When Our Agenda Gets in the Way

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One of the reasons why I love history so much is that you can learn from other people’s examples, good and bad. You can learn from other people’s mistakes, and there are a lot of really big mistakes to learn from. One of the biggest, as I was thinking about the topic of this morning’s message from Luke, One of the biggest mistakes, I think, in history happened about 800 years ago. Right after a sultan in Egypt had just taken over Jerusalem, taken it out of the hands of Europeans, Christians, they identified themselves as Christians. We might take issue with some of their theology, but they claimed the name of Christ. So the Pope decided it’s time for us to have another crusade because we have to retake Jerusalem. This was the beginning of the fourth crusade. Now their mission, we need to remember this because it becomes important later. Their mission was to retake Jerusalem.

So when I ask you, if I remember to ask you in a minute, what was their mission? To retake Jerusalem. I promise there are no trick questions this morning. Their mission is to retake Jerusalem. So the Pope says, we need to have a crusade because we need to retake Jerusalem. So a group of knights in Western Europe answered the call and said, we’re going to go and we’re going to retake Jerusalem. And they marched south to the Mediterranean coast, and they realized, we’ve got to find a way to get to Jerusalem. See, this was not very well planned out. We’ve got to find a way to get to Jerusalem. How are we going to get there? They happened to encounter some merchants from Venice, and merchants from Venice always had ships. And they said, no problem, we’ve got you. We can get you to Jerusalem, or at least to the Holy Land.

Jerusalem’s not there on the coast, but we can at least get you within marching distance of Jerusalem for a fee. And these crusading knights said, but we don’t have any money. And the merchants in Venice said, no problem. See, there’s this city not far down the coast from us that we don’t really like so much called Zara. If you’ll just go and attack their city, we’ll pay you and we’ll cover the cost of getting you to the Holy Land. And the Crusaders said, all right, this is our mission. We need to go and attack Zara. What was their mission? To retake Jerusalem. But now their goal is we have to go and attack this city that the Venetians don’t like. So they took the city. They attacked it. They took it over, handed it over to the Venetians. Everybody was really happy. There was someone nearby that the crusading knights encountered who said, you know what?

I’m the rightful heir to the throne of the Byzantine Empire. But somebody else is sitting on my throne over in Constantinople. if you’ll help me, since you’ve got all these armies right here not far away anyway, if you’ll help me retake Constantinople, I will pay you an enormous sum of money. And the crusaders, the crusading knights, or at least their leaders thought, well, we’d be foolish not to take that deal because who doesn’t like money, right? And so they say, we’ve got to go take Constantinople. Why? Because we need to make money. but what was their mission? To retake Jerusalem.

So they go and they end up using all of their forces to go and attack this Christian city, fellow Christians, different denominations, so there was a little bit of animosity there, but they go and attack this fellow Christian city that had enormous walls because it was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and they expend all of their energy taking this city and they got bogged down and they spent months there and they stayed there until they could try to capture Jerusalem try to capture Constantinople and what was their mission retake Jerusalem but after the debacle at Constantinople they just kind of turned around and went home and they never made it to Jerusalem see we can start out with a plan we can start out with marching orders in this case the mission that was given to them by the pope we can start out with those things and get distracted by our own plans along the way and it may sound like a good deal at the time but like those crusaders who never reached jerusalem and now we can debate and people do debate whether it was right for them to go retake Jerusalem or not.

That’s not the issue here this morning. That was their mission. We can allow other things to distract us from the mission we’ve been given. That’s what Jesus deals with his apostles about in Luke chapter 9. If you’ve already turned there with me, great. If you haven’t, please turn with me to Luke chapter 9. As we look at the next stage of Jesus’ training of His disciples in preparation to hand the ministry over to them. Once you turn there, once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together. If you can’t find it or don’t have your Bible, it’ll be on the screen so you can follow along there. We’re going to start this morning in verse 37. This is just after the transfiguration that we talked about last week.

And it says, On the next day, when they came down from the mountain, a large crowd met Him, And a man from the crowd shouted, saying, Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only boy. And a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly screams, and it throws him into a convulsion with foaming at the mouth. And only with difficulty does it leave him, mauling him as it leaves. I begged your disciples to cast it out, and they could not. And Jesus answered and said, You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you and put up with you? Bring your son here. While he was still approaching, the demon slammed him to the ground and threw him into a convulsion. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy and gave him back to his father. And they were all amazed at the greatness of God.

