Who Was Jesus
Yelling At?

I’ve been reading through Luke, and I hit a spot that stopped me.

It’s chapter 9. A man pushes through a crowd and begs Jesus to look at his son. A spirit grabs the boy, throws him down, tears at him. The father says, “I asked your disciples to drive it out, and they couldn’t.”

You’d expect Jesus to kneel down next to the kid. He does heal him. But first he says this:

O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, and suffer you? Bring thy son hither.

Luke 9:41 (KJV)

I read that and thought, who is he talking to?

The father came for help. The boy can’t help himself. So who’s getting the rebuke? I didn’t understand it. And I’ve learned that when I don’t understand something in Scripture, that’s usually the place to dig.

Look at where he just came from

Luke says this happened the next day. The day after what? The mountain.

Jesus had just been up there with Peter, John and James. His face changed. His clothes turned white. Moses and Elijah stood with him and talked about his departure. The word Luke uses there is exodus.

Then he walks down the hill into a mess. A suffering child. A desperate father. A crowd. Disciples who couldn’t get it done.

Moses made that same walk. Glory on the mountain, and a golden calf at the bottom.

Look at whose words he’s using

Jesus didn’t make that phrase up. He’s quoting Moses.

In Deuteronomy 32, near the end of his life, Moses sings about Israel and calls them a perverse and crooked generation, children with no faith in them. In Numbers 14, God says of the people in the wilderness, “How long shall I bear with this congregation?”

So this is not Jesus losing his temper. He’s using the words God used about a people who had seen the sea split and still didn’t trust him.

So who’s he talking to?

Not the kid. I think it’s everybody else in the scene.

The disciples. At the top of this same chapter, Jesus gave them power and authority over all demons. They had it. Matthew says straight out they failed because of their little faith.

The crowd and the scribes. Mark tells us the scribes were arguing with the disciples when Jesus walked up. A boy is being torn apart, and the adults are having a debate.

Maybe the father, a little. In Mark he’s the one who says it:

Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

Mark 9:24 (KJV)

That’s the most honest prayer in the Bible.

And it hasn’t sunk in yet for his own men. A few verses later Jesus tells them he’s about to be betrayed. They don’t get it. Then they start arguing about which of them is the greatest.

“How long shall I be with you?” He knows the answer. Not long.

The rebuke went to the adults. The mercy went to the kid.

The part I almost missed

Luke is the only one who tells us this boy was the man’s only child. And Luke is careful about how it ends. Jesus rebuked the spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.

The rebuke went to the adults. The mercy went to the kid.

That’s the side of Jesus I was curious about. He’s hard on people who have seen enough to know better. He’s gentle with the one who’s hurting. I’d guess most of us have been both.

I started with a question I couldn’t answer. I didn’t get every answer. But I got further than I would have if I’d read right past it.

So here’s mine to you. What’s the verse that stops you?

Read it for yourself: Luke 9:28–48, Mark 9:14–29, Matthew 17:14–20, Deuteronomy 32:5 and 32:20.

John Malham is the author of the Unseen Battle Series, Christian books for working men, born from over twenty years of fire pit Bible studies in the New Jersey Pinelands. See the books.