Majesty on Display

They're going to come down off that mountain and what a change is going to take place in the space of 24 hours. And I couldn't help but be reminded that God never intended a mountaintop experience to eliminate the battles down below. It happened that way with the Lord.

Why do we think it would be any different with us? Yesterday, it was a demonstration of the kingdom of light. Today, there's going to be a demonstration of the kingdom of darkness. God encourages believers in their walk with Him by giving them spiritual victories in their lives. But many Christians don't understand how easily these victories can be twisted into vices. When we forget where our power comes from, when we're tempted to take the credit for these victories, suddenly God-sufficiency becomes self-sufficiency.

The sin of pride takes over our lives. Jesus' disciples fell into that trap after a successful week of witnessing. Jesus lovingly reminded them and us who it is that ultimately has the power over the kingdom of darkness.

Stephen called this lesson, majesty on display. By the time the apostle Paul was preaching to his generation, the world around him had become rather inundated, saturated with largely superstitious views of the spirit world, the world of demons. The earlier Egyptian world had greatly influenced the Greek and Roman empires with their obsession with demons. They had adopted the view that the human body had 36 parts and that a demon could invade and control any one of those parts. As a result, in the culture of Rome, as in cultures around the world to this very day, medicine was nothing more than an attempt to get rid of a demon.

The medicine man was part doctor, part exorcist. Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, you have the view that the devil and demons don't exist. The devil and demons are the butt of jokes. They're just something to laugh about.

Don't take any of it seriously. So you have the demon deacons of Wake Forest. Poor deacons got associated with the word demons back in 1924. You've got the blue demons of DePaul University. You've got the blue devils of Duke.

They deserve that title, by the way. I mean, what's the harm in turning into demons and the cute little mascots are running around with horns and a pointy tail. The demonic world and their leader, the devil, that fallen cherub, are more than happy to see a generation or a culture play down the destructive, dangerous reality of the kingdom of darkness they represent.

They enjoy every joke. We're about to watch the Lord engage in an encounter with the demonic world. And as you watch the ministry of the Lord, I want to point out the rather obvious fact that he isn't obsessed by them.

He isn't distracted by them, but he is very aware of them. For the believer, he reminds us that there is no reason to fear them, but every reason to be aware of them. In fact, the apostle Paul warned the believers living in Corinth to stay alert.

He writes, don't be ignorant of the schemes, the methods, methodias, the plans, the strategies of the devil, 1 Corinthians 2. While the believer cannot be possessed by a demon, we are now the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God now dwells in us, 1 Corinthians 3.16. We cannot be possessed, but we can be harassed.

In fact, he comes with us and at us, I should say, in one of four ways. First, through temptation. We are tempted by really the joint forces of the world, the demonic world, and our own flesh.

It all collaborates together. When we sin, we unlock the door from the inside. It might be the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, John describes in 1 John 2.16. This is what Peter warns us of when he says that Satan is like a hungry lion. He's roaming about and he's roaring, seeking somebody to devour. The word devour means to ruin, to discredit.

So he's talking about believers. He wants to discredit you. He wants to ruin you.

Temptation is the bait and Satan uses all kinds of bait. He's a skillful fisherman, but ultimately, he doesn't care about the bait that made you bite. He doesn't really care.

He doesn't care about the sin that entangles you. He just wants to ruin you. He wants to ruin your testimony.

He wants to ruin your joy. He wants to ruin your walk and your trust in the Lord. It means that the Christian life is not one battle and it's done.

You've found that out, haven't you? It's a constant warring with our flesh, the world, and the devil. It isn't going to end until we see Jesus. Only then can you safely hang up your weapons and the armor of your warfare described for us in Ephesians 6.

The 17th century Puritan, wonderful writer by the name of John Flavel, wrote these realistic words. He said, to keep pure in thought, to have everything orderly in the heart, is constant work. The keeping of the heart is a work that is never done until life is ended. There is no time in the life of a Christian which will allow an intermission in this work. It's good, isn't it?

There's no intermission. In fact, Paul would say, take heed, be careful while you're standing unless you fall. And one of the delights of the assembly is to gather the army involved in the battle. Satan comes after the believer through temptation. He comes after us through persecution, would be the second area. This is his attempt to discourage the believer, to silence our witness.

He pursues the believer thirdly through division. He hates your family. He hates your church. He hates the gospel. He hates the fellowship of the believer. He hates what's happening here more than we could ever understand.

He hates it. He desires to dissolve the unity we have with one another. Finally, the demonic world pursues the believer through not only temptation, persecution, division, but through deception, constantly attempting to distort the truth, distract the believer, deny some portion of scripture, get us hung up in some area, and so deceive the believer. Is it possible for a believer to be deceived in some way?

