January 22, 2012
Scripture:
Scripture: Psalm 103:1
Scripture:
350 – I will make you fishers of men
Prayer
We have been looking at the beginning of the Lord Jesus’ life. We saw him as a baby being born in Bethlehem, where the shepherds came to visit. Then we read of the visit from wise men, when he was (we believe) about two years old.
Luke 2:40
The first four words of this verse are “and the child grew.” How can you tell if you have grown? You could measure your height against your previous measurement. Do you wake up in the morning and think, “I’ll grow today”? No, you don’t have to do anything: it just happens. According to our hymn I can read my Bible and pray and I will grow. The growth the hymn is talking about is not your body growth, though. That hymn is saying that you will grow in wisdom if you read the Bible and pray. Can you grow in more than one way? How many ways are there to grow?
Read v. 52. This verse says that the Lord Jesus grew in wisdom, stature, favour with God, and favour with man. We can grow in the same ways as the Lord Jesus.
We can grow in wisdom when we read the Bible or do school work. When you grow in wisdom you can say that you grow academically. Then the Lord grew in stature; part of this is your height, which we already mentioned. This one you don’t have to think about; it just happens. Growing in height, we could say, is growing physically.
Thirdly, the Lord grew in favour with God. How can we grow in favour with God? We can grow in favour with God by following that path that He has placed for us. This is very important. You grow spiritually this way. Lastly, Jesus grew in favour with man. We can say he grew socially. The Bible does have things to tell us about growing socially; for example, “Be ye kind one to another.”
These are four ways that we can grow. The only one that we can really measure is our physical growth, but it is important to be working on all four of them. The people around the Lord Jesus could tell that he was growing in these areas. I wonder what the measurements would be if we could measure our spiritual growth?
Today, we read two verses; between those two verses, there is a story about the Lord. We’ll look at that story next time.
Luke 9:37
This portion is a contrast to what we had last week. Then we were on the mountain top, now we are in the wilderness. That mountain top gave us a picture of the kingdom of heaven, with the saints of heaven and the saints of earth. There was also the cloud. Israel had the cloud as a guide in the wilderness. Also it was above the tabernacle and the temple. It represented the presence of God, and God spoke out of this cloud, “This is my beloved Son: hear him.” Jesus had left His heavenly glories, but here - as at His baptism - He was recognised for Who He really is. When the cloud departed, there was only Jesus and His disciples left. Do we enjoy the privilege of being alone with our Saviour?
These disciples had the marvelous experience of seeing the Lord in His glory - a “mountain top” experience. However, when they came down off the mount, they found the enemy working in the form of a demon-possessed only son. There’s something about only sons. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest” (Genesis 22:2). This father asked the Lord to look upon his only son. He had asked the disciples to cast the demon out, but they couldn’t. They seemed to lack faith. The Divine power was up on the mountain, but Satan’s power was working in the world.
Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and delivered him to his father. This showed that the Lord was superior to all powers. He delivered the boy from the demon, and delivered him to his father. That’s a mighty deliverance, but it’s no more so than ours. 2 Corinthians 1:9-11 speaks of our deliverance in three tenses: past, present, and future. This deliverance isn’t shelter from judgement. When the children of Israel were redeemed on Passover, that was shelter from judgement. What God redeems, He claims. Once we’re redeemed, we can’t just keep living worldly lives. We’re redeemed, and then we need to be delivered from the world just as Israel was finally delivered from Egypt and Pharaoh at the Red Sea. God overcame Pharaoh and Egypt. In our story, the Lord was stronger than the strong man (Satan), and so overcame him and spoiled his goods (the demon-possessed boy).
Another time that our Lord came down off a mountain, a leper met Him. He had descended from glory, and yet He wasn’t repelled but instead overcame the enemy and healed the leper.
All were amazed at the power of God in healing this boy. We need to learn to recognise the power of God. They were a faithless generation; and we are told that when we pray, we should pray believing. What are we believing in? The power of God. God has power in resurrection, power in creation, and much more. This story shows His power over the enemy. The Lord had all that power, and yet He told the disciples that He would be delivered into the hands of men. One reason He allowed this was so that we could know His power in resurrection.
Our Lord’s most amazing power is mentioned in Ephesians 1:16-20. The margin for verse 19 changes “His mighty power” to “the might of His power”. Nothing showed God’s power like raising Jesus from the dead and setting Him at His right hand. Why? V.21. It seems that all the diabolical powers of Satan were present to try and stop the resurrection. Satan knew that if he could keep Jesus in the grave, then he had won. If Jesus came out, Satan had lost. That’s why it was the mightiest demonstration of God’s power: He completely overcame the enemy.
We get a picture of this in Moses and the ten plagues. The Egyptian magicians could copy some of the plagues, but they couldn’t create life. Only God can do that.
This is also a mighty act because not only did God raise Jesus, but Ephesians 2:6 tells us that the same power will also raise us. It’s a precious truth.
Hymn 346 - Jesus who lives above the sky
Prayer