Luke 9:37-45 The Struggle to Believe

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Pastor Mike Abendroth, Luke 9:37-45 The Struggle to Believe

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Well, there are some things in life that are simply difficult to believe.
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Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia. If you tried a new variety of an apple every day, it would take you more than 20 years to try them all.
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Cotton candy was invented by a dentist. That's difficult to believe, but true.
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I just looked over and I saw a Mark Kranz, so here's one for you. There are more possible iterations of a game of chess than there are atoms in the known universe.
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Look up the Shannon number. The remains of the inventor of the
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Pringles can are in a Pringles can. There are more confirmed deaths from drowning in molasses than from coyote attacks.
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21 people died in the 1919 Boston molasses disaster, and only two from coyotes.
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And then lastly, cats can be allergic to people. It's difficult to believe.
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In the philosophical area of life, it's difficult to think that we're not the center of the universe.
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It's difficult to think philosophically that we would die one day. Emotionally, it's hard and difficult to believe that we're not as good as we think we are, that we can't fix people, and that one day in a generation or two, no one will remember us.
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Those are some difficult things to believe. But today we're going to address this. When you're in a trial or a difficult circumstance, it's sometimes difficult to remember that Jesus is powerful and compassionate.
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You're in a vice grip of a trial and you think, you know, where's God? Does he know? Does he care?
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Is he powerful enough to re -extract me from this problem? And is he compassionate? So if you have a
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Bible today, turn to the Gospel of Jesus according to Luke. We just read in Proverbs 15 that good news refreshes the bones.
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Literally, good news makes your bones fat. And so I hope to fatten you all up today with the good news from the
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Gospel. Luke chapter 9, trusting Jesus in difficult times. Eyes on Jesus, his power and his compassion and more.
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From his sovereignty to his omniscience, and he knows everything, eyes on Jesus.
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Now we know that to come into the kingdom, God grants us faith and we believe, sola fide, faith alone.
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We don't have any works or merit or bring anything to the table. It's all faith. We're thinking about the object of our faith.
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And that's right, justification by faith alone. You believe. But Christians don't stop believing.
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Christians don't say, well I believe to get into the kingdom and now there's no more faith. We continue to walk by faith and not by sight.
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So we're going to talk about that a lot today. How we keep believing even in difficult times, in trying times, in hard times.
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We're saved by faith alone and yet we keep believing. Until that day, there'll be no more belief.
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And that day is called glory because you don't have to believe in something when you see that person, the
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Lord Jesus, face to face. Trusting Jesus in difficult times. By the way,
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I think some of the kids at VBS got journals to take notes. Did anybody bring a journal today to take notes?
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Some got them but didn't bring them. Okay, that's alright. I had a hundred bucks to give you if you did.
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The Gospel of Jesus according to Luke is an account. It's a genre of literature that's kind of like a biography but it's a little bit different.
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It's a theological biography, maybe we could call it that. It's the account of Jesus. And there's
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Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, four different people from different angles taking a look at the work of Jesus.
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And Matthew, for instance, wants to promote Jesus as King, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Certainly Luke and Mark know that but there's a special spotlight on that topic in Matthew.
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Mark, for instance, wants to have us understand that Jesus is a servant, that He's a suffering servant from Isaiah.
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And of course, Luke and John and other books, Gospel books, they address that as well but there's not that highlight there.
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John wants us to highlight on Jesus this great I Am and His miracles. And Luke wants us to make sure that we've got the right
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Jesus. That Jesus the God -man is understood properly because your life depends on it.
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Your eternal life depends on it. My eternal existence, can you imagine every person that's ever been born will live forever.
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And they'll either live paying for their own sins or live worshipping the one that paid for their sins, the
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Lord Jesus. And so it's important to have the right Jesus. When I went to my grandmother's house, she had a picture of Jesus and I had just,
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I was a brand new convert and probably overzealous. But we got in a big argument and she said, well
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Mormons believe in Jesus too. And I probably just should have been kinder and said it in a nicer way.
