3 Reminders for Jesus' Disciples

Luke 9:28-50 - Riley Boggs

It feels like it has been forever since we have opened the Gospel of Luke and looked at the Word together. Babies and ice storms and sickness and conferences has really caused some delay. But the good news is that we are all here, now, and we can pick back up right where we left off. As a reminder, the last time I preached from Luke we looked at Jesus sending out the apostles, the feeding of the five thousand, the foretelling of Jesus’ death, and the well-known “take up your cross and follow me” passage. And what we specifically looked at is how we can trust, confess, and follow Jesus. This week we’ll be picking up on similar themes as we look at verses 28-50. Specifically we’ll be looking at 3 different reminders for Jesus’ disciples.

But before we really dive into the text itself, I simply want to ask you, what is a disciple? It’s a word that doesn’t really get used much outside of Christian contexts, but it could, because a disciple is simply someone who intentionally follows someone so that they might learn from and imitate them. And with that understanding, you could be a disciple of all sorts of people. I remember whenever I first started working at Starbucks, they had me follow around another work for the first few days I worked there. They wanted me to watch and learn so that I could do what they did. Occasionally they would have me try to do something, step back and watch, and then offer some advice as to how I could better do whatever the task was. I was essentially a disciple of this coworker. And this kind of discipling can happen across all sorts of vocations and hobbies and sports and so on.

But, there is a difference between simply being a disciple and being a disciple of Jesus Christ specifically. The difference is that being a disciple of Jesus doesn’t just impact your 9-5 or how you spend your free time. Rather, being a disciple of Jesus Christ impacts every single aspect of your life. Yes it impacts what you do, but it also impacts how and why you do it. It impacts your desires, your thoughts, and your feelings. Being a disciple of Jesus means that we are following Him, seeking to imitate Him, in every moment of our lives.

Probably the most common passage about being a disciple of Jesus is the great commission passage found at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Actually, if you will, turn with me there just briefly, Matthew 28:19-20. Jesus says, “19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” That’s the task that Jesus gives not only to His disciples then, but to us, His disciples now. What is that task? To make more disciples of Jesus. In other words, we share the Gospel with them, and Lord willing, they come to saving faith. Then we baptize them into the church so that they can walk with us, and us with them, and teach them to obey all that Jesus has commanded. We gather together, look at the Word, and try to make our life better imitate Jesus through our obedience. We become better disciples of Jesus Christ.

This morning, in our passage, which you can turn back to, I think we get 3 reminders for Jesus’ disciples. Jesus is teaching His disciples then and there to remember these things, and now we, as disciples of Jesus, are to read and apply these same things. So, the way I want to do this is look at this text in 3 sections that I think put forth each reminder. The first section is verses 28-36, so let’s look at it together.

Luke writes that what happens here in this passage takes place 8 days after Jesus told them of His future death and resurrection, and that they must deny themselves and take up their cross. Now that’s important to take note of because it’s going to help us rightly interpret what is taking place here. So we read that Jesus takes Peter, John, and James, up to the mountain to pray. And as Jesus is praying the appearance of his face is altered and his clothing becomes dazzling white. Now if that weren’t interesting enough, there are also 2 men who are talking with Him. That wouldn’t be too interesting were not for the fact that these 2 men were none other than Moses and Elijah. Both of whom have been dead for some time.

Luke goes on to tell us that these men had showed up in glory and were talking to Jesus about His departure, which was going to take place at Jerusalem. And apparently Peter, John, and James had been a had been asleep and started to wake up around this time, and were trying to make sense of what was happening before their groggy eyes. The more they wake up and realize what is happening, the more they are amazed. They realize that they are seeing the glory of Jesus and the 2 others with Him.

Eventually Moses and Elijah look like they are about to leave and so Peter says to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” In other words what Peter is saying is, “Hey Jesus, I don’t want this to end just yet, this is amazing. I want to be here, in this moment, beholding your glory, with Moses and Elijah. Let’s stay here a bit longer, let’s set up camp.” That seems like a reasonable request, right? Well, maybe not, because Luke adds that he said this, “not knowing what he said.” Now you might be thinking, umm… what does that mean? And if so, good question, and we will answer it in just a second. First, let’s just finish walking through this section.

