Where Is The Man For The Day?

WHERE IS THE MAN FOR THE DAY?

Text: Matthew 17:14-20, Mark 9:14-29

OPEN WITH PRAYER AND THANKSGIVING

Before we begin this morning, I want to read to you a quote from Charles Spurgeon. I’ve read it before, but it’s so good it bears repeating. It’s from a sermon he gave in 1888, and he begins by saying, “Everybody admires Luther. Yes, yes, but you do not want anyone else to do the same today. When you go to the zoological gardens you all admire the bear. But how would you like a bear at home? Or a bear wandering loose about the street? You tell me it would be unbearable. And no doubt you’re right. So we admire a man who was firm in the faith, say 400 years ago. The past ages are a sort of bear pit or iron cage for him. But such a man today is a nuisance and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot or give him a worse name if you can think of one. Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and their compeers had said, ‘The world is out of order but if we try to set it right we shall only make a great row and get ourselves into disgrace. Let’s go to our chambers, put on our nightcaps and sleep over the bad times and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better.’ Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of error. Age after age would have gone down into the infernal deeps and the pestiferous bogs of error would have swallowed all. These men loved the faith and the Name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on. Note what we owe them and let us pay to our sons the debt we owe our fathers. Look you sirs, there are ages yet to come. If the Lord does not speedily appear there will come another generation, and another. And all these generations will be tainted and injured if we are not faithful to God and to His truth today.”

Now did ya’ll catch what Charles Spurgeon was throwing out there? Let me modernize it for you a bit. He’s saying, “Everybody admires guys like Martin Luther for taking a stand. For being uncompromising in his faith… But why is it when someone does something like that today, that the world, as well as – the Christian community comes down on him. “Wow, this guy is such a rigid, unloving, uncaring, intolerant person! Doesn’t he know that if you want win the approval of the world and get things done, you’ve got to be compromising?” That’s the way the world and the Church views a person like that today. But had not Luther, and Calvin, Knox, and even Spurgeon himself done what they did, we very well could’ve had centuries of error and false teaching… and if we ourselves don’t stand for the truth, and start proclaiming the truth, then generations down the line, our grandkids, and great grandkids, are going to pay the price.

Let’s take our Bibles and open them up to Luke chapter 18… and I’m actually going to read two passages this morning, and the first one, here in Luke 18, is just to get your feet wet, and the other one, from Matthew 17 is the text for the sermon.

So Luke 18:7-8 (READ). Now that question that Jesus asks there in the last part of verse 8 should disturb the heck out of you. And people say, “Well it’s hypothetical.” Yes, but still, why ask it? Even hypothetically? Now let’s turn to our text. It’s Matthew 17:14-20 (READ).

So let’s set the stage here. Jesus, James, John, and Peter have just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration. They’ve had this amazing experience, and as they’re coming down, they see the other disciples and a crowd of people. And a man kind of makes his way through the crowd and approaches Jesus and says to Him, “Lord have mercy on my son, for he has seizures and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” And notice what Jesus says, “You faithless and twisted generation.” Then of course He tells the man to bring his son to Him, and in verse 18 Jesus rebukes the demon and the boy was healed instantly.

Now afterwards, the disciples come to Jesus privately and ask Him why they couldn’t cast it out.

And that’s a logical question.

You see, prior to this Jesus had commissioned the 70 to go out, to preach, to heal the sick, and to cast out demons… and you remember they returned to Jesus rejoicing saying, “Even the demons obey us in Your Name Jesus.” So they’ve done some exorcisms before. They’ve been successful at casting out demons before, so why not this time? And Jesus tells them, “It’s because of your little faith.” In-fact, had they been listening to Him, they would’ve known that. He said, “Oh you faithless and twisted generation…” But then He goes on and tells them, “If you had faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you could move mountains! You could do amazing things.” And He even says, “Nothing would be impossible for you.” Now there’s two ways theologians have understood this, and I think we can take both of them as accurate.