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But I said, but they believe the wrong Jesus. You know, just because your name's Jesus, it doesn't mean it's the right
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Jesus. So who is the right Jesus? Who is the Jesus that I need to trust in to make it to heaven, to have my sins paid for, to have
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God forgive me? So that's what Luke is doing. Luke is a doctor and systematically, weekly, chapter by chapter, he's just painting this picture, here's who
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Jesus is. This is the right Jesus. It doesn't work to say, well my
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Jesus doesn't have any hatred for sin. Well your Jesus is just made up. This is the only
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Jesus with whom we have to do and so we want to make sure that we're trusting in this Jesus. And as we said earlier, as we first trust
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Him, we keep trusting Him because we'll look at passages like this today and we'll go, who does that? Who acts like that?
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Who's so kind and wise and powerful and sovereign? This is amazing. I've never met anyone like this, nor will
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I ever. This has to be the right Messiah. Lord help me keep trusting in You.
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Now he said to the disciples, to have a little catch up here to put everything in context, in chapter 9 verses 23 and following, he told the disciples, really the cost of discipleship.
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What is it going to cost you disciples and every other disciple to follow Jesus? What's it going to cost?
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God saves you by sovereign grace. He makes you born again. You're a Christian. And now, he says,
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I want you to understand that it's going to be a life that looks a lot like mine, Jesus would say, a life of suffering, self -denial.
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And so he said in verse 23, if anyone would come after me, Jesus talking, let him deny himself, not deny things or products or fish or food or anything like that.
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Deny himself, say no to self so you can say yes to Jesus and take up his cross daily. That's an instrument of death, public execution.
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Be willing to die for the Lord Jesus and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
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For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
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And so the disciples hear that. And now Jesus goes from denying self to a little glimpse of would it be worth it.
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If I were to say to you, whatever trial you're in now or you just came out of or will be in, if I could for five seconds transport you to heaven to show you what glory is going to be, either when the
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Lord returns or when you die, for five seconds of glory, I wonder if that would get you through your trial. Ten seconds of just seeing what heaven must be like, glory,
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Shekinah, a full just radiant beams brighter than lightning and you just think this is glory and of course is
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Jesus the Lord of glory in the center of it all. I think we'd say yes, one little glimpse of heaven would help me get through this.
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So what does Jesus do as disciples? The transfiguration, when Jesus shows his deity burst forth through his humanity, he says, by the way, here's a little preview of coming attractions, here's a preview of coming attractions.
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Do you ever notice if, if you watch a preview, a movie trailer, first of all,
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I watched the movie trailer and think that's going to be a great movie because they're tricking me. They're only playing the good things.
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Nobody watches a trailer and says, that's awful. Well, maybe Halloween 10 or something, maybe you'd say that.
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That wasn't in my notes. But you watch the preview and you go, I watched the movie and it doesn't, it doesn't satisfy.
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It's almost false advertising. Not here though. This moment of glory that Jesus shows himself transfigures, it says in our text, we'll look at just a second, his face was altered.
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What an understatement. It's going to be worth it. That preview is going to match the glorification.
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So what Jesus does is he says, let me just show you a preview.
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And of course you see the passage in Luke 9, verse 29,
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Jesus was praying, his face was altered. His clothing became dazzling white. I mean, can you imagine that on the mountain?
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It's nighttime. It just bled up. And behold, two men were talking with him.
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Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.
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Here we have Moses, Old Testament law, Elijah, Old Testament prophecies, all pointing to Jesus, all pointing to what he would do, all pointing to his departure, literally his exodus.
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And while we don't accomplish things with our death, Jesus is going to accomplish something with his death.
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And so here, hey, we have on the mountain, Moses and Elijah and Jesus all talking. And so what do we do?
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Do we put Moses, Elijah, and Jesus all in the same setting, all on the same platform?
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And if you skip down to verse 34, as he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud.
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And a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is the father, this is my son, Psalm 2, my chosen one,
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Isaiah 42. Listen not to Moses and the prophets, they all pointed to him, that's true, but listen to Jesus.
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And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone and they kept silent and no one in those days told anyone of what they had seen, fortifying the disciples, encouraging all those who would believe, including you and including me.
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Second Corinthians eight, for you know the grace of the Lord Jesus, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor.
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So you can just think about how glorious Jesus was, the purpose of Jesus to encourage the disciples.
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And then now we move on to our passage. We move to our passage in Luke 9, 37, 45.
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And here's kind of what's happening. We're going to go from the mountaintop experience, people talk about that a lot.
