Faith in Jesus

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Where Is Your Faith? EXPOSITION ON THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE study #68 (Luke 8:22-25) – Disciple's Direction

Where Is Your Faith? EXPOSITION ON THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE study #68 (Luke 8:22-25)

/ Matt Vance / Leave a comment

As we move along in our text here in chapter 8, I want to make mention that we have seen several instances where Luke breaks away from the chronology of the actual events. I have said this before and I am sure it will be said again before the end of our study in Luke, that none of the writers of the Gospels set out a direct and definite chronology but I do believe that mostly Luke does have that idea in view. Some of what Jesus has spoke on in this chapter could be viewed as out of order and that will be the case for this study as well. It is hard to place the events of what we will learn in this text into the exact chronology so we will just take the text as we see it and learn the principle within the event and teaching that we see.

I only bring this point up every once and awhile because we can not be dogmatic on trying to fit every detail of Jesus’ ministry into some type of timeline. As we will see even Luke does not place this in order from the last section of Scripture. So let’s look at our first point to begin this section for our study.

1.Sailing into the storm.
Look with me at Luke 8:22-23 that says Now it happened that on one of those days He and His disciples got into a boat, and He said to them, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they set out. 23 But as they were sailing along, He fell asleep, and a windstorm descended on the lake, and they began to be swamped and in danger.

In our intro I made the point that we do not know exactly what day by our text here because all we see Luke say is it happened that on one of those days. I do want to mention that Mark does make a little clearer that this seems to be a certain day. Mark 4:35 says And on that day, when evening came, He *said to them, “Let us go over to the other side.” 

This goes along with the day that Jesus taught the parable of the soils and as recorded in Mark, the parable of the seed and the parable of the mustard seed. Matthew’s account gives to us information that this would be around Capernaum near the Sea of Galilee. So at least we know that He is setting sail from around the Capernaum area of the Sea of Galilee which would be the Northwestern area of the Sea.

We notice that He does not invite everyone to come along but enters the boat with His disciples. Now we remember that there are many people following Jesus and many people that are called disciples. I do not believe that the word disciples here, that is those that gets on the boat with Jesus could be all that are called disciples because the boats they would be using were fishing boats. Most fishing boats would only carry 5 to 15 people which goes along with this boat being big enough to carry Jesus, the twelve and possibly some of the woman that we learned about at the beginning of this chapter. Of course I want to stay true to the text so we clearly see that our text says that He and His disciples got into a boat. This to me says that 13 people set sail across the Sea of Galilee.

We observe as well that our text says that they set sail for a purpose. Jesus says in verse 22 “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” We will learn in our next study that Jesus was setting out to reach the region of the Gerasenes but let’s not get to far ahead of ourselves. First let’s look at what happens as they set sail on the Sea of Galilee toward this region. Look again with me at Luke 8:23 that says But as they were sailing along, He fell asleep, and a windstorm descended on the lake, and they began to be swamped and in danger.

Jesus in His humanity is exhausted from the pressure to constantly be preaching and healing. It is a sign of His true humanity but also we notice that this is a sign of His deity. His deity is noticed because He has no worries about what is going on at the time. In fact Jesus in His sovereignty would have known exactly what they would face as they crossed the Sea of Galilee. He did not worry but we find Jesus asleep. Both Matthew and Mark’s accounts shows us that the waves were even higher than the boat and that the boat was filling up with water. These types of storms were common on this sea. In fact from information from the website https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/ it says and I quote: The sea’s location makes it subject to sudden and violent storms as the wind comes over the eastern mountains and drops suddenly onto the sea. Storms are especially likely when an east wind blows cool air over the warm air that covers the sea. The cold air (being heavier) drops as the warm air rises. This sudden change can produce surprisingly furious storms in a short time, as it did in Jesus’ day. End Quote

So this would not even be something uncommon to many of Jesus’ disciples because some of them were fisherman. But this storm seemed to be extremely violet as they sail along and yet we find Jesus calm and asleep. This leads us to look at the disciple’s reaction and Jesus’ miracle of calming the storm in our next point.

2.The disciple’s fear and Jesus’ power.
Look with me at Luke 8:24 And they came to Him and woke Him up, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And He woke up and rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became calm.

