The problem of pride; Luke 9: 37-56

 We are coming on to a year since we began studying the book of Luke, and we haven’t really finished half of the book yet.  But the longer we study Luke, the more impressed I am with the way that he has assembled the events in the life of Jesus in such a strategic way so as to teach certain truths or doctrines.  Luke isn’t just relating everything in a chronological order, but in  doctrinal order, so that in studying these passages we find a common thread of truth that he is trying to teach.  The key then to a deeper understanding of the text then is to find that common thread which is woven through the passage.

After thinking and praying about today’s passage, I believe that the second half of this chapter has to do with something that is a very common problem in the kingdom and yet very dangerous to the kingdom. The problem is the sin of pride.  By way of explanation, Jesus is taking the disciples to another level in the ministry of the kingdom.  He is no longer doing everything Himself, but He has appointed certain disciples to become apostles, and He  commissioned them to act on his behalf, with His authority, to be His representatives to the world.  It is essential for the success of His ministry that Jesus moves to this next stage of multiplication, taking His words and giving them to the 12, who will then multiply His message 6 fold as they go two by two, and then the apostles will eventually do the same thing, commissioning others who will continue to multiply the kingdom throughout the world. 

But there is an inherent danger in this act of multiplication, even in the act of discipleship.  And the danger is that even as the apostles are given this power and authority to act on behalf of Jesus, that there would arise the sin of pride in their hearts which would undermine the mission and could even destroy the effectiveness of the ministry.  The sin of pride is something that still is a threat to the church today.  It is an undercurrent that works to produce strife and animosity and jealousy and will eventually destroy unity.  That is why just before Jesus was crucified He prayed for unity for the disciples and the church.  And it is still Satan’s most effective weapon against the church even today. 

So we are going to look at the next four events primarily in the light of exposing the sin of pride, or the consequences of pride.  But as an introduction let’s go back a little bit and see the roots of pride.   The roots of pride start at the beginning of the chapter, if not before.  But especially since at the beginning of this chapter, we saw Jesus take the 12 apostles and give them a title, a position, and a certain measure of authority and power.  It’s really amazing, when you think about it.  Christ picked 12 of the most unlikely men, untrained, uneducated regular guys, and set them apart to be His personal representatives.  He has trained them for about 2 years, and now He commissions them and gives them the unique authority to heal, cast out demons and preach the gospel.  And He sends them out two by two.

And what is even more amazing, was that at least initially they are successful.  They probably were so over awed initially that Jesus had chosen them to do this, and given them this great responsibility, that they were sort of timid perhaps and had a certain degree of humility in doing what He had tasked them to do.  I think that is the case a lot of times when people first get saved.  They are so overawed by the grace of God that has saved them, that they respond in a degree of humility.  They want to learn.  They are teachable, moldable.  They are humble.  But as we continue many times in our Christian walk, as we start to gain knowledge, we can easily become overconfident  as we forget that we are chosen by God not on the basis of how great we  are or how smart we are, but by how sinful we are. 

1Cor. 1:26, “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.”

And I think that is what we see happening here with the disciples.  Right after they came back from their mission trip to all the villages in Galilee, Jesus again uses them to bring about a miracle.  It wasn’t necessary for Jesus to use them, or to use the loaves and fish that they brought, or to even have the disciples serve the people.  But Jesus is trying to train the disciples to participate in the ministry in anticipation of the  day when He would be gone and they would take over.  But again, perhaps they found themselves feeling a little empowered by the impressed multitude as they passed out the bread and the fish and ordered the people to sit in groups of 50. 

And let’s not overlook the specialness of Peter, James and John.  It must have become quite  evident that they were singled out by Jesus more than the others.  They had been allowed to enter the house where Jesus raised the young girl from the dead.  The other disciples had to wait outside, but they got to go inside.  And of course, the big one was the transfiguration.  The other disciples didn’t know initially what transpired there, but Peter, James and John certainly did.   They got to see Jesus transfigured.  They had seen the two greatest prophets of all time, Moses and Elijah and heard them talking.  They had even heard the voice of God booming through a dark cloud that came down upon the mountain.  Man, if they didn’t have a big head before, they certainly would have by then.  They must have walked down the mountain without their feet touching the ground.  We can almost forgive them for a little pride, can’t we?  I know I would probably be feeling pretty smug by now if I was one of the apostles, and especially if I were one of His elite inner circle made up of Peter, James and John.

