Day 160: Luke 9:49-50

John responded, “Master, we saw someone driving out demons in Your name, and we tried to stop him because he does not follow us” (v. 49).

We saw John, his brother, and his buddy Peter as they viewed sights the others could hardly have imagined. They beheld revelations of His glory both in raising the dead and conferring with those long supposed dead. One might say you’d have to be dead to be unaffected by such sights, but obviously in both cases the dead were highly affected! No one remained unchanged. But how were the disciples changing? That’s the question.

In yesterday’s passage from Luke 9, we saw the disciples arguing about which of them would be greatest, now we see John—not once but twice—snapping the suspenders of his perceived superiority, bringing a sense of entitlement to the inner circle.

I’m sitting here shaking my head. Oh, not just at them. At myself. At the whole lot of us. Sometimes I wonder why God doesn’t give up on us when we cop attitudes like these. I am so grateful that God is both nearsighted and farsighted. He sees us as we really are, and He sees how we’ll really be. I’m pretty convinced that only the latter keeps the former alive.

Perhaps John’s age didn’t help. Life simply hadn’t had time to beat him over the head with humility—not like Moses, who had all of forty years on the far side of the desert followed by a flock of aggravating people to humble the exclusivity right out of him.

In a wonderfully peculiar account in Numbers 11:24–30, Moses faced a similar situation. He took the elders of Israel into the tent of meeting. There the Spirit of God came upon them and they prophesied. Two of the elders, however, did not come with the group. Yet these two also began to prophesy in the camp. When Joshua heard what was happening, he asked almost the exact question as John in our incident above. He asked if he should stop the two. Moses responded, “Are you jealous on my account? If only all the Lord’s people were prophets, and the Lord would place His Spirit on them” (Num. 11:29 hcsb).

I’ll never forget standing in the resource room of my office with a friend who asked, “What does it feel like to look at all these books with your name on them?” My face screwed up into a knot, and I said, “All they represent to me is one holy beatin’ after another!” I am sad to say that much of what I’ve learned has come with the rod of God, but things are beginning to change, aren’t they, Father? I hope so.