So as Peter is saying this, a cloud begins to overshadow them, and they became afraid as it came over them and surrounded them. And then, from the cloud, a voice spoke, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen one, listen to Him!” After that, they looked around, and only Jesus was there; He was alone. And Luke adds that, “they kept silent about this and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.” Kind of wild story, right? What are we supposed to glean from that? What is the reminder for the disciples there and for us? I think it’s this.

1.) Death leads to glory (vv.28-36)

This is something that everyone who follows Jesus must remember, it is crucial. And it’s certainly not lost on our Lord Himself that His disciples need to understand this well, and so He has them behold all of this before their very eyes. See what is happening on this mountain is that the glory of Jesus Christ being shown. These men, up until this moment, had only seen Jesus clothed in His humanity. They had not seen the true glory of the Son of God without the veil of His humanness laid over Him. But now, as His humanity is briefly lifted away, they see the glory of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. They see Jesus as He was before taking on flesh. They see Jesus as He will be after His death, burial, and resurrection. In fact, this is the exact topic of conversation between Him, Moses and Elijah, further proving this to be the case. Luke says in verse 31 that these 3 were discussing Jesus’ departure. In other words, they were discussing Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. They are discussing what is to come, when Jesus’ glory will be put on display again like it is at this very moment.

Now, let’s get back to the question that Peter asked that seemed to be a fine question, but upon further investigation may not be. Peter, seeing this amazing event before him, asks Jesus if he can set up camp to prolong all of this. What’s wrong with this question? Why does Luke say that Peter doesn’t understand what He is asking? Why does God the Father speak through the glory cloud during this telling them to listen to Jesus? The reason is because Peter is misunderstanding the way in which glory must come. He doesn’t understand that the path of glory runs through death. In order for there the glory of Jesus to be seen in this way again, He must die on the cross, be buried, and resurrect. He must defeat death and sin once and for all. And because we know the end of the story, we know that this does happen. In fact, there are some who do not even recognize Jesus in His glorious state after His resurrection.

But not just for Jesus, but for everyone. In verse 31, Moses and Elijah are said to have appeared how? They have appeared in glory. What are Moses and Elijah at this time? They are dead. See that is what Peter, and us, are supposed to remember here. No matter how great of moments we have on this side of eternity, we shouldn’t try to set up camp as if we are going to be here forever. In fact, to do so would be to misunderstand how great eternity is for those in Christ. Not only will we behold the glory of the Son of God, but we ourselves will be glorified. We will be rid of all sin and pain and weakness. We will be glorified. And in that state, that we cannot comprehend now, we will behold the glory of the One who saved us for all eternity. This is why Luke adds that Peter doesn’t understand what He is asking. Peter thinks that this moment can last forever without death, but that just isn’t the case.

You know, this truth should radically change how we view death. I don’t mean to be morbid, and I am in no way saying that we should long for death or make light of it. Death is a result of sin, and it is an awful thing. It should have never been, and yet we all know it to be incredibly real. That being said, for those in Christ, there is glory on the other side of death. And if we really believe that glory was real, like we say we do, then the way we think about death should look very different than the rest of the world. When believers die, we mourn their death and we miss them dearly, but we do not feel sorry for them. We don’t cross our fingers and hope they are in a better place. No, we, with tear filled eyes, give thanks to God because we know that they are in a glorious state and they are beholding the Son of God in all of His glory.

By the way, I know that can be hard to imagine that. Our finite minds cannot even come close to understanding what it will be like to behold the glory of the Son of God. And I think because it’s such an incomprehensible thing, we can be tempted to think that we might not enjoy it as much as we should. I know that sounds silly when we say it out loud, but it’s true. Like we think that we’ll die, and we’ll see the glory of the Son of God and not be as blown away as we should be? Let me just say that will be not the case. You’re earthly brain might think that is the case, but I promise you it won’t be. It will be better than all of the best moments of your life combined, and you’ll never grow tired of it. I know that seems impossible, but it isn’t. And one day we’ll all experience it. But only after we have died or the Lord returns. Until then we follow Jesus, remembering that death leads to glory.

