Who Is Jesus to You? (Luke 9:7–17)

Fuel welcome Noah Sacedo.

Good morning.

Yes, I am the lucky one that gets to speak while Pastor Todd is in Guatemala.

If you don't know me, my name is Noah Sacedo.

I am the men's director here at Hope and soon to be pastor of Hope Church, Alvaredo.

Sorry, my computer decided to log me out.

So devil's fighting back through technology.

There we go.

So have you ever had a dream that it felt real?

That maybe you wake up and you're just like, what was that?

That felt so real, like I really thought that was happening.

A few months ago, I thought that's what I was having.

I seen flashes of like paramedics and being in a hospital and just all this stuff.

But when I finally woke up, I found that I was not in my bed anymore.

I was in a hospital bed.

And I was very confused.

And I remember thinking to myself, God, you've called me to plant this church.

And I said, Yes.

I didn't fight you on it.

I didn't try to run.

I said yes.

Why is this happening?

Why am I waking up in a hospital bed?

And this was just a true test of my relationship with Jesus and who he is to me.

And so this morning we're continuing in Luke.

If you don't have your notes, you can scan or tap the tag on the chair in front of you and pull up my notes there and follow along.

We'll have all the Bible verses and everything there.

But if you want to open your Bible, we are in Luke 9, starting in chapter 7.

We're going to go verses 7 through 9.

So starting in verse 7, it says, Now Herod the Tetriarch heard about all that was happening, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen.

Herod said, John, I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?

And he sought to see him.

So Herod has heard people talking about a man that is going around and performing miracles.

He's teaching these large crowds, he's raising the dead, and he wants to know who this man is.

And people are saying that he's John the Baptist raised from the dead.

Now remember, Herod is the one who had John beheaded, because John told him that his the way he was living was not right.

Um and so Herod's like, There's no way I know that John is dead, so it's definitely not him.

Um, but he's saying that, you know, people are saying, well, it's Elijah who's returned, or it's another prophet raised from the dead.

And so Herod asks, Who is this about whom I hear such things?

And Luke presents us with a question in this, in this first section.

And Herod has heard about Jesus, he's heard of all the miracles, and he's trying to figure out who Jesus is from a distance.

He doesn't want to go and sit and hear Jesus, he just wants to know who is this and what is he doing.

And this shows that there's a difference between knowing about Jesus and having a relationship with him.

Herod had heard all about Jesus, but we can know the stories, we can know all the Bible verses, we can hear of all the miracles that Jesus has done, and we can even pray to Jesus when we're in trouble.

But the question is, do we really, who is Jesus to us, and do we have a relationship with him?

And Luke begins to answer this question in a couple different ways.

And when I was reading through this, it made me think of you ever seen like the older Star Wars movies where it shows like the villain's face and then the screen wipes and it shows the heroes?

Well, that's kind of what happens here.

If we go into Luke 9, 10 through 11.

Wrong tab.

There we go.

On their return, the apostles told him all that they had done, and he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bessadia.

When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them, and spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and cured those who had need of healing.

So point number two is Jesus is our healer.

And so the disciples have been out on their mission trip now.

Like Pastor Todd talked about last week, they went and spoke and healed and performed miracles in the name of Jesus.

So they've come back to Jesus now and they're telling him about everything they've done.

I don't know about you, but if I went out, if Jesus sent me out on a mission trip when I get back, I'm gonna want to tell him everything I did.

I want to be like, Jesus, man, you know, I laid hands on this guy and he got healed, and we saw these people give, you know, accept you into their lives, and you know, we would want that time with Jesus to tell him what had happened.

We're probably also gonna want a little bit of time of rest, too.

But Luke tells us that Jesus does things a little differently.

Um, the crowds have found out where they're at, and now there's all these people are coming to see Jesus.

And look at what Jesus does in this moment.

He doesn't send the crowds away, he doesn't ignore them.

He it's Luke says he welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who had need of healing.