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I just had a mountaintop experience to like to the gutters of real life, from the mountaintop to the valley.
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It's like here basking in the presence of Jesus. It's a foretaste of glory divine. It's wonderful.
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It's Anticipator, it's with great anticipation, we're looking for it. And now we go down the mountain and there's just life trouble.
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Because remember, the Christian life, Jesus's life, is suffering, then glory.
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It is the cross, then it's the crown. And for us, to a lesser degree, of course, it's suffering, then glory.
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This is not your best life now. Because as it's been said, if this is your best life now, you're going to hell when you die.
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This isn't our best life now. But by the way, it's a pretty good life, isn't it? Think about taste buds and we can hear music and we can see things and all.
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It's a wonderful life. We don't deserve any of it. But the best is yet to come. So what we're going to do today with this passage is we're going to walk through this passage and then at the end,
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I'm going to try to give you some belief boosters, as it were, to try to remember a few things so that you keep believing in difficult times.
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So we're going to walk through the passage, we're going to have a few takeaways. That's our roadmap for today.
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Verse 37. So remember, just have the Transfiguration account. On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him.
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And of course, it doesn't take much memory to realize that wherever Jesus was, they were trying to follow because they sometimes had bad motives and they wanted to eat, sometimes had good motives.
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They wanted to have someone healed or they wanted to learn or they wanted to be forgiven or they wanted to honor God. But wherever Jesus would go, they'd have this great crowd around him.
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Verse 38. We just had a preview of coming messianic attractions. And then down the mountain,
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Jesus comes and there's all kinds of people there. This is almost the same language of God coming down the mountain to deliver
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Israel from the power of the Egyptians, Exodus chapter 3. Coming down the mountain. Now, there's a lot of contrast here.
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I was reading one writer that said this week, one happened on the mountain, the other in the valley. There was glory in the mountain, tragedy in the valley.
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On the mountain, Jesus displayed glorious majesty while in the valley, Satan displayed cruel violence.
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Two sons ran view, one God -possessed, the other demon -possessed. One in whom his father was well -pleased and the other whose father was tortured with displeasure over his son's condition.
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One son was the destroyer of demons, the other son was being destroyed by demons. And both sons eventually given back to their fathers.
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Now, Mark and Matthew sometimes give us extra information. And the extra information from Mark is, scribes are there arguing with the disciples.
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So remember, up the mountain, Peter, James, and John, there's nine other disciples, they're down in the valley, and now they're arguing with the scribes.
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I'm sure the scribes are saying, you can't even heal this boy.
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Because what's going to happen is we're going to see there's this boy with an unclean spirit. The word is out,
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Jesus is saying he's the Messiah. So we better dispatch scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees from Jerusalem and going way up to where we are here by Mount Hermon.
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We've got to get a handle on this. We've got to get our arms wrapped around this Jesus problem. They're arguing with the disciples.
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The text says in Matthew that a man went up and got on his knees before Jesus. Verse 38,
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Behold, a man of the crowd cried out after he was on his knees, Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, he's my only child.
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And behold, a spirit seizes him, and suddenly he cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth and shatters him, will hardly leave him.
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I beg your disciples to cast it out, but they could not. I'm pretty certain that the scribes were saying, see, you can't cast it out.
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You can't do this. And if you can't do it, Jesus has already told you in Luke chapter 9, verse 1, you could.
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Well, then this is a problem with Jesus's power. All right? The disciples do something poorly so it reflects on their master.
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But suddenly the jeering stops, the arguing stops, everything stops. And in verse 38 and 39,
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Behold and behold, in the middle of the argument, this man steps in, this man steps forward and cries out.
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You see it again, verse 38? Probably because it was loud and he needs to talk over them and he cries out, this is my son.
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And look how it's added there at the end of verse 38, he's my only child. He's my only child.
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Who else is going to carry on the family name? I love my son. And with regular consistency,
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Luke's account of Jesus is Jesus healing sons or daughters.
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Jairus' daughter, the son of the widow at Nain. And you just see Jesus and what he does and what his heart is like.
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This man's begging. I mean, if I had a child that was sick like this, this man knows
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I'm going to go to Jesus and he begins to beg. He's crying.
