We’re going to be turning in the gospel again to Luke chapter 9 tonight. You’ve probably heard it said before that “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” And as we get older, we fall into more of a sedentary lifestyle, our muscles may begin to atrophy and we become more prone to injury and aches and pains and all those sorts of things. It can all happen to the very best of us. I’m sure many of us have experienced that already. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
Well the same thing can happen in the Christian life as well. It can happen in the church. If we neglect certain aspects of our spiritual lives, or if we dismiss important parts of our calling in Christ, then we will atrophy and our spiritual lives will suffer and the church will struggle and we will fail to bring the honor that Christ’s name deserves as we follow Him. So tonight as we look again at the gospel of Luke, we’ll continue our way through this account of Jesus’ life and ministry. And we’re picking up the story in chapter 9 – and it’s found on page 867 in your pew Bibles – and we’re beginning a new section in this gospel. The first few chapters, if you will remember, were all about Jesus’ arrival – the birth and the coming of Christ, the Savior. And then starting in chapter 4, we saw that Jesus began His ministry outright. He called disciples to Himself and He went out and He attracted the crowds because of His teaching and His miracles. And really the climax of that section of the Gospel, the opening section of Luke’s gospel came in chapter 9 when Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ of God. And then Jesus went up and was transfigured on the mountain.
But now things begin to change. Things begin to turn. In the next section of this story, which really begins in chapter 9 verse 51, and it runs all the way to Luke chapter 19, we’re going to see that Jesus sets His face to go to Jerusalem. And as He sets His face to go to Jerusalem, He is going to meet much more opposition along the way and His teaching, His message takes on an even greater sense of urgency as He makes His way to Jerusalem to face His rejection and ultimately His death. So this section of Luke’s gospel is also called, “the travel narrative.” As we trace Jesus’ steps on His way to Jerusalem, we’ll find out that the main focus of these chapters is the kingdom of God. But what we’re told about the kingdom of God, it can be challenging. It may even be unsettling because the kingdom of God is not like the kingdom of this world. And if we are a part of the kingdom of God, then we’re not supposed to be static; we’re not supposed to atrophy. We’re called to be on the move. We’re called to be engaged for the sake of God’s kingdom and for the sake of Christ’s name.
And so our goal for the next several weeks will be to read and to study this, then the next few chapters of Luke’s gospel, with a particular focus on evangelism, on engaging others with the Gospel, on sharing our faith with others. Now most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, if we would admit it, we’re not very good at that. We may even admit that we don’t really want to do it. But we can’t afford to lose that part of the Christian life. We can’t afford for that to drop out of our life together in Christ as a member of His Church. So tonight we are going to begin by asking ourselves really just a simple question. “Where are the places in our lives, where are the times in our schedules that allow for us to meaningfully engage with unbelievers?” As we look to answer that question, we’ll see two things from this passage. One, is where Jesus goes. And then two, what Jesus calls us to do. Where Jesus goes and what He calls us to do.
Before we read this portion of God’s Word, let’s ask His blessing on it. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we make it our prayer tonight, “Come Thou fount of every blessing.” Every blessing comes from You. We give You thanks for the blessing of Your Word, for the blessing of Your Son Jesus, for the blessing of salvation, and for the blessing of the Holy Spirit. We pray now that Your Spirit would illumine Your Word, that You would help us to understand and to apply Your Word to our lives, that we would be faithful in all that we do to serve You and to make Christ known. And we pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Luke chapter 9, starting in verse 37:
“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.
An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side and said to them, ‘Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.’
John answered, ‘Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.’
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ But he turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village.
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Yet another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Where Jesus Goes
You may not have noticed it, but this passage begins with a thud because the verses right before this were like a glimpse of heaven. If you remember back in verse 29, Jesus was on the mountaintop and His face was altered, His clothing became dazzling white, and Moses and Elijah appeared there with Him in glory and there came this voice out of the cloud that said, “This is My Son, My Chosen One. Listen to Him!” It was this incredible moment of glory unveiled before them and a fellowship and encouragement. And then the very next day, the first thing that Jesus meets is this man whose son is afflicted with an unclean spirit and His disciples are not able to do anything about it. You see, Jesus came down from the mountain, and as He came down from the mountain He was immediately greeted with a reminder of what life is like in a fallen world. He didn’t stay on the Mount of Transfiguration. No, He came down to the crowds and He came down to their problems and to the problems of His own disciples.
