don’t really believe. What little training we do have abandons us. That’s what we see happen to the disciples here. They are freaking out and afraid they are going to die.

 

 

 

Where is Jesus during all this? He is sound asleep in the stern, snoring away. He is not worried about the storm. The disciples see this, and they lash out at Jesus, crying out, trying to wake him up, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” Marks Gospel shows them angry and frustrated with Jesus, saying, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

 

We can really see a lot of ourselves in the disciples if we are just willing to look. And not just the good things we want to see. Something happens to us. We lose our job, we get bad news from the doctor, we lose someone close to us, whatever it is. We look around and we see people living it up, people who are not following God succeeding and we are struggling, and we ask Do you not care?

This did not start with the disciples either. We see the prophet Habakkuk crying out the same sentiment. In Habakkuk 1:2-4, he looks around and cries out to God:

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not hear?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
and you will not save?
3 Why do you make me see iniquity,
and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
4 So the law is paralyzed,
and justice never goes forth.
For the wicked surround the righteous;
so justice goes forth perverted.

 

Habakkuk looks around and to his human eyes, it looks like God is just letting stuff happen, that he doesn’t care about those whom he loves, those who are living for him, in Habakkuk s Old Testament context, his chosen people.

The “storms of our life” cause us to wonder, to doubt, to forget. Now this story is partly about the storms in our life and how God will calm those storms, and get us through them, I’ll talk about that in a bit. Much more than that, this story is about a literal physical storm that threatened to kill the disciples. They woke Jesus up and he responded quite differently than the disciples. And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. 

We saw earlier that these storms could be whipped up out of nowhere, and I’m sure they could disappear quickly. But the wind doesn’t just cease. The waves don’t just stop rocking. They settle down, they wind down. That’s not what happens here. It says the wind ceased and there was a great calm. Jesus calmed this violent storm INSTANTLY. This is a bonafide, powerful, doesn’t happen in nature miracle.

So far, up to this point in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has shown he has authority to forgive sins. He has authority over the Sabbath. He has shown he has authority in his teaching in. He has shown his authority over demons. And now, Jesus shows his authority over nature itself. As one commentary stated, this was an example of Jesus binding the strong man and reclaiming his physical creation with his power.

Mark 4:39 says that Jesus said to the storm “Peace! Be still!” That translation helps show the calm and control that Jesus had in this situation. But a more accurate translation of those word in the original language would come out “Be Muzzled.” I like this translation a little bit better because it better shows the power and control over nature that Jesus exhibits here in this story.

Jesus turns and looks at the disciples and asks Why are you afraid, have you no faith? I picture Jesus here lying back down and going back to sleep, but it doesn’t tell us here. I don’t agree, but I like that one commentator said of this part, “Sometimes Jesus gets grumpy.” Sometimes people are grumpy when they are woken up from a nap.

Now most of the time, when this story gets told, we stop there, and we then apply it to our lives. We say things like, if we have enough faith, God will you get you through the storms of life.

While that is true, if we trust in God, he will bring us through our trials, our struggles and we will spend eternity at peace with him.

 

But that’s not what this story is showing.

The disciples did not have faith here. Looking at the text, they did not even ask Jesus to save them.

From their angle, they were trying to keep the boat from sinking and them drowning and Jesus is still asleep in the boat. They not only didn’t have faith in him saving them, but They also forgot how much he loved them, how much he cared for them. Their response was, don’t you care that we are going to die? The disciples forgot their faith and the forgot Jesus’ love for them. Maybe more accurately, they didn’t feel Jesus love at that moment.

That’s makes it a little more real, doesn’t it? A little more personal? Because we all go through these times. At times, Gods feels so close to us we can almost touch him. He speaks to us with crystal clear clarity. And other times we don’t feel that.  Sometimes, he has never felt further away. We are blinded and we see no evidence of his love for us, his mercy and his grace. We don’t feel him when we read his Word, we don’t feel him when we pray.

They key here is “feel”. We will have times when we don’t feel something that we know is true. Then, we can go back to God’s word and trust in that, what we know is true, as opposed to what we feel.

I did not have a moment of salvation where I fell on my knees and angles started singing and a light shone down on me. I didn’t have that one powerful moment. Because of that, as a new Christian, I often doubted my salvation. In fact, it didn’t end with just being a new Christian, this doubt followed through much of my growth and maturation as a believer. I FELT that because I didn’t have that Saul on the road to Damascus moment, that My salvation was not clear cut, or strong or as assured, or legit, or whatever. You name it and I felt it.

