Luke 9:37-48 | They Need Jesus | Alex Culpepper

And church. I'd invite you to open up your Bibles to Luke chapter nine. Luke, chapter nine, verse 38, I believe, is where we're going to be starting this morning.

It's good to be back. I've been out for a couple weeks. It's good to rejoin you and be with you and bring the Word. My heart is here. My heart is to see Jesus move powerfully, continue to move powerfully here.

So. So if I could speak to you transparently a little bit as your pastor. The Lord has been growing and expanding my heart for Generation Z and Generation Alpha, the two next generations that are coming up. So I'm not a youth pastor. I've never claimed to be a youth pastor.

My peers have told me that I am much too serious to be a youth pastor. So you can take that for what it is. I was a children's pastor, but the main reason I was a children's pastor was because I could organize, organize groups of volunteers, but, like, asked me to be, like, kind of guy and that's just, that's not me. And so most of my life, I have connected best with people who are about 10 to 30 years older than me. Right.

So that's just kind of the age range that I've been able to connect well with. But the Lord has been expanding my heart for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And so that's why I'm grateful that we partner with Crossroads. And I'm praying that the Lord would open up doors and avenues, specifically not only with Crossroads, into elementary schools, but would open up in our community opportunities to bring significant gospel impacts to middle schools and high schools in our community, into these local places for Jesus to show up to a bunch of people. I just want to let you know there are tons of people of kids of students in these schools who have no idea who Jesus is.

No idea at all. It hasn't even occurred to them. You ask them, you tell them about stories in the Bible. You tell them, oh, there's Moses and they're Noah, and they're like, what are you talking about? We don't know these stories.

They may have heard the name of Jesus before, but in their mind, they don't understand the significance that he has. There's essentially an entire unreached people group inside the four walls of every single school that's in our community. And so you see, I believe that God is calling this church, though we are small, to stand in the gap for our local public schools. I believe that's what he's calling us to that we might see the kingdom invade enemy territory in significant ways. And I'm just going to tell you, I don't have all the details of what that call to stand in the gap of looks like, but God is giving me a sense of urgency and passion.

And this morning I want you to capture some of the why behind that urgency and passion. And so in order to start that, I just want to draw something to your attention. I got to take Gavin and Emmett to Life Conference this past week and I want to give you a recap video of that so that you could see some of the stuff that went on there, some of the teaching that they got. And so I'm gonna go ahead and share this video with you.

So I just wanna thank you church for the way that you supported us to be able to take Gavin and Emmett there. That was a gift. And Gavin and Emmett are here because of Crossroads, because we started that. You know, 10 years ago, people in this church when I was not here made a decision to say, hey, we're gonna care and we're going to invest in the next generation. And this is part of the fruit of that, this work, this raising up of faithful followers of Jesus among kids and students.

This is a work I want you to know that is incredibly near to Jesus heart. And that's what we're going to look at this morning, a segment of Jesus Story that highlights the value of kids and students. So this morning we're actually in Luke 9:37. Luke 9:37. And we're just going to take a look at Jesus heart for kids.

Verse 37 of Luke chapter 9 says, on the next day when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Now, there are several details in the surrounding verses that indicate that this mountain is somewhere on the northeast edge of the land of Israel. And when you're on the edge of the land of Israel in the Bible, what that means is that you are in spiritually contended territory. It's possible, though we can't say for sure, that this mountain is, is Mount Hermon, which traditionally is that mountain that marked the border of the land of Israel before you entered into other lands. And so whether it's Mount Hermon or some other mountain on this eastern edge of Israel, this is what you could expect religions to false gods would have used this mountain for their worship.

The Jewish families who lived in this area would be desensitized to the cultural agendas of both the Roman government and pagan religious groups. There would have been a lot of cultural confusion about truth. What is truth? What is reality? And so if you were to look back a few verses, you would see that it was on this mountain that the Heavenly Father revealed that the glorified Jesus to Peter, James and John, this is called the Mount of Transfiguration, where there's this miraculous vision of who Jesus is for Peter, James and John, as they went up to the mountain with him.

