Can I ask you to turn your Bibles to Luke Chapter 9?
Luke Chapter 9? We're going to be reading verses
27 to 43 this morning. Luke Chapter 9, verse 27 to 43.
Sorry, 37 to 43. I gave you guys 10 extra verses.
You're going to be like we were covering that last week,
starting verse 37. The next day, when they came
down from the mountain, a large crowd met him.
Just then a man from the crowd cried out.
Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, because he's my only child.
A spirit seizes him. Suddenly he shrieks and it
throws him into convulsions until he foams at the mouth,
severely bruising them, and it's scarcely ever leaves him.
I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they couldn't.
Jesus replied. You unbelieving and perverse
generation, how long will I be with you and put up with you?
Bring your son here. And as the boy was still
approaching, the demon knocked him down and threw him into
severe convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean
spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to his Father, and they
were all astonished at the greatness of God.
You've probably heard these 3 words or read them on AT shirt
or a hoodie somewhere. You are enough.
It's a phrase that grew in popularity really beginning in
the early to mid 2000s with the self help guru Brené Brown.
And then as we got into the 20 tens, gained a lot of traction
through social media influencers on Instagram and TikTok.
And so today you can buy a whole bunch of you are enough merch.
You can buy hoodies, buy key chains, you can buy T-shirts.
You can even buy the item that I'm about to have put up behind
me if you would like a crocheted rose in a pot holding a little
sign with the first saying saying you are enough.
Actually, it's not. This is not very Dutch of me.
That's not a rose, that's a Tulip.
That's a Tulip. And I understand the sentiment
behind those 3 words. It's, it's something that
resonates with a whole group of people and, and A and a culture
in a time where we feel exhausted from trying to measure
up to other people's definitions of what enough is.
We're just living in a time where we've always had
comparison going on, but we've never always had comparison in
our hand 24 hours a day looking into the lives of other people,
looking at standards that are set for us in the area of, of
beauty, of strength, of success, of accomplishment, and just
being like, I can't do that. That's not me.
And lots of us, I think, just feel an overall sense underlying
a whole bunch of stuff of inadequacy.
We just don't measure up. We, we, we want to, we, we, we
crave somebody to tell us that we are enough because we think
that being enough is what would give us value.
The question, though, isn't whether we understand why the
statement is out there. The question is, is that
statement true? Are you and I really enough?
And I can just say for me, man, there's a whole bunch of areas
in my life, things that I have come to discover over the course
of my life, sometimes the really hard way where I'm just not
enough. If you're looking for somebody
to pick a suit and a tie and match those things together, I
am not enough. You did not want the color blind
guy picking that. In fact, you don't even want the
color blind guy to be the guy who's telling you if there's a
stop sign coming up, right, Amanda?
She just shook her head no, Just so you know, or trying to
explain a movie character to your kids because you told them
that was the blue guy and they're like that, that guy's
purple, right? I just, I'm not enough in the
area of color. I'm not enough.
If you're the guy, if you want a guy who's going to fix your car
and check your oil, I'm not him. That's not me.
If you want a person to organize your paperwork, you can talk to
Jolene. She will tell you I'm not the
person. I am not enough, as I found out
over and over again, to fix somebody's marriage or to fix
your kid or to fix your finances.
And I can't even fix myself. Every Sunday I stand up here or
stand in Brant or Kitchener at our Arabic site and I preach
and, and I know this reality. I'm not enough.
The things that God has asked me to bring before you and to
communicate, I am not capable of getting through to you.
I'm not enough, and neither are you.
And no matter how many times you repeat that phrase to yourself,
it doesn't change the reality that you and I are not enough.
That was the problem in the passage today.
For almost all the characters in this story, they weren't enough.
There was a Father who wasn't enough.
There were a group of disciples who weren't enough.
There's religious leaders in Matthew's record of this story
who were also present there. And Jesus makes it very clear to
them they're not enough. So let's let's start by looking
at some of these characters who just put to bed the lie that
we're enough. Let's start with the dad.