Sure it is. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians 2-3, let no one deceive you in any way. To the Ephesians, let no one deceive you with empty words, meaningless, superficial, worldly advice.

Don't be deceived. Ephesians 5-6. So these are the actions against the believer, temptation, persecution, division, deception. For the unbeliever, there is a fifth action possible, and that is possession, demonization. This is where the person is physically overtaken and the demon essentially counterfeits the indwelling of the Holy Spirit by making that unbeliever's body their temple.

In reality, the demons don't really care about that person. They are taking on a mocking, jeering, offensive action directed toward Creator God. This is their attempt to insult God who created mankind in his image and uniquely for his glory. They love to distort that. They love to destroy the glory of God reflected in his creation of mankind, and they do it then through this masquerading, false, indwelling possession.

Of course, the difference is obvious. When the Holy Spirit indwells someone, their lives are redeemed. When a demon indwells someone, their lives are only further, if not completely ruined.

That's exactly what Jesus is about to change as he faces a young man who is demon-possessed. That's all introduction. All right, let's go to Luke chapter 9, and we're now at verse 37.

I want you to just notice the first four words. We'll cover more than that, I promise, but just notice as the verse opens. On the next day, this is intended by Luke, not to be lost on us here. Luke clearly wants us to know that something happened the day before because this is going to happen on the next day, and he wants us to see the contrasting events as if to say that what happened the day before was really different than what is going to happen today.

All right, read on. What happened the day before? Luke continues, on the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met them. So that now makes it clear undeniably that the Lord, on the day before, was what we call on the mount of transfiguration. If you were with us in our last study, just the day before, the Lord pulled back the veil of his humanity to reveal a stunning deity, but that was yesterday.

They're not going to live up there. They're going to come down off that mountain, and what a change is going to take place in the space of 24 hours. And I couldn't help but be reminded that God never intended a mountaintop experience to eliminate the battles down below. It happened that way with the Lord.

Why do we think it would be any different with us? Yesterday, it was a demonstration of the kingdom of light. Today, there's going to be a demonstration of the kingdom of darkness. Jesus and his three disciples, Peter, James, and John, come down off the mountain. The other nine disciples are currently involved in a heated argument with religious leaders and lawyers representing the law of Moses.

Mark, in his gospel account, lets us know that they're just having a shouting match, basically. The crowd is waiting. The mob is assembled. It's pandemonium.

It's what one author called confusion and chaos. It's the kind of scene where you'd want to go back up the mountain. Let's just run back up there. No, let's go down here. There are things to learn down here in the battle. He writes this in verse 38.

Before we go any further, I want that last phrase to sort of arrest your attention. I beg your disciples to cast it out, and they could not. What do you mean they could not? Of course they could. Not more than a week ago, they were empowered by the Lord, sent out in teams of two. They'd gone out and performed miracles and cast out demons and preached the gospel of Christ with incredible power. But now, nine of them combined cannot cast out one demon. They could not do it. The problem, I believe, is that they thought they could do it because they had done it. Matthew's account specifically states that they lacked faith or trust in the Lord.

Mark's account tells us that they hadn't prayed about it. I don't need the Lord to help me out. I already did this. I've handled this before. Just watch.

Let me show you my resume. There's no need to depend on the Lord in faith. There's no need to ask the Lord in prayer for power. Just watch.

Get this. In the space of one week, they experience a power outage. They move from power to powerlessness. And I believe the Lord is teaching them and us a lesson here without even saying a word. We could miss it. This is what can happen when you drift from sheer dependency to self-sufficiency.

And it could happen in less than one week. Now verse 41. Jesus answered, O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you?

How long do I have to put up with you? Sounds like something my fourth grade teacher would have said. But what's the Lord mean here? Well, we would misunderstand and think, well, he's just exasperated. He's actually taking us back to Deuteronomy chapter 32, which refers to Israel's unfaithful unbelief in the wilderness.

You see, this is a text for the nation. He applies it to the unbelief of the nation Israel and their own rejection of him as their Messiah. He knows it isn't going to be long before they're going to be clamoring for his crucifixion. He sees the clouds of demonic influence gathering, swirling, as it were, overhead. He sees the infiltration of the kingdom of darkness, displaying the tentacles of power, even in this demonized young man.

With that, he asks them to bring this young man to him. Verse 42 says, and when he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. And Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy and gave him back to his father. Note this, and all were astonished at the majesty of God.

Jesus is clearly different than his disciples. Jesus has spiritual power they've never seen. They clearly and correctly attribute this event to the majesty of God. In fact, the word Luke uses here for majesty is the same word used by Peter in that text I quoted earlier. I was an eyewitness to the majesty of God on the mountaintop.