And there was this voice from heaven. The Father's voice spoke and said about Jesus, this is my son. Listen to him. He's the one who is entitled to all of my rights and privileges. And so what the Father did for those three disciples on that mountain is to give them some clarity in a place of tremendous spiritual confusion.

And now they're coming down from that mountain, Jesus and these three disciples. And so verse 38 says, behold, a man from the crowd cried out. So people have now they know that Jesus is up there somewhere on the mountain. A bunch of people have come and gathered and there's a man from the crowd who cries out, teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. Here we encounter a man who undoubtedly lives in the area of this spiritually contested territory, this spiritually confusing place.

And this man has a son. And imagine this like the man loves his son, as many parents love their children. This man has a deep love for his son, not only because it's his son, but because it's his only son. This is the only son that he has. And this man is desperate for the sake of his son.

So why all this context? Why would I take the energy to point out the spiritual realities and the confusion and all of that stuff? Because we live in a similar sort of place and situation, do we not?

New Age spirituality and the occult are more forward in our culture and more accessible to an individual than they ever have been in our nation's history. You can find right now, if you were to Google it on your phone, you can find 10 different kinds of spiritual healers who use forbidden spirits, spiritual practices in a five mile radius of this building. Christianity right now publicly is full of controversy in the public eye. There are constant news articles about Christian leaders and priests and pastors and the like coming out about things that they did and mishaps that took place. You add to that that phone apps and social circles provide a constant stream of distraction.

And I promise you, AI, it's a great tool. It's very useful. I promise you that there are people right now who are asking AI to give them spiritual guidance and reveal to them, spiritual truth. Can you help me understand these things that are so confusing for me to understand? And you have.

On top of that, Matt was talking about it. Gosh, pornography. Getting to kids who are 10 years old and getting a grip on them at that point. Point. This is what spiritually contested, confusing territory looks like.

We're in the same similar sort of place as this father was with his kid. And so in verse 39, it says, behold, a spirit seizes him. The man's explaining to Jesus what is going on with his son. Behold, a spirit seizes him and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth and shatters him.

It breaks his body down and will hardly leave him. So this father, because of the territory that he lives in and who knows what else, is dealing with a demonic incursion into his family that has come as a result of the multiplicity of spiritually open doors that comes when you just live in a place and do the things in that place created by all the things that you become desensitized to when you live in a spiritually confusing place. So, church, I want you to grasp this. If you don't grasp anything else, this morning, in spiritually confusing territory, kids and students are a primary target. They are a prime.

Matt said that with clarity. The next generation is the target of the enemy. He is aiming for them. I mean, what a heartbreaking situation to hear about those murders with Crossroads. I mean, it's terrible.

I just. I'll share another circumstance with you. I debated whether or not I should share this, but Matt shared that the first night that we were there, and I didn't notify anybody because the leadership of the Life Conference advised us not to notify anybody. But in the middle of the night on July 4, a block and a half from the convention center, there was a mass shooting in Indianapolis. Two kids, 15 and 16 died, and four other kids were injured that night.

Okay. And Indianapolis, I did some research on this. Indianapolis is going through its own sort of crisis with its youth. Kids wandering around in the middle of the night, going around in groups, getting into gangs, messing around things up. And this is not like organized gang violence.

This is kids just, like, going around and causing trouble. And so there were some kids shooting fireworks off. And, you know, something happened. And then at the end of it, at 7 o' clock in the morning, there were police officers in the middle of the route that kids from our conference had to walk from the hotel to the convention center. And so, I mean, I don't think that's accidental.

We're in the middle of Indianapolis trying to promote and to say, hey, the Lord has a plan for the next generation, and the enemy is one who would like to show us. Hey, well, what do you think about your plan with this 15 and this 16 year old now?

So my goal here, when I tell you these things, I want you to know my goal here is not to strike fear.