But while everyone was marveling at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples, Let these words sink into your ears, for the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. But they did not understand this statement, and it was concealed from them so that they would not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this statement. And you may be seated. I struggled. I struggled this week in preparing this message because the perspective I was looking at just wasn’t working. And I finally realized I was looking at this from the wrong angle. When you read this, just on the surface, it looks like it’s a story about him healing the boy who is demon-possessed.

But there were so many instances of Jesus healing people and doing miracles that John even says that if they were to write them down, write them all down, then the world itself could not contain all the books that would need to be written. So with understanding the limitations of space, there’s always a reason why the gospel writers include the stories that they do. And you look at it and you think there’s got to be more to it, more reason to this than just the healing of the demon-possessed boy. Because Luke has already illustrated that Jesus can do that. So why put another one of these stories in here? And then you read it again, and you read it again, and you read it again, and you realize that even Jesus draws his disciples’ attention away from the possession. And you see that the focus here is not the possession.

It’s whatever’s going on with the disciples that they just can’t get their heads around what Jesus is doing. And when Jesus healed this demon-possessed boy, Luke includes that story because it’s pretext for us to understand that the disciples were struggling here. It happened, the healing happened, it was important, but it’s really for us to understand what’s going on in the relationship between Jesus and the disciples. This man brings his child to Jesus, or catches Jesus’ attention, and says, I’m begging you, my son is possessed with a demon. And it does terrible things to him. It causes this violent physical reaction. My son is in peril. And I brought him to your disciples thinking they were going to be able to help. I begged them, and they couldn’t do anything. So I’m bringing him, and I’m begging you, please, would you do something with my son?

And Jesus has this reaction that kind of strikes our ears as unusual, but I think we can make sense of it in just a minute. And he says, how long am I going to have to deal with you people, basically? Bring your son here. And just to give you a little sneak peek of where we’re going with this, when he says, how long am I going to have to deal with you people, he’s not talking to the dad. When you compare this with the other gospels, you realize he’s talking to the disciples.

they’re the problem how long do i have to deal with you people bring me your son and so the man brings his son to jesus jesus sees what this demon does to the boy and jesus rebukes the demon casts him out the boy is healed instantly and everybody sees this incredible miracle and they’re all marvel marveling this is the show that they have come to expect This is what they have come to see, and while they’re marveling at what Jesus has just done, Jesus turns to his disciples and begins to teach them, because the focus here is not on the healing, as important as it is, and especially as important as it is to the man and his son. But Luke’s focus in recording this is that this story of the healing shows us there was something that the disciples were struggling with. And what they were struggling with was serving Jesus, following Jesus, obeying Jesus when they were so distracted.

And what we’re supposed to learn from this story, one of the things that we’re supposed to learn from this story, is that we struggle to serve Jesus when distracted by our own agenda. And that’s where the problem lay with these disciples. They were so wedded in their minds to who they thought Jesus was supposed to be and what they thought Jesus was supposed to do that they could not see the plain truth that was in front of them even when Jesus spelled it out for them. And you and I are, it is so easy for us to get distracted by things that matter less to the point that we ignore things that matter more. I had the opportunity yesterday to take a group of young men to a conference for middle schoolers and high schoolers who are pursuing the call to ministry. And one of them went with me to a class called Removing Distractions.

And we told Benjamin he couldn’t go with us to that class because he was too distracting. But it was on Removing Distractions. I’m sorry, you know I love you. Okay. It was on removing distractions. And part of that class that we sat in on was just explaining to these kids that even good things can be a problem if we allow them to distract us from God. Even pursuits and things that are not sinful in and of themselves, they can be a problem. They can become an idol. if we allow them to take our focus off of God. Even good things can distract us from better things. There was a day a couple of weeks ago when, you know, my kids, especially the little ones, they just chatter. They just chatter. And Abigail came and asked me a question, and I said, oh, that’s nice. I was sitting there working on the checkbook. It is a good thing to balance your checkbook periodically.

