Jesus Really is the Point

Luke 9:37–45 ESV

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 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. And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 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. And all were astonished at the majesty of God. But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, so that they might not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

Introduction:

Have you ever had one of those amazing spiritual mountaintop experiences? You know, the kind where you are part of something God is doing or showing you in the Word and you just know in your bones that everything will be different now?

Then you get home from that experience or you go talk to family and something immediately happens that reminds you of all the darkness and sin in the world? That must have been the feeling in this experience for at least the three disciples that had been with Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration. The next day, they come down and are greeted with a crowd and a father crying out for help. Today’s passage sandwiched right between the transfiguration, a display of Jesus’ glory and the testimony of the Father about Jesus and our passage is followed by the 12 arguing about which of them is the greatest. The darkening over the whole chapter is Jesus turning toward Jerusalem where He would be betrayed and die for sinners.

_Main Idea to argue: Jesus is who He says He is, so we should trust Him to work and win._

Luke writes what he writes so that we will have certainty about who Jesus is and what He has done. Up till now, Luke has given us a bit of a sketch of who Jesus is and who His people, the church are to be. As we walk through chapter 9 we are seeing more and more and the sketch is getting colored in. By the end of next week we will have a very clear picture of Jesus and the church. It’s been really cool to see how God brought all of this together in His Word. With that, let’s turn to point number one: Jesus truly triumphs.

I. Jesus truly triumphs. (v. 37-43a)

The scripture tells us this was the next day after Jesus’ transfiguration. So He, James, John, and Peter and have come down from the mountain. They’re met by a big crowd. There’s a father int he crowd with an only child who is being tormented by an evil spirit. The spirit means harm to the son of this man. He asks Jesus to look at his son. He tells Jesus that he had begged the disciples to cast it out but they were not able to. Jesus responds to this in verse 41.

Luke 9:41 ESV

Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.”

The demon is terrified of Jesus. He throws the boy down and convulses him. We’ve seen this before. We saw back in Luke chapter 8 that the demons there begged Jesus not to send them into the abyss. If you’ll recall, they begged to go into a herd of pigs.

James 2:19 ESV

You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!

The readers of this gospel account, us, just heard the account of Jesus’ glory radiating from within Him on the mount. Then He comes down the mountain and we have this juxtaposition of the glory on the mountain and the darkness here in this boy. Then this glory, that causes the demons to shudder, this power is displayed by casting them out and healing the boy. The disciples couldn’t but Jesus could.

My favorite band is U2. Yesterday I was listening to one of their albums and their song, “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”, came on. I thought these words were fitting.

“Tough You think you've got the stuff You're telling me and anyone You're hard enough

You don't have to put up a fight You don't have to always be right Let me take some of the punches For you tonight

Listen to me now I need to let you know You don't have to go it alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror And it's you when I don't pick up the phone Sometimes you can't make it on your own”

There are some things in the Christian life that we just have to admit we can not do. There is no manifesting anything. Believing something hard enough doesn’t mean you can do it. You can’t make some things happen. This can be a difficult truth for some people to believe. Also true is the fact that it is not safe to do anything in our own strength. Going out and trying things in our own power, apart from the power of God is dangerous. Our triumph over Jesus is not won by us but it is won by Jesus. It is not ultimately our victory but it is His victory. Too much emphasis is made in some churches about us overcoming. My issue isn’t with the overcoming but it’s with the focus on US. The only reason, listen to me well here, the only reason that we can do anything for the Lord that truly matters is by the power of Jesus and because of the victory that Jesus won on an old rugged cross and an empty tomb.

The father’s desperation is met by Jesus’ compassion. The man cried out and Jesus answered. He rebuked the evil spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.

Jesus restored this father and son to one another. Jesus still restores families by the gospel. It’s not the point of this passage. But we can see that He can and does restore.

The point of the exorcism here is not that we can trust Christ so we can cast out demons. That doesn’t happen that frequently. The point is not the miracle or the show. The point is that we can trust God to do all of the spiritual work that only He can do. That means both healing and restoring, but also revealing and saving.

The people were astonished at the majesty of God. His gradeur, His impressiveness, His glory displayed here against the backdrop of darkness was amazing to them.

For the people, who are amazed by what they have seen, the miracle is the point. But not to Jesus.

Jesus uses His triumph over the evil spirit to point to His coming ETERNAL TRIUMPH.

Jesus stays steadily focused on His mission. He defeats distraction.

II. Jesus defeats distraction. (v. 43b-44)

I like looking out the window at the world around me when I’m driving somewhere. This is especially true when driving somewhere new. As it turns out, if you are driving and you look in a direction, you have a tendency to drive or drift in that direction. Maybe you have experienced that. Keeping your eye on the road is important. I heard comedian Tim Hawkins once say he was driving one day and saw a woman drinking coffee, doing her makeup, and fixing her hair while driving. He said she almost ran him off the road and he almost spilled his bowl of cereal.

In Jesus’ earthly mission He was steadfastly focused on His mission. He kept His eye on the road so to speak.

Jesus is the classic example of keeping the main thing, the main thing. He avoided distraction. Let me tell you, there was plenty of distraction around Him. He stayed on mission.

Luke 9:43–44 ESV

And all were astonished at the majesty of God. But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.”