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There's agitation. This is the same language, crying out with a leper, cried out, please heal me.
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I mean, this is pretty vicious. Verse 39, seizes him, cries out, convulses, foaming at the mouth, shatters.
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I mean, what would you do if you had a son like that? Mark, it says, it dashes him to the ground.
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It throws him down, tortures him literally. And here's this man, he runs up to Jesus.
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There's this big argument going on and he's on his knees and I know you can help me. And by the way, Matthew says, sometimes this demon throws the boy into the fire.
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Behold, there needs to be liberation.
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Just like every person who's caught in Satan's snare, there needs to be liberation by Jesus. Now Luke, what was
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Luke's occupation again? I know you know this. Physician. Physician.
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So he uses doctor terms, like that word suddenly. We have people in our own congregation that have loved ones in our own congregation.
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An epileptic fit, it just comes upon you suddenly, out of nowhere, you're just living life and then it happens.
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You can't seem to figure out the trigger. The trigger here though is this Satan's demon.
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And so it throws this boy into kind of this convulsion, back and forth, shaking, kind of this spasm thing.
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And in addition, foaming at the mouth. This is actually a medical term, so if you have a seizure and your mouth is foaming, that's exactly it here.
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Now of course, what's happening here if you go, let me go behind the curtain. What's behind the curtain?
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What's behind the curtain is, if this is such a bad demon, that the disciples can't even cast it out.
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If this is such a bad demon that's trying to kill this boy, and convulsing, and foaming, and seizing, and torturing, then who can help?
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But if Jesus can help, that must mean He's more powerful, He's kind, He's the Messiah.
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He's the right Messiah. That's the kind of Messiah I should be trusting in. Now there's epileptic kind of seizure, but demon run, shatters him.
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I mean, I've seen a lot of people in medical situations, but I don't think I've ever said that person just shattered. Mark, it says, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth and grinds.
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It's like, grind your teeth as hard as you can and put a little amplifier on it, and it's making this sound.
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And it slams him down, and I don't want to try to be funny or amusing at this particular point, but this is wrestling language that says,
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I'm going to pick up somebody and body slam them. And so instead of a wrestler picking up another wrestler, this is
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Satan's demon picking up this boy and slamming him to the ground over and over and over.
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Verse 40, the text says, I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not. I mean,
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I first started begging them, now I'm begging you. They couldn't do it.
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Go back up to chapter 9, verse 1, and He called the 12 together and gave them power and authority over just the minor demons, all demons, and to cure diseases.
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And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. Well then, something's wrong. Why can't the disciples do that?
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Are they lacking power? Are they lacking authority? Are they lacking faith? The answer to that question is found in verse 41.
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Jesus answered, O faithless and twisted or perverted generation, how long am
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I to be with you, plural, and to bear with you, plural? Bring your son here. Faithless generation.
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Who was the one He's talking about here? Certainly the scribes and Pharisees, faithless, perverted.
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Certainly to the disciples, because the disciples weren't believing in what Jesus was saying or else they could have cast the demon out.
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Maybe to a lesser degree, the Father, I mean, the Father did the right thing to bring him to Jesus. In another account, this
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Father will say, increase my faith. Matthew 17, the disciples said to Jesus, why couldn't we drive it out?
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And Jesus replied, because you have so little faith. This is the language of God's rebuke.
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Deuteronomy 32, you're a perverse and crooked generation. The essence of the problem is unbelief.
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And by the way, that is the root of every sin. Some people think it's pride or self -righteousness.
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At the bottom of everything is not taking God at His word. Started in the garden, not believing.
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I want to stop here for a second, though, and it just dawned on me. How gracious is the
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Lord Jesus, even when He's surrounded by weakness, when
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He's surrounded by lack of faith, when He's surrounded by a perverse generation,
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He still stoops to heal and save. You ought to let that sink in.
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What if you, what if I had to be completely obedient for the Lord to answer prayer? Well then why pray?
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What if we needed perfect faith in order to be blessed, to be provided for by the Father, to be pitied by the
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Father, to be protected by the Father? We have to be perfect. I mean, we wouldn't do that with our children on earth.
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You better live up to my perfection rule or else there's no love from me. Maybe there's a wicked father out there, but that's not a good father.