Sometimes I can go overboard and balance it every day. I try not to do that, but it’s a good thing. But Charla said, did you hear what Abigail asked you? Oh, not really. She had brought me a book, my favorite children’s book, and asked me to read it to her. Like, I love that book, and I love Abigail. Okay, we’re going to read this book, but I had allowed something that was good to distract me from something better. We do the same thing with God. I talked a little bit recently on maybe a Sunday night or a Wednesday night about how I did this with the call to ministry and let things that would be good distract me from what God’s agenda. I let my agenda distract me from God’s agenda for my life. That I knew God was calling me to ministry from the time I was in high school, and I fought it. I didn’t want to say yes to that junior high, I knew, and fought it.

I started high school and finally said, okay, God, if you want me to do this, I’ll do it, but I still had in mind, I can preach part-time. My goal, and this was in the days before social media got so prevalent and so awful, my goal was a career in politics. I was going to run for the state house of representatives. I knew which seat. I knew when the guy was term limited, and I was going to go for it and serve 12 years and then run for governor. I don’t know what in the world I was thinking, but I thought, I could still preach on Sundays and fill in at churches. I mean, it sounded crazy at the time, but James Lankford does it now. It’s not unheard of. I could have done that, and here I was trying to do pulpit supply and said, God, yes, I’ll do that. I’ll it just wasn’t working.

And finally I realized God was calling me to do something full-time and I was trying, I was so distracted by my agenda that I was just trying to shoehorn his plans into my agenda and that’s why it didn’t work. We will always struggle to serve Jesus when we’re distracted by our own agenda. And that’s what these men experienced. When the man came to see Jesus, he was desperate. He begged Jesus in verse 38 to heal his son, just like he had begged the disciples, he said in verse 40. And these disciples, think about this, they should have been able to do what the man asked. They should have been able to do this. How do we know they should have been able to do this? You don’t even have to turn back that far if you look at verse 1 of this chapter. It says, and he called the 12 together and gave them power and authority over the demons, over all the demons, and to heal diseases.

He had sent them out with this authority. But when the time came for them actually to step out and do what he had called them to do, do what he had empowered and equipped them to do, do what he had commanded them to do, they couldn’t do it. The man told Jesus in verse 40, I begged your disciples to cast it out, and they could not. Jesus said they could, but they couldn’t. and their problem, the problem that kept them from being able to do it was a lack of faith, specifically a lack of belief that what Jesus said about their authority was true. And that’s easy to miss from just the passage in Luke. As I read through a passage, I’ll jot down questions. I’ll interrogate the passage. Why is this here? Why does this say this? Why does he say it that way? One of the questions I had was, why does Jesus get so frustrated in verse 41?

Because it sounds, the way we read it in Luke, it sounds like he’s mad at the man. But if you compare it with Matthew and Mark, you realize that he’s talking to the disciples. Because in Matthew 17, they asked the question, why could we not drive out the demon? And Jesus said, because of the littleness of your faith. Because your faith was tiny. He said, for truly I say to you, if you have the faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible to you. Now, he’s not talking about them being able to manifest riches. Hey, just speak it with enough faith and you’ll have a Mercedes. That’s not what he’s saying.

But the things that he’s called them to do, the things that he’s equipped them to do, the things that he’s promised they could do, if you have even the size of faith of a mustard seed, you’ll be able to say to a mountain, move, and it’ll be moved, if that’s what God told you to do. But when he tells you, you have to believe. And so this explains Jesus’s initial reaction there in verse 41. He’s not getting mad at the man and saying, Oh, you people, how long am I going to have to heal people and do these miracles for you? When He says, you unbelieving and perverted generation, He’s talking to the disciples. And it’s because they are refusing to believe the things that He’s told them, and they’re refusing to act like they believe the things that He’s told them. It’s about the disciples.

and just to be clear on what he’s saying here because these are difficult words to translate unbelieving means they had no faith I mean that’s pretty simple they did not fully believe what Jesus told them back in verse 1 it could have even been a sense of I mean he did tell us but how do we know they’re questioning what he told them and it’s okay to ask the Lord questions but not from a place of unbelief and when he says they were perverted and that word has some really awful connotations in the way we talk when he says they were perverted he means they had deviated from the path that he had put them on it means they’ve wandered away it doesn’t mean that they were involved in anything scandalous. But because of their lack of faith, they had deviated from the path that God set out for them.