My Pastor and numerous other mature Christians counseled me on this and took me to the Bible. Did I believe that Jesus Christ was my LORD and my savior? Did I believe that he was God, and he was Man? Did I believe that he was born, died for my sins and rose again three days later?
One of the places they kept bringing me back to in the Bible was Romans 10 verses 9 & 10:

 

if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

 

Since I believed that and I confessed that, my assurance was not in whether I felt saved, but rather the truth of the scriptures.

That is what we need to remember during the storms when it feels like Jesus is nowhere to be found. Scripture tells us differently. One of the scriptures I always go back to is Joshua 1:9. God is telling Joshua, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

          We see in the New Testament as well, in Matthew 28, the last words that Matthew records Jesus saying: And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

          Even when we don’t feel him close, he is there. One of the most comforting attributes of God is that he is omnipresent. He is in all places, in all times, all at once. That means he can be with me right now; he can be with you right now. He can be with the underground church in China, right this very moment. He can be with Martin Luther while he is walking up to post his 95 theses on the door to strike the most blow in the reformation. He can be with Jesus and he is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. And he is in all those places and all those times at the same time.

He will never leave us; he will never be away from us. He will never not love us or not care what we are going through. In fact, Jesus knows what we are going through on a very real level. We saw earlier in Luke that Jesus was tempted by Satan out in the desert and that he was able to overcome that temptation. Hebrews 2 also tells us that Jesus was tempted and tells us why that was important. Hebrews 2:18 tells us:

 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last thing I want to show is that the Disciples didn’t respond to this miracle the way we tend to think they should have. Jesus calms the storm in an amazing miracle, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief and celebrates and maybe even worships him, right? Not quite…

V 25 says, and they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

They are still afraid, although now their fear has shifted. This man that they have been spending day and night with, for possibly up to two years, just stood up and yelled at the wind and the waves, and the wind and waves slinked away like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs.

And they ask, who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him! They have seen him, as we saw earlier, show his authority over all different areas and now, showing his authority over nature. The word for fear here is the one that is used often in the New Testament when Jesus is telling people around him to not be afraid. This is not the word we see talking about the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. That one is more of an awe-inspiring reverence. In this case, in the original language, fear means fear, or afraid.

But in that fear, the disciples ask a question. They ask Who is he? This is the question. If we take one think out of this story and this passage, it is for us to ask the question Who is this? Who is Jesus? Jesus himself would ask this question a few chapters down the line, asking the disciples, who do you say I am?

I don’t think it’s an over statement to say that this is the most important question we will ever ask. The most important question we will seek an answer too. A question that has eternal consequences.

See, if we look at the evidence, if we see who the bible says Jesus is. If we see the historical, the archeological, and the secular evidence of the reliability of scriptures, if we look at all that, we see a man who claimed to be God. We see a man who performed many, many miracles during his ministry. We see a man who was nailed to a cross and died. We see the Bible then tell us that this same man, a human being, rose from the dead three days later, proving that he was who he said he was: God.

We also see that the bible says that we have no ability or way to be in a right relationship with God, except through this Godman. If you accept the evidence, that Jesus Christ is fully man and that he is also fully God, then we are reconciled to Him and we get to spend eternity with him.

However, if our answer to that question, who is he? Is any other answer than that…? then we get to spend eternity separated from him, in what Matthew calls eternal punishment.

That is why this question, who is this? Who is Jesus Christ? That’s why this is the most important question you will answer in your life. It determines or fate for the rest of time.

Please, if you have not answered this question already, or if you have answered that he is not fully man and fully God, there is still time. Time to look at the evidence. Time to look at the world and what God has revealed to us. Time to believe and to say, Yes, Jesus Christ is the Messiah, is who the bible says he is and is who he says he is. Don’t dismiss the question. Seek an answer. Who is this? Who do you say he is?

 

Let’s Pray.

 

 

Luke 8:16-21 Jesus is the Son of God Hear and Do.

Luke 8:16-21

Jesus is the Son of God

Hear and Do.

 

 

All right! Let’s go ahead and turn in our Bibles to Luke chapter 8. IF you need a Bible, or if you know someone who needs a Bible, please see me after the service so we can get one into your hands.

Last week we looked at the parable of the 4 soils. And in that, we saw the four responses to the sowing the seeds of the Gospel. Once the Gospel is sown on good soil, once it is received and the hearer repents and believes in the Gospel, then a new life spring up. We see the scriptures say that with a life in Christ, good fruit will be produced.