Now we want to be careful with how we treat the disciples in this section. Some of you may remember those caricature t-shirts from the 80s and 90s that had some of the best athletes of the day on the front of the t-shirt. I loved those t-shirts. It was Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Daryl Strawberry. It just has a certain sense of nostalgia about what I loved about sports in the 80s and 90s. Those are long gone. But they were a caricature. And what a caricature does is it accentuates or accents certain features of a person while letting others sort of diminish and doesn’t call as much attention to them. We can easily caricature what the disciples are like. And sometimes we are really hard on them and we emphasize their blunders and their misunderstandings while missing and discounting what they actually did right. It’s not the whole picture. They had moments of remarkable clarity about Jesus and there were incredible demonstrations of Jesus’ power through them. We saw that earlier in Luke chapter 9. It’s just that this isn’t one of those times. And what we see in this section, in these verses, is that Jesus’ disciples seem to stumble from one mistake to the other.
And the first thing that we see is this father who has his son. He begs the disciples to heal his son. It’s his only son. He has a demon that is destroying him and the disciples are not able to cast out the demon. And when Jesus hears about that He says, “O faithless and twisted generation! How long am I to be with you and to bear with you?” You see, Jesus is disturbed, He is distressed, not only by the effects of sin that He sees in this boy’s life but also by His disciples and their failure to carry out the commission that He had given to them back in Luke chapter 9 verse 1. If you look in that verse it says that He called the Twelve together and “gave them power and authority over demons and to cure diseases.” In verse 6 it says, “They departed and went through the villages preaching the Gospel and healing everywhere.” So Jesus gave them the power and the authority to do this, to cast out demons, to heal those who are afflicted in this way, and yet here we are in this section and this occasion and for whatever reason they can’t do it. They are at a loss somehow.
And then the next thing that we see is that Jesus makes a prediction about His death. This is the second time He has done something like this in this Gospel. He says in verse 44, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” His disciples didn’t understand what He was talking about. They didn’t get it. They were afraid to ask Him what He meant by those things. And so here we have this picture of the disciples and their inability to heal and their uncertainty as to what Jesus is talking about and then right following up on that – what do they do? They have an argument amongst themselves over which one of them is the greatest. Now it’s one thing to be ineffective and uncertain, but then to actually argue about which one is the greatest, it almost sounds like a joke because it’s so absurd that that would be their argument after already having these two failures.
And what does Jesus do? He takes a child, brings him to His side and says, “Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.” And He is saying to His disciples that greatness isn’t what they think it is. Greatness isn’t what they want it to be. No, greatness in the kingdom of God is all about humility. And then Jesus goes on and He corrects their understanding of exclusivity. They want to think that they have a monopoly on Jesus’ authority. There’s almost a sense of denominationalism that’s going on with the disciples in this regard. In verse 50, Jesus says to them, “The one who is not against you is for you.” These are all different things, blunders of the disciples as Jesus comes down the mountain, this is the thing that greets Him as He comes down.
There is a danger if we focus too much on the disciples and on their mistakes and on their failures. And it is that we miss what this passage is teaching us about Jesus and about the kingdom. And so just to be clear, what’s on display here in this passage is the majesty of God in Jesus. And what’s on display is His path to glory that goes through the cross and the humility and the reach of God’s kingdom. But at the same time, what is on display here in this passage are the limitations and the errors of Jesus’ disciples. And as a whole, the portrait that we get of His disciples here in these verses and throughout this Gospel, you see, it’s not flat. It’s not one dimensional. No, it’s realistic. It’s a realistic portrayal of who these men were. They’re human. They’re flawed. They fluctuate from one extreme to the other. In other words, they’re people. They’re people like us. And yet what do we notice about this? It’s that Jesus uses people like them. Jesus uses people like us who are flawed and who fluctuate from one extreme to the other. Jesus uses imperfect, inconsistent and unlikely people and He does that to carry out His mission, to carry out His kingdom mission. If that’s true of the disciples, it’s true of us as well. And praise God that that’s the case.
