Luke 6:17-19
Let us hear from God’s word.
This is Luke’s gospel, chapter six, beginning at verse 17. Speaking
of Jesus, it says, and he came down with them and he stood on
a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great
multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast
of Tyre and Sidon who came to hear him and to be healed of
their diseases. And those who were troubled with
unclean spirits were cured and all the crowd sought to touch
him for power came out from him and healed them all. Let us pray
together. Lord, your word is a lamp to
our feet. It is a light to our path. If it were not for your
word, we would not be instructed in your law. We would not know
your character. We would not know of your actions
on our behalf, your promises that are all yes and amen in
Christ. And without your word, we would
be left in this world to fight against the world without your
word, to be in a fight with the devil without Christ. And we
would for sure be fighting against our own flesh without the help
of your spirit. And so we give you thanks that
in days gone by, you gave it to holy men of old to write down
the sacred things that would help your church live by your
word and not the ways of the world. You wrote down your holy
word in order that we would follow Christ and not Satan. And you
gave us these, your scriptures, so that we could know how to
live by the spirit’s power. and not according to our flesh,
the sin that remains in us, that is indeed pardoned, pardoned
forever. It is subdued, but we fight against
it daily until we make it safely home and are glorified, and we
will sin no more. Lord, let your word do its work.
Curious, we pray Jesus, of our diseases, spiritual, and even
physical, that we might serve you without fear in this world,
having been redeemed and having realized that you delight to
save us, that we might serve you. Help us, we ask in the name
of Christ, amen. A couple of years ago, our family
was returning home from the beach. And for us, when we come in from
the South, we like to use the University Drive exit. make our
way to Church Street down Edgewood and then back home. And as we
pulled off the exit near the car dealership that is there,
the Toyota dealership, we noticed a rather large tent with a rather
large crowd. And as we drove by this thing
and saw this site, we sort of knew we’re from the South. This
was some kind of revival. So we rolled down our windows
and we listened. We looked for the sawdust, as
it were, to rise in the air. We wanted to see this site. And as many of you know, that
first summer this tent was here, it lasted for months. It went
on and on. It was in the paper often. Some
of you may have snuck a peek or visited. People were fascinated
by the tent. They were fascinated so much
so that nightly the place was filled because something was
taking place. If you rode by in the passing
weeks, you saw that there were church buses, church vans from
not just the surrounding area, but really the entire Southeast. There was some kind of revival
taking place. It was a wonder to many of us.
We wanted to know what was happening in that tent. Well, this event
we’re about to read about and talk about for a few moments
in the life of Jesus would have been newsworthy. It would have
made the headlines of the Jerusalem Times, the Galilean Daily, the
Nazareth Post, whatever papers you can imagine they might’ve
had had they had them, these would have been events that were
reported. Well, this sermon title today
is maybe the headline that would have been in the paper. People
from everywhere healed of everything. Remember that in our passage
It’s linked to where we have been in recent weeks in Luke.
Jesus, having been accused and attacked and followed around
and nitpicked, if you will, by the Pharisees, has recently gone
up on the mountain with the Lord in prayer. And for a night he
spent in prayer, he asked the Lord to give him 12 apostles.
He came down, he chose those 12 from among, and now they have
gathered their first Tent meeting, you might say, but it’s it’s
not a tent meeting. It’s a sermon on the plane. In Matthew’s gospel, it’s the
sermon on the mount. But Jesus is standing in a level
place. He’s with his apostles. His disciples
have gathered and crowds have come from the north and the south,
the east and the west. People from everywhere have come
to be healed of everything. And so in the next few weeks,
as we hear a little bit of Jesus sermons, we’ll see that Jesus
is going to preach and teach about the values of his kingdom,
the values of his new covenant, the values of his church, the
people of God. But in today’s episode, today’s
couple of verses, we see two things take place. People come
to hear Jesus. and people come to be healed
by the Lord Jesus. Let’s take a look at these two
parts of the story if we can. The first thing we learn in this
passage is that people come to hear Jesus. Our passage says
Jesus came down with the 12 apostles. He stood on a level place with
a great crowd of his disciples, a great multitude of people from
all Judea and Jerusalem. from the seacoast of Tyre and
Sidon, they came to hear him. If we were to put up a placard
on the front lawn, if we were to put one of our banners out
that we do, we were to change our ad in the newspaper, we were
to send a batch of mailings to all the houses in the 27215 zip
code, and we were to put on that placard, we were to make in our