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Even though there's faithlessness, even though there's arguing, even though there's a perverted generation and these scribes and the disciples don't have it all together, even the
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Father doesn't have it all together, the Lord says, I'm here. Even when surrounded by unbelief,
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J .C. Rowe said, He stoops to heal and save. Bring your son here, verse 41.
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Bring your son here. Of course,
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Jesus, true man, loves God and loves neighbor and we see that right here.
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Probably in his sovereignty, having this whole situation orchestrated so at the right moment he shows up.
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Verse 42, uh oh, he was coming, a demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. So that means the boy wasn't with the dad.
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Now they're bringing the boy to Jesus and on the way there to see Jesus, of course, demons know who
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Jesus is and now here's like one last desperate attempt to try to hurt the boy, threw him to the ground and convulsed him.
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This is that body slam kind of language. This is an evil, wicked spirit.
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Do we believe in Satan today? The answer is yes, but he's a created being. He's not equal in authority and equal in power with God.
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He is a created being. I mean, it's been going on for a long time.
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Jesus has to meet Satan in the wilderness and there's a clash ever since and here it is again, throwing this person into some kind of fit, knocking him down.
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And when you look at it, you think, I can kind of see it in my eyes, this is so vivid. Mark's account says that he began rolling about and foaming at the mouth.
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Jesus said to his father in Mark, how long has this been happening to him since childhood?
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One more little hint. It's been happening so long. It must mean someone so powerful can overcome this.
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It throws him into the fire and into the water. Can you imagine going by the river Jordan or in the
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Dead Sea or the Mediterranean and this demon just tries to throw you in the water? And then in Mark, the man said to Jesus, if you can do anything, take compassion on us and help us.
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And I love what Jesus said. If you can, if I can, if you can, all things are possible for the one who believes.
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And immediately the child's father called out, help my unbelief.
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I believe. Verse 42, but Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, gave him back to his father.
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You know what I love there? Just simplicity. No smells and bells, no big kind of chanting and this, that and the other.
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Just makes it a matter of fact. Rebuked, healed, gave him back. The power of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus.
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This is just like when that dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him back to his mother. I mean, how would you like to receive your son back?
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And now I don't have to wait for the foaming. I don't have to wait for the epileptic seizures that are driven by demons. I don't have to wait for the next attack.
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I don't have to think, is the next one going to kill him? And with tenderness, love and pity, he gives him back to his father.
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Mark says that Jesus commanded the spirit to come out of him and never enter him again.
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And crying out and convulsing the boy terribly, it came out and the boy was like a corpse and everyone said, the boy's dead.
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Everyone said, nice job, Jesus. He's dead. You know, that's that old phrase, the operation was a success.
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That's the good news. The bad news is the patient died. Here we have the boy.
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He's dead. No, no. Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. Why did
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Jesus come? Well, he came to live a perfect life in my place. True. He came to die for my sins.
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True. He came to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. True. The list could go on and on and on and on. Here's another reason he came.
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The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. First John 3, 8.
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What's the response? Verse 43, the first part of it, and they were astonished at the majesty of God. Is that a good response?
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It's not bad. It's not complete, though. It doesn't say, and they all repented and believed. They all said, we're going to trust in you,
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Jesus. No, no. They were just astonished. And you can be astonished at the feeding of the 5 ,000 men, the 20 ,000 people.
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You can be astonished by walking on water. But it's a lot different to be astonished so much that you say,
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I believe. The disciples and Mark asked
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Jesus, why can't we cast it out? And Jesus said, this kind cannot come out by anything but prayer. Verse 43b.
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But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing,
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Jesus said to his disciples, and remember he says this over and over and over because it's hard to believe in a suffering
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Messiah, let these words sink into your ears. The Son of Man is about to be delivered in the hands of men, but they did not understand this saying and it was concealed from them so that they might not perceive it.
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And they were afraid to ask him about this saying. Jesus is not only going to help this boy.
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Jesus is not only going to help the boy's father. Jesus is going to continue to help the disciples.
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To remind them about his death. To remind them where they're going.
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Says in John 14, so that when it does take place, that is the crucifixion, you may believe. Let these words sink into your ear.
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This is something that's very, very important. Kids are you paying attention? I see a couple of kids aren't paying attention.
