Text: Luke 4
Title: Deal With It? How?
Topic: Christian Living
Theme: Living with Difficulties & Trials
Purpose: to be the Holy Spirit’s second witness encouraging God’s people in my care to deal with difficulties and trials as Jesus did.
Response: Individuals will commit themselves to using the same spiritual resources Jesus used as He confronted temptation, rejection, oppression and the expectations of others.
Pattern: A series of questions and narrative answers using both contemporary biography and the story of how Jesus dealt with difficulties and trials.
Visual Aid: A White Board or overhead projector to list the resources Jesus used to deal with His difficulties.
HAVE YOU EVER STARTED TO TELL SOMEONE ABOUT YOUR DIFFICULTIES ONLY TO HAVE THEM CUT YOU OFF WITH “JUST DEAL WITH IT!”? DID YOU WANT TO SAY, “DEAL WITH IT HOW?”
HAVE YOU EVER FACED TEMPTATION?
1) Jana Goetz did. She was an experienced nurse who had just switched jobs. The change had been a long time coming. Jana was excited to join up with two doctors whom she had worked previously. She was back with "family"; she had come home. Her first evening at the clinic a young mother came with her 18-month-old son. He needed his final shot for a routine immunization; his mother came for a physical. Both patients were new to the clinic.
Jana gave the boy his shot, and his mother took him back to the waiting room, where his sister and grandmother sat. The mother then went back to the room for her physical. When Jana went to record the vaccination on the boy’s chart, she noticed that the seal on the vial inside her lab coat was unbroken. Quickly Jana realized that she had given the boy the wrong vaccine. She had given him a shot from a different vial -- a routine vaccination for children, but the boy had already completed that series of shots months earlier.
Jana said she gasped when she realized her mistake and then went into shock, physically numbed by the fierceness of what raged within. Here is the sequence of her thoughts, according to her own story:
"No one will ever know. No harm done."
"I can’t tell the doctor."
"This is my first day on the job."
"The doctor will think I’m incompetent."
"It can’t hurt him, can it?"
"It doesn’t hurt to be immunized twice for the same thing."
"But he needs the right vaccine."
"What will the mother say?"
"But I will always know, and so will God."
Meanwhile, the doctor was examining the boy’s mother. Jana weakly paced outside the room.
When the doctor walked out of the room, Jana told him her mistake, almost vomiting her confession. "Whoa. Let me think about this for a moment," he said. After a few moments, he walked back in the room, told the mother what happened, and asked her to schedule another time for her child’s immunization. Jana’s anxiety released, she was now free.
Citation: Dave Goetz, author and editor, ChurchLeadersOnline.com © 2001 PreachingToday.com / Christianity Today, Inc.
2) Jesus was tempted too (Luke 4:1-12).
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."
Jesus answered, "It is written: `Man does not live on bread alone.’ "
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours."
Jesus answered, "It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’ "
The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down from here. For it is written:
" ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ "
Jesus answered, "It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ "
When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.
HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED REJECTION?
1) Author James Lee Burke did.
In the mid-’70s this creator of the Dave Robicheaux detective series wrote a book he called The Lost Get-Back Boogie. To his dismay his novel was rejected 111 times by New York publishers alone. (It is still considered the most thoroughly rejected manuscript in American publishing history). But Burke didn’t give up and eventually one reluctant publishing house decided to take a chance on his story. In 1985 James Lee Burke was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for The Lost Get-Back Boogie. Imagine the reaction of all those editors that originally said the manuscript was unfit.
Citation: Greg Asimakoupoulos. From the files of Leadership. © 2001 PreachingToday.com / Christianity Today, Inc.
2) Jesus was rejected too (Luke 4:14-30).
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn’t this Joseph’s son?" they asked.
Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ "
"I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian."
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
HAVE YOU EVER CONFRONTED SPIRITUAL OPPRESSION?
1) I have.
Once the attack was furious relentless like the waves of the sea crashing over me. All Connie and I could do was pray.
At other times there have been hurtful and discouraging thoughts threatening to overwhelm me. But I found relief when I prayed.
On another occasion I had to fight hard to make my thinking and my behavior line up with the Bible. But the more I prayed and read God’s Word the easier the battle became.
2) Jesus was oppressed too (Luke 4:31-37).
Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath began to teach the people. They were amazed at his teaching, because his message had authority.
In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, "Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God!"
"Be quiet!" Jesus said sternly. "Come out of him!" Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him.
All the people were amazed and said to each other, "What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to evil spirits and they come out!" And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area.
HAVE YOU EVER HAD TO STAND UP TO OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPECTATIONS?
1) Hudson Taylor and his missionaries in China did.
Those missionaries who dressed like the Chinese suffered a few snags. In the gossipy colonial enclaves of Shanghai and Hong Kong, "going native" caused outrage and hilarity. When China Inland Mission workers first adopted Chinese dress, it seemed to other expatriates as if they were putting on the clothes of the enemy, "aping Chinese dress and manners." Western suits, the diplomats said, offered protection and prestige, the power of the flag.
It seems so simple to adopt "the costume of the country" as a courtesy to one’s hosts. But this "simple" policy of Hudson Taylor had some surprising ramifications.
"Full Chinese dress" was one of Taylor’s hardest and fastest rules, a symbol of his intention to create an indigenous Chinese church shorn of foreign trappings. "The foreign dress and carriage of missionaries, ... the foreign appearance of chapels, and indeed the foreign air imparted to everything connected with their work has seriously hindered the rapid dissemination of the truth among the Chinese."
In a hierarchical society like China, however, where every button, every feather, every ripple of silk, denoted one’s status, putting on Chinese clothes was no simple matter. How to choose the right costume? The missionaries did not want to be confused with Buddhist priests in saffron robes, nor with upper-class Confucian scholars. The China Inland Mission chose to dress like poor school teachers, a humble costume that befitted their goal of converting China from the bottom up. Such dress, they claimed, offered a sort of spiritual passport into the hearts and minds of the people.
Citation: Alvyn Austin, "Hudson Taylor and Missions to China," Christian History, no. 52. © 2001 PreachingToday.com / Christianity Today, Inc.
2) Jesus did too (Luke 4:38-44).
Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.
When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, "You are the Son of God!" But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Christ.
At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. But he said, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent." And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.
HOW DID JESUS DEAL WITH THESE DIFFICULTIES AND TRIALS?
1) Prayer
2) Fasting
3) The Bible
4) Sense of purpose and commitment
5) Expect trials and difficulties to return
ARE YOU WILLING TO DEAL WITH THE DIFFICULTIES AND TRIALS OF LIFE WITH THE RESOURCES JESUS USED?
1) Bow your heads and close your eyes so God can meet with each of us privately.
2) Ask God’s Holy Spirit to guide each person as he or she considers the following question.
3) “How do you deal with difficulties and trials?” (A time for silent thinking as the Holy Spirit works.)
4) If you’re willing to commit yourself to using the same spiritual resources Jesus used as He confronted difficulties and trials, will you raise your hand and leave it up?
5) Pray for those who respond.