Just like any of us, the disciples find themselves overcome with fear. This fear was not just some superficial, outward scare but really shook them. This shook them so much that they go to wake Jesus from His sleep. I’m sure they were amazed that He could even be asleep in such a storm. In fact we see in Mark 4:38 And Jesus Himself was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion; and they *got Him up and *said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”

Isn’t this just like us to question God when things aren’t going the way we think they should. Instead of praying, instead of trusting God, instead of looking back at what Jesus had already done and having faith, they turned to fear and questioning Jesus’ compassion. In all 3 accounts we see that the disciples wake Jesus up and mention that they are perishing. The Greek word here indicates that they felt that the next thing to happen was that they were going to die. They lacked faith even though they had seen Jesus heal diseases, open the eyes of the blind, healed the paralytic, cast out demons etc. This shows us that we too would fall prey to our flesh when faced with these types of circumstances. We are no different than they are but at the same time this should be an area that we are allowing God to change.

Jesus does not just say that their fear is normal or that it is ok to be in that state but rather as we will see in our next point, He will question why they are so fearful. Before He does that He shows once again His deity and power as we see in our text. It says that Jesus woke up and rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became calm.

Jesus over and over again had shown to the crowds and shown His disciples that He was God in the flesh and yet so often they did not trust. Here Jesus says the words and the waves stopped, the storm was gone instantly. There was a calm like nothing had ever happened. This must have been an amazing thing to see. In a very similar act this will happen again months down the road when Jesus walks on water and Peter does as well in Matthew 14. In that account what we see is that the disciples had went ahead of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee and they found themselves caught in another bad storm. This time Jesus comes walking nearly past them in the middle of the storm and this is where Peter walks on the water as Jesus tells him to come out on the water with Him. It says this in Matthew 14:32-33 And when they got into the boat, the wind stopped. 33 And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, “You are truly God’s Son!”

Once again Jesus stops the storm and that time they recognize that He is indeed the Son of God. But in this account back in Luke 8, we see there reaction is a little different. In fact Jesus calls to their attention their lack of faith to recognize who it is that is with them. We will look at this in our last point.

3.The disciple’s lack of faith.
Look with me at Luke 8:25 And He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were fearful and marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him?”

We will notice the disciples lack of faith but also their astonishment and fear of the One who was in the boat with them. Jesus makes it plain here that they should have faith and not fear by saying “Where is your faith?”

Jesus did not look at them and say, I understand why you would be fearful but rather He points out that with the revelation of Jesus’ power they should have faith that they would survive. I know it is easy for us to judge them as I already said but our Lord makes it clear that they should have had faith and not fear. In Matthew 8:26 the Bible says that Jesus said, “Why are you so cowardly, you men of little faith?”

Mark 4:40 records Jesus saying “Why are you so cowardly? Do you still have no faith?”

Their faith was minimal at best. They in reality had so little faith in this moment. Little faith is equal to no faith because if you have any doubt then you have no faith. I know we may say that this seems a little harsh and uncaring but the principle here is that they needed to have faith that Jesus knew what was going on and was in control of what was going on. We too fall prey to this shallow faith when we face issues that seem to be beyond our comprehension of how we will make it through it. This is where our faith grows and our trust in God continues to grow. I believe we see this more from the disciples as we move along in Jesus’ ministry but for now we will look at their response.

Luke 8:25b says They were fearful and marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him?”

They may had seen Jesus perform miracles, heal sicknesses, raise the dead, make the lame walk but this seemed to go even further than ever. This made them think about who Jesus really is more than ever before. I think this was a turning point in their thinking because this brought them to a place of fear as they were in the presence of our Lord Jesus. I love the way Mark 4:40 says it, it say And they became very afraid and were saying to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”

They may have had fear of the storm that seemed to bring them to the point of death but they became very afraid as they realized who it is that is in the boat with them. I believe they had a sense of Jesus being the Messiah, the Lord, the Redeemer before but I believe this made them realize that Jesus was sovereign over all that was going on. When we recognize God’s sovereignty we realize that we are not in control of who gets saved, what happens, how we will live, die or even our eternity. When we evangelize we are not looking to persuade by some catchy or cool words or analogies but only preaching the Gospel. This helps us to know that since God is sovereign, He will use us even though we are just sinners saved by grace if we would just have faith in His sovereignty and not our own ability. This was the point Jesus was making in this section and this moves us to what we will look at in our next study.