I'm not about to tell you that this is what is always going to happen when you think. When you think about this story with this dad who's got this kid and he's foaming at the mouth and he has like, this dad is one kid. This, this kid is one kid in the midst of a whole culture of kids. So I'm not trying to tell you that this is the thing that's always going to happen in spiritually confusing territory. My goal is not to make predictions.

My goal is for us to see one of the many bad fruits of spiritual confusion so that we might get a little bit desperate for the next generation.

So, because if I were to come up here and just tell you, like, these are all the bad things that can happen. And if I were to allow fear to kind of come after us, fear would tell us to run away. Fear would tell us things are getting too dire here. Maybe you need to move to Indiana or to Tennessee or to, you know, like all of those places that have the laws that you appreciate that you feel like, keep your kids a little bit safer. Right?

Fear would tell us to go somewhere else, to find someplace that might be more hospitable to us, to find some place that might be spiritually safer for us. But I'm not trying to create fear this morning. I'm trying to create the same sense of desperation that this father had. And desperation says, I've got no other choice but to stay here and to plead for Jesus. Solution, right?

Would we become desperate for what's taking place in the next generation? The Father says, teacher, I beg you to look at my son. I don't have anywhere else to go. I'm out of options. Would you look at my son?

He's my only child.

So how can we stand in the gap for the next generation? The first thing that I would draw to our attention is, would we desperately bring kids to Jesus? Could we desperately bring kids to Jesus? You can do that in two ways. We can do that in prayer and we can do that in practice.

We do that in prayer. We go to intercession, we do some spiritual contesting for our local schools and public schools. We get to do some of that in our prayer meetings here at this church. Would you just invest for this community and the next generation in this community that they could not just like, fix their behavior and that they could not just get rid of the bad influence, but that they could love Jesus, they could come see with clarity who he is. So we can.

We can pray for them in desperation, but then also we can practice bringing Jesus to them and sharing that the crossroads gives us a great avenue to carry out that practice. The children's ministries on Sunday morning of this church give us a great avenue to carry out that practice. So can we stand in the gap by desperately bringing kids to Jesus? The story goes on verse 40, it says, the dad goes on to talk to Jesus, and he says, I begged your disciples to cast out the spirit that seizes my son, but they could not. So the disciples, they are supposed to be not only people that Jesus is training up, but they are supposed to be extensions of Jesus ministry.

But you know what? Spiritual confusion can take a toll even on those who are close to Jesus. So if you go on to verse 41, Jesus answered when he heard about his disciples, said, o faithless, twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? And then he said to the dad, bring your son here. I just want to say this is not a rebuke that I particularly want to receive from Jesus, but what he's Jesus, actually, He's giving them a gift because he's helping them diagnose their problem.

See, it's clear that Jesus actually believes that his disciples had the capacity to deal with whatever was troubling this child, whatever. They had access to everything that they needed to heal and save this boy, but they failed to access it when the boy needed it. And so can I submit to you that what was potentially going through the disciples heads as they watched the crowds gather at the foot of this mountain and they observed this spiritually contested territory as they thought things like, you know, we're used to being in the middle of Judea. It's pretty culturally pure in there. People follow after the things that we're called to follow after and mostly agree with us on these things.

But out here, I mean, these people, they're too far gone, a little too intertwined with the cultural confusion here. They're a little too given over to the world's agenda here. They're a little too corrupted by the place that they live in here. And I want to tell you all of Those thoughts are fundamentally grounded in unbelief because that word too, they're too corrupted, too given over to the world's agenda, too intertwined with the confusion. All of those thoughts doubt Jesus power to break into the darkness.

All of those thoughts wonder if the power and authority that Jesus has given us could really amount to anything in the lives of these kids who are invested in all of this darkness. And so then Jesus asks to see the boy. He says, bring the boy to me. And so verse 42, while he was coming, that is, as the boy was approaching Jesus, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. But Jesus just spoke a word and rebuked the unclean spirit.

And when he rebuked the unclean spirit, he healed the boy and gave him back to his father. I think, oh goodness, I think of that story that we got to watch on the video this morning of this, this girl who struggled with self harm, but she gets an opportunity to be with peers and to see leaders and to see their love for Jesus. And something in discovering the presence of Jesus in the midst of that brings healing to her.