When Jesus looks at hurting people, he moves towards them, not away from them.

He doesn't ignore them.

And it's through this that we kind of see God's heart for the hurting and those in need of healing.

It was through Adam's and Eve's disobedience that suffering and sorrow was brought into the world.

This was not how God originally wanted us to live.

He wanted us to be whole, he wanted us to live in his presence, but it was because Adam and Eve that there was separation was caused.

Now I really want to be clear in this point that I am not saying it is because we sin that we get sick or that we are not healed.

It is because of sin.

Acts 10 38 B says he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.

Acts 19 12, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them.

It can be easy to believe the lie of the devil that something you did in your past or something you're doing is causing is why God won't heal you, or is why God's made you sick in the first place.

That's not true.

Sometimes we may get off track from God, or maybe we are just defying God altogether, and we may lose his presence in our life.

But God is not making you sick to punish you.

He's not holding back healing from you to punish you.

Jesus is very clear that becoming a Christ follower does not mean that life gets easier, but that we will face hardships and that but that we don't have to carry that burden alone.

In July, in early a Sunday morning, Amanda had to call an ambulance for me because I was basically stuck in a sleepwalk-like state.

I was doing weird things, I was throwing up, and she could not get me to wake up.

No matter what she tried, I just I would not respond.

She calls the ambulance, the paramedics come, and they're checking me, checking all my vitals.

And I I have vague memory of them asking me questions, but she said that the way I responded just didn't make any sense.

And their assumption was I had taken something.

I was clearly on drugs and had just gone off a deep end.

And Amanda explained to them, no, that's definitely not it.

And so they run a huge panel of tests on me, test me for everything possible, West Nile virus, anything you can think of, they tested me for it, including performing a spinal tap.

And to just show you how out of it I was, I don't remember that.

And when she told me at first, I honestly didn't believe her until like two days later, I realized there was a band-aid on the middle of my back.

And I was like, I guess that did happen.

But it was just in that moment of I just couldn't remember any of what happened.

And they had even told me at one point that I had gotten combative with some of the nurses.

Some of y'all that know me, that that just doesn't sound like me.

Something's not right.

Yeah.

Um, and so I'm laying in this bed and I'm thinking to myself, like, God, why?

Why is this happening?

Like, what is going to happen in this?

Because at this point, we still they still didn't know for sure what it was that was causing it or what was going to happen.

They're telling me that I had had stroke-like symptoms, even.

And so I'm just praying.

I'm like, God, what is going on here?

And it was it was in this time that what I knew about Jesus and who Jesus was to me was tested.

Because I had known Jesus as my savior.

I had known him as a redeemer for the one that had carried my sin for me, and I was forgiven for sin because of him.

But I had never had need for Jesus as a healer, and in this moment, that's what I needed.

Sorry, I lost my place.

And what I learned in all of this was that God's faithfulness isn't always that he keeps us out of hard times.

Sometimes his faithfulness is that he's walking with us in those hard times, that he's walking with us through that fire.

I believe that Jesus 100% still heals.

I believe that we should be praying for healing and that we should ask God to intervene when we are sick or when we are hurting.

But one thing we have to keep in mind is that our hope is not in getting the answer we want.

That our hope is in Jesus.

And that He is with us when we are healthy, He's with us when we're not, He is with us when we understand, and He's with us when we don't.

And when I first started looking over these verses that I had, it would have been very easy for me to just skip these verses and go to the next part of this.

But I saw that word healing, and God told me, you have to talk about that.

And at first that scared me.

That is above my knowledge of the Bible.

Like, how am I gonna talk about healing?

Because I thought about all these people in my life that I'm praying for, family members that I've been asking for years for God to heal and just haven't seen it yet, and saying, God, why them?

And some of that for me, I carried almost a survivor's guilt in the way.

Because people had told me about people they knew that had viral meningitis.

I forgot to mention that.

That's the sickness that I ended up having.