But the Bible says that pride goes before a fall.  And the disciples came down from this mountain top experience only to end up falling flat on their face.  That is so often the way it is in the Christian experience.  Like Peter, we want to build three tabernacles on the mountain top experience and stay there. That glorified air on the mountain top is heady stuff, and we would like to have a mountain top experience every day.  And many Christians seek that.  But the reality is that Christ has chosen to have us live down on the plain, among the people of the world.  Paul writes in  1Cor. 5:9 that when “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.”  No, Christ has commissioned us to go into the world and preach the gospel, to be a light to the world.  To be in the world, but not of the world.  This plain below the mountain is where the rubber meets the road, and it’s where so many of us fail.  And one of the primary reasons we fail is because of our pride.

Listen, understand something important.  Pride is the original sin.  It’s not just a relatively harmless personality disorder. Pride is not just an innocuous eccentricity.  Pride is a terrible, horrible sin that is an affront to God because it exalts you and lessens your dependence upon God.  It is the original sin.  It was the sin of the most beautiful angel in heaven named Lucifer, who was the worship leader of the  heavenly host, who exalted himself and said I will be like God. In Isaiah 14:11, speaking about Lucifer, Isaiah writes; “Your pomp and the music of your harps have been brought down to Sheol; “How you have fallen from heaven,  O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’”  Notice the five “I’s”.  The sin in pride is “I”.

Pride was the downfall of Satan, who was the covering cherub above the throne of God.  It was the downfall of Eve. And pride is too often the downfall of the Christian as well.  Pride is a sin.  It was a sin of the disciples.  And  I believe it’s the most common sin of Christians today as well.  If you say you have no sin, then it’s obvious that you have the sin of pride at the very least. 1John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

So we come to verse 38, and the first characteristic we see is that pride prohibits power.  The disciples are primed with a feeling of empowerment.  After all, they had successfully cast out demons and healed people.  And yet look at what happens in vs.38; “And a man from the crowd shouted, saying, “Teacher, I beg You to look at my son, for he is my only boy,  and a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly screams, and it throws him into a convulsion with foaming at the mouth; and only with difficulty does it leave him, mauling him as it leaves. I begged Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not.” 

The disciples came off the mountaintop experience in the pride of their position as apostles, and in the pride of their power, and the pride of their accomplishments, and they fell flat on their faces.  Mark’s gospel tells us that by the time Jesus arrived they had a crowd around them and they were arguing with the scribes.  Things had quickly fallen apart.  There was a big melee going on.  The disciples seemed helpless and things had quickly gotten out of control.  The crowd sees Jesus coming and runs up to meet Him in a rush of commotion and chaos.  The man who had brought his son was shouting. The disciples were arguing.  It was chaos. 

And that explains Jesus exasperation in His rebuke in vs. 41; “You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you and put up with you? Bring your son here.”  That sounds a little harsh, doesn’t it?  At first it’s not real clear if Jesus is talking to the multitude or the disciples.  I happen to think it is addressed more to the disciples.  Because the lack of healing wasn’t a matter of this man’s faith.  He had enough faith to bring the child to Jesus and the disciples.  And in all the other miracles Luke has given us, that was enough faith to be healed.  Jesus said if you just have faith the size of a mustard seed, then there is no limit to what God can do.  A mustard seed is the smallest seed in the garden.  So the problem here is a problem with the disciples.  I think that they went about this in the strength of their wisdom, in the strength of their experience, in the strength of their position, and found themselves woefully inadequate to deal with the strength of Satan. 

Notice Jesus response;  He uses two words to describe them.  The first is unbelieving, which comes from the Greek word apistos.  It means unfaithful, or faithless.   Jesus isn’t talking about the size of their faith, but a departure from the faith.  The word is speaking of a reliance upon themselves, rather than a reliance upon God.  The second word is perverted.  And it doesn’t mean what we think it means today - some sort of twisted sexual sin.  But it is interpreted from  diastrephō, which means to distort, or corrupt, pervert. It’s referring to a distortion of the truth.