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What can we do about that? I just was swimming in the ocean by Sicily, in Sicily.
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And a couple of the people we went snorkeling with, there were a couple of guys and we said, who can touch the bottom? It was like 25 feet deep.
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And so I, being the 65 -year -old stupid person, I wanted to show these younger guys that I could touch the bottom because I used to be a good swimmer.
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And I got some weird stuff in my ears, so I went to the pharmacist. True story. And I said, I need something for my ears because, you know, in California, you just get the water stuff and you put it in there, it evaporates.
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And he said, here's what you need. You need to lay down, put these things in your ear and light them on fire. It'll take the water out.
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So afterwards, you come up to me and I'll talk to you. I'll show you pictures of Kim Abendroth trying to burn me. I said to the pharmacist, come on, this is like ancient technology from the mafia in Sicily.
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This is stupid. Let that sink into your ears.
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Jesus has taken care of the man. And remember, just like first Corinthians, that the word of the cross is foolishness to those perishing.
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It's folly. It's stupidity. You mean there's a suffering Messiah? You mean that if I believe in Jesus, for me, it's also suffering before glory?
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Who would ever sign up for that, deny self, pick up cross daily and follow? Who would ever do that?
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Well, you would do it if Jesus was really God, and he is. And you would do it if you realize this isn't going to last forever.
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And you would do it if you realize this is the God who created me and made me and recreated me and regenerated me and justified me.
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And I'm all in. So he's helping the men. And he says,
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I'm going to be delivered over to death. A sober reminder.
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The way the language is in the New Testament is, it's a long class. He just didn't say it and say, okay, here you go.
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Put, you know, here's a couple of Bible verses for your problem and tuck that under your saddle and off you go. No, it's a discussion.
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Suffering then glory. That's Christ's life. That's our life. Interestingly, verse 45, go back to that.
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They didn't understand it. I mean, we've seen it before in Luke where they didn't get this.
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In Luke chapter 9 earlier. And here it says it was concealed from them so they would not perceive it.
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Well, that's interesting. We could talk about human responsibility and divine sovereignty here. We could do that. That'd be fine.
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But you know what Jesus is doing? He's told them before, suffering then glory, cross then crown.
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Jesus is saying, you know what? This is going to be too much for these men to take right now and I'm going to conceal this truth from them.
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Does this sound familiar? John chapter 16. He said, I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
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And so here Jesus in his kindness, in his goodness, instructing the men, preparing them for later when he dies and they'll look back and see this.
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But right now, some of the edge is just concealed because he knows how hard it must be to grasp.
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Jesus, powerful. Jesus, kind. Jesus, sovereign.
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So we've looked at the passage. Now let me give you a few belief boosters, if you will.
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We're going to realize in life, sometimes we've got those transfiguration moments, those mountaintop experiences.
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And now in the valley of sin and difficulty and the world is affected by the fall. How do we keep believing?
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I don't want the Lord to say, well, you've got little faith. I don't want the Lord to say, this is faithless generation.
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And to be quite honest, for most of us, we're not like always in the mountaintop experience anyway.
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We're down where life is, where there's trouble. And so how do we keep believing in difficult days when there's all kinds of trials?
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Number one, the person of Jesus. Number two, the promises of Jesus.
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And number three, prayer to Jesus. Person, promises and prayer.
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All right. All these basically say the same thing. All these are basically, how do you have greater assurance of salvation?
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All these are saying, I stumble in life and life is hard. How can I be assured that God still cares for me and loves me?
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It's the person of Jesus, the promises of Jesus, and prayer of Jesus and to Jesus, certainly.
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Let's talk about that first one, the person of Jesus, keeping our eyes on the person of Jesus. Kind of almost implicitly, but if you go back to that passage that we just went through with the unclean spirit and the convulsing and this, that, and the other, you might think that the center of the story is that boy.
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I mean, that would really make me look at him. But of course, that's not the spotlight. This is not what's going on here with the main person.
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The main person is who Jesus is. And it starts in Luke chapter one and ends in Luke chapter 24. Yes, even to Acts chapter 28, always about Jesus.
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By the way, why do you think we're a Christ -centered church? Why do you think it's Christ -centered in every way, shape, or form?
