Grace Road Church

Jesus Conquers Sickness and Death

Luke 8:40-56

We are going to Luke 8.

Luke 8:40 Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. 41 And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house, 42 for he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. 

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Luke 8:26-39
Legion

We need our faith during these times. But we’ve said often that faith isn’t in our faith. Christian Faith isn’t just being optimistic about the future. Christian Faith isn’t just feeling like the sun is going to shine again. The Christian faith has Jesus Christ as its object. 

So let’s look to Him, and see him today in Luke as the one who triumphs over the darkness and restores a person who seems irreparably broken.

Luke 8 “26 Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.

So Jesus and his disciples sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, near the modern-day Golan Heights. It wasn't a Jewish area at the time, it was Gentile.  It had Syrian and Greek occupants.  Back in the days of the great kings of Israel, it was a conquered land and they brought tributes to King Solomon in Israel.  They had many dealings with the Jews, and even some encounters with the God of Israel.  But, by and large, they had rejected the God of Israel. 

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Kevin, Andrea, and Cody talk over the coronavirus pandemic, the panic, and where God is in all of it. 3.19.20

Faith Over Fear

Luke 8:22-25

Well, this morning, though many things are different for us, one thing is not, we are continuing in our sermon series through Luke’s Gospel, and in the providence of God our next passage is especially applicable for us today.

This is probably a much more familiar passage for most than our passage last week. Luke 8:22-25…

Luke 8:22-25

22 One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they set out, 23 and as they sailed he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. 24 And they went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. 25 He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

Luke 8:16-21

Seeing the Light

Christians are people who have come to trust in Jesus and to hang our lives on the reliability of the word of Jesus.

We are people of the book. 

The Bible has preserved for us the story of Jesus and the message of Jesus, and that story has so resonated with us and changed us that this has become an incredibly valuable book. Like a friend that gives us a valuable gift, we have learned to cherish the Bible because it has given to us Christ. This is a defining characteristic of Christians: we regularly hear and obey the bible. 

So there’s little that’s more important than coming to know Christ more through His word. Becoming wise by coming to really know the Bible is an important lifelong pursuit.

The Sower

Luke 8:1-15

We are spending more than a year walking through Luke’s Gospel, trying to allow it to have the effect it was intended to have, which is in Luke 1:4 “that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” This story of Jesus builds our faith and addresses our doubts.

And in today’s passage, we get something of a vaccine for one source of doubt, the deconversion of many of our friends and former Christian leaders. We see so many who seemed like they were vibrant Christians, who give up on the faith altogether and often publicly announce (in our day when everything is publicly announced) that they no longer believe.

Forgiven Much

Luke 7:36-50

In conversations with many of you lately, I get the sense that many of us are feeling that it is an increasingly challenging time to live as a faithful Christian. The worldview of our non Christian neighbors continues to move farther and farther away from a Christian worldview. We probably sense how much we’re not at home here: its tough to feel at home in a political party, at home in the schools, at home in the corporate setting, at home in the world of entertainment or social media.

We feel more than we have in our lifetimes that we are aliens and strangers and exiles here as 1 Peter 1:21 says. We feel what Hebrews says in Hebrews 13:14, that we have no abiding city here. We feel very much not at home in a world that couldn’t think more differently than Christians think.

THIS MORNING

In the next section of Luke’s gospel, Luke is going to return to a familiar theme, the theme of doubt.

If you remember from the first sermon in our Luke series, Luke gives the main reason for his writing the gospel in the opening verses of chapter 

Luke 1:1-4

So, Luke wanted to put together an orderly account of the life of Jesus, his teachings and miracles, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and then with the book of Acts an account of the early days of the church. And he does all of this so that Theophilus, and by extension anyone else who reads it, will grow in their certainty about the identity of Jesus.

Luke 7:1-17

Worthy

We are going to Luke 7 today.

Luke 7:1-5  After he had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. 2 Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him. 3 When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, "He is worthy to have you do this for him, 5 for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue." 

Jesus has been teaching and preaching throughout the region, and his ministry has primarily focused on a jewish audience. He spoke and healed in synagogues, he talked primarily to the jews in the big outdoor gatherings. But now he enters Capernaum, and word comes to Him that a Gentile, this centurion, has a servant that is dear to him that is dying, and he is asking Jesus to come heal his servant.