That is the problem with the modern day faith healers and word of faith movement that we see so prevalent in the church today.  They have distorted and corrupted the truth, and departed from the faith, by virtue of the fact that the spotlight is on them, and is not on God.  They believe that the power to heal rests on them.  That’s always the emphasis in the modern movement. It’s always on the healer, the miracle worker.  And I think that the disciples had erred in that sin of pride as well.  They had been given the authority to act on the behalf of Jesus, but in this case, they had acted on their own, acting on their own authority and in their own power, and it had been no match for Satan’s power.  Their sin of pride had robbed them of any power that they had been given.  And the same is true for us today.  Pride will rob you of power in your Christian walk.  As a Christian, sin will not condemn you to hell anymore, but it will cause you to lose the power to live an effective Christian testimony.  It will lead you to failure in your walk.   Because unconfessed sin will rob you of fellowship with God.  And that fellowship with God is the only way to have an effective walk.

Jesus has perfect fellowship with the Father.  And so He is able to cast the demon out of the child and return him to his father.  Jesus said everything I do, I do because the Father tells me to do it.  Phil. 2:8 says “have the same attitude as Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” You want to have power in your life, then humble yourself, and be obedient to the will of God.  Don’t exalt yourself in the place of God. 

In Matthew and Mark’s account of this event, the disciples ask Jesus later why they couldn’t cast out the demon, and Jesus told them that what was lacking was prayer.  The disciples went off half cocked, confident in their ability and power and experience, without a prayerful dependence upon God and a submission to His will.

That humility of Christ to submit himself to the Father’s will is the point of vs. 44, Jesus said “Let these words sink into your ears; for the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.” There was no self exaltation in the cross.  And that is the secret of humility.  It’s to take up your cross and die daily to your flesh, to your pride, to your innate desire for exaltation, to your desire for glory, your desire for others to see how wonderful you are.  Jesus is saying the way to glory is through sacrifice, not self exaltation.  Because Jesus was willing to humble Himself and be obedient to the Father’s will, it says in Phil. 2:9, “For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW.”

Well, vs. 45 says that the disciples didn’t really understand the idea of sacrifice.  They were fixated on self promotion, on self empowerment.  They were attracted to the power and the position of being an apostle.  They liked the adulation. And they were no different than we are, I’m afraid.  I think that the majority of evangelical Christians are just as susceptible to pride as the disciples were, if not even more.  So before you know it, Jesus finds them squabbling about who was the greatest apostle. Vs. 46. The second characteristic of pride we see in this example;  pride produces selfishness.

Vs. 47 says that Jesus knew what was in their hearts.  Can you imagine what it was like for the apostles, spending 2 years 24/7 with Jesus, and He was able to read their minds?  How long would any of us last around Jesus if He was reading our minds and knowing our innermost thoughts?  Well, guess what?  He is the same today as He was yesterday.  He still reads minds.  Psalm 139 says that “Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all.”  Jesus knows what you say in secret.  He knows what you think in your darkest moments.  He knows what motivates you.  He knows the sin of our hearts.

What was motivating the apostles in that argument was nothing less than just crass pride and selfishness.  They were arguing over who was the greatest.  Who was the best.  Who had more healings.  Who had cast out more demons.  Who was closest to Jesus.  How much like them are we also today, clamoring for the showy gifts, clamoring for the attention in our assemblies, clamoring for the chief seats, the seats of the elders, the positions of authority.

And so since they were acting like children, Jesus took a child and stood him by His side.  Jesus said in vs. 48, “Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me; for the one who is least among all of you, this is the one who is great.” What Jesus is talking about is accepting one another as you would Jesus.  Accepting even the least of these as you would receive Jesus Himself.  He is talking about accepting in the sense of serving, showing hospitality to, showing preference to.  The sign of a Christian should be that of submitting to one another in deference to the other’s need.  Not finding offense in another’s better position.  God looks at the heart.  And He will one day exalt the humble.  “Blessed are the meek, the humble, for they shall inherit the earth.” Being a Christian is not about exerting your rights, or defending your rights, but being a servant, even as Jesus was a servant.  And yet we know that even right up to the end, the disciples kept squabbling over who was the greatest, right up to the last supper on the night before the crucifixion.  And that night Jesus gave still another object lesson of how God considers greatness, by washing the disciples feet as a servant. 

Luke isn’t finished showing us this ugly sin of pride and how insidiously it asserts itself even in the kingdom. Look at vs. 49, “John answered and said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name; and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow along with us.”  Here is yet another example of the disciple’s prideful attitude.  Someone else was casting out demons and they tried to prevent him because he wasn’t part of their group.

