Luke 9:37-43
Our reading from God’s word today
is Luke chapter 9, verses 37 to 43. Luke chapter 9, beginning at
verse 37, let us hear God’s word together. Speaking of the next
day after the transfiguration, it says this 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. Behold, a spirit seizes him and
he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams
at the mouth and it shatters him and will hardly leave him.
And I beg 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 to 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. He healed the boy and gave him
back to his father. And all were astonished at the
majesty of God. Let us pray together. Almighty
God, we sit under your word this day, it speaks to us, it judges
us, it comforts us, it builds us up in our faith, and it gives
us great courage that we may fight against Satan, that we
might struggle against our own flesh and remaining sin, and
it gives us great help when the world and its many voices attempt
to gain our allegiance and our worship. So we thank you for
this gift and we pray now that by your spirit, your word would
grow us in grace, strengthen our faith, and that it would
save the souls of those who are lost. And we pray all of this
in the name of Jesus, amen. The famous painter named Raphael,
It’s always good to be famous just by your first name, isn’t
it? But the famous painter, Raphael, his last work of art was a painting
that showed the mountain of transfiguration and then what was taking place
below. And what Raphael paints or depicts
in his painting is a picture of the way Luke frames the life
and ministry of Jesus. We understand that there are
a handful of gospels in our Bibles. We call them the synoptic gospels,
which simply means seeing alike. We know that in Matthew, Mark
and Luke, but not John, Matthew, Mark and Luke, the three synoptics,
we know that there are Similar passages in each of the gospels. We know that some include stories
that others do not. We understand that there are
things excluded things included. There’s a little bit of variance.
One of the great resources I have on my desk is a. It’s a Holman
Christian Standard Bible back a few weeks ago, months ago,
when LifeWay was closing down. I cruised through the aisles
to see what was cheap. And this Holman Christian Standard book,
it’s a thin coffee table type book. It has all the Gospels
laid out with the passages that are similar, the passages that
are different. And it has a wonderful little
note on what those differences are. But Luke, Luke gives for
us. in his account, a little different
account than what Matthew and Mark give. And the reason he
does this is he wants to create a juxtaposition, a compare and
contrast, as it were, between what took place on the mountain
of transfiguration, say on a Tuesday, And then what took place down
below on earth the next day, say on a Wednesday. We don’t
know if it was Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. We don’t know. I’m
just making the example. But Raphael, the painter in his
last work of art catches this. Down below, there is darkness.
Down below, there’s a father and his son in the crowds. And
there’s great anguish because this little boy is suffering
from great difficulty. And no one can help him. But
in the top half of the picture, you’ll see the brightness of
the transfiguration, the brightness of the glory of Almighty God
as he is present with his son, the Lord Jesus, the Christ, the
Messiah. And he’s there with Moses. He’s
there with Elijah and there Peter, James and John are with him on
the mountain. And so there’s this great contrast
of darkness below and light above. But what Luke wants us to see
is that it’s the same Jesus, the same Jesus who is exalted
on the mountain is the same Jesus who is exalted on earth. He is
the same Christ who, when we put our faith and our hope in
him, he can save us. We see Jesus majesty for sure
on the mountain of transfiguration. But we also see his majesty when
he comes down the mountain and he encounters sin. He encounters
great hardship. So what does this passage teach
us? It teaches us a couple of things. The first is this. It
teaches us that we live in a sin sick world. We live in a sin
sick world that is suffering under the curses of Genesis chapter
three, when Adam and Eve transgressed the law of Almighty God and God
placed curses on this world. Remember, he told Satan that
he would crawl on his belly. He told Adam that his work would
be difficult. that the earth would not bear
forth fruit as easily as it had before. And he told Eve that
there would be trouble in marriage and trouble in bearing children. He also promised to all of them
that there would be this cosmic and continuous battle between
the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. But one
day the seed of the woman would crush the head of the seed of
the serpent. But we live in a sin-filled world.
If you do a little Walmart sociology or Target sociology or Alamance
Crossing sociology, you might call it, go shopping, go people
watching, sit in the waiting room at the emergency room at
the hospital, go into a restaurant and watch people, do a little
sociological study, if you will. And you will notice that across
age, across politics, across socioeconomics, across every
branch or division we may place on humanity, we all live in a
sin-sick world. And we all live in a sin-sick
world that needs the majesty of Jesus to come into the midst
of us and to preach good news of salvation and to help us as
we live in this sin-sick world. In this passage, the sin sickness
is on display. There’s a helpless crowd. There’s
a father who is desperate for his only son, his heir, most
likely, to be healed. There’s this little boy, and
by all modern day medical accounts, he’s an epileptic. This boy is
seized by a spirit. He cries out, he convulses, he
foams at the mouth, our passage says, and it shatters him And
this wicked spirit hardly leaves him alone. And he has the medical
diagnosis of epilepsy, but he has the spiritual diagnosis of
having a demon in him. And only Jesus, only Jesus is
able to heal him. We live in a sin sick world,
do we not? We have aches and pains. We have struggles. Wake
up every day knowing what we face and what those curses of
living in this world are. Yes, we have glories. Yes, we
have triumphs. Yes, we have the hope of heaven,
but cancer cells spread. And so on, dollars disappear. We see corruption in the world.