Um, but people told me of people they knew that had that and either didn't make it or they had been severely uh disabled.

And so I just asked God, God, why?

I'm thankful that you healed me, but why do you not heal them?

And I did a lot of studying through this because I wanted to have a good rock solid answer.

And what God told me was that that's where faith comes in.

That we're not always gonna understand why he does what he does, why some are healed and some aren't, why some get sick and why some don't.

But that's where we have to have faith because if we understood it, then there'd be no need for faith.

We would just know, oh, this is how God works.

He's gonna do A, B, and C, and that's what's gonna happen.

But instead, we don't know, and we have to walk by faith.

We have to trust that he's gonna do what he says, even if we don't see it, even if we don't understand it.

And so as these verses show, not only can Jesus heal, but he wants to.

He wanted to heal those people, he wanted them to come to him and teach them and love them and heal them.

So now going into verse twelve through seventeen it says, Now the day began to wear away, and the twelve came and said to him, Send the crowd away and go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.

But he said to them, You give them something to eat, they said, We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.

For there were about five thousand men, and he said to his disciples, have them sit down in groups of about fifty, and they did so, and had said they did so, and he had them all sit down, and taking the five loaves and two fish, he looked up to heaven and set a blessing over them.

Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.

And they all ate and were satisfied.

And what was left over was picked up twelve baskets of broken pieces.

Point number three, Jesus is our provider.

So Jesus has spent all day teaching these people and speaking to them, healing them, and now it's starting to get late, and the people have a new problem.

They're hungry.

And so the disciples try to solve the problem on their own, and they what makes sense to them.

They say, Hey, Jesus, we need to send these people to go get food.

They didn't have Uber Eats back then, they couldn't just call in and order to dominoes.

I mean, could you imagine trying to order Chipotle for 5,000 people?

Like if you want beans over here, if you want rice over in this area, like it would just be a mess.

And so the disciples are trying to take care of the people in a way that makes sense to them.

And I think a lot of times we do the same thing.

We face a problem, we weigh our options, we look at all the pros and cons of what we can do, what we can't do, and we try to solve the problem.

And I think that's good.

We should do that.

That's an ability that God put in us.

He doesn't want us to just sit there and just, I don't know what to do.

He wants us to try to solve it.

But the problem is sometimes we get stuck in that.

We forget that we can ask God for help.

We get so stuck on, I've got to fix this, I've got to fix this, that we don't say, God, what are you trying to do?

What can you do through this?

And so the disciples are in that kind of same boat, and they've come up with a solution, and they're telling Jesus what needs to be done to fix it.

How often do we try to tell Jesus how we need to fix the problem?

Trust me, I'm the same way.

I am a problem solver.

I'll say, all right, God, I need you to do A, B, and C.

If you will just help me fix this, then I can do this, and then I just need that, and the problem's fixed, problem solved.

But, you know, maybe it's in our family we face issues.

We say, you know, well, if you just change this person's mind, then everything will be good here.

Or it's our health, our job, or even our future.

We say, God, this is what I want to do.

And if you'll just help me get through this schooling, if you'll provide for me, then problem solved, we're all good.

But instead of stopping to ask, God, what do you want to do in this situation?

How do you want to fix it?

What do you want me to do?

And the disciples looked at the crowd and they saw a problem.

But Jesus saw an opportunity.

Jesus says, You give them something to eat.

The solution that Jesus gives does not sound like a solution to them, though.

They're like, What you want us to do?

What?

And you know, I think a lot of us find ourselves in that same situation.

Jesus has told us, hey, do this, and we're like, What?

Like that's that's not gonna work.

I don't have enough time for that.

I don't have enough talent, I don't have the ability to do that, or I don't have the resources.

But maybe you're right.

Maybe what you have is not enough.

Five loaves and two fish was not enough to feed 5,000 people.

Faith doesn't mean ignoring the problem.

It doesn't mean saying that, oh, this this will get it'll get taken care of.