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By the way, the VBS workers behind the scenes and the men who taught the VBS curriculum,
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I was just so happy. I was so, so happy. Some taking a week off for vacation, working behind the scenes, hour after hour, after hour.
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But there's one young man for the, for the children's 15 minute message. I mean, we're talking children said,
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I'm going to teach you something today about Jesus's death. I mean, we've learned that he existed before he born.
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We learned how he was virgin born. We learned how he perfectly obeys God's law. Tomorrow, we're going to learn about the resurrection.
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But today we're going to learn about what Jesus did, what happened at the cross. And I won't mention his name,
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Taylor said, today, kids, we're going to learn about double imputation.
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And I thought, zealous, but overreach. And he explained it.
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So kids could understand. So parents could grasp it, that our sins, here's the first imputation, get credited or imputed to Jesus.
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And Jesus's perfection, loving God, loving neighbor, get credited or imputed to our account.
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And it's the grace of God. It's a double imputation. Little girl came to my office afterwards, breaking up for that day on Thursday.
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And did you have fun today? Yes. Great job singing. Are the snacks good? I mean, the snacks, by the way, they had wagon wheels, they had snakes and rocks, they had all these things.
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If you sent your kids here, they ate snakes made out of bread. What a father, when asked by his son for, give him a snake.
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And that little girl said, today, we learned about double imputation. I had to fire
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Taylor, then I rehired him. So everything is focused on Jesus.
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By the way, that's why Lord's Day worship is so important, because we need to be remembering who Jesus is every single week, because we forget.
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And when we forget who Jesus is, we forget how we can stand before God. It's not by our own goodness, our own law keeping or our holiness.
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It's in the work of another, the stead of another, the mediator, the advocate. And so one of the things you do, if you're in a trial today, just pick the trial.
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And I know some people right in here that I could just name their trials. Back to Grandma Evie, I need to have my gaze on the
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Savior and glance at my problem, because if my gaze is on my problems and I glance at the
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Savior, things are going to go wrong. Simple grandma advice. But that's the advice of Luke.
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That's the advice of Mark. That's the advice of John. That's the advice of the Old Testament. Eyes on Jesus.
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Not on the wind. When Peter looked at the wind, what happened? You know the answer. One of the things
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I do when I sing is I say to myself, well, I'll sing with the voice
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I have. I say to myself, think about the words. I say to myself, sing like I was holding a hymnal with Jesus.
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Sinclair Ferguson taught me that. And then I think, I say to myself, I'm singing with Jesus in the congregation.
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You go, what? I thought we're singing to Jesus. Yes. And you're singing with Jesus. Did you know that?
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Singing with Jesus. Listen to this. Hebrews chapter 2. He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.
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That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name,
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God, to my brothers in the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise.
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How does that all happen? I have no idea. But you'll be in heaven singing to Jesus, with Jesus, because the solidarity of brother.
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You think about brothers. Famous brothers in the Bible, Cain and Abel, James and John.
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I'll give you the two most famous brothers in the Bible, in my opinion, Jesus, and now this one isn't in the
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Bible, me, Jesus, and you. He's a brother.
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What do brothers do? I mean, we call each other, hey, brother, you know, especially we form Baptists, hey, brother. Hey, sister.
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But how about a brother? Jesus is your brother. That's what Hebrew says. I have to keep my eye on my brother.
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Yes, fathers help, protect, provide pity. That's true. But brothers also help. I can call up Pat Abendroth right now in the middle of the sermon and say,
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I need help. What do you think he would do? Brother means from the same womb. We were in the same womb together.
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So there's that camaraderie, that love, that friendship, that intimacy. How can Jesus call you brother?
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Because you have the same father, because you've been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. And I will tell of your name to my brothers.
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I'm going to tell my redeemed people, Jesus says, about your great name, Father. I'm going to do it in the midst of the congregation.
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I'm going to sing with them in praise. What's the point? The point is what Timothy was told by Paul.
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Remember Jesus Christ. Eyes on Jesus. There are 89 gospel chapters,
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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Settle down in those this week. The person of Jesus, now the promise of Jesus.
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The promise of Jesus. Let me give you one of the promises of Jesus through his apostle.
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Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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You're in a trial. You want to keep your eyes on Jesus, Hebrews 12, fixing your eyes on Jesus.