And what this boils down to, as we look at the passages before it and the passages after it in Luke, what they’re struggling with, they are acting like he’s going to stay there forever. In their mind, all that stuff about, oh, I’m going to die, I’m going to be handed over, I’m going to rise again, they’re thinking that’s years off. They have seen him at the transfiguration. They’ve seen this glimpse of him in his glory. And they’re thinking that’s what’s going to be on display for the whole world in the very near future. They’re thinking about Peter’s confession that he’s the Messiah, the son of the living God. And they’re still thinking in terms of an earthly Messiah.

No matter how many times Jesus tells them, I am going to Jerusalem to be killed, they are still in their denial, putting that way down the road because they want him to be the political and military leader who’s going to come and kick out Rome and set up his kingdom and restore a golden age to Israel. That’s what their agenda is. And we know this because in the next passage, they’re asking, can I be on your right and left hand when you come into his kingdom? Now, we have the benefit of looking back and realizing you don’t want to be on the right and left hand when he comes into his kingdom. There are two thieves that are going to be on his right and left hand. That’s not a question they should have asked if they understood. It’s in direct contradiction to what he’s already told them about himself. He’s going to be leaving. He’s going to be betrayed. He just said that to them in verse 22.

And he’s sending them out. He told them that in verses 1 through 5 earlier on in chapter 9. He’s calling them to serve. When we looked at the feeding of the 5,000. He handed them food to go and hand out to the people. There is a passing of the torch here where Jesus is saying, I want you to be involved in this ministry. I have an agenda for you. I have a plan for you. It’s your turn to go out and serve in my name. He’s calling them to do these things, and he’s calling them to lay down their lives, as he said in verse 23. But their agenda is something different. It’s that earthly kingdom. That’s still what they expect, an earthly kingdom with the glory that they glimpsed at the transfiguration. An earthly kingdom where he’ll be there and he’ll do all the work. And listen, as believers who serve him, we do rely on him for everything we do.

We rely on him to empower, we rely on him to guide us, but he still expects us to go out and be his hands and feet. We still have to do something. Because that’s, not because he needs us, but because that’s the way he wants it.

and they were just sitting back he’s always going to be here he’s always going to be the one doing the things and we get to just watch and they’re expecting their agenda to play out and as i’ve already pointed out we’re prone to doing the same thing you and i have a tendency to do that in life we have a tendency to let good things distract us from the best things sometimes we have a tendency to let bad things distract us from the best things we do it with the Lord as well we will let even good things distract us from his agenda so how do we avoid that there are two mistakes that the disciples made in this passage that if we can learn from we can avoid and they’re very simple hopefully hopefully when we’re done here you say oh that was so simple I’m not sure why he even had to tell us well the reason I have to tell us is because it’s in the Word, but also because we need the reminder.

Notice I didn’t say you need the reminder. I said we need the reminder because I’m right here in the same boat. First way we avoid this is very simple. When Jesus calls you to do something, obey Him. Easy enough? I mean, simple enough to understand, not always easy to do, but simple enough to understand this is a basic Sunday school lesson. When Jesus calls you to do something, obey him. There was some form of hesitation on their part. When Jesus had said, you’re going to go out and you’re going to be able to cast out demons in my name, you’ve been given all authority over it. When it came time for them to do that, there was some kind of hesitation when it came time to cast out the demon. We don’t know what specifically motivated it. It might have been fear. It might have been disbelief, like this is not going to work. It might have been complacency Jesus will deal with that.

It could have been any number of things. We don’t know specifically what it was, but whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Because the bottom line is whatever the excuse was, they were disobeying him. And we, as a species, are very good at coming up with excuses. I am very good at coming up with excuses when Jesus says to do something, to put it off. Or say, Lord, I’ll do part of it. Or I’ll do it later. Or I’ll do it this way. But as believers, we’re called on, if He’s Lord, we need to act like He’s Lord. And when He tells us to do something, go do it. But it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to us, but His brain is bigger than ours. It doesn’t make sense to us, but His ways are higher than ours. The more we trust him, the more we’ll obey him.