Same word here. Jesus is demonstrating his divine majesty. He did it up there on the mountaintop, illustrated with brilliant light. He's demonstrating it down here as he battles the kingdom of darkness. I want to point out, beloved, the majesty of God might be more obvious to us on the mountaintop, but it is still as majestic and still as powerful and still as operational down here in the battle, in the confusion, in the chaos of our world. I also want to point out that the majesty of Christ in delivering someone bound by the kingdom of darkness might not be as dramatic as this demonized young man who's going to be delivered, but in the heavenly realm, where they see the big picture, every redemption, every salvation, every rescue, every redeemed life is just as victorious over the kingdom of darkness. You might think, my testimony is so bland, so ordinary, so vanilla, so commonplace. Oh no, your salvation was nothing less than the majestic power of Jesus Christ over the kingdom of darkness. Don't look down on your testimony. In fact, when you got saved, the Bible says a celebration broke out in heaven in the presence of the angels, Luke 15, verse 10. John, in the book of Revelation, can't count that Angelica, so he attributes the number 100 million to them, 100 million. Imagine 100 million angels at some kind of heavenly celebration when you got saved.

Why? Because they get it. They know the rescue of your redemption. You thought it was wonderful when you had that surprise birthday party. You know, 20 people showed up. You walked through the door, whoa, they sang happy birthday. You can't imagine the celebration at the moment of your spiritual birth, but it wasn't ordinary. It was a demonstration of the majesty of God.

Well, everybody here is marveling and awestruck at the power of Christ. We're told here in verse 43, notice the middle part, but while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, let these words sink into your ears. The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men. The Son of Man is a favorite expression, title for the Messiah that emphasizes his identity with the human race, fully God, fully human.

He's the Son of God, but now here he's the Son of Man, too. Verse 45, but they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them so that they might not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying, now why would Jesus tell them something they're not going to understand?

Same reason he tells you things you don't understand, and me. But he wants to drop a seed into their memory. They don't get it quite yet.

The Lord doesn't want them to understand fully yet. One author said this, but when he is condemned by the nation's leaders, when he is tried in courts by Roman rulers who were morally bankrupt, when he suffered the pain and shame of crucifixion and then lay cold in a borrowed tomb, they would realize that none of it had been a mistake. It was not a miscalculation.

Everything had gone perfectly according to plan. So he's just dropping it in, and they're going to recall it later that this had all been planned. But don't forget here at this juncture, I love that Luke emphasizes again another point in timing. He says, while they were marveling over the majesty of God, while they're marveling over this incredible victory, the Lord says, you know, we're not going to ride into the kingdom right now on this triumph.

That's not our plan. While they were marveling, Jesus reminds them of the divine script, and it's different from theirs. Another reminder that even to this day in the lives of his disciples today, our schedule doesn't necessarily match up with the plan of God, does it?

Our agenda, our calendar, our appointment book, our expectations are often directly incompatible to the agenda of God. And we hear God, as it were, effectively say, no, not that. Or no, not now. Or no, not ever. Or no, there's something different.

There's something deeper. I read recently about a man who was accepted and appointed along with his wife as missionaries to the continent of Africa. They quickly raised their support and headed off to the field. But once they arrived, his wife became desperately ill, susceptible to disease, common in that region. And for her health's sake, they had to leave in their first term of service and return to the States in order to make a living. This young man joined his father in his dentistry practice. It wasn't long before he joined his father in tinkering around with an experiment to pasteurize grape juice in order to keep it from fermenting and then to provide it to their church to use during communion services. Pasteurizing grape juice had not yet been done and they were attempting it and they had modest success. And their church appreciated it. They offered it to other churches in the community and the word spread. It wasn't long before the demand for their grape juice exceeded their dental practice and they set it aside.

The practice, that is. So this young man who had longed to be a missionary, who along with his wife had their dreams changed, their schedules changed, their expectations changed, they would never serve the Lord overseas. His name was Charles Welch. And we're drinking his stuff when we have communion to this day. He would go on to give hundreds of thousands of dollars, in our economy millions of dollars, to world missions. You know, often it takes a lifetime to see it come together.

Maybe you don't see it now. But you will later that God did not miscalculate. There are no typos in his script for your life.

It's all according to plan. And one day we're going to discover in the perspective of heaven that in our lives, in ways we may have never seen, we never saw it, we couldn't imagine it, but we'll understand that his majesty had been on display in our lives all along the way. That lesson was called majesty on display. Stephen Davey is currently teaching through this section of Luke. We'll bring you several more messages from this series over the next several broadcasts. But between now and next time, we'd appreciate hearing from you. If you have a comment, a question, or would like more information, you can send us an email. Address it to info at wisdomonline.org. We have a special place on our website where Stephen answers questions that have come in from listeners like you. Thanks again for tuning in. Please join us next time for more wisdom for the hearts.