Scripture
Jesus was coming to the end of his ministry in Galilee, where he had been for about eighteen months. He was about to begin his journey to Jerusalem where – in just six months’ time – he would experience suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection (see Luke 9:22).
Luke recorded thirteen miracles that Jesus did in the region of Galilee. Today, we come to the last of the thirteen miracles of Jesus that Luke recorded him doing in Galilee.
Let’s read about Jesus healing a boy with an unclean spirit in Luke 9:37-43:
37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 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. 40 And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41 Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42 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. 43 And all were astonished at the majesty of God. (Luke 9:37-43)
Introduction
The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is home to one of the most fascinating museums on earth. The facility run by GfK Custom Research goes under the informal name of the “Museum of Failed Products.” At first sight, the shelves and aisles look just like a supermarket – except there’s only one of each item. And you won’t find these items in a real supermarket anyway: they are failures, products withdrawn from sale after a few weeks or months, because almost nobody wanted to buy them.
This is consumer capitalism’s graveyard. It is the only place on earth where you will find Clairol’s A Touch of Yogurt shampoo alongside Gillette’s equally unpopular For Oily Hair Only, a few feet from a now-empty bottle of Pepsi AM Breakfast Cola (born 1989; died 1990). The museum is home to discontinued brands of caffeinated beer; to TV dinners branded with the logo of the toothpaste manufacturer Colgate; to Fortune Snookies, a short-lived line of fortune cookies for dogs; to self-heating soup cans that had a tendency to explode in customers’ faces; and to packets of breath mints that had to be withdrawn from sale because they looked like tiny packages of crack cocaine. It is where microwaveable scrambled eggs – pre-scrambled and sold in a cardboard tube with a pop-up mechanism for easier consumption in the car – go to die.
If the museum has a central message, it is that failure is not a rarity; it is the norm. For every insanely successful product such as the iPhone or the Big Mac, there’s a whole host of ideas that only a mother could truly love.
According to some estimates, the failure rate for new products is as high as 90 percent.
Given the ubiquity of failure, business expert Matt Symonds advises that we should help people “fail, fail again, and fail better” rather than “filling [people’s] heads with the unrealistic notions of winning every time.”
As Jesus was coming to the end of his Galilean ministry, he was still dealing with the constant failures of his disciples. I don’t think that Jesus was helping his disciples to “fail, fail again, and fail better”! It is just that his disciples were such slow learners! And yet, how grateful we are for the patient instruction of Jesus.
In the narrative we will examine today, as well as the next few pericopes in our study of The Gospel of Luke, we will see the disciples subject to constant correction by Jesus.
Lesson
The analysis of the miracle of Jesus healing a boy with an unclean spirit as set forth in Luke 9:37-43 shows us the disciples’ failure of faith.
Let’s use the following outline:
1. The Heartbroken Father (9:37-38)
2. The Helpless Son (9:39)
3. The Hopeless Disciples (9:40-41a)
4. The Healing Savior (9:41b-43)
I. The Heartbroken Father (9:37-38)
First, let’s look at the heartbroken father.
In the previous pericope, in Luke 9:28-36, Luke told us about the transfiguration of Jesus. Jesus had taken Peter and John and James with him up the mountain. While on top of the mountain, Moses and Elijah appeared and talked with Jesus. Then, the Shekinah glory of God the Father appeared in the form of a cloud, and he said to the three disciples, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” (9:35). This is one of the most amazing accounts in all of the Gospels.
Well, the mountaintop experience could not last. Jesus’ compassion for the lost brought him down from the mountain and into contact with people in great need. So, 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” (9:37-38).
This father is desperately heartbroken. His son – his only son – is demon-possessed. Over the years nothing has helped his beloved son get healed. Do you sense the father’s anguish?
