Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, November 7, 2024. Matthew 17, a tough text!
Good Morning, Good Morning my brothers and my sisters and welcome to Thursday November 7, 2024 and Turning On the Lights!
Today, by request, we take a look at Matthew 17:14-22. It is a difficult text to understand and digest, not to mention the way Jesus seems to talk to His creation!
Let’s explore it together and hopefully at the end we are strengthened in our understanding.
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May God bless you and keep you and, I WILL SEE YOU IN CHURCH!
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This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, November 7, 2024
All right, good morning, good morning, my brothers and my sisters, heaven forbid. I try to begin outside of this amazing Comcast internet. It’s such a strong signal. It’s very frustrating, but it is a first world problem. And we are, oh, I want to show you something. Here we go. Bring your children to church day, November 10. Christmas hymn sing presentation. Oh my goodness, it’s going to be so much fun. Look at the little things that they’re making. Look at that. That’s going to be a lot of fun. Is anybody out there? Do I have to start this thing over again? Oh my goodness gracious. I never know what’s happening. Oh, I guess Sandy’s out there. I guess it is broadcasting. Had some trouble in the beginning, Sandy. Not just with my voice either. Had some trouble in the beginning. I could not get the broadcast to work. I hope it’s working now. It said at first it was disconnected. Then it said that the audio was disconnected. So here I am. Here I am in the church town, church of God filling time. We are going to talk a little bit about this and a little bit about that. Here’s our choir loft. There’s our organ. Hey, we have a young man coming in practicing on the organ fairly regularly two or three times a week. I’m certainly going to try to get him to play for us on Sunday, but it’s hard to find organs to practice on. So why not? Here we go everybody. Good morning. Good morning, Rosie. Matthew 17 verse 14. Rosie was asking me about. So we’re going to go to Matthew 17 this morning. Eventually, we’ll get some folks on here. Good morning, Renee. Good morning, Rosie. Good morning, Sandy. Good morning, everybody. There we are. There we are. Good stuff. Oh, yes. Good stuff. Okay. You ready? You ready? There we go. It’s Thursday morning. A little bit of faith has been restored. I shared with you on Tuesday some of my doubts. And I don’t know if it was just too big of a turnout or what, but I shared with you on Tuesday some of my doubts about how this whole cabal, this whole oligarchy was playing out. And I have a little bit more faith, at least for now, in our electoral system. The conservative wave that swept over the legislative branch and the executive branch is encouraging. And not just because I lean way more conservative, it is encouraging because they were actually voted in. And at least it appears that way. So I know I’m such a skeptic, but I’ll take it. So the skepticism is still there. I have no faith in the institutions of man, but it was good. It was a good feeling to see that, like I said, if it were just an anomaly, 2020 was an anomaly. It was weird. You got to know that that was weird. But we see it over the legislative branch. We see it over the executive branch and that gives me faith that these folks were actually voted in and the votes were counted. And most everything at least was on the up and up. So that is what I spoke about a little bit on Tuesday. And what I was praying for was free and fair. I was praying for free and fair. We always get what you vote for and America would get what they voted for or what they cheated for, whomever they put in, if it was not going to be a free and fair election. So I had all of my, all of that out there and ultimately saying, look, I told you this and I meant it. I know what I want. I see the America that was, the constitution is amazing. And you look at the Christianity, the Christian principles that are embedded in our law system, our constitution, our legal system, our system of justice, our executive legislative judicial systems, all of those things. And you long for that. Now we’re way past that in many, many areas, but like I said before, two systems always go from a state of order to a state of disorder. It is one of the laws of the universe, one of the laws of physics. That is one of the biggest arguments for creation by the way, because there is not an example on this earth or in the universe as we watch the universe where we see the organized system stay organized. It always goes from a organization, a state of order to a state of disorder. So now you’re saying that evolutionists say, well, no, everything went from a complete state of chaos to an incredible state of order. And now it’s, it’ll break back down. There are zero examples of that throughout the universe. So there you go. Here’s a little nugget for today. Father, we pray that your word will go out today in any way, shape or form that you choose. We pray your will will be done in our lives. We pray that your Holy Spirit would guide us in your word in Jesus’ name. Amen. So yeah, it is good morning. And like I said, woke up on Wednesday going a little bit of faith restored in America. And not just because conservatives won, but because conservatives won, if that makes sense, because it looks as though the election was free and fair. That was my big thing. So we’ll see what happens next. We have all the faith in this and politically, earthly speaking. And so we’ll wait and see what’s next. But there you go. There you go. Rosie and I were talking a little bit yesterday, a little bit about