The second section of text we are going to look at is verses 37-43a. Starting in verse 37 we read that the next day Jesus and the disciples who were with Him come came down from the mountain, and as they came down, a great crowd met them. Not only that but a man who was in the crowd cried out to Jesus, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him. 40 And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.”

Jesus hears this and responds. He says, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” And as they are bringing the son to Jesus, the demon threw the boy to the ground, and he began convulsing. So Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. Then Luke adds that everyone was astonished at the majesty of God.

Now there’s several thing that I think we could draw from this, but I just one to pull one simple reminder.

2.) When we can’t, Jesus still can (vv.37-43a)

Shelby and I typically walk down the clearance aisle at Walmart when we pass it. There’s never really anything good, but every time we start to walk by we think, “But, what if something good is there today and it’s the one time we skip it.” And then we go down it. Well over the summer we did that and there was this little game that was really cheap that we thought we could mount on our fence and play. It’s the game where there’s a little hook mounted a board that goes on your fence, and then metal rod that sticks out away from the fence with a string and a metal ring on the end of it. And the game is pretty simple. You step back with the metal ring in hand, drop it, and try to have it land on the hook. Well anyway, we bought it that game.

We got home and got it mounted on the fence and then I stepped back and started to try to land it on the hook. Over and over and over again I tried and over and over and over again I couldn’t do it. Shelby was doing something else for a few minutes, and I had probably tried this thing like 50 times and hadn’t done it. She came over and watched her husband just fail miserably. I was so determined on not giving up, so I kept saying, “Okay 3 more and you can try. Okay just 3 more now, I think I figured out something.” Eventually, I had to do what no man wants to do. I admitted failure and gave up. Shelby walked up, grabbed the metal ring, and on her third try hooked it. Then, took it off the hook, stepped back, and did it again.

I think that silly example is a good parallel to this story and to how we often treat issues in our own lives. In this story, Jesus’ disciples couldn’t heal this boy. We don’t know why they couldn’t. When Jesus says, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you?”, we don’t actually know who that was directed towards. Some commentators think it was directed at Jesus’ disciples who were not trusting, or having faith, that Jesus had really given them the authority to cast out unclean spirits. Other commentators think that this is directed towards the crowds who did not have faith that they could do this. I lean towards the second simply because Jesus often heals people and says, “Your faith has made you well”, and so this seems to be Him saying the opposite of that. That is, “Because of your lack of faith, this boy was not made well.” I think both interpretations are reasonable, and I also don’t think it impacts the meaning of this passage, which is simply that even when others can’t, Jesus can.

As disciples of Jesus, we have to remember this. Though we follow the Lord and try to imitate Him with our whole life, we aren’t Him. We can’t do the things that He can do. And what that means is that when we fail to do whatever it is, we aren’t without hope. In fact, whenever we fail and come to the end of ourselves, that is when we ought to have the most hope. Because there is no better place for us to be, with whatever is ailing us, than before the Lord with nothing left to give.

There is an endless of things that we fight and struggle with daily. Things that we wish we could just stop, but it’s just not that simple. Fear, anxiety, worry, depression, and a whole list of sinful temptations. We can try and manipulate our circumstances a million different ways. We can try this new technique or this new whatever over and over again. But no matter what we do, it’s still there. When that happens, when we try everything in the world, and nothing helps, I want you to remember that you are not without hope. Jesus can heal you of it. He really can. Don’t sell Him short and think that He can’t or He won’t. Turn to His Word and see what it has to say about anxiety. Go to Him in prayer and ask Him to show you how to have joy during this depressive season. Do those things and just see what might happen.

We would all be much better off if instead of trying to fix everything ourselves we would just take it to the Lord immediately. Instead of trying to change our circumstances to alleviate worry, we look to His Word to see what we need to trust and believe to not worry. But the truth is that we stubborn and forget this far too often. And so for that, I just simply want to remind you that even when you can’t, Jesus can.