A Sinful Woman Is Forgiven By Jesus. EXPOSITION ON THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE study #63 (Luke 7:40-50)

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We come now to the final section of this 7th chapter in the book of Luke. As we come to these last 11 verses we need to remember the context in which this section is spoken. Jesus was invited to the house of a Pharisee, who we will learn in this study is Simon, to join in a dinner. Remember we have often talked about how most religious leaders would never associate with anyone other than those that were in their circle. We may assume that this Pharisee wanted to bring Jesus to his house so that he could show off how religious and “godly” he really was. I made the point in our last study that often we see that the Pharisee were doing nothing other than trying to bring accusations against Jesus to try to prove His disobedience to the law. They looked around God’s law to their own traditions so that they could find some type of accusation against our Lord but it back fired every time.

As we will see there will be no difference in that here. The context shows us that while they were eating, there came along in the house a sinful woman, most likely a woman that was a known prostitute, came to Jesus with a repentant heart. This was shown in her crying and also in her humiliation of washing and kissing the feet of Jesus. But as always the Pharisees looked to accuse Jesus so we see in Luke 7:39 Now when the Pharisee, who had invited Him, saw this, he said to himself, saying, “If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner.”

This statement was a slam towards this woman in a sense but much more an accusation of Jesus’ knowledge of who this woman was. In other words he was saying if this man is who he says he is, he would not let a woman that commits such sinful acts to touch him. This would bring about some impure thoughts from this Pharisee about Jesus’ purity. This sets the stage for how Jesus responds to this Pharisee’s inner thoughts. This will be a moment of teaching and forgiveness that we will learn in this section. Let’s look now at our first point.

1.Jesus responds to Simon with a parable.
Look with me at Luke 7:40-43 And Jesus answered and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he replied, “Say it, Teacher.” 41 “A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he graciously forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have judged correctly.”

The start of this verse makes it look as if Simon had asked Jesus a question but in reality verse 39 said that Simon had said what he said to himself. It is possible that he spoke this verbally but usually this is referenced as speaking to himself inwardly with no verbal communication. So with that we see again that Jesus knows the very thoughts of this Pharisee and looks to expose his hypocrisy.

The word answer in the Greek can also mean to take up a conversation so it is clear that Jesus is replying but is also that Jesus is wanting to talk with Simon about what he just thought. In amazement Simon accused Jesus of not knowing what sort of woman was touching Him but Jesus proved that wrong by knowing the very thoughts of Simon. Jesus tells a parable of two debtors that can easily be represented of the Pharisee which would be the debtor with 50 denarii in debts and the sinful woman with 500 denarii in debts. Notice that even though there is a distinction in the amount, these two are both debtors. The one with less debt did not get a pat on the back for not being as bad as the other but that they both had debts. This of course is representative of the sins of each person. We are all sinners but we may not be committing the same sins or the same amount of sins as others but that does not lessen the fact that we are still sinners.

In the parable Jesus says that the moneylender graciously forgave them both because they were unable to pay their debt. Just like us, we too can never pay our sin debt whether you sinned once or a million times. Now understand that Jesus is laying out a parable to get Simon to think and in no way is saying that this Pharisee has repented of his sins and is forgiven. He is speaking this in a parable to make a comparison when he says that they were both forgiven. He moves now to the point of why He spoke this to Simon by asking him So which of them will love him more?

The answer seems obvious because of the reality of the debt so we see what is said again in Luke 7:43 Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he graciously forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have judged correctly.”

This answer shows us that Simon knew logically who would show a love more outwardly and expressively. He knew that the one that had the most debt would be more loving and gracious. I think about it this way, if I owed someone 50 dollars and another 50,000 dollars and they both wiped that debt clean, I would be thankful for both of those people but the one that forgave that big debt would be someone I would look to pay back in some form through acts of service etc…

This brings us now to the real lesson as we move into our next point.

2.The forgiveness of the sinful woman.
Look with me at Luke 7:44-48 And turning toward the woman, He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave Me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. 46 You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with perfume. 47 For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” 48 Then He said to her, “Your sins have been forgiven.”