So the people are all marveling at what Jesus was doing and He takes the opportunity to once again point to the fact that His goal is to be betrayed and die at the hands of men. The temptation for the 12 would be to sit around and marvel at what Jesus had done and miss out on what He was about to do. Distraction is easy. It comes at us from every angle. It tries to get us to focus our lives on the wrong thing. Distraction would try to get us as a church to focus on the process or the programs, rather than on Christ Himself and His mission. Distraction would try to steal our focus from the cross and the empty tomb. As marvelous and majestic as the people thought God was and how amazing they thought what Jesus was doing was, their would be another contrast… from the glory on the mountain, to the darkness of the demonic possession of the boy, to the the glory of casting it out, to the darkness of Him being betrayed, to the glory of what that would mean for His followers, even though they didn’t understand it.

If the gospel mission was the main point for Jesus, shouldn’t it be the main point for us as well?

Don’t get so distracted by amazing things that you get to where you’re looking for those things and you miss the Creator of the Universe standing right in front of you.

Again, the miracle isn’t the point, the worker of the miracle is the point. The point is the source of the power, not the power itself.

DON’T GET DISTRACTED. Don’t let unbelief in who Jesus is and what He has done and can do distract you.

In this passage we see unbelief and Jesus’ response to it.

III. Jesus undoes unbelief. (v.41-45)

In Ligon Duncan’s exposition of this passage, he points out that this passage is a battle of unbelief. And while “it’s specific to the circumstances that are going on in Jesus’ life and ministry” … “there are things for us to learn about right here and now about our lives and the battle of unbelief from this passage because it’s God’s Word and it’s inerrant and it’s infallible and it is given to us for our edification.”

The unbelief of the disciples grieved Jesus, hence His response to them.

He calls them a faithless and twisted generation.

Why?

They lived, as we do, in a fallen world. This is put in stark relief when they come down from their mountaintop experience of the transfiguration and immediately are back in the mess of ministry to sick and hurting sinners. This was the most usual way Jesus and the 12 would have spent their time. It’s also how we spend our days, down in the muck of a fallen world. We’re oft to forget that this is the norm and not the mountaintop. There’s a temptation to not actually trust in the sovereignty of God when we see the darkness all around us seemingly winning.

The disciples were displaying unbelief in what Jesus had told them in verse 1.

Luke 9:1 ESV

And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases,

He had given them this authority over demons and they weren’t believing it.

How about you - Do you believe that God has the power to deal with whatever you are going through right now? Do you believe God is sovereign over it all? Or are you tempted to question whether God is good and whether He is going to use this for good?

Romans 8:28 ESV

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

This is a promise for Christians. Everything that happens in your life, God is purposing for good. Even trouble that comes, God is purposing for good.

If you’ve been reading through us with the Bible Recap plan, we recently finished Genesis with the story of Joseph. He went through a lot of ups and a whole lot of downs in his life. His brothers sold him off into slavery. He ended up in Egypt where he got accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison for two years. Eventually he gets released and elevated to second in command of Egypt and orchestrates the survival of the people of Israel though a famine. His words to his brothers after this reflect the very point I’m making:

Genesis 50:20 ESV

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

The question before us everyday that we live in this fallen world, is do we believe that God is sovereign and He is indeed over our troubles? If we say, yes. Then we should be looking for what we can learn from what we go through. Will our lives be characterized with trusting in God or will they be characterized by unbelief?

Philip Ryken says,

“This is one of the mistakes that most Christians make. We say we believe in God, but do we trust him to do what only he can do? All too often we try to serve him in our own strength, as the disciples did, and then nothing happens, or at least nothing that demonstrates the majesty of God.” - Philip Ryken

In the corresponding passage in Mark, the boy’s father says to Jesus,

Mark 9:24 ESV

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

The outgrowth of unbelief is that they didn’t understand what Jesus was saying.

Luke 9:45 ESV

But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, so that they might not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

They didn’t understand so that they would not perceive. This is a strange statement.

One commentator I read pointed out that the quadruple negative in this verse is emphatic.

He had predicted His death before but it just didn’t make sense to them. They knew He was the Messiah, but they didn’t understand that the Messiah’s mission was to suffer and die as a substitute for sinners. They had seen the marvelous power of Jesus and couldn’t fathom that someone like that would die, particularly in such a weak way as to be turned over to men. Jesus is showing them about His upcoming sacrifice and instead of asking questions, they turned their eyes away from the cross.

And we do the same thing. We may say the cross is the center of our worship time but are we keeping it the center of our daily walk with Christ, our daily discipleship? Earlier in this same chapter Jesus called His followers to go with him all the way to the cross. Luke 9:23

Luke 9:23 ESV

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Our lives should be filled with the love for others and sacrifice there in that shows we serve the crucified and risen Christ, our Savior.

We stand by faith in Christ. This is how we escape from being part of an unbelieving and perverse generation. Unbelief is defeated by Christ through faith in Christ.

Ephesians 6:10–13 ESV

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

Conclusion:

Pray for God to reveal His truth to the hearts of ppl around you. Specific people.

Then talk about Jesus with them.

Believe Jesus can restore your family by His power.

Pray against your own ignorance.

Pray against your own unbelief. Help my unbelief.

Trust even when you don’t understand.