Amy C Walters

Jesus Again Foretells His Death | Luke 9:43-45

While crowds marvel at one of Jesus’ miracles, he tells his disciples that he will be “delivered into the hands of men.” In spite of his instructions to listen carefully, the disciples don’t understand what he means and don’t ask him to explain. From this, we learn that true greatness listens to Jesus.

In the previous story, the disciples, due to unbelief and twisting things around to be about themselves, were not able to drive the demon out of a poor, suffering boy. Jesus called them out for it. He rebuked them as being unbelieving and perverse. Then Jesus healed the boy and gave him back to his father. 

While the crowd was marveling at this miracle, Jesus said to his disciples, “Listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you.” Quite literally, what he says is, “Let this sink into your ears.” What a word picture! Jesus wants to make sure the disciples are paying close attention.

He goes on to say, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.” Another way of saying this is, I’m going to be handed over or surrendered to someone else’s authority.

Now, this message seems completely out of place with what’s going on at that moment. There are people marveling at what Jesus has done. There are crowds that have come to see him. They love what he’s doing. They want to see more of it. How is it possible that people would want to arrest him? 

How does that make sense, too, with Jesus’ glory that they just saw in his transfiguration? Glory and suffering don’t seem to go together. 

And how does surrender fit with all of the things that they had seen Jesus do? He has power over demons. He has power over nature. He has power over sickness. He has power over death itself. Wouldn’t he have power over those who would try to capture him? 

This message certainly would have been strange in the disciples’ ears. And in fact, we’re told that the disciples didn’t understand what it meant. “The meaning was hidden from them, so they did not grasp it.” 

This reminds me of the Parable of the Sower. After Jesus told this parable, the disciples didn’t get it. So they asked him what it meant (Luke 8:9). And Jesus told them. He didn’t withhold the information or rebuke them for asking. 

But here in this story, the disciples don’t ask Jesus to explain. Why not? They were afraid.

For some reason, these disciples were afraid to ask Jesus the meaning of what he had just told them, the meaning of something that he said needs to sink into their ears, like a seed sinking down into soil. 

Luke doesn’t say explicitly what the disciples were afraid of. Maybe they were afraid of looking foolish by asking Jesus a question. Sometimes that’s what keeps us from asking questions. We don’t want to reveal that we don’t know what’s going on. We want to pretend like we’re in the know.

I think the context gives us some clues to their fear. Right after this conversation is an argument between the disciples about which of them would be the greatest. That’s what is on their minds–pursuing personal greatness. 

But Jesus’ message of suffering and betrayal doesn’t fit with that. It’s incongruous with their idea of greatness and glory. And so I think they were afraid to ask Jesus because they didn’t want to hear about suffering and betrayal. It doesn’t fit with what they wanted the future to look like. 

So, did the disciples listen carefully to what Jesus said? No. They were unsuccessful because not only did they not understand, they didn’t ask him what it meant. They were afraid to pursue the truth because it didn’t match with their idea of glory.

And yet, here’s the amazing thing. Jesus was going to wring glory out of that suffering. He was going to be betrayed, in fact, by one of the very disciples in that group. He would be handed over to his enemies to be killed.

But he would also be resurrected. Jesus was going to turn that suffering and betrayal into glory. In Jesus’ hands, those ideas are not incongruous. This is what he wanted his disciples to understand. 

As his followers, they too would experience that suffering. And eventually, they would come to see suffering as glory for the sake of their Lord Jesus. But right here, they didn’t listen. 

Our key truth for today is that true greatness listens to Jesus.

Even when that message seems to be contradictory to your own ideas or plans. Even if it doesn’t make sense how that could possibly work out. 

This has been a theme of Jesus’ teaching for a while. Think back to the Parable of the Sower, how Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” Or how the soils represented the hearts that hear the Word of God. 

Think of the transfiguration, where the cloud of God’s presence settles on them, and God speaks from the cloud and says, “This is my son whom I have chosen. Listen to him.” 

Looking ahead in the New Testament to the book of Hebrews, the author speaks to this audience who are believers but are starting to slide back into their old ways of doing things. And the author diagnoses their problem as dullness of hearing.

Consider our situation today. We have messages coming at us from all different directions. And we have become really adept at tuning out things that don’t fit with what we want to hear. But we cannot apply that filter to the message of Jesus. We need to listen to him and let his words sink into our ears. We may not understand exactly how it’s going to play out, but we need to trust that what he says is the truth.

We have a culture that’s telling us all kinds of different things. Telling us what’s acceptable, what’s expected, what’s good and true. And so many of those things are contrary to the words of Jesus. Which are we going to listen to? The culture’s vision of what’s right? Or are we going to listen to Jesus?