This, this guy, he is dealing with one of the hardest things
that any parent ever has to deal with.
He is dealing and coming face to face with this reality that he's
not enough, that he can't fix his kid.
I, I can't imagine what this guy is going through.
Can't imagine the pain and the anguish and the frustration that
he has encountered seeing his only son ravaged by this evil
demonic power. This power that that Luke tells
us is causing him to foam at the mouth and throw him into
convulsions that is bruising his body.
Matthew 17 gives us some additional information about
what has happened to this young man.
The the Father told Jesus in this in Matthew's recording that
he often falls into the fire and he often falls into the water or
into pools of water where he's a danger of drowning.
If someone doesn't yank him out, he's being burned and he's being
drowned. Mark tells us in his account
that this man had had been made unable to speak, couldn't
communicate. And Mark says it's been going on
since childhood. So we talk about this.
This boy, he's not a boy. He's a young man.
And there's been an extended period.
We don't know how long that this has been going on in his life.
And the father has had to watch it and he's been powerless to
fix it. And I'm just going to tell you,
maybe you're a new parent. When you're a parent for any
period of time, you come to a realization, usually when your
kids start to get into later double digits, that there's just
things that you can't protect your kids from that you can't
fix in your kids. It's the scariest thing.
I, I, I remember really clearly going to Maya's kindergarten
orientation and, and be in there and watch and she's going to be
put into this class. It was it was either late May or
early June. And and while she's there, I'm
kind of, we're just supposed to be in there observing.
Maya probably doesn't remember this.
There were two little girls who started to treat her cruelly.
And while the teacher wasn't looking, I sobbed up to those
two little girls. And I said, if I ever find out
that you have been mean to my child, there is no place you
will be able to hide. No, I probably shouldn't have
done that. And if those girls happen to
hear this along the way, I'm sorry for that.
But there's something in us as parents that we just fiercely
want to be able to protect and and put bubble wrap around our
kids, right? And yet eventually, the cruelty
and the evil in this world ends up affecting all of our kids.
See, mom and Dad, you're not enough.
You won't be able to fix everything that your kids come
up against. You won't be able to protect
them from everything in this world.
This is contrast, right? This is intentional contrast by
Luke of last week and this week. Last week.
We are up on the mountain in glory and nobody wants to leave.
This week we're down in the valley and we are confronted
with the reality of the brokenness and evil of this
world. And I'm just going to tell you
because some of you still think in your head, you can protect
your kids. You can bubble wrap if you just
get them out far enough. It's OK if you just build that
bubble big enough. Guess what?
The problem is sin doesn't just live outside the bubble, it
lives in the bubble. See, sin isn't an out there
problem for us, it's an in here problem for us.
I assume nobody here taught their child how to bite and hit
Like you didn't start practicing that with your kids, right?
First we're going to practice please and thank yous, and next
week we're going to work on bitings and hits.
Nobody does that. You didn't have to teach your
kid how to to lie and and deceive you.
You didn't have to teach them. Nobody has ever had to teach a 1
1/2, a 2 1/2, a three and a half, a 20 and a half, a 30 and
a half, a 50 1/2 year old. How to be selfish comes
naturally to us, see, on our own, we're not enough to fix
what's broken. The disciples, they're in this
story. And guess what?
They're very clearly not enough. It's this very humbling moment,
an incredibly humbling moment in this passage, especially if you
remember where we started in Luke 9, as we started into this.
Remember Luke 91? We get this, this picture.
Jesus is bringing all the disciples and they've been
walking with him. They've been learning from him.
Now Jesus is going to send them out.
And so in Luke 9/1, he summons the 12 and it says he gave them
power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases.
And yet here they are with this demonic evil power and they are
powerless. They had come to a point where
they thought that they could do it on their own.
They thought that the power didn't just rest in them, it
came from them. They had enough when they were
out and casting out demons and going out from town to town,
they had enough. Until they didn't.