The Transfiguration is the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. Originally commissioned for the Narbonne Cathedral, Raphael worked on it until his death in 1520. The painting is now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana in the Vatican City. The painting dramatizes the contrast between the mountaintop and the plain below. Rafael has united these two scenes in his painting and has emphasized what the Gospel authors were trying to show, the contrast between the glory above (represented by the upper half of the painting) and the pain and suffering below (represented by the lower half of the painting).
Pastor John MacArthur notes:
The contrasts between the two incidents are striking. One happened on a mountain, the other in a valley. There was glory on the mountain, tragedy in the valley. On the mountain Jesus Christ displayed His glorious majesty, while in the valley Satan displayed his ugly, cruel violence. Two sons are in view, one God-possessed, the other demon-possessed; one in whom His Father was well pleased, the other whose father was tortured with displeasure over his condition. One Son fulfilled the glorious plan of the ages, confirmed by both Old Testament and New Testament saints; the other son was disassociated, disconnected, demented, and chaotic, without purpose or value to anyone. One Son was the destroyer of demons; the other son was destroyed by demons. Both sons were given back to their fathers. The demon-possessed son was delivered and returned to his father; the Son of God was killed, rose from the dead, and ascended back to His Father.
The father is heartbroken over the condition of his son. But I want you to notice that the father brought his son to Jesus.
You may have a situation that is breaking your heart. Your son – or daughter, or spouse, or parent, or some other loved one – is breaking your heart. Whatever it is that is breaking your heart, take that person, as it were, to Jesus. Go to Jesus and say something like, “Jesus, I beg you to look at my loved one. Will you do what I am not able to do for my loved one?”
II. The Helpless Son (9:39)
Second, notice the helpless son.
The father described his helpless son’s condition. He said to Jesus, “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” (9:39).
Pastor Kent Hughes says:
When we piece the Gospel descriptions together, we get a heartbreaking picture. When the demon seizes the boy (Mark 9:18; Luke 9:39), the child screams (Luke 9:39). The spirit throws him to the ground in convulsions so that he foams at the mouth (Luke 9:39). He grinds his teeth and becomes stiff as a board (Mark 9:18). Many times he had been cast into fire or water by the evil spirit (Matthew 17:15), and he is covered with scars. Even worse, the spirit has made him deaf and dumb (Mark 9:25). The poor boy lives an aquarium-like existence. He can see what is going on around his pathetic body, but he cannot hear or speak. His father concludes here in Luke, “It scarcely ever leaves him and is destroying him” (v. 39, NIV) – literally, “it is crushing him together.”
Commentator Darrell Bock notes, “Such destruction by a demonic force is commonly noted in the New Testament, but this is the first detailed mention in Luke (cf. 4:35). Clearly, the boy is in serious shape.” Actually, I would go so far as to say that the boy is completely helpless.
Do you at times feel completely helpless? You certainly would if you were possessed by a demon. However, that is not likely your condition. But you still may feel completely helpless as you wrestle with a medical issue, or a relational issue, or a work-related issue, or a financial issue, or, most importantly, a spiritual issue.
Well, do not despair, because, if this story teaches us anything, it teaches us that Jesus helps the helpless.
But, before we look at that, let’s note one more point.
III. The Hopeless Disciples (9:40-41a)
Third, look at the hopeless disciples.
The father told Jesus, “And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not” (9:40).
Apparently, while Jesus and Peter and John and James were on top of the mountain, the father had asked the nine other disciples to cast out the demon, but they could not do so.
That is very interesting because just a short while before this incident, Jesus “called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases” (Luke 9:1). On that first missions trip, we know that “they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them” (Mark 6:13). So, it is strange that they were not able to cast out the demon on this occasion. Why not?
Dr. Philip Ryken hits the nail on the head when he says, “The disciples did not fail for lack of effort, but due to their lack of faith.” It was not that the disciples had not used the right approach or because they had forgotten how to cast out demons. They simply did not believe God to do what only he could do.