And sometimes we just have to step out on faith and do the obedient thing, even when it doesn’t make sense, and even when it goes against our agenda. Because if we’re not deliberate about obeying Jesus’ agenda for us, if we’re not deliberate about obeying the things that he told us to do, we’re going to go back to our own agenda by default. It’s just the way we’re wired. If we’re not deliberate about looking at what is it Jesus told us to do, and that’s what I’m going to do, we will end up filling up the calendar and the to-do list ourselves. So that’s the first thing. How do we avoid their mistakes? How do we avoid getting sidetracked with our agenda? When Jesus tells us to do something, obey him. The second one is, when Jesus tells you who he is, believe him. This was really at the root of their problem.

I think whether it was fear, whether it was complacency, whatever it was, At the root of it, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of who Jesus is and what he’d come to do. They’re thinking, we can’t do it even though he told us. Well, you’re doubting that he has the authority that he said he gave you, or he’s going to do it himself. You’re doubting the fact that he said he’s going to leave and he’s giving you this ministry. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of who he is and what he’s come to do, but he had claimed already and already His authority. They knew who He was. Peter made that clear. He’s the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and nobody argued with that. Jesus confirmed it, and He had demonstrated it over and over. That’s what so many of these miracles were about, was demonstrating this authority, that He is God the Son, that He is Israel’s Savior.

He’s the Savior of mankind. He was demonstrating the power that he had. He had shown his glory, and a group of these apostles had seen that glory on display like nothing that anybody has ever seen. He had warned them, going back to verse 22, about his departure, now three times, once after Peter’s confession, once during the transfiguration in verse 31, and now here in verse 44, he tells them again he’s going to be leaving. In spite of all the things he showed them. Here’s who I am and here’s the proof. Here’s what I came to do. And I’m going to tell you over and over so you get it. Despite all of that, their ideas about him and his kingdom, their own ideas veiled their eyes from the truth. One of the questions I brought to this text was why does verse 45 say that God concealed these things from their eyes? Jesus is trying to tell them these things. Why has God concealed it from them?

And then I realized I’m just reading that into the text. It never says God concealed it. It says it was concealed. When you look at the Greek, it just means there’s like a veil over their eyes. And sometimes we do that to our own selves with our own ideas and our own opinions and own presuppositions. Their ideas about his kingdom and what that was going to look like had blinded them. When he told them about himself, he said, let these words sink in. That’s what he says in verse 45. Let these words, I’m sorry, verse 44, let these words sink into your ears. That means listen carefully and don’t forget. And then what does he say? He reminds them. I’m about to be delivered up. Luke gives us a short snippet of it. Matthew and Mark tell us that he goes through the whole thing about what’s about to happen to him. He’s going to be delivered and betrayed. He’s going to suffer. He’s going to die.

He’s going to rise. He goes through this reminder of who he is, and they’re still not getting it. And the only real explanation is they just don’t want to get it at this point. Because they’re more concerned about what they want. When Jesus tells you who he is, believe him. If we’re not listening to what Jesus says about himself, we’ll fall for the world’s opinions about him. Are the world’s opinions about Jesus right? There’s a lot of wrong opinions out there about who Jesus is that directly contradict what he said about himself. And if we don’t listen to what he says, we’ll listen to what the world says. And we’ll end up in the same boat as the disciples, wandering off the path that he set for us. In order for us to trust him, in order for us to obey him, in order for us to walk with him and serve him, we need to pay attention to what he says about who he is and why he came.

He didn’t come just as a good moral teacher. He didn’t come just to give us a comfortable, pretty life. He didn’t come just to set an example. He came to take responsibility for our sins and be delivered up for our sins, to be nailed to the cross, to be punished in our place, and to die so that we could be made right with God. And then he came to rise again to prove it. And he came to reign over us as our good and righteous king. Not an addition to our lives that we sometimes look to for guidance, but the one who sets the agenda. The one that every day we get up and say, Lord, what do you want me to do today? And that’s what we do. But we’re not going to be in that place if we don’t take seriously what He says to us about who He is.

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