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And I also need to be thinking about the promises. So again, I'm not thinking only about the trial.
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Go back in chapter 9, and I want to focus in on a little section there.
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What does it say in chapter 9, verse 44? Let these words sink into your ears, that the
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Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men. Who delivered
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Jesus into the hands of men? Ultimately, it was God.
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The Bible says, Jesus delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross.
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It was the sovereignty of God that put Jesus there. Did Pilate do it? Of course. Did Herod do it?
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Of course. Did we do it? Of course. But the main one is Jesus. It says in Isaiah 53, it was pleasing to the
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Lord to crush Jesus. Paul says in Romans 8,
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He did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. I want you to see the sovereignty of God right there, the sovereignty of God.
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And in the midst of the trouble, in the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the trial, there's the sovereignty of God, a predetermined plan of God.
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Now let's think about our own life for a second. I've got troubles, you say.
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I'm wondering if you're thinking about the sovereignty of God. May I encourage you to do that? My troubles are bigger than God's sovereignty.
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I don't theoretically believe that, but I've kind of been acting like that. How about this?
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Instead of my troubles are greater than the sovereignty of God, are greater than I should believe in the sovereignty of God in light of my, believe my trials in light of the sovereignty of God.
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Or how about this? Ready? This is why you came today, to hear about Jesus and to hear this.
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I'm in my trial because of the sovereignty of God. It's not even how is
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He going to work this together for good. It's not even how I can count it all joy. Those are both true. But ultimately, you're in the trial just like Jesus was because the cross was predetermined and planned for God's glory and for our good.
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You're in your trial because of the sovereignty of God. What else am I supposed to do? Go to Dana -Farber and say to myself, well, you know what?
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God's sovereign over everything, my salvation, the world, eschatology, all these other things, but He's not sovereign over the leukemia that's in my body or used to be in my body.
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No, no. No, no. We don't want to run away from sovereignty. We want to run to it because we're running to the
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God of the universe. Who cares? Hey, boys, hey, disciples, you've got all these problems about you can't cast demons out of certain kids, and you should be.
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Your bigger problem is you don't think God's sovereign over my, the Messiah's, death, by suffering, by being killed, by being crucified.
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That's your bigger problem, is a lack of faith. And so whether it's we lose our job, or there's difficulties in a marriage, our circumstances, our health, or whatever, you have to keep beating down those thoughts that go in your mind.
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And by the way, I've had plenty of them late at night, in the middle of the night when you wake up, it's like the worst, and just like, what goes through my brain?
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It's not good thoughts like, wait a second, my trouble can't be more sovereign than God is.
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My trouble doesn't run my life. My trouble, God knows about. My trouble, God brought into my life.
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While the trouble might not be good, God's going to make something good. And maybe God's going to use me in someone else's life, or He's just going to chip away in my life.
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Is God greater than your troubles? These men could not figure it out that the sovereignty of God is going to place
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Jesus on the cross. I'll take that as an amen. Once a
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Pentecostal, always a Pentecostal. They're going to heaven, they just don't know why.
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Lastly, prayer. The person of Jesus, the promises of Jesus, and maybe instead of talking about your prayer life, which is important, pray always, pray without ceasing,
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I'll just remind you of Jesus' prayer life. If you remember Jesus is praying for you,
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I think it probably actually will motivate you to pray more yourself. But I want you to know that the person of Jesus, sovereign, good, gracious, to you, dear
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Christian, the promises are for you, no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. And that Jesus is praying for you.
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It says in Hebrews 7 .25, He always lives to make intercession for them.
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Let's just make it personal. Jesus lives to make intercession for Jannah.
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Did you know that, Jannah? He lives for that. And you can trust Him. And so can everyone else.
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Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your word. We all need encouragement. And it's sometimes difficult to believe that you're sovereign over our troubles.
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We can't see it. Therefore, we would ask your forgiveness. We would ask that you would have us have submissive hearts.
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And instead of asking only the question, why me? Maybe we should be asking like some teachers have taught us.
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What am I supposed to do now, Lord? And what am I supposed to learn? Help me trust in you.
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I praise you that Jesus is powerful and compassionate and that He has overturned
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Satan. And one day, it says in Romans 16, the ultimate crushing and heresy.