Because it didn't work this time.
What does the dad say? The father says, hey, I I knew I
couldn't do it, so I came and I begged your disciples to drive
it out. And guess what?
They couldn't. So many times in the Christian
life, man, I have gotten to a place where I thought, you know,
I've been doing this long enough, I've been at this long
enough, I've got enough experience.
I got this, I got this. And that's almost immediately
when I fall flat on my face, when I go into a situation and
I'm relying on my experience, on my gifting, on my ability, on my
force of will, when my thought process just starts going, you
know, if I could just if I could just talk to that person, we
could just sit down. I could convince them I could
fix this. And time and time again, I find
out when I get into that spot, I'm not enough.
What about the religious leaders?
Mark 9 talks about some religious leaders being there.
Mark 9/14, it says when they came to the disciples, when they
came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, they saw a
large crowd around them and the scribes were disputing with
them, that is the other disciples who were left behind.
And so there's this dispute and debate going on between the
religious leaders, the scribes and the disciples.
And, and in the context of what's going on here and what is
happening in the broader story of the Gospels, what's happening
is that they are sitting there and they're shaking their finger
at the disciples. They're saying, see, these guys
are a fraud because they follow a fraud Messiah.
They, they can't do this. And so they're seizing on this
moment, looking at Jesus followers who are failing to
discredit the one they're following.
Still happens today, right? Because their issue was they
were looking for a very different Messiah.
They didn't like this Messiah. They wanted a Messiah who was
going to come to praise them as the holy, religious, righteous
leaders. They they were waiting for a
Messiah. And they believe the Messiah
would come when they had been righteous enough to force his
hand, when they had made the nation righteous enough.
Then then Jesus would come and owe them, and he would do all
that needed to be done to rescue them from the Romans.
They wanted a Messiah who came and recognized that they were
enough, that they deserved his salvation.
And Jesus responds and says, you unbelieving and perverse
generation, all their striving, all their efforts, all their
religiosity wasn't enough to impress Jesus.
We want to believe that we're enough.
I want to believe I'm enough. We want to believe that on our
own we are sufficient to measure up.
We want to believe that we can validate ourselves, that we can
justify ourselves, to use a religious, a Christian term.
But it's a lie. It's a comforting lie, but it's
still a lie. And it's a lie that we know deep
down as a lie. And So what do we do?
What do we do? Where does that leave us?
Is it just our then the lot to know that we can't measure up,
that sooner or later we come up against our stuff that that just
we're going to fall flat on our face on, but we just keep on
pushing and striving and trying and trying harder and trying
harder anyhow? Or do we come to a point where
we resign ourselves that this is all a failure, just throw our
hands up in the air and kind of give up?
If we're not enough, then what are we supposed to do?
The answer is we go to the same person that this Father goes to.
When we're not enough, we go to the one who is not only enough,
he's more than enough. Jesus is more than enough.
You know, he said that the Father says, teacher, I beg you,
would you come look at my son? And then in verse 42, we see
that as the boy was still approaching, the demon knocked
him down and threw him into severe convulsions.
But where? Where the disciples had not been
enough and where the Father was not enough to protect and to fix
what was broken in this child, Jesus rebuked the unclean
spirit, healed the boy, gave him back to the Father.
He did it all. Jesus fixes the problem that
everybody else was powerless to solve.
And and I would argue to you that actually the very thing
that kept the disciples from being able to do what they
should have been able to do was thinking that it was them who
could do it. Mark 928 and 29 says this.
After he had gone into the house, his disciples asked him
privately, why couldn't we drive it out?
He told them, this type can come out by nothing but prayer.
See, the power that they needed to accomplish this came by
prayer. It came from God.
The power that they had been using before had been granted to
them by Jesus, but somewhere along the line they had started
to think that the power belonged to them and they they could kind
of just do it on their own. Maybe that was enough.
And how often do we do that, right?
