Hi everyone, Chris here, taking over for the month of August.

This week, I want to look at John’s experience in Luke 9. Imagine with me what you would feel if you were John in this chapter…

The first story recorded in this chapter is Jesus calling the twelve disciples together and sending them out with “power and authority over all the demons, and to heal diseases.” They were sent out to “proclaim the kingdom of God, and to perform healing.” Going, they preached and healed “everywhere.”

What an experience! What a privilege to be chosen of God to be used in such a way, to be the vessel for casting out demons and healing the sick!

What’s next? Ah, the feeding of the 5,000; imagine yourself, as John, walking among the families of over 400 men with a single basket of bread and fish, never running out as you give out enough food to satisfy all, with leftovers.

And next? Well, it only gets better! Now you, John, and your brother James and Peter are chosen from among the Twelve and taken by Jesus to the top of a mountain to pray. While you are up there, Jesus starts to change, His clothes turn white and “gleam!” On top of that, Moses and Elijah appear “in glory” and start talking with Jesus! You, John, are among the only four people who have seen both Moses and Elijah in all of history!

Now, I personally think that Christians in this century tend to have an easier time bashing the disciples than they should, and it annoys me, but at some point, John has to be thinking to himself “why me?” At some point, he has to ask himself why he has been chosen no be one who can cast out demons, heal diseases, why he has been chosen to take part in probably the largest scale miracle of Jesus’ ministry, why he has been chosen to be one of three people to see Moses and Elijah. At some point, I don’t think it is too hard for us to understand why John can struggle with an ego, why he can begin to think that there must be some reason inherent to him why he has been given this privileged and exclusive status.

And we don’t have to wonder whether that was the case, either. Now that John has decided that he has a special place and that that special place is because he is special, we can see it in his actions. In verse 46, we see that there is an argument among the disciples as to who is the greatest. From other passages, we can see that at one point (closer to the end of Jesus’ ministry; humility is a hard lesson to learn) John and James had their mother ask Jesus for the left and right hand seats beside Jesus when He reigns, angling for the positions of first and second only to Jesus.

This is going to be a series, but I think that this is going to be a good stopping point. It gives us time to think about the danger of pride before we move on to other topics. We’ll come back to John next week, but for this week, think about how easy it is to turn the awe of being privileged into the idea that we somehow deserve our privileges, that because God has chosen us for something special (and he has, for all of us) that we are somehow more special than others. This is a trap, and a dangerous one. Beware.

Oh be careful, little mind, what you think
Oh be careful, little mind, what you think
For the Father up above
Is looking down in love
So be careful, little mind, what you think

*This post is shamelessly and almost wholly stolen from the content of a study led by Neil Cole a few weeks ago.  All quotations are from the NASB.