Now, I would argue that the first 2 points this morning have been sweet reminders. The third reminder for us this morning probably isn’t as sweet. In fact, I think it feels like a bit of a punch. That’s because our final reminder this morning is simply this.

3.) It’s not all about you (vv.43b-50)

In this final section of our text for this morning, I think this is what Jesus is trying to remind His disciples. There are 3 different examples of it. The first one is in verses 43-45. Jesus says to them, “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” But then Luke adds that they didn’t understand what this meant. It’s not altogether clear if it’s being hidden from them or if they themselves are lacking understanding, but regardless, they don’t know what Jesus means by this. And out of fear, they don’t ask Him what it means.

The second one you can see in verses 46-48. Luke tells us that an argument broke out among the disciples about which of them was the greatest. Jesus knew that they were doing this, so He took a child and put him by His side and said, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”

Then lastly, in verses 49-50, we read that John says to Jesus, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” Jesus responds to him and says, “Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.”

In each of these, I think the message that Jesus is trying to convey to the disciples is simply that it is not about them. They need to get out of their own way, stop prioritizing themselves and their desires, and begin to truly be a disciple of Jesus. In the first story, they didn’t understand what Jesus is saying, I think, because they haven’t been listening to what Jesus has been saying. They are so consumed with the idea that Jesus has come to establish a political kingdom on Earth that they aren’t hearing the words that He is saying to them. They’ve made it about them.

In the second story they can’t stop arguing about who is the best among them. A clear and obvious obsession with themselves. One that Jesus rebukes quickly by telling them only the one who accepts the child, who was considered the lowest of society, is great. In other words, until you give up all your pride and self-obsession and welcome in the least of these, you will never be great. You’ll just keep missing everything go by as you stare at yourself in the mirror and try to make yourself look better in front of others.

In the third story, the disciples want to put a stop to people doing good things without them. They think that if they aren’t a part of whatever is happening, then maybe they should shut it down. They want their name attached to it. They don’t want good things unless they are a part of the good thing.

You can examine each of these examples further and draw points from each, but I think the point being made across all of them is the blunt reminder that being a disciple of Jesus means it’s not about us. The call to follow Jesus is a call, as He mentioned just before this, to deny yourself and follow Him.

Our culture spews some incredibly self-absorbed stuff. It says that you can and should be able to do whatever you want. It says that your happiness is what matters most. It says live your life for yourself. Church, that is not the Christian life. The Christian life is a life that says I give up my desires so that I might pursue Jesus. It says I give up momentarily pleasures and fleeting happiness so that I might have true joy. It says I live my life for the One who gave His life for me. The Christian life is a radically selfless life. A life that tries to imitate Jesus, who gave Himself for a people who hated Him.

When we realize that and really begin to come to terms with that, then we’ll see that all of the things that we do as Christians are better. We don’t come to church to be entertained and just be a consumer. We don’t sing so that others will clap for us. We don’t serve so that others will think well of us. We don’t harbor jealousy when good things happen to others in the church. We don’t hesitate to sacrifice our time our resources for one another.

And do you know what the amazing thing about this is? As you do this, the Lord will actually start to give you all the things you gave up. Your desires will begin to change, they’ll be more sanctified, and the Lord will help you walk in the works He has prepared for you. As you serve humbly, He will lift you up. As you sacrifice, He will see to it that He provides for you. All of this simply because the Lord is good and kind and loves you. As you deny yourself and seek to not make things about you, He remind you of how much He delights in you and that you are fulfilling the very purpose for which He created you and saved you.

But, for us to really understand this, we must first simply remember that it’s not about us. By definition, a disciple of Jesus is one who doesn’t look at themselves and feel proud, but one who looks to Jesus and tries to make their life imitate His. So let’s be disciples who remember that. But not only that, but let us also remember that when we can’t, Jesus still can, and that death leads to glory. These are the 3 things that I think Jesus was reminding His disciples of, and through His Word, I think He is trying to remind each of us of as well.