If you're a follower of Jesus, to start as a follower of Jesus
is to come to this point of recognition of total dependency.
To to recognize it is literally the cry that sets us free and
gets us to the point where we can receive Christ as Savior is
the cry of saying I'm not enough, Jesus, I'm not enough.
If we have to come to that point of dependency to recognize my
righteous religious activities, my goodness, my morality is
simply not enough. But Jesus, you are enough.
Your death on the cross was enough and more than enough to
cover over all my sins. It is only by believing in the
power of Jesus to save on the cross and through his
resurrection that we can be saved.
Romans 10/8 and 9:00. We're going to put it up on the
screen for you. Paul says this is the message of
faith that we proclaim. If you confess, if you believe,
if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that that
Jesus is the Messiah, he's the God, He's the only one who can
save and rescue you, and you believe in your heart that God
was the one who raised him up from the dead, then you will be
saved. Nothing about you doing anything
in that other than just receiving and recognizing what
Jesus did. It's crying out, Jesus, I'm not
enough, but you're more than enough.
And so the whole whack load of us in this room have come to
that point, watching online, you're there, you've believed
that you started into this life of following Jesus saying I'm
not enough. And then Jesus gives us the
Spirit, just like he gave power to the disciples, He gives the
Spirit, the Holy Spirit to all of us as his disciples to
empower us and to guide us and to gift us and to make us new.
And after a while of doing this, sooner or later, most of us come
to a point where we start to live, act and believe as if we
are doing the work. And the Spirit is maybe given a
little nudge and help here and there.
I'm going to throw a picture up on the screen.
Some of you will be familiar with this little contraption.
It's called a trailer bike. And and it's something you put
on the back of your bike as you've got a kid who's starting
to learn how to ride a bike and doesn't go in kind of those
little tent trailers on the back anymore.
And you get a kid and they they get to kind of pedal along on
the back. They get to participate in the
ride. But guess what?
If the adult who's on the front stops pedaling that bike, there
is not enough power in the rear to keep the bike going.
If the adult stops pedaling, the power is gone.
In the Christian life, if the Spirit isn't doing the work, the
power is gone. You might deceive yourself into
thinking you're doing the work and you're doing the pedaling.
You don't do SWAT. You're just like the kid on the
back of the bike. You get to participate.
It's glorious, it's awesome. You get to go along for the ride
and you should keep those feet pedaling, but you're not doing
the work. The number one indicator that
you've fallen into the trap of forgetting that it's Jesus who's
doing the work. It's the Holy Spirit who's doing
the work. You know what the number one
indicator is? Our lives begin to be marked
more by doing than by praying. Soon as your life begins to be
marked more by doing things for God, then by crying out to God
to help Him do the things you can't do, you're in trouble.
See, when we understand that God is doing the work and inviting
us into it, and that nothing ultimately gets done without Him
doing the work that needs to get done, prayer moves from our last
resort in life to our first response in situations.
So let me ask you a few questions in your life right
now. Are you spending more time
trying to fix your friends, fix your kids, fix your spouse?
Then you are praying for them is your solution to the to the sin
that you're struggling with it is your solution more about
trying harder or inviting the Holy Spirit in more in those
moments of temptation? Are you trying to overcome the
struggle that we all come up with it sometimes?
This struggle that we started talking about, about this
struggle with self doubt and self worth.
By looking inside yourself or looking to others to validate
your value and your worth, or by looking to God's word and seeing
men, you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
The God of the universe loves you so much He sent his Son to
die for you. I just need you to know we start
off by saying you are not enough.
That does not mean that you are not incredibly, incredibly
valuable. You have unbelievable value, but
you just are not going to recognize that value by
validating yourself or seeking validation from others.
Now here's some good news. The good news in all this is
when we believe that we are not enough, but that Jesus is
enough. It's enough.
The solution to the problems
that we all face in in making our way through this fallen and
broken world is not to believe harder in ourselves.
It's to ask God to help us believe more in Him.