The passage we are going to look at this morning, Jesus is going to look at some of the things that flow from that new heart. We are gong to see what it looks like in this new life in Christ.

Its important to know that this passage, the two briefs things that Luke is going to mention, they are immediately following what we looked at last week. Luke puts this immediately following the parable of the 4 soils and we have to make sure we don’t remove it form that context.  Jesus says during the parable last week, He who has ears, let him hear. And this week we will see that we are to both listen well, to rightly hear, and to put that into action, to obey what we hear.

So, with out further ado, lets go ahead and read this morning’s passage. We will be reading Luke chapter 8 verses 16 through 21. Ill be reading out of the English Standard Version, though I encourage you to read out of your preferred translation. Luke 8:16-21.

Luke, inspired by the Holy Spirit, records the following:

 

 “No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. 17 For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. 18 Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.

19 Then his mother and his brothers[b] came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” 21 But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”

 

God Bless the Reading of the Word.

 

So, after we have received the seed of the Gospel on good soil, we are changed.  We are new creations, as Paul puts it. The Holy Spirit sparks a light inside of us.

I love the way God describes this process in Ezekiel 36:26 & 27, where he says: And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.[a]

 

                God changes us from the inside out and he helps us to reflect Christ and his saving grace and forgiveness to the world around. Christ is the light of the world and we are to show that to all who come around us.

The lamps that are common in those days would be little more than long lasting candles, using oil instead of wax, but giving off not much more light than that. So, inside the houses, in order to get the most light, the most practical use out of it, people would make sure they were not covered or blocked in any way and elevate them, putting them high up so that the light that was given off would illuminate as much of the darkness as possible.

If we are to reflect the light of Christ, it would negate everything if we were to cover it up, or if we were to place it down, low to the ground. The purpose of light is both to be seen and to make everything else seen as well.

When we link this to the parable of the soils, we see that we have a clear and direct responsibility to sow good seed. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. There is no other way to be saved than to hear the word of od and respond to it. But we have a responsibility to share it in a way that people are able and willing to hear it. Sharing the Gospel, sharing Jesus Christ, sharing the good news of salvation always requires words. It always requires us to articulate the gospel. But our actions affect how people listen to us.

Paul Washer has a great quote I saw this week, he says: There is no way to preach the Gospel with your life. You can affirm the Gospel with your life, but you cannot preach the Gospel with your life. You can only preach the Gospel by opening up your mouth and speaking forth the Word of God.

 

          We are to live our lives according to the Word of God, loving the people and preaching the Word. In this we live our lives, shining light around us, living in a way that people are able to see, are willing to listen and have their hearts prepared to hear the Word of God. We are to make sure we make Jesus know and seen to all. Kent Hughes says that we are to shine the light in a way that those who hear it will be prepared for judgment day when all will be revealed.

Jesus says in verse 17, that all things that are hidden, all secrets that are held, all of it will be revealed in time. This has many layers of meaning to it. First, of course, is what we try to hide from each other, from ourselves and from God.

All that we hold inside of us, our sins, the state of our heart, the light inside us, and so much more, we may be able to temporarily, even temporally, succeed at keeping things hidden. But in the end, at the judgment, all things will be made known.

One of the keys to this as well, is that we can fool ourselves, hiding the truth from ourselves. Paul says in Romans that we suppress the truth in our unrighteousness.  We fool ourselves in regard to our standing in relation to the Gospel. I’ve shared this number many times but over 75% Of Americans consider themselves Christians. Many are wrong, thinking that their goodness or their lives will be good enough, or earn them enough favor with God to make it to heaven. Because we lie to ourselves, refuse to see our own sins. We tuck them away in the dark recesses of our hearts. We refuse to see them, until Christ shines his light on them.

This natural tendency and desire to cover up our sins goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. Their sin had massive implications and repercussions for us even today and they immediately tried to hide from God and cover themselves. But we also see how long they were able to hide. Not very. God knew where they were. What is done in the dark will be brought to the light.

 

RC Sproul also points out another way that the truth will be brought to the light. In addition to our heart, our deeds and our sins, the truth of Gods Word will be brought to the light. The truth of Gods Word is denigrated, laughed out, hated, disbelieved and critiqued away as unreliable truth at best.