some of the, as she explores her Bible and she came across and there, actually, if you, this made me think of the podcast, a podcast that I will listen to from time to time called Tough Texts. It’s two guys that sit down and dig into some of the texts of scripture. If you just look up Tough Texts, it’s a 15, 17 podcast network and all that stuff, but you’ll find it. And they dig into things. I don’t specifically remember this, but this is a tough text. And as we come across these in our Bibles, we did a study on James last night with the men. And as we open up James and you really look at all of the declarative statements of James, like is it hyperbolic? Is he just being making a point, an extreme point with all of the things that he says that are just declarative, right or wrong, on board or not on board? I love James and his way of preaching. What makes you think, do you think the scriptures have no meaning, he says? What are you looking at in them? Right? That sounds an awful lot like my preaching. It’s also very, very challenging because they are declarative. He is very bold. And so you are confronted with, what is he saying there exactly? And am I convicted of that? Which side of that statement am I on? So there are tough texts out there. Matthew 17, 14 through 21, let’s read it and take a look at it and try to understand a little bit about where Jesus is, what Jesus is doing and how this then transcends through the disciples into his disciples today. When we read scripture, we read it with an understanding of its time and place, right? Its context. We read it with an understanding that it is the divinely inspired infallible word of God. So you all, you know that everything that is in our scriptures is in there for a purpose and it will never fail in meeting that purpose. That’s what infallible means. And we also know that our holy scriptures, what we call the Bible is designed that so large spanning so many years spanning old covenant, new covenant, that scripture itself is the first place to go to try and understand what a particular piece of scripture is saying. So I hope that that makes sense. I do this all the time and this is where we go at church town. We are not biblically illiterate. I will not allow that. I will not stand and take a verse from text and spend 45 minutes telling you what I think about that verse. It doesn’t matter what I think about that verse. What matters is what that verse says. And first of all, I would never take just a verse. We will take a passage or even larger. Big pieces of scripture. Now we want to know what they are saying and we are always looking at how it applies when it is being said to the people whom it is being said, how it moves through the disciples, the early disciples and the early church and then transcends into the church today. Scripture is that rich and that powerful. It’s not a history book that is limited in space and time. It moves through space and time as human beings and as his bride, the church grows and develops. So that’s, you know, he said, whoa, that is how we look at scripture. This is what we teach and we look at the depth and the breadth and the whole meaning of scripture because if we can truly find areas of scripture where God is inconsistent, where messages seem to be disjointed and unconnected, then we’ve got some issues. But we can’t. The scripture is put together, given to us, shall we say, and put together by God’s Holy Spirit and that it is one consistent message all about the salvific history of humanity. And that is through Jesus Christ on the cross. It is all about who God is. He is the God of the living, not the God of the dead. So we say who God is. And we know that we are created in his image and likeness. We know that we are a reflection of him, if you will. And so we always talk too about not trying to recreate God in our image. We know who we are. And if we’re an image and image and likeness of God, then we can project onto him. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We look in scripture. Who is he? Now we say, oh, we see how that reflects in us. So we can very easily get that part of the equation twisted as well. And the next thing you know, we are projecting onto God, well, this is the way I feel. So God must feel this way. This is my sexuality or my sexual feelings. So God must have them as well. This is the way I view culture in society. So God must view it that way as well. And that’s wrong. It’s wrong to do. We look in the word of God. This is prophecy. This is word of God. We speak the word of God and we learn who God is. And in so doing, we learn who we are. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. So let’s take a look here, Matthew 17, 14 at the foot of the mountain, a large crowd was waiting for them. And Jesus is moving around. This is right after the transfiguration. And so it’s a very dramatic event. And then he has another words with Peter and so on and so forth. But he’s coming down off of the mountain where the transfiguration occurred. So at the foot of the mountain, a large crowd was waiting for them. A man came and knelt before Jesus and said, Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. So I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him. Now it’s important to understand that they’re not right away saying that he is demon possessed. The translations across the board use a physical symptom of seizures. So there is always a question, especially as we’re reading Old Testament and early church, how much is physical disease and how much is demonic possession and or how much does Satan and his demons prey upon those who are physically ill, making them feel certain ways about it. So right there, right off the bat, we have got an awful lot to think about. But