In the 1st century it was usually common courtesy to provide water to wash the feet of a guest or provide someone to wash the feet of a guest. Some wealthy people would have servants do this for their guest. As we know they had dusty roads and this was a gesture of respect and honor to your guest. Here in our story we see that Jesus just showed Simon that he was as much in need of forgiveness as this sinful woman even though she had a quantity of sins that could have been viewed as greater. We all need forgiveness and it is with that we see Jesus turned toward the woman and then showed Simon how this woman expressed her gratitude for Jesus.

This statement Jesus speaks in verses 44-46 really exposes the hypocrisy of this Pharisee because he is condemning this woman for her actions, he is condemning Jesus for allowing her to touch him and yet he has not even done the most basic thing to show his respect for the guest he invited to his house. Now some might suggest that yes Simon maybe failed at being courteous but does this really show his sinfulness? We need to understand that Jesus shows us the contrast between the two by then saying in Luke 7:47 For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.

There is no indication that Jesus tells this Pharisee that he too is forgiven but rather shows Simon that forgiveness comes to those that have expressed the need to be forgiven. This Pharisee, like all other Pharisee’s, did not see themselves as people that needed forgiveness. They felt like they had reached the pinnacle of the religious ladder and that if someone was from God, then they would surely be accepted. In reality they were so far from being able to receive forgiveness because their hearts were corrupt and callous. Their agenda was so corrupt that they failed to show love and compassion in the simplest things like providing water for the guest to wash their feet.

This point is clear here and then we see Jesus say to the woman in Luke 7:48b “Your sins have been forgiven.”

This statement gives to us a clear picture that this woman was saved at this moment. This forgiveness was not because of some personal act she had done toward Jesus but it is the forgiveness that is associated with redemption. Ephesians 1:7 says In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions, according to the riches of His grace.

Colossians 1:11-14 says being strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 Who rescued us from the authority of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The forgiveness of sins is in connection to God’s great mercy and grace as seen in Isaiah 43:25 that says “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins.

Then also Psalm 32:5 says I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not cover up; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh;” And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.

God is a forgiving God, but to those that do not have an attitude of the need of forgiveness will not receive forgiveness. This woman showed her need for forgiveness in spite of all that she had done. She may had been a person that lived in unadulterated sin, she may have exposed her sin in front of others which brought about shame but here she has shown her need to be forgiven and that is exactly what she receives.

This moves us to see the last two verses that first shows us the reaction of the people that heard Jesus speak to her that her sin had been forgiven. Look at this response from Luke 7:49 that says And those who were reclining at the table with Him began to say to themselves, “Who is this man who even forgives sins?” 

We have heard this type of question before from the scribes and Pharisee after Jesus heals a paralytic in Luke 5. In Luke 5:20 Jesus says And seeing their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” Then the response at that time was recorded in Luke 5:21 that says The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”

The thing is they had their question right in a sense. No one other than God can forgive sins but sadly they did not make the connection that Jesus is indeed God, that He is the Son of God, that He is the incarnate God. They missed the mark and continued to find a reason to accuse instead of submitting to the Lordship of Jesus as God. So again in our Luke 7 text this same thought resurfaces which brings this question of who is this man that even forgives sin?

We do not see any dialogue concerning this question but we can only assume that some of the same conclusions are drawn here about Jesus. We know that the Pharisees do not stop at their attempts to trip Jesus up so therefore we can conclude that none of them at this point starts to follow or accept His teaching.

Lastly we see that Jesus expresses to the woman how she received this forgiveness in Luke 7:50 that says And He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Now do not take out of context that Jesus says anything like what we hear the prosperity preachers in our time speak. He does not say if you have more faith then you will receive more forgiveness. He simply says that her faith is what saved her. Faith is not a work of the human will but the proof of the work of God in a person. Ephesians 2:8-9 says For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, so that no one may boast.

It is this faith that a person must have in order to be saved. We can not on our own muster up this faith. Our own faith makes us think we have done enough to get the attention of God to give to us salvation but true faith is seen in the fact that the sinner recognizes their own sin and knows that they are unworthy of any forgiveness. At that point faith is birthed, grace and mercy is given and salvation is secured. Sinner, have you done this? Do you recognize your sin or are you like the Pharisee that thinks himself to be better than others? I hope that you will be as this sinful woman and receive today the forgiveness of sins needed for eternal life in Christ.