This is clear from Jesus’ answer to the father. He said, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you?” (9:41a). In the parallel accounts in Matthew and Mark, the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” (Matthew 17:19; cf. Mark 9:28). Jesus said to them, “Because of your little faith” (Matthew 17:20), and, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29). It seems that the disciples somehow thought that they could in their own power cast the demon out of the boy. They did not have a prayerful, dependent trust in God to do what only he could do. The hopeless disciples experienced a failure of faith. And this was one of the ways in which Jesus suffered because of his own disciples’ lack of faith.
Do you sometimes have a lack of faith? You say you trust in God, but do you trust God to do that which only he can do?
Dr. Ryken says:
The main point of this episode is not that we need to trust God to help us cast out demons – which is something that rarely happens – but that we need to trust God to do all the spiritual work that only he can do. We have all the more reason to trust God than the disciples did, because we have received the full benefits of Christ’s finished work, and the Holy Spirit is now at work in us to help us trust in God. We need this faith in our struggle against temptation. We come up with all kinds of methods to manage our sin, but the real transformation comes by trusting in the gospel to change our hearts and minds. We need this faith in our relationships, which can be restored only by the healing work of God’s Spirit. We need this faith in our ministry, both as individual Christians and as a church, both locally and around the world. We may be very busy serving the Lord in practical ways, but this makes a spiritual difference only when we depend on God to use what we do to advance his gospel. We need this faith in our evangelism; leading someone to Christ does not depend on the skill of our witness, but on the grace of God. We need this faith in our discipleship. No matter how much good advice we give, we cannot be the Holy Spirit for anyone else; only God can change someone’s life. Then we need this faith in our ongoing war with Satan, who is seeking to destroy everything we do for God. They only way to be safe from the Evil One is through faith in Jesus Christ and his mighty power.
Make no mistake: God is the only one who can do any of these things. Therefore, we are called to trust in him through Jesus Christ. When we do this, we see his majesty in our own spiritual growth, in the healing of wounded relationships, in the salvation of sinners, and in the triumph of the church over spiritual darkness.
IV. The Healing Savior (9:41b-43)
And fourth, look at the healing Savior.
Jesus said to the father, “Bring your son here” (9:41b). While the boy was coming to Jesus for healing, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him (9:42a). This was one last desperate attempt by the demon to keep the boy from coming to Jesus for healing. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father (9:42b). And, not surprisingly, all were astonished at the majesty of God (9:43a).
Jesus never turned anyone away who came to him for help.
Do you need help today? Go to Jesus. Don’t delay. Go to the one who can help you in your situation.
Conclusion
Therefore, having analyzed the miracle of Jesus healing a boy with an unclean spirit as set forth in Luke 9:37-43, we should trust God to do that which only he can do.
Thankfully, God is patient with us and our failures of faith. R. O. Blechman is one of the most famous illustrators in the world. In his recent book, Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator, he shares a series of letters that he wrote to a younger fellow-illustrator. In one of the most poignant letters, Blechman addresses the reality of failure:
Preliminary drawings and sketches often are discouraging things, pale shadows of one’s bold intentions. Seemingly nonsense, they’re especially dispiriting for beginners. . . . “Is that what I did,” the novice might ask, “and I consider myself an artist?” . . . Speaking for myself (but also for other illustrators, I’m sure), my trash basket is full of false starts and failed drawings. . . . There should be a Museum of Failed Art. It would exhibit all the terrible art that would have ended up in trash bins and garbage cans, lost and unknown to the public life.
The Bible contains a “Museum of Failed Discipleship.” Over and over again, the Gospels record the “false starts” and spiritual failures of the disciples. Thankfully, they also record Jesus’ willingness to encourage and challenge his flawed disciples. We tend to cover up our heroes’ faults; and we’re even more likely to gloss over our colossal flops. Instead, the Gospels allow us to see the disciples’ failures – and most of those stories came from the disciples themselves. This honesty provides encouragement to us when we feel like saying, “Is that what I did, and I consider myself a Christian?” Our security is in Christ who continues to love us even when we stumble and fail.
Let us trust God to do that which only he can do. Amen.