We see wickedness on the nightly news and on and on we can go.
We live in a sin sick world. And in the midst of this sin
sick world, what do we see? Well, we see secondly, some wobbly
need disciples. I mean, Jesus is up on the mountain
having the time of his life. Peter, James and John are there
with him. God is affirming Jesus. Peter, James and John witnessed
this wonderful sight. But down below, down on the mountain,
down in the dark portion of Raphael’s painting, as it were, we see
the church, we see the body of God’s people. And as we look
around the church, as for sure the disciples could do in their
day and every church and every generation could do. We see around
us the brokenness of sin. We see around us the hardships
of living in this fallen world. And you know, it comes to my
mind as I think of this passage and what it teaches us is you
as members of the church, you as disciples of Jesus who are
human beings made in God’s image, broken image by sin and fall,
but being redeemed by Jesus, you entrust yourself to the church
just as people in those days entrusted themselves to the disciples. And here the disciples were wobbly
need leaders at that. But we as the elders of the church
face the very same situation as these disciples. You all are
sick. You all face death and hardship and discouragement.
The world and the flesh and the devil come in and wreak havoc
in your lives. We could do no better as elders
of the church or spread it out a little more as members of the
congregation, as you minister to one another, we could do no
better than to take you to the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ. This year I’ve been a minister
16 years, and I can’t tell you how many times in those 16 years,
and then you add the years before that as a pastoral intern or
doing clinical pastoral chaplaincy work in the hospitals in Charlotte,
how many times you walk into a room and you see people hopeless,
the cancer’s back. This is a disease that’s not
treatable. Dear friend, you’re gonna die
before long. You see parents after an awful
car wreck and one of their child is not going to be normal again.
They won’t have an athletic career. Or you see all the brokenness
and hardship of the hospital room or the sick bed. And as Christians sometime in
2019, we can pat people on the head sometimes and say, it’s
going to be all right. You’ve got good health insurance.
Or we can pat the wife of a dying husband on the head and say,
it’s going to be OK. He’s got his life policy paid up. Or thank God
for HMOs. Or thank God that his benefits
were paid up. Or we even go so far as to look
at the oncologist or the heart surgeon as our saviors. And we
live down here like these disciples were. We live down here as if
God cannot help. And we rely solely on dollars
and checkbooks and HMOs and surgeons. And yes, God does put all those
things in our paths and he does use them. But dear friends, we
should take everyone straight to Jesus. Straight to the majesty
of almighty God, because at the foot of the cross, at the throne
of grace, at the sight of his majesty, he speaks his gospel. He speaks his words of healing. And he can make the sin sick
soul well. And so it’s a good lesson for
us as we see these weak knee disciples who could not help
this little boy and for sure could not help the father. We
need to be a people. Whether it be pastors or elders
or members of the church, whoever we are, when we see sin sick
souls facing the struggles of this world, we don’t pat them
on the head and say, hope you got your blue cross paid up.
No, we take them straight to Jesus, straight to the foot of
the cross and straight to the throne of grace. For in Christ
is their only hope. We don’t want to be found flat
footed. We don’t want to be found faithless
and wobbly need like the disciples. There’s a third thing this passage
teaches us. Yes, we live in a sin sick world. Yes, we can be wobbly
need disciples. But the third thing this passage
shows us is that we have a perfectly able savior. Now, can you imagine
Jesus coming down on the mountain from glory? Having been affirmed
by the Father, having visited with Moses and Elijah, having
been treated most gloriously by his Father to encourage him
on his continued mission as the Christ, as the Messiah, as the
Savior. And he comes back down the mountain
from this marvelous event, the glorious light. And what does
he see? He sees 9 of the 12. Nine that
he’s prayed for night and day, nine that he’s entrusted with
the gospel, nine that have previously been sent out and been able to
heal and cast out demons and proclaim the great name of the
Lord Jesus. But here he comes down the hill
and he finds them faithless. In fact, he finds them in such
a spot. He proclaims, oh, faithless and twisted generation, how long
am I to be with you and to bear with you? Bring the son here
to me. We have a perfectly able savior,
but he’s frustrated. He’s frustrated at sin. He’s
frustrated at the fall and the curses of this world. And he’s
frustrated at a generation who does not seem to get who he is. and what he is capable of doing.