Like I, I just wonder. Verse 43 says all after that happens, all were astonished at the majesty of God.

I think God is just waiting for some people to believe what the authority of Jesus can do in spiritually confused places. The problem was not that the boy had a demon. The problem was that the disciples didn't believe in Jesus enough. But goodness, if some people would believe what the authority of Jesus can do in the midst of spiritually confused places. Like if we could take up that mantle and say there is no such thing as too far gone to say that we refuse to let statistics about Gen Z and Gen Alpha tell us what our God can do.

I'll tell you what Jesus can do. Jesus can shut open doors. Jesus can heal trauma. Jesus can bring clarity to the confusion. I don't care what AI is doing.

I don't care about the influence of the cultural agenda. Do you know who my God is? He is the one who can save them.

So how I long for the day when we could see Jesus move in power. Not just at Sycamore Trails, not just at Horizon, but in Bartlett High School, Streamwood High School, South Elgin High School, where Jesus could show up and put materialism and idolatry and body image issues and confusion and the endless search for purpose. We could put all of those things to shame and bring a generation out of here in the suburbs to gather around himself and set them free from the things that they're facing so that all of us, ones who might tend towards faithlessness, might look and be astonished at the majesty of God and what God can do. So how can we stand in the gap? The second thing I would say is that we can cultivate faith and Jesus authority to overcome.

If you look at this story, this story is told in two other gospels. If you look at this story and it's told in the two other gospels, the disciples asked Jesus, Jesus, why couldn't we cast out the spirit? And Jesus says to them, well, hey, this one only comes out through fasting and prayer now, or through prayer and fasting, or however you look at that, what we tend to think is like, oh, the disciples needed to be fasting and praying in that moment in order to deal with this thing. And that's not the purpose of fasting and prayer. Jesus comment to them was you did not believe you were faithless.

The purpose of fasting and prayer is to bring us to a place where the temperature of our faith would rise to so that we could believe Jesus would do impossible things. Fasting is an opportunity for us to set aside our hunger and believe that Jesus presence can sustain us in the midst of what we lack. And as we believe him for that, he raises the temperature of our faith to believe him for even more impossible things.

So that's one story. And the last point that we have to make is from another story. Just a few verses later, there's a second story of Jesus and kids. Verse 46 of Luke chapter 9. It says an argument arose among them, I.e.

the disciples, as to which of them was the greatest. Mind you, this comes just after Jesus called them a faithless and twisted generation. They're having an argument about which of them was the greatest.

But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side and said to them, whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great. Jesus heart here. Goodness. The disciples are so focused on what does it look like to have an influential ministry?

What does it look like to appear great in the eyes of the world? And I can tell you, you build your life around children's ministry. It's rare that you will appear great in the eyes of the world.

But Jesus says, whoever receives one like this, that's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, you want to do ministry, valuable ministry, take up for the sake of the children, of the kids, of the students, of Those who are growing. So the last way we can stand in the gap is that we can contend church to welcome all kinds of kids. I share some culturally good news with you. There is in our country right now a movement of Gen Z wanting to return to church and engage faith.

And when they do show up, the question is, can we, are we prepared to welcome them regardless of their background? Can we show them a faith and a Jesus who heals and walks with us in the light and a faith that is authentic and has tangible impact on our lives? Okay, so what got three. So what's this morning? What do we do with all of this that we've heard?

Number one, just ask you if you are able, if you've got the space in your time or schedule, would you consider serving as Crossroads Leader this year if you've signed up before? I just want to get a good idea of who is available and able and willing to serve in Crossroads so that we can figure that out. So you can either talk to me today and say, hey, yeah, I'm actually really interested and if you want more information, we'll have a chance to do a bit of an informational gathering so that you can understand what that commitment is. But if you're interested or you're intrigued by that thought, would you either come up and talk to me after church or I'm going to send an email with a sign up sheet on it that you could sign up this week for that as well. But consider serving as a Crossroads Leader this year because the role, the leaders just play such a significant role and we, you know, as we, we carry the presence of Jesus with us into those four walls, into that contested territory.