It wasn’t a case of false doctrine. They weren’t opposing him because he was a heretic or was preaching a false Christ.  He was acting in the name of Jesus.  But they didn’t like him because he was doing something that they had just failed at doing.  It was just a plain old case of jealousy. The third characteristic that pride produces is jealousy.  Notice that one sin begets another sin.  Jealousy produces animosity which produces divisions and on and on. James 4:1 says, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” One sin begets another sin. And pride is at the root of all sin. Vs. 6, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

It’s amazing how graciously Jesus addresses  all these sins, isn’t it? It’s amazing that He doesn’t just kick them off the team.  You know, my job isn’t to kick people out of the church because they don’t agree with me.  If that was my job soon I wouldn’t have a church.  My job is according to Ephesians 4, “speak the truth in love, with all long suffering and patience.”  If I am speaking the truth, then those that are in disagreement with the truth will usually leave on their own eventually.  Jesus responded to John, “Do not hinder him; for he who is not against you is for you.” In other words, keep on doing what you are supposed to be doing.  Don’t worry about what others are doing.  If they are not hindering you, then don’t worry about them.

Luke gives us one more example of the sin of pride and how it is contrary to the kingdom of God.  Jesus is heading for the cross in Jerusalem, and He sends some disciples ahead of Him to a village in Samaria to make arrangements  for Him.  Perhaps they were to find a place for them to eat and sleep for the night.  But the Samaritans are enemies of the Jews.  They hated each other.  And for whatever reason, the messengers came back and told Jesus that the city wasn’t going to receive Him.  They basically closed their doors to Him.  They refused hospitality to them.

And once again the disciples show a prideful attitude.  Vs. 54, “When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”  James and John were called the Sons of Thunder.  Pretty cool name for a motorcycle gang.  But not a particularly good name for a church.  If you go back to the beginning of the chapter you see that Jesus said if  a village doesn’t welcome your message, then shake the dust off your feet and go to the next village.  Jesus never told them to call down fire from heaven and burn them alive.  Maybe they got that idea when they saw Elijah on the mount of transfiguration.  Elijah called down fire from heaven and burned up the prophets of Baal.  But Jesus never gave the apostles that authority or directive.  They had a little taste of power and it went right to their heads.  Now whether or not they could have actually called down fire and burned up the town is not really the issue.  I doubt they could have done that.  Because a Christian’s power is always dependent upon God’s will, not on our will.  God never gives us the prerogative to make independent decisions as to who gets saved, or who gets healed, or who goes to hell.  It’s always the prerogative of God, not of us. Whether we think we have enough faith or not is not the issue. The issue is whether or not it’s God’s will.

But the issue for the disciples is that their attitude revealed the sin of pride in their life.  “How dare someone resist us. Don’t they know who we are?  We will show them what we can do!”  Their pride produced judgment. That’s the last characteristic in this passage. Pride produces judgmental attitudes.  They wanted to strike back, to hurt someone who didn’t agree with them.  They wanted to take the place of the judge, and condemn these people to hell and actually light the fire.  Their arrogance and pride made them the judge and the jury.  But God does not give us the ministry of judgment.  Judgment is solely the prerogative of God and He has already pronounced judgment on sin.  He said the wages of sin is death.  But our ministry is the ministry of reconciliation.  A ministry of mercy. 

Jesus rebukes them  in vs. 55, ““You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”  Our ministry is the same as Christ’s ministry, a ministry of mercy to a dying world, a ministry of telling others about the good news of the kingdom. Sometimes our ministry means that we suffer while being treated unfairly, of having our feelings hurt or being rejected and yet not retaliating.  Instead our ministry is that of leading others to Jesus Christ for deliverance from the judgment that is coming upon all the world, a ministry of forgiveness of sin. 

John 3:17, Jesus told Nicodemus, “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”  Our ministry is to be a ministry of mercy.  That is what we are to be about.  We are to be shining examples in a dark world of God’s transforming grace for sinners.  And the primary characteristic of a transformed sinner is that of humility.  Pride has no place in the kingdom of God.  We were saved by grace.  None of us deserved it. And so we should be merciful, as our Father in heaven is merciful to us. Rom 11:32 says that “God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.”

You can’t be merciful and be prideful.  Pride and mercy don’t mix. Pride makes us powerless Christians, pride produces selfishness, pride arouses jealousy, and pride produces judgmental attitudes. James 2:13, “For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”  Let’s confess our pride to God and He will show us mercy.  And let us then follow His example and be merciful to one another, giving preference to one another, “walking in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph. 4)