Again, let me take you to Mark's account of this story.
It's one of my absolute favorite prayers in all of scripture that
comes out of this story. See Mark records it this way.
The Father came to Jesus and he said, listen, if you can do
anything, if you could just do anything, have compassion on us
and help us. Jesus said to him, if you can,
everything is possible for the one who believes.
Let me unpack that First. Let me unpack Jesus statement
saying if you would really believe in me, if you would
really know me, you would trust me to be enough and trust that I
am always enough. Because belief in Jesus is
always enough to fix anything and everything.
And here's what I mean by that. Why is that?
Because if you believe in Jesus, one day you will be with Jesus
when he fixes everything and anything.
See that is the absolute promise.
Jesus is going to fix it all. Romans 10/9 says if you confess
with your mouth, Jesus is the Lord, believe in your heart, God
raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
And we think of that as some disembodied salvation taken up
into into clouds and woo woo playing harps and stuff.
That's not it. Jesus came to rescue and redeem
everything, a new heaven, a new earth, all creation to set right
all that was broken and wrong. He didn't like design physical
matter by accident. It was the point for you to be a
physical embodied being. And His plan is to renew and
restore all things to the way it was meant to be.
And so that means someday, fully, completely forever, you
will be healed. I don't know whether it's going
to happen this side of glory or the next, but I have zero
question that it will happen. You will be set free of of
temptation and sin. You may struggle your entire
life, but I'm telling you, there's a day coming where
you're not going to struggle anymore.
You will enjoy the fullness of the world without evil, without
injustice, without pain, without heartache, without loss, just as
God made it to be. If you believe Jesus, that's all
it requires. But this is where it gets really
good. We all have moments where we
struggle to believe what we believe, right?
Probably today you'll have a moment where, like the thing
that you say you believe up here is not somehow reaching here.
It's not being lived out in the way that you live.
What do we do in those moments where I believe, but I'm not
sure that I believe. We ask God to help be enough for
us, even in our unbelief. Immediately upon Jesus saying
what he said to this man, if I can do anything, you just just
believe. Immediately the father of the
boy cried out. I do believe.
Help me in my unbelief. What a prayer, man.
That is a prayer that so many of us need to pray so often.
I believe. Help me in my unbelief.
Help me in those areas, Lord. Where?
Yeah.
If I was given the test and the exam, I know the right thing to
say. I know the right answer to give.
But I'm not sure I want to believe it, but I'm not sure
that I really believe that you can fix what's broken in this
situation. I just want to tell you, your
family is not beyond Jesus's ability to save.
Your situation is not so far gone that Jesus can't do
anything about it. It's beyond his ability.
If you believe in Jesus, one day all that is broken and all that
breaks our hearts. And I don't know how this all
works. I just believe Jesus is going to
make it right. Evil is defeated, sin is
destroyed, the power of darkness and death is forever expelled.
That's the way the story ends with Jesus the Father didn't
come with perfect faith. He came with desperate faith.
And he prayed the really the most feeble prayer that anybody
could pray. I believe but I don't really
believe helped me in my own belief that's it feels so feeble
and yet cried out to God with true humility and true
desperation. It is more powerful than
anything that you can do in your own strength and flesh.
Only when we we we get to the point where we're fully honest
about our weakness are we ready to actually see Jesus working
strength. Theo Moody said this.
He said God sends no one away empty except those who are full
of themselves. See, some of you think what
disqualifies you from coming to Jesus is your weakness.
But weakness is exactly what qualifies you to come.
The only people that Jesus can't help are the people who think
they don't need Jesus's help. So stop trying to be enough and
start trusting that Jesus is enough for you.
Just as we come to a close here and begin to wrap this up, I
want to give you some time this morning.
Just reflect on what God is saying to you through this
message, through this story, through this encounter.
What is the Holy Spirit been pushing on you?
1st I just say if you've never cried out that cry of desperate
prayer for salvation to Jesus did to say Jesus, I know deep
down I am not enough. I'm not sufficient.