Number two, I would tell you to fast and pray and I'm going to actually specifically ask you to fast and pray for two places if you, I mean, if you're not up for fasting, you got, you know, blood sugar issues or whatever it might be, don't fast, please. You know, be safe. But if you are able to fast and pray for Horizons, Sycamore Trails and Centennial or for our local high schools, and this is just what I want you to do. I want you to go to Jesus and say, jesus, I believe that you can work powerfully here. Would you, by your holy spirit give me some idea of the power of the work that you want to do?

I just want to tell you, if you get a sense that Jesus reveals something to you as you are fasting and praying and interceding for any of these schools, would you just share that idea Right. Because I believe the Holy Spirit can show us all things in relation to that. So would you just share that so that we can be on the cutting edge of whatever he wants to do in our community? And then finally, I would just tell you this. Believe in what the Lord can do.

So, like I said, there's a bit of a movement of revival, spiritual awakening even happening among Gen Z. Some of the people that I listen to and who are remarking on it say it's similar to being in the early days of the Jesus people movement in the 60s. It's got a lot of similarities to that, just culturally in the way things that are coming across. And so that's good, that's exciting. I would hate to see it pass this place over for whatever reason, whether it's that churches aren't ready to engage what the Lord has, whether it's, you know, just the general spiritual apathy and contentedness that is in the place that, that we live.

So I just say, believe in what the Lord can do, because he can do some mighty things. I want to share with you just three different stories of some powerful things that the Lord has been doing recently. So there's One Church in LA, a church of 325 people. Pastor went to the church at the beginning of this year and said, hey, we're believing the Lord, that he's gonna bring 400 people to faith through our church this year. It was a new marker.

It's a brand new thing. It's not something that they regularly do, but believe that the Holy Spirit had placed that on his heart and on the heart of the church, and they had been training and preparing for that kind of a thing. And they so far have seen 3009 professions of faith this year. Yeah, it's amazing. 10 times 10x, you know, the number of people in the church.

Bible sales are soaring right now. Christian. So brick and mortar Christian bookstores are struggling to keep printed Bibles on the shelves because kids are walking in and they're like, we don't have a Bible. Can we get one here?

College campuses are breaking out in spiritual awakening and baptism and deliverance. And so. So I'm. I'm not saying that all of those examples that I gave that, those are the ways that the Lord has to use us because, number one, he has done some powerful stuff through us in the local elementary schools. And it's worth celebrating and continue to be worth celebrating, and that's all he does here.

We'll bless the Lord and say, thank you, Lord, for what you've done. But I also want to choose to believe that he will, that he desires and that he can do more. I want us to be the kind of people who are ready to go when he gives the word to say go. Because Jesus is coming back soon. I don't know if you know that, but I mean, yes, we're all supposed to believe as we read the Bible that Jesus is coming back soon.

But I am more convinced and I don't speak up about this stuff, but just when I look at the world and situations, I am convinced now more than ever that Jesus return is very soon.

And we want to see many who have been redeemed from the confusion of this world looking forward to his return with expectancy and anticipation and so church along those lines. Would you pray with me, Father? I'm very grateful for this church and I'm grateful for what you have done and will continue to do here.

God, you have chosen to work in a powerful and a mighty way in the hearts of many in this church, to love kids, to go to where they are and to share Jesus with them.

And the character and the nature of this church and the people here are different because you've chosen to use us in that way. And so I want to give you praise and glory for that, Lord. And I believe that you're pleased with the the way that we already have taken up the mantle for the next generation. But Lord, we also want to believe you for more. So Holy Spirit, I pray for us that you would expand, grow and expand all of our hearts for the sake of Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

And Lord, would you just make us desperate like that? Father was desperate because we believe you can do powerful things to bring healing in places where there is considerable darkness. So we pray all of this in Jesus name, Amen.