And yet it’s not like the disciples’ mistakes were just when Jesus came down from the mountain. They kept on going as they made their way down the road. And where is the next place that they went? They went to a village of the Samaritans, verse 52 tells us. And if you remember back in the early parts of Luke’s gospel, the early parts of Jesus’ ministry were focused on Galilee. Many of them took place in the villages and the towns of Galilee. Now Galilee was Jewish territory. Galilee was the place of Jesus’ own people. But that’s not true of Samaria. Samaria was unfamiliar territory. Samaria was the place that Jews avoided going at almost all costs. Jesus was actually breaking custom by going to a Samaritan village. And not only was it unfamiliar territory; it was unwelcoming territory. You notice in verse 53 it says that the people “did not receive Him.” Jesus was rejected by the Samaritans in this case. And what did James and John want to do? They wanted to call down fire to consume the Samaritans because of their rejection of Jesus in this visit. But Jesus won’t have it. He won’t have any of it. He rebukes them and He simply went ahead to the next village, probably going to another village of the Samaritans. So where does Jesus go? Jesus goes down from the mountain and He goes to the Samaritans.
A few weeks ago, our family drove through Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. And I had never been there before and didn’t really know what I was seeing as we drove through the streets of Pigeon Forge. It was like a strange dream in some ways! And one of the places that we saw was the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Show. And according to the description, it says it is “a homestyle dinner feast followed by a farcical musical review with dancing and comedy.” The description says that “there is something for everybody” and in all caps – “IT’S ALL YOU CAN EAT!” Now I didn’t realize that was what my vacation was missing, but the question I wanted to ask is – “Do they realize, have they forgotten that the Hatfield and McCoy feud involved fighting and theft and divorce and murder and prison sentences?” It’s not exactly the material for a comedy dinner theater.
And that was the case with the Jews and the Samaritans as well because the relationship, the conflict between the Jews and the Samaritans, there was prejudice and hostility; there was religious disputes and sometimes there was open violence that erupted between the Jews and the Samaritans. As far as the Jews were concerned, the Samaritans were the enemies; not just their enemies, they were the enemies of God. What they deserved was exactly what James and John wanted them to receive – fire coming down from heaven to consume them. They were outside the plan of God. They were not worthy of God’s blessing. But where does Jesus go? Jesus goes to the Samaritans. He went to the idolaters. He went to the religious outsiders. He went to them even though they rejected Him and did not receive Him. The reason they did not receive Him was because His face was set to go to Jerusalem, verse 53.
And when it says that Jesus was headed to Jerusalem it’s saying a lot more than just telling us a place from His travel itinerary. It’s more like what we would say when we say that someone is “dreaming about going to LA” or they “had their sights on going to DC.” What does that mean? We know what that means. It means that they are dreaming about a career in the movies, being a star in the movies or having a role in politics. Those places are associated with certain aspects of life. Well Jesus is not just going to visit Jerusalem. In fact, over the next ten or eleven chapters, as Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem He may actually visit Jerusalem a few different times. Some gospel harmonizations place some of His visits to Jerusalem multiple times in this journey to Jerusalem.
You see, Jesus on His way to Jerusalem, it represents something bigger. It means that He is on His way to the cross. He is going to be rejected and He is going to die, to be raised on the third day and then to ascend into heaven. And Jesus has set His face in that direction. In fact, some other translations say that He “steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” or He “resolutely set His face to go to Jerusalem.” That phrase, it’s an Old Testament expression; it’s a Hebrew phrase that indicates the strength and the resolve of someone’s decision. One scholar says that “to turn one’s face in a particular direction is to declare the firm intention of following this course without deviation.” And that this phrase right here in Luke’s gospel is showing us something about how significant this is in salvation history of this section where Jesus is beginning this journey from Galilee down the mountain to the Samaritans on His way to Jerusalem. Jesus is making His way to Jerusalem and nothing will cause Him to change His course. It is a course and it is a mission that will come face to face with despair and with unbelief. It will include those, it will incorporate those who are inconsistent and unreliable and undependable. He will go to the lost and He will go to the unwelcoming. He will experience unimaginable suffering and pain and agony and ultimately He will sacrifice His own life. But that’s the way of the Gospel and that is the way of God’s kingdom. That’s where Jesus is going.
What Jesus Calls Us to Do
Now what does He call us to do? He calls us to follow Him. There are plenty of excuses that we could make for following Jesus into difficult places like He goes in this passage. They may be really decent and respectable reasons that we could give – that we have bills to pay, we have mouths to feed, there are certain things that we need like food and clothing and shelter, we have responsibilities to care for the needs of our families. But even those things, even those things can start to crowd out our devotion and our commitment to follow Jesus wholeheartedly.