But as scriptures says, in the end, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is LORD. The truth of Gods Word will be made known to every single person and every single soul. There will be no more unbelief, no more suppressing the truth. Unfortunately, too many will not have come to that realization in time. Too many will not know that there is grace, mercy and forgiveness even for their darkest moments, their darkest sins, their darkest actions and deeds, and will reach into the darkest corners of their heart.

 

Discernment is so important. So very important in many ways. This ties into our own standing before God but also how to have a right understanding of the teaching of God.

We, as followers of Christ, as believers, we are entrusted with the Gospel and all that that entails. This is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But this is also the teachings and the commands of Jesus as well.

IF we don’t rightly understand his teachings and his commands, then I don’t think we can rightly understand his Gospel. IF we don’t rightly understand his Gospel, then we have to wonder if we rightly understand or even have salvation.

Jesus says in verse 18, Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.”

 

          If we say we believe, it will be evidenced by our hearing correctly the teachings of Jesus and obeying them, bearing fruit, shining light in the darkness of the world around us. The more we do this, the more God will continue to grow us in him. Proverbs 9:9 says: Give instruction[b] to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.

 

If we think that we believe, but don’t shine that light, don’t hear correctly, then even what we think we have, in the end, will not be ours. The consequences for not being truthful with our selves and with the Word of God is that we will not receive the things that we thought we had, namely the gift of salvation.

 

Jesus Mother and brothers came to see him. It is not without importance to note that this text shows us that Jesus had brothers, he had siblings and Mary was not a virgin her whole life and her whole marriage.

 

 

We don’t know why or what was going on. We don’t know if there was something major going on with the family and they needed to get ahold if him immediately or if they were just looking to see him and spend time with him.

But what we do know from this text is that they wanted to see and speak to Jesus, but the crowd was too big, and he was too busy. But someone came and told Jesus that they were there, looking for him.

Jesus says my mother and my brothers are those who hear my Words and do them. Jesus tells his disciples “If you love me, follow my commands.” The point of it is this, if you hear and do Jesus Word, you are Jesus family.

 

Here is what this does not mean. This does not mean that you have to disassociate with any and all of your unbelieving family and friends. This does not mean that you can or should only associate with your church family. This does not mean that physical, blood family doesn’t matter.

What it means is that Gods call comes above everything else in this world.

What it means is that we, as a church family, we have a connection that binds us together, sometimes, even closer and even tighter than blood relation.

We can share and understand certain things, things like baptism, like certain spiritual growth and milestones, we can understand those better and deeper than unbelieving physical family.

To be a part of the Kingdom of God is to be a part of His family. Adopted. Loved.

And in that, our physical, blood relation family should see the light of the Kingdom of God shining off of us, shining out of us. They should be able to see the work of Christ, in our lives.

RC Sproul says: The Point that Jesus is making is simple. He was saying that the light that comes from the Word of God is truth, the truth that must never be hidden. We’re not to take the Word of God, as we understand it and it takes root in our hearts and put it under a cover or hide it under the bed. Rather, we are to put it in a place of prominence where it can be made manifest and where it can be seen clearly by all who are present.

 

          The Word of God needs to take preeminence in our lives. The Word of God needs to be front and foremost. This is the very Word of God. These are the Words of Jesus. These are how we learn more about him and how we learn how to live according to his will.

Psalm 1 and Joshua chapter 1, among other places all exhort us to meditate on his Word day and night. Hearing the Word, believing in it, thinking on it, doing it. Do all things as unto the LORD.

I will finish with the words of one preacher who tells us, like James that we are to be doers of the Word, not hearers only. He says:

But hearing is worthless if it does not result in doing. Attention to Gods Word must be coupled with a willingness to do it, or the truth of it will fade.

          Has Gods Word impressed on you that you must forgive? Then do it!

          Has Gods Word impressed on you that you must confess a wrongdoing? Do it!

          Has Gods Word impressed on you that you must apologize? So, Do it!

          Has Gods Word impressed on you that you must speak the truth regardless of the consequences? Then do it!

          Has Gods Word impressed on you that you must discontinue a certain practice? Do it!

          Has Gods Word impressed on you that you must make a gift? Do it!

          Has Gods Word impressed on you that you must bear witness to an acquaintance? Do it today if you can!

          Has Gods Word impressed on you that you must leave all to serve him? Do it!

          Or if you realize that you are a soil other than the good soil, repent and believe without delay! Ask God to put eternal life in your soul today and to produce the fruit of the spirit abundantly in your life.

 

Let’s Pray