again, throughout the scriptures we see, Lord have mercy on my son for he is an epileptic. That’s the New King James version. He has seizures, that’s a new international version. Right? So we’re right off the bat. We know that this is going to be more complex and God forgive me, this sounds crazy, than just demonic possession because we’ve seen demonic possession. God is sovereign over the spiritual realm. They recognize him and he speaks and they go. They don’t hesitate. They don’t argue with him. Well, I guess the ones who went into the pigs, they did argue with him. They’re like, “What is in those pigs?” But he is absolutely sovereign over it all. So it’s going to be a little bit more than that. Jesus said, “You faithless and corrupt people.” What? Now, you got to remember too, Jesus came off the mountain of transfiguration and for lack of a better way of saying it, this very spiritual high that everybody is on, coming off the mountain. “You faithless and corrupt people, how long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Then Jesus rebuked the demon in the boy and it left him. From that moment on, the boy was well. That’s very, very interesting. And you can see, okay, is it physical? Is it spiritual? It’s both. It’s both. We have an instance here of a boy who is an epileptic, who has a physical, something wrong with him physically. That’s not necessarily demonic possession, but we see demonic forces at work in the boy to make him present demonically, to drive this boy down into the darkness, to play with his mind, to destroy him from the inside out. If the epilepsy does not destroy him, shall we say from the outside in because it’s a disease, the demons intend to use that avenue to get into the boy and destroy him from the inside out. Jesus rebukes the demon and it left him. And that’s what I was talking about earlier. Most of the cases when we see Jesus in demonic possession, we experienced the Lord’s sovereignty over the spiritual realm. Why have you come to us? Oh, son of the living God, right? They know who he is and he says, “You, out. You go.” And they don’t have, there’s not a choice involved. They are the created. He is the creator. He is sovereign. And we learned this again when it’s taught to us that on that cross, he could have called lesions of angels to come and destroy the world for humankind was so corrupt. He said he would not do it again by water, but he could do it because he is sovereign overall. So we understand that sovereignty and we’re getting a real piece of it here. This boy demonstrates that Jesus is sovereign over the physical, the epilepsy, and over the spiritual, the demon who’s inside this child working on him. Afterward the disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that demon? You don’t have enough faith.” Jesus told them. I tell you the truth. If you had faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, “Move from here to there.” And it would move. Nothing would be impossible. Now we got to understand this because people have been trying this now since those words have been written, they were spoken and then written. If I just had faith of a mustard seed, I can say to that mountain, “Move it.” And I will go out and I will try to do things through my faith to try to prove my faith. It’s not the point of this scripture. The point of this scripture on the one hand is that it demonstrates Jesus’s humanity. I told you he just came back from very powerful time on the mountain. Many would say it was at that time when the rest of his mission was revealed to him by Father. Jesus is feeling certain feelings at this time. Jesus is very, I guess today we would say, jacked up at this time. And so when this situation is presented to him, is it hyperbole or is he trying to make a point? But he’s obviously not in the mood where, “Come unto me these little children.” He’s like, “You faithless generation, how long must I be with you? You cannot drive out this demon because you have such little faith. You have no faith.” There’s mystery behind that. There’s mystery behind his emotion. And we can be okay with that because we understand Jesus as fully God and fully human. And the text is not revealing to us behind his words. Oftentimes it does. And Jesus felt compassion for them and said, “Bring them unto me.” We have the feeling behind the words. We don’t have the feeling behind the words. We have the words and they are strong. So we look at Jesus again, putting it in context, coming down from the mountain, what happened there? Right? As James and John and Peter were looking at that conversation, what was being said? What was happening there? And as he’s glowing and he’s obviously God, the Father, Holy Spirit, things are happening there. From that moment on, things are very different in his ministry. He’s moving forward definitely to the cross. And he comes right down out of the mountain and gets hit with this. I’m just saying, we don’t know the emotion behind it. Now the behavior we do. He still has mercy and is very generously healing. But he’s not in the mood to say, “I have compassion for you all. Bring all unto me.” He’s in the mood to say, “You can’t heal because you are faithless.” Maybe an overstatement, making a point, but it certainly does jar me when I read it. When I read Jesus, right? As we say today, “My Jesus, say you faithless and corrupt people, how long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” That sounds so real and so raw. And it sounds like, again, his behavior demonstrates his mercy, but we don’t understand the emotion behind the words. But it’s powerful. He doesn’t often speak to his disciples or about humanity in general like this. He does from time to time. “Oh, you of little faith. Why do you have such little faith? I tell you that you do not come to me because you witnessed miracles. You come to me because you’re hungry.” Right? There are times. You don’t have enough faith. Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth. If you had faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” After they gathered again in Galilee, Jesus told them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of his enemies. He will be killed. But on the third day, he will be raised from the dead, and the disciples were filled with grief.” There’s your context. So we have the Mount of Transfiguration. We have the conversation that got Jesus very jacked up. He comes down off of the mountain, and of course, Peter is like, “Let’s stay here.” He’s like, “No, you don’t understand what’s going on at all.” And we don’t necessarily understand what’s going on in that conversation. There’s no context there. But we do know Jesus’ state of mind when he comes down off that mountain. And he’s not of the mindset to mess around. He’s not of the mindset. He’s looking around at this creation of his and saying, “This,” he says at one point in time, “This particular demon can only be driven out with prayer, and you just don’t have that kind of faith.” And that’s a recurring message throughout the gospel. And it’s not just a rebuke or a chastisement. I want all of my Christian brothers and sisters to hear that. It’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. It is an edification, a strengthening to constantly, to be very intentional about our faith and how we demonstrate our faith. And Jesus looks at the people around him, he calls his very disciples, “little faiths,” people of little faith. So where are we on that scale? That’s what makes us, that’s what reflects back to us in his church today. Where are we on that scale? Where is your faith? And he’s challenged you to have faith. Faith is small as a muster so you could move a mountain. Okay. But he knows how to use words. Not saying that that’s not true. I don’t know if it’s true because I will never have that pure, I will not have that pure, unadulterated, uncorrupted, to use his words, faith until I am restored again in his kingdom. So, tough text. Yep. It’s a tough text. But much like as I said with the book of James, the statements that Jesus make, makes, the statements that Jesus make, statements that Jesus makes, okay, the statements that he makes challenge us. Where do, here he is saying it, you of little faith, if you only had faith of a muster seed, you corrupt and faithless generation, where are you in that? In that rebuke? How does that rebuke make you feel? It should at the very least challenge you. Maybe you’re very faithful and you believe yourself to be very faithful. Good. But it should still challenge you to examine your faith and where you are and how intentional you are in that relationship. All of that. If you are faithless and you’re actually believing in this Jesus, it should hit you over the head like a brick. You’re professing to be a Christian yet like we spoke about last night in James four, you are a friend of the world, thus an enemy of God. Those things are going to go whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, his teaching and your faith and your demonstration of faith are not going to line up and it should really convict you. So the words of Christ are here for a reason. Obviously he’s chosen them for a reason, obviously, and they never fail in their purpose. Read them. What is their purpose in your life? How is it convicting you? How is it strengthening you? How is it challenging you? That’s what it’s all about, right? That’s what it’s all about. So there you go. I thought that was good and I will welcome all texts if you’re like, cause we did the thing with, you know, uh, first Corinthians, but send me your messages, send me your messages and texts that you’ve been wondering about maybe your entire lives. I may not be able to answer it, but we can look at it and we can talk through it and we can see where the Lord leads us. All of us have those places in our Bibles where we’re like, what? Seriously? Did he really mean that? So send them and we will continue to explore this miraculous, this miraculous piece of work, divinely inspired, infallible word of God. And we love it. Hey, the weekend’s coming. I’m going to get outside today and do a little work. I may even, I may even put away the John Deere today. Once in the fall, once in the spring, the garage gets cleaned out, everything gets pulled out. Everything gets clean. In the spring, the snowblower goes to the front and gets covered up and all of that stuff and all the salt and all that stuff. And then the John Deere gets brought out. And in the fall, the John Deere goes to the front and gets covered up and all of the accessories get covered up. And then the snowblower gets brought out. That may happen today while it’s like 80. Oh, well, God bless you guys. I hope to see you in church on Sunday, wherever you are, invest in your local church. If it is a congregation in Christ and Christ is in that congregation and your pastor or your pastors are working very diligently as they are called to do to primarily bring you the word of God and preach it faithfully support, support that effort. It is never been more important than it is today in this country and around the world. Know the word of God. Know when it is being rightly preached and support that effort spiritually and any other way that you can because it is necessary. Father, we pray that your church will absolutely be that shining city on the Hill this weekend, that she will rise and honor you, not embarrass you. Your bride will rise and honor you in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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