We had a dinner recently with some friends and someone asked the question, “What about your life now would have been a surprise to you 20 years ago?” And we all had different answers about things that have, changes in us that we didn’t see coming, but basically all of our answers kind of boiled down to the fact that we are all more high maintenance than we were 20 years ago. And there are things about our lives that require more for our comfort than our self-care. I’m not sure that that’s a good thing. And yet that can happen to us as a church as well, can’t it? We can become more focused on our own preferences and our efforts can be all about maintaining what’s already here, what already exists, and yet the call to follow Jesus is the call to follow Him when it’s uncomfortable and when it’s costly.
And these three encounters here that Jesus has at the end of chapter 9, they are all about following Him. They are all about the call to follow Jesus. The obstacles that these people put up in the way of following Jesus, they’re legitimate; they are legitimate concerns. They are about having a place to lay your head. They are about taking care of parents. They are about saying goodbye to loved ones. But personal comfort and close relationships can easily become excuses for staying put and for not participating in the work of God’s kingdom. What Jesus calls for is for us to follow Him sacrificially. He’s calling for us to give up material possessions and personal comfort. He is calling for us to follow Him immediately, to do it right now, and He’s calling for us to do it decisively. There’s no turning back; there’s no looking back or turning aside.
I was reading a book the other day, it’s a book of letters from a pastor to different people that he came across throughout his ministry. And in one of these letters, it was a letter written to a missionary couple that was serving in Uganda. And the pastor wrote how he was praying for this couple; he was praying for them in their language studies, in their own preaching and teaching that was going on in the church, and also just for their whole way of life. And then he said this. He said, “Believe me, this is no easy battle. You will find in the world of Uganda as in the world here in the States, getting by is the dominant tone. Some things merit only getting by, but don’t give into it as the rule. Always try to be daring but not in a hurry.”
You see, when our focus is on getting by or keeping up, what happens? We become complacent and we stay put. We atrophy. But Jesus is calling us to something different. Jesus is calling us to follow Him. And that means being on the move. That means going to those in need of salvation. And I wonder if we have a place for that in our lives or is all of our time spent with family obligations and church activities? Do we have margins in our schedules to interact meaningfully with those who are different from us, with those who believe differently than we do, to those who disagree with us? Are we taking the time and the effort to engage people who need Jesus? Look for where Jesus goes and look at what Jesus calls us to do. Let’s be intentional. Let’s be intentional to get to know our neighbors and our coworkers and our waiters and our classmates or whoever we come in contact with in day-to-day life. And let’s take our earbuds out of our ears and look up from our phones and let’s pay attention to who they are and what they need. Let’s be ready to go where Jesus calls us to go even if it’s uncomfortable, maybe especially if it’s uncomfortable.
And for now, that’s it. That’s all I want to say tonight. Just that – notice who it is around us who needs the Gospel. I’m not talking about having a Gospel presentation ready to go. I’m not talking about even handing them a track. I’m not really even talking about saying anything at all at first. I’m just talking about getting out of our bubbles and having a kingdom mentality and noticing those around us who need the Gospel. I heard a missionary say to me one time that if you would pray at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, at the beginning of the day, “Lord, show me someone who needs the Gospel,” at the end of the day, “Lord, show me who I missed that needs the Gospel” – if we would pray in that way, that God would give us eyes to see those to whom God gives us an opportunity to build relationships, Gospel relationships, I think God will answer that prayer. Sharing our faith will come soon enough, but it will not happen if we are not spending time with people who need to hear it.
Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem. He did that for us. He did that for you and me. He went to the cross to die, to give His life and to be raised again to forgive us from our sins to bring us into relationship with Him, to bring us into His kingdom. He did it for us. But not just for us. He did it for everyone who trusts in Him for salvation. And so this passage is an invitation for us to join Jesus in His mission and to do that today. And you know as we come to this Table tonight, this Table is an invitation. It’s an invitation for us to remember and to enjoy again the blessings of communion with God and communion with one another – those things that Jesus has given to us as we trust in Him for salvation. But it’s not meant to be kept to ourselves. It’s meant to be shared. It’s communion. So let’s set our faces to the people to whom Jesus calls us to go.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, as we come to the Lord’s Table we give You thanks and praise for the blessings that You have given to us in Your Word preached and the Word visible before us. We ask that by Your Spirit You would give us ears to hear, give us hearts to understand, give us minds that know what You have to say to us and apply it to our lives and give us the strength, the ability, the opportunities to carry those things out in obedience to You, for Your glory and by Your grace. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.