announcement, Something to the effect that at first ARP Church
on thus and such a Sunday, the Lord Jesus Christ himself will
be preaching. Don’t you think people would
show up? Don’t you think we may have a reporter from the Times
News? Wouldn’t you think we would draw skeptics? We would draw Seekers, as they
call them, we would draw other Christians who wanted to hear
the voice of Jesus. Well, that’s sort of what’s happened. It’s announced that Jesus of
Nazareth, Jesus, the Lord of all, the King of kings, has come
into the Judean countryside. And he is, he’s here to preach. He’s here to proclaim with his
voice, his word, his wisdom, his rule, his good. What is right? What is true? There’s a sense
where we need to think about that each week. I heard a very
good radio presentation by a minister this week, and he said something
like this. He said, as Christians, we need
to realize that when we gather with the people of God in our
church, some gather with thousands, some gather with hundreds, Some
gather with 10s and 12s and 14s or 30s and 50s. We need to realize
the spiritual reality that exists. We need to realize, and you hear
this sometimes in my opening prayer, we gather today as the
people of God together with those around the world who call on
the name of Jesus. It’s not just 2250 Saddle Club
Road, First ARP Worshiping today. It’s everyone who calls on the
name of Jesus in America, in Zimbabwe, in Venezuela, in Mexico,
in England, in Scotland, in Wales, in Russia, in China, in North
Korea, South Korea. Many of us under pristine worship
conditions, some under severe persecution. And we gather also
together. with those whose spirits have
been made perfect, who gather night and day around the throne
of glory, worshiping almighty God. We worship with our spouses
who’ve gone before us. We worship with our loved ones
who’ve been in heaven a bit longer. We worship with Abraham, with
Isaac, with Jacob, with Noah, with Martin Luther, with John
Calvin. We worship with the Wesley brothers. We worship with the great hymn
writers, All who had faith in Jesus. And so when we sit here
in our assembly, the world may look on us and say, what a weak
little bunch. Your church isn’t big. Your church
isn’t much. Oh, but if they had spiritual
eyes to see, they would be like. It’s one of the kings of Israel
who looked beyond the armies of Sennacherib. And he saw the
whole host of heaven with their swords drawn. And he realized
the battle, the battle is not mine. The battle is the Lord’s.
And he saw into the spiritual realities that took place. And oh, if we sat here week after
week, And we said, look at the thousands. Now look at the millions. Look at possibly the billions
of unnumbered saints with whom we worship together. And Jesus
is in our midst and he is the one speaking. He is the one speaking
to us. It’s not the preacher. It’s not the celebrity. It’s Jesus speaking through his
ministers from his throne of glory. He rules and he reigns
in his church. through his ministers and through
his elders, and we are but servants.” Well, that reality is a wonderful
thing to think of, but go back to this plane. Go back to this
flat place in the Judean countryside where the crowds had been pressing
in on Jesus. Remember, they had been pressing
in on Jesus so much so that a paralytic who needed healing had to be
let down through the roof. People had been coming to hear
the voice of Jesus. Jesus says in his own words,
if you read through the first couple of chapters of Luke, he
says, I must preach the good news. I must preach the kingdom.
I was sent for this purpose. Today’s scripture, he says, in
the synagogue at Nazareth is fulfilled in your midst as he
opens the scroll, as he explains the scripture. I was sent for
this purpose, to be a light for revelation, to be a guide to
your feet in the way of peace. I was appointed for the rise
and fall of many. I know the thoughts of the hearts
of the people. And so we see Jesus proclaiming
good news, teaching in the synagogues. He was proclaiming liberty to
the captive, sight to the blind. And he was speaking of liberty
to those who were oppressed. Dear friends, in our passage
today, a great crowd has gathered from all over to hear Jesus.
You’ve gathered today to hear the voice of Christ. We understand
from the Apostle Paul in Romans that faith comes by hearing. And so it ought to be a great
priority in our lives. It ought to be a great priority
for the ministry of the church to make sure the voice of Jesus
is loud and clear. To make sure we’re in the crowd,
to make sure we open our Bibles, to make sure that we proclaim
the message of Jesus. What a wonderful gift it is to
hear Christ. And dear friends, we still hear
his voice. Yes, he is up in heaven, but he has gathered you and he
has gathered you through the ministry of the word and spirit
into his church, and where today, from his throne of glory, he
gathers his people and speaks to his people through the ministry
of the church. People also came, though, to
be healed. They came to be healed by Jesus. They came to hear, but they came
to be healed. And I wonder about some of us.
Have we ever been so sick, so absolutely sick, that we wished
for healing? This past fall, I woke up one
morning with a twitch in my back or my neck and it was one of
those, you know, you think. Give it a day or two, give it
a night or two on the hot pad, give it a few rounds of ibuprofen,
a few, you know, stretches and twists and all, it’ll go away.