I don't have to worry about it.

It's it's not a problem.

But faith means even though I don't have enough, Jesus will provide everything else that I need.

Jesus didn't just tell the disciples, go figure it out, go make it work.

He said, What do we have?

They brought to him what they had.

And I want to point out, and this is an important part that can be easy to miss.

He blessed it.

Now, the scriptural, this is not like the blessing, blessing the meal we think of.

This is not God blesses to our bodies, you know, may this keep us healthy.

No, Jesus gave thanks for what they had even though it wasn't enough.

Can we say that we thank God when it's not enough?

When the solution that He's provided doesn't look like a solution, do we say, God, this isn't enough, but thank you.

Can we say this job I have isn't providing for what I need, but thank you, God, that I have a job.

You know, how different would our lives be if we gave God thanks for everything, even when it's not enough?

So next, Jesus breaks the bread and the fish and hands it to the disciples to pass out.

Now, could you imagine walking up to a group of 50 people?

You don't even have the five loaves and two fish anymore, you've just got pieces of it now.

And you know, you're trying to feed these people with that.

You think the first couple groups, they probably got some really teeny tiny pieces of bread and fish.

The disciples probably like, all right, here's a tiny piece for you.

But the disciples even had to have faith in order to do this, because they had to take that step for the miracle to be seen.

Had they could have just stood there and said, No, this isn't enough.

I can't, how often do we do that and say, God, this isn't enough.

I can't do anything with this, so I'm just gonna sit here.

I'm not gonna do anything.

But because they took that step of faith and say, All right, Jesus is sweet, told me to do, so I'm gonna start passing this out.

The miracle began to be seen.

And Jesus didn't just provide the bare minimum, he didn't just give a little snack to everybody, he provided the solution and then some.

Everyone was full, everyone had what they needed.

So, what in your life do you maybe need to take a step of faith in and you're holding it back from God?

What do you need to give thanks for and give to God?

Maybe it's your finances, maybe God's told you, hey, start tithing.

You've been tipping, it's time to give that 10%.

You said, God, I can't, I don't have enough.

He's waiting for you to take that step of faith.

He's got so much more for you, but he needs you to take that step of faith.

The worship team will go ahead and come back up.

It's what is insufficient in our hands can become more than enough in his.

We may not see the solution yet.

And God has think about that too.

How much blessing do we maybe have that God is just like, I want to give this to you, but I need you to take that step.

I can't do it until you take that step of faith.

We often say God will provide.

And that's right, but sometimes I think we need to say God has provided.

That what he has given us, although it doesn't look like enough, it is enough.

That what we've been asking for, that's he's gonna provide it when the time is right, that he's gonna give us that healing that we need, that he's gonna take care of those bills that are just piling up and we don't know how to take care of them, but we have to do what we've been called to do first and just know and in faith that God is going to provide for that.

So, what are our transformational moments?

Number one, who is Jesus to you?

Maybe your thought of Jesus is based off of something friends have told you, or your parents, or even Pastor Todd.

And you've just built around that's who Jesus is.

But when you really dig down deep and ask yourself, who is Jesus to me?

Because just like for me, I knew Jesus as my savior, I knew him as my salvation, but I didn't know him yet as a healer.

I didn't know him as the one that would provide because there was a lot of need that came up in that time, and the people of this church provided for us in a way that I didn't, I didn't even fathom, that we're just right there and ready to help.

He will provide that for us.

And so I wanted to I want to take a minute here and do a salvation call.

And you know, maybe you're not even at that step yet, maybe you're still at step one.

You haven't allowed Jesus into your heart yet, but you feel like you need to, you feel like some you're missing something.

There's a hole that needs to be filled.

So if everyone will bow their heads and close their eyes and repeat after me if that's the decision you want to make today.

Dear Jesus, I admit that I'm a sinner and I need you in my life today.

You died on the cross so that I may have freedom, and I invite you into my life to and heart today.

Amen.