Introduction
Whenever we gather together on Sunday as a church, it is to worship our God and Lord Jesus Christ. The Church is known as the Bride of Christ. It is our solemn duty, it is our great privilege, it is the very least we can do to exalt and praise the One worthy of all power and dominion forever. He has purchased us from sin and death with His sacrifice. That is a fundamental purpose of our church. The other fundamental purpose is to go. We are to go out into every place where we find the least, the last, and the lost and call them home. It is a message of love and it is an invitation of love. The church is a gathering place and a sending place. We must get this right or we are not in the will of God.
The Bible - the Scripture - is the book about Him. The Old Testament is the revelation about His coming. The New Testament is the revelation about His arrival, with the book of Revelation a prophetic treatise about his return. As a whole, the Bible culminates around this great Day of the Lord that is coming. Scripture is His story. He was at the creation and he was the one prophesied at that fall that the seed of the woman would crush Satan under his feet (Gen 3:15). He was the one that shut Noah and his family in Ark. He called Abram to Canaan. He was the burning bush calling Moses to deliver Israel from slavery. He was the Passover lamb. He was the Pillar of fire and smoke in the desert. He was the lawgiver and the fulfillment of the law. He commander of the army of the Lord standing before Joshua. He was kinsman-redeemer, the song of David, the weeping prophet, and so on and so on.
This book is His story and we are a part of that story. You are His story too. He is moving and shaping you. This is not our church, this is His church. Apart from him, we can do nothing. Apart from him, we lose our purpose, our worship, our mandate, and our authority over darkness. Through him, we have a purpose. Through him, we have a commission and we have a purpose to worship. We have to get this right. We don’t gather to attract. We gather to empower, be filled, shaped, encouraged, strengthened, and sent back out.
Luke’s gospel was written to reveal this to us. This is the testimony of Jesus’ power and authority. He reveals to us how and why Jesus is God’s promised messiah. Luke includes all of this evidence to build a masterful case. And he's proving to us that Jesus is God in human flesh, the promised Messiah, the Christ, the Lord, the Savior, the Redeemer.
Last week we read about the 12 disciples Jesus chose as his closest followers. Now, there were literally hundreds of disciples following after Jesus, but these twelve were the closest students of Jesus, with Peter, James, and John being Jesus’ innermost circle. This was done after an entire night of praying. This morning we enter into a phase of Jesus teaching his disciples and the crowds of people about what it means to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and this is where we pick it up today:
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17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, 18 who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. (Luke 6:17–19 ESV)
Before Luke gets into the heart of Jesus’ teaching, he wants us to pause for a moment and catch our breath. In doing so we see a snapshot of the current situation. Every once in a while you need to stop and reorient yourself to the situation, especially in a spiritual battle. You have to take a look at who are the players involved. This is what Luke is doing for us here. He wants us to catch up with the situation and we see two important things about Jesus: The Popularity of Jesus and the Power of Jesus.
1. The Popularity of Jesus
We live in a world that seeks to find meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction in all kinds of ways. And yet, people find only emptiness in following their various pursuits. Perhaps psychiatrist Carl Jung gave the best description of our culture today when he said, “The central neurosis of our time is emptiness.” One would think that people living in the 21st century would have learned how to deal with the emptiness of life. But they have not.
People in Jesus’ day found life just as empty as they do today. They struggled to find meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction in all kinds of ways too. The reason Jesus was so popular is that he gave answers for life. He told people how they could find meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction in life. Think about the woman at the well. Jesus spoke right into the emptiness and brokenness of her life and she left rejoicing telling everyone to come and meet the man who told me everything that I ever did! (John 4:29)
Luke tells us that Jesus came down off the mountain after choosing his disciples and arrives at a level place (also translated plateau) to teach his disciples. Luke is recording for us the Sermon on the Mount we find in Matthew 5. Present are 3 groups of people with Jesus. “Them” being The Twelve, the crowd of disciples, and then people who are from all over the region - as far south as Jerusalem and all the way up the coast to Sidon and Tyre to the North.
Luke doesn’t tell us how many people are there, but we can speculate it to be in the thousands. On one occasion Jesus taught the people and fed more than five thousand men by miraculously turning five barley loaves and two fish into enough food for everyone. The next day the people wanted Jesus to keep giving them bread always (John 6:34).
I don’t know where you are or who of these three groups you identify with: the committed, the curious, or the crowd, but I want you to know something. Jesus is the fullest satisfaction of the soul. Jesus told the people that he was “the bread of life.” He was the one who provided meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction in life. The miracle of the bread was merely a sign pointing to him who alone fully satisfies every human need.
The beloved blind American poet Fanny Jane Crosby did not begin writing hymns until her mid-forties. But from then on, inspiring words seemed to flow constantly from her heart, and she became “the happiest creature in all the land.” Friends stopped in frequently to see her with requests for new texts for special occasions.
One day William Kirkpatrick, a talented gospel musician who had just composed a new melody that he felt needed suitable words to become a singable hymn, visited Fanny. As William sat at the piano and played the tune for Fanny, her face lit up. She knelt in prayer, as was always her custom, and soon the lines to this lovely hymn began to flow freely from her heart:
“A wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord, a wonderful Savior to me; He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, where rivers of pleasure I see.
A wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord—He taketh my burden away; He holdeth me up and I shall not be moved; He giveth me strength as my day.
With numberless blessings each moment He crowns, and, filled with His fullness divine, I sing in my rapture, “O Glory to God for such a Redeemer as mine!”
When clothed in His brightness transported I rise to meet Him in clouds of the sky; His perfect salvation, His wonderful love, I’ll shout with the millions on high.
Chorus: He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock; that shadows a dry, thirsty land; He hideth my life in the depths of His love, and covers me there with His hand, and covers me there with His hand.
When Fanny Crosby wrote “rivers of pleasure I see,” “with numberless blessings each moment He crowns,” and “I sing in my rapture,” she revealed the satisfaction she found in Jesus even though she was blind. (Credit: Freddy Fritz)
2 The Power of Jesus
The second thing we see about Jesus’ ministry is his power. Whenever you have the preaching of the full gospel, there is the power associated with it. The gospel is not a mere intellectual exercise of theology. Nor is it merely a religious exercise, a collection of teachings, or a social movement. There are elements of each of these within the gospel, but the gospel is a radical transformation of the life of the believer that is associated with the authority and power of God.
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1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. (2 Timothy 3:1–5 ESV)
Jesus demonstrated His power in His healing of mind, the body, and also over the spirit, spiritual power. Verse 18 says those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being cured. It is one thing to be tormented in your body, it's another thing to be physically well and to have the very minions of Satan dwelling in your spirit. We've already seen Jesus cast them out. We've seen in chapter 4 a dramatic account step by step of how He dealt with a demon-possessed man in the synagogue. And now we see it on for an entire crowd of people.
What does that mean to us? First of all, that He is God because only God can do these things. Secondly, this is a preview of what heaven is going to be and it proves to us that He is the Lord of heaven, that He is the Savior and Redeemer who can and will give us a perfect mind, a perfect body, and a perfect soul. Jesus says, "Look, I can do that. I can bring the truth to your mind and give you a perfect mind. I can bring wholeness to your body and give you a glorified body with no infirmity, no sorrow, no sadness, no sickness, no dying.” And I can take your soul and I can make it pure and free from any evil influence. This is what He does. (MacArthur)
It also shows us God’s compassion. You can put your full trust and hope in Jesus Christ because he is preparing a place for you in heaven where you will enjoy the fullness of his riches and power for eternity. That’s hope!
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12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. 14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; (Joel 2:12–15 ESV)
Will you humbly come to him today?