Well, it went on and on and about two weeks in, no sleeping at
night, excruciating pain that was so bad that it would, it
would light up your entire body. You would stand up in the middle
of the night in the bedroom and, and you would really just beg
the Lord, take this pain away. I can’t take it. I can’t move.
I can’t sleep. I can’t function during the day.
really makes you think about others who suffer chronically. I went to a little rehab. I went
to a few appointments and they took care of it. It was gone.
Thank the Lord for that. But what about the person who
has cancer and their treatments don’t lick it? What about the
person whose backache has gone on 30 years? What about the person
whose heart condition cannot be cured? What about the person
whose illness, whose disease, whose physical sickness is so
difficult that nothing in this world, in this medically and
technologically wonderful world can help it. You need the touch
of the Lord Jesus Christ to heal our cancer, to heal our pain,
to remove our disease from us. And we would say with all our
hearts, wouldn’t we, take me to Jesus. Take me to Christ,
let him touch me. Let me like that woman in the
passage of scripture, touch the hem of his garment and let the
power from him come into me and heal me and make me well. Well, the ministry of Jesus is.
is one of turning back the darkness. He comes as we sing in that Christmas
hymn, joy to the world. He comes to make his blessings
flow as far as the curse is found. And he’s come to speak, to preach,
to proclaim, and we hear him, the good news of salvation, but
he came to heal. He came to touch bodies broken
by sin. He came to fix what the fall
ruined. He came to turn back the darkness.
And so we want to be taken to Jesus. We want him to touch us. We want him to rebuke our disease
and to heal us. Excuse me. We’ve seen in our study of Luke
that he’s given sight to the blind. He has rebuked leprosy
and Senate packing. healed the paralytic and commanded
that they take up their bed. He’s taken men with withered
hands and healed them. He’s making, he’s taken those
with unclean demons and he’s cast them out of them. His touch,
his rebuke, his commands have healed people. You know, you watch the, You
watch the evening news, maybe you’re in the car on the way
somewhere, you listen to the radio and you hear of our opioid
crisis. Opioid addiction, that’s the
worst thing going in America now. You hear about drug addictions,
pornography addictions, nicotine addictions, and heaven help many
of us who think it’s not a problem, our sugar addictions. Jesus can
touch those as well. Anything that we have, any problem,
any curse from the fall, Jesus can touch and he can heal. You know, there’s a passage in
James and it’s not one that we think of much in the scripture.
I can remember on Wednesday nights as a kid, we had prayer meeting.
We were a little church, maybe 150, 200 at times, but on Wednesday
nights at prayer meeting, 70, 80, 90 people would come out. straight from work, hadn’t had
supper yet, they’d come to prayer meeting. And at the end of our
time of prayer, we’d break up in groups and pray in groups
of six or eight. We’d come back for about the
last 10 minutes, and the elders would stand in front of the congregation.
One of the elders would get a little bottle of oil, and anyone who
that night had come sick could come in faith to the elders.
They would lay their hands on them and anoint them with oil.
It’s right out of the book of James. If any one of you is sick,
let them call on the elders, let them pray and anoint you
with oil. That’s a lost, it’s really a
lost means of grace in the church, isn’t it? We get sick and we
run straight to the doctor and that’s great. God has made men
and women in his image to know medicine and bodies and they
are skilled and that’s their task. but we can come to Jesus. And we can come to Jesus by calling
the elders to gather around us and to pray for us and to ask
for his blessing. Dear friends, we live in a world
that is bound up in sin. It is bound up in the curse of
almighty God. It’s broken our bodies and it’s
broken our souls. And we need desperately to come
hear Jesus and to come be healed by Jesus. And where does that
take place? It takes place in his church. Let us pray together. Our Lord
and God, we give you thanks that when you left this earth and
you ascended into heaven and took your seat in glory at the
throne of almighty God, you did not leave your people without
help. You sent your Holy Spirit You
left your apostles. Holy men of old wrote down the
scriptures. We have copies of them in our
laps today. You gave us ministers. You gave
us elders. You gave us deacons. You gave
us the company of saints. You’ve not left us. You’ve left
us in good hands. And so help us by faith to trust
the church. Word preached is hearing the
voice of Jesus and that the ministry of prayer by the elders is the
healing ministry of Jesus. Lord, we know life won’t be perfect.
We know that we’ll get sick, we’ll have our ailments, we’ll
even die, but we will be made whole in heaven. We long for
that day, but until then, may we let the church take care of
us. It’s the hands of Christ. Let
us believe that. Let us make full use of it. We
ask and pray in Jesus name. Amen. Let us respond to God’s
word as we sing together from our hymnal, 433 Amazing Grace. Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound, that saved a wretch like me. Let us raise that tone, my heart
to Thee, and praise Thee.