And friends, that’s the type of generation we don’t want to
be as a church, isn’t it? Would we want Jesus to stand
in our midst and take a gander around and say, oh, you twisted,
you faithless generation. You rely on the works of your
hands. You rely on the works of the hands of others. And yet
your faith in me is found wanting. This is why week after week,
we confess our faith. We use the creeds of the church.
This is why week after week, we read the Bible, we sing the
Bible, we pray the Bible. It’s why we meet together midweek.
It’s why we do Bible studies, because we are, in a sense, well,
put it this way, we’re eating our Wheaties. And you know what
happens when you eat your Wheaties, you get your vitamins, you get
your strength, you get yourself fortified for, well, the athletic
event that’s before us. And we know the Christian life,
according to the Apostle Paul, is often given in the form of
an athletic way of life. We’re running a race, we’re boxing,
we’re fighting the good fight, we’re finishing the race. Dear
friends, we need to be fortified in the person and the work of
Jesus. We need to continually have a glimpse of the majesty
of Christ so that we don’t begin to live down here in the darkness.
And therefore, then live in the down here resources, which in
the case of this little boy, leave him in sickness, leave
him under the power of the demon, leave him to a distressed father
who is afraid that he will lose his only son. And so here we
see a perfect savior who is able and he’s frustrated, yes, but
he He calls the boy to himself as the boy is being brought.
Satan gives one last punch, as it were. He throws the boy down
and Jesus rebukes the spirit. He heals the boy and he gives
him back to the father. There’s a picture of Jesus we
saw last week up on the mountain of transfiguration. Yes, he was
glorious. Yes, he was portrayed in his
splendor and his majesty. But now we see the majesty of
Jesus, the teacher. the healer and the savior. Isn’t it amazing what good art
can do for us? If you were to visit the church,
I believe in France, where this painting is, and you were to
study this passage and study Raphael’s interpretation, wouldn’t
you come to the same conclusion as he? That up there, there’s
so much glory. Up there, there’s so much majesty.
Up there, there’s so much promise in Jesus. But down here, we get
forgetful. Down here, we lose sight of Jesus. Down here, we believe we’ve run
plum out of resources. And yet the same Jesus who is
majestic on the mountain is the same Jesus who is majestic in
the trenches and in the ditches, in the emergency rooms, in the
hospital beds and in the hardships of almighty God. We’re so oriented
to down here. We see the sin and the fall and
the curses and we shrug and we say, that’s just how life is. I mentioned to you earlier, throughout
being a minister, I’ve been in lots of hospital rooms, lots
of sick beds. And you know, the most common
expression of church people is when things bring them hardship,
is they say, I don’t know what to do next. Or they say something
like this. Que sera, sera, whatever will
be, will be. And the church, for some reason
in the modern world, has taught people that Jesus is up here.
But he’s not down here. And so when tragedies take place,
like I’m sure many of you have seen on the news, you’ll get
Christians who get on the TV and they’ll say something like
this. God is up here. And the sinsick world is down
here. And yes, God sees it. He knows it from afar, but it’s
not his plan. It’s not his design. Dear friends,
God is absolutely sovereign, and if he can shine above in
his majesty, he can shine below. We’ve just got to run to that
majesty. We should never be a people who shrug at sin and curses and
hardship and say, well, that’s just the way it is. Because there
is something greater to come, there is something greater to
come in Jesus display of his majesty up on the mountain. And
his displays of his majesty down the mountain as he heals and
cast out demons and returns a father’s son to him. They are glimpses
of the second coming where the Bible tells us Jesus will come
in his glory. He will come in his glory. Every
eye will see him and all that is wrong with the world will
be made right. And we don’t have to wait until
then. Now, Jesus promises that he is in this world beginning
to make all things new. And he started with those who
come to him by faith. He’s made you a new creation
in Jesus. And yes, you may get sick. Yes,
evil may befall you, but you’re marching your way to the heavenly
city. That’s the eternal goal. And
that’s the great promise of the gospel. So, dear brothers and
sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ, you may be looking down. You
may be looking in the darkness. You may be looking for human
answers on this earth. And Jesus is telling us in this
passage, you need to look up and see my majesty. It never
goes away. He may be up in heaven. He may
be at the right hand of God, the father almighty, but his
majesty is able perfectly to accomplish all his holy ends.
And so don’t be weak need. Don’t be wobbly need. but have
faith in the one who has shown us his glory. Let us pray together. Our great God, we thank you for
your word to us and we pray that we would not lose sight of the
Lord Jesus, his person, his work, his promises. These things are
precious to us and we often forget them. So remind us by your word
and spirit this day, strengthen us most especially now in your
sacrament that we might walk the Pilgrim way Not with weak
knees and wobbly and feebly, but in strength as we press on
and as we keep the faith. And we ask all this in the glorious
name of Jesus. And it’s in his name we pray.
Amen. We want to respond to God’s goodness
and prepare for the Lord’s Supper by seeing number 487 sometimes
a light.