Daily Devotions
Luke
Luke 9: 46-50 "NEW SITUATIONS - NEW LESSONS"
Day 117 – Luke 9
Text: Luke 9: 46-50
NEW SITUATIONS – NEW LESSONS
The Lord Jesus taught Discipleship in a number of ways, and all of them wonderful. Try making up a list of the special ways in which the Lord Jesus taught His Disciples. Here’s a short list to start with:-
1. He would take time to explain to His Disciples in greater depth and detail what He preached to the Multitudes. What was His reason? (Cf. Luke 6:20-49; 8:9-10).
2. He would carefully guide His Disciples as they went out to minister on their own. They needed to have experience in ministry, but He always made sure that they had direct recourse to Him. The Disciples would come back to Him and share with Him what they did, with reference to their assignments.
As may be expected, not all lessons in discipleship will be learned in a classroom situation. The sending out of the Disciples on their own always produced new situations wherein new lessons are learned. Discipleship involves not only learning lessons deeply, it also means learning new lessons all the time.
WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIFFERENT MINISTRIES?
One of the Disciples, John, came up to the Lord Jesus one day and shared what he did. His account was straightforward,
“Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your Name,
and we forbade him
BECAUSE he does not follow with us.”
Luke 9:49
John probably did not expect the Master to correct him. He must have felt that he did the right thing. His reasoning seemed flawless:-
1. The individual was using their Master’s Name!
2. He was using the Name of their Teacher to cast out demons!
3. AND he wasn’t even one of the Disciples following the Teacher. In other words, he was not one of the Twelve, who were specially chosen.
Wasn’t it logical to forbid him to attempt to do any special ministry such as the casting out of demons?
THE GREATER PLANS OF THE LORD
The thoughts and plans of God are always far greater than most realize! The Disciples had to understand and realize that God’s plans were far greater and deeper than they thought.
They were privileged indeed that they belonged to a special group of The Twelve. However, they must not think that the Lord’s overall ministry was restricted to just the Twelve of them. He had other Disciples, who also sought to serve Him as best they could, even though they may not have belonged to the special group of Disciples.
This lesson must not be lost on us today. There are many other churches all over the world. Not all will share with us our beliefs, our vision etc. We must never think that we have the best model of serving the Lord. We need to have a healthier respect for the greater plans of God.
“DO NOT FORBID HIM…” Luke 9:50
The response of the Lord Jesus to this report of John couldn’t be clearer!
1. John had overstepped himself, in the application of the authority entrusted to the Apostles.
2. He had come across a new situation, and he did not know exactly how he should have responded.
3. He erred on the side of caution. His reasoning was not deep enough.
The Lord Jesus taught John how to view the work of God differently. He must not make the kind of mistake that the Pharisees had been making all along. Their restrictive view of God and His work tied them up in knots.
Why should John forbid the man from serving God, simply because he did not belong to The Twelve?
“HE WHO IS NOT AGAINST US IS ON OUR SIDE.” Luke 9:50
The Lord Jesus had all along maintained a very broad perspective of ministry. He sat and ate with sinners, because that would provide an excellent opportunity to bring them into the Kingdom of God (Luke 5:29-30).
He reached out to the multitudes. He made plain and simple the Scriptures to the huge crowds. Though many of them came to Him only because they wanted to be healed, He met their needs out of sheer compassion!
There were huge crowds. There were too many for The Twelve to effectively handle. They should be glad and thankful that there were others who cared enough to pitch in to help!
This individual was not doing anything harmful. He was not like the Scribes and Pharisees who bared their fangs at Jesus, and waited for an opportunity to go in for the kill.
If he did not have any power at all, then his ministry would be terminated automatically. However, if he did have a valid and effective ministry, then obviously, he must be on the side of the Lord Jesus too. If so, then he should not be discouraged or be forbidden to carry on with his attempts to help people with their problems in life.
A BIGGER HEART NEEDED
The Disciples needed deeper knowledge. They also needed to have a bigger heart. These were new lessons that the Disciples had to learn. All these lessons were part and parcel of the process of being equipped as future leaders. How important it is to have a humble heart that is able to keep learning the right lessons!