I can't do this. I haven't earned your love and
your salvation. You just cry out to him and you
say but you, you died because you love me.
You forgive my sins. I want to follow you then let
today be that day and know that it is true.
The words of Romans 10/9 and 10 right?
If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe
in our heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. But then for those of you who
who Yeah, you're there. You know that salvation reality
to be true. Are there areas where you have
been trying and instead this morning, maybe you need to try
praying, Maybe it's in that area of trying to fix your marriage.
I, I truly, honestly, I tell couples that I meet with all the
time. I believe that one of the
reasons that Amanda and I are together today, that I love that
woman more than I loved her the day we first met or the day we
said I do on on the stage in the church where we got married.
I believe it's because my wife is way smarter than me and she
was the one who came to recognition about a little while
into our marriage, but longer than I wish it would have taken,
where she realized that we were never going to change one
another. No amount of nagging, no amount
of complaining, no amount of fighting, bickering, arguing,
passive aggressive behavior, no amount of self help books,
marriage books was going to ultimately change the other
person. What was going to change the
other person was believing that Jesus could change the other
person and go in and, and, and taking the thing that was
bothering us or the thing that was a struggle in our marriage
and coming to them and putting it before them.
But then putting it before the Lord and saying if this is me,
change me. And if this is them, change
them. And Lord, if you don't change
anybody, then give me the patience to be able to live with
this until you do. Or can you trust not just your
marriage, but your kids to a God who loves them more than even
you love them? Maybe your prayer today needs to
be Lord, I believe that you love them more than me.
Help me in my unbelief. I know how hard it is to believe
that somebody could love your kids more than you.
God loves your kids more than you love your kids, and He can
do for them what you can't. Maybe today, maybe you need to
just ask God to give you the faith to believe the prayers
that you've been offering before him, that quite honestly, you've
started to struggle to believe God.
Maybe your prayer is just this God, I have believed in you for
blank. But if I'm honest, I haven't
really. I know there's a disconnect
here. Help me in my unbelief.
Help me really, truly believe that you could do something
about this there. There might not be anybody in
all of church history who got used in a greater way for
greater purposes to build this church than the Apostle Paul.
In 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul talks about a a, a gift that God
had given to him that felt like anything but a gift was the gift
of weakness. The he said he had this thorn in
the flesh. We're never told what it was,
whether it was spiritual or physical.
He had this thing that he said was from Satan.
It was just it he kept on bashing his head against it was
it was keeping him from being enough and he was crying out for
it to be removed. He cried out fervently, and
ultimately the Lord says this to him.
He says My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made
perfect in your weakness. And this was Paul's response.
Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my
weakness so that Christ's power can reside in me.
So I take pleasure in my weakness, insults, hardships,
persecution, and in difficulties for the sake of Christ.
For when I am weak, that's when I'm strong.
Paul thanked God for the constant reminder that he was
not enough, because it was a constant reminder and a constant
call to the One who is enough. Without it, he even says
himself, he would have grown arrogant.
He would have grown boastful. He would have believed that he
was doing this all in his own strength, that he was pedaling
that bike forward. But because he knew his weakness
and he knew how desperate his need was, he grew to know how
big his God was. Would that be true for all of
us? Let me pray over you.
God, we would love if we got to be known and shaped by our
power. We would love to be those who
are seen as glorious and strong. Thank you for this reminder.
It's just not true. Every single one of us.
We're weak. None of us in this room are
enough. We're not enough in the
struggles we face. We're not enough in the sins we
combat. We're not enough in the
relationships we're in. We're not enough to fix
ourselves. So how would we ever fix
somebody else? But Jesus, you're more than
enough, Holy Spirit. You are more than enough in US
and through us to do what we could never do on our own.
And God, I know that in this place, even in my own heart,
there are areas where I believe, but I struggle to believe.
I struggle to believe that you're enough.
Help me in my own belief, be enough.
In Jesus name, Amen.