The Grammar of Gladness: Text: Luke 10:17-24
Introduction: Miscalibrated Joy
The modern evangelical church has a peculiar appetite for what we might call "spiritual sugar highs." We crave the spectacular. We measure success by the size of the crowd, the volume of the music, and the intensity of the emotional experience. We want to see the demons flee, and we want to see it now. We are, in many ways, like the seventy disciples returning from their first short term missions trip, buzzing with the thrill of their own effectiveness. They were filled with joy, and it was not a counterfeit joy, but it was a miscalibrated joy. It was a joy fixed on the wrong thing.
Joy is not a spiritual luxury; it is a weapon. It is the engine of the Christian life. But like any powerful engine, it must be fueled by the right source. Joy fueled by circumstance, by visible success, by spiritual victories, is a volatile and unreliable fuel. It sputters and dies when the circumstances change, when the victories are few, and when the spiritual warfare feels more like a slog than a rout. Jesus loves His disciples too much to let them run on such cheap fuel.
In this passage, Jesus performs a crucial act of spiritual recalibration. He does not rebuke their joy, but He redirects it. He takes their eyes off the exhilarating skirmish on the ground and fixes them on the decisive, cosmic victory that was already won. He teaches them, and us, the grammar of true, unshakable gladness. It is a grammar grounded not in what we do for God, but in what God has sovereignly and eternally done for us.
The Text
Now the seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.”
At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
And turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.”
(Luke 10:17-24 LSB)
The Joy of the Skirmish (vv. 17-19)
We begin with the disciples' exuberant report.
"Now the seventy returned with joy, saying, 'Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.'" (Luke 10:17)
Their joy is understandable. They had been sent out as lambs among wolves, and they returned as lion tamers. They had seen the power of darkness retreat before the name of Jesus, spoken from their own lips. This is the kind of success that gets you invited to speak at missions conferences. "Even the demons," they say, indicating their own surprise. They had expected some success, perhaps, but this was beyond their wildest dreams. Their joy was rooted in their delegated power and its visible results.
Jesus' response is profound. He does not say, "Good job, boys." He says something far more significant.
"And He said to them, 'I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.'" (Luke 10:18)
Jesus connects their small, localized victories to the ultimate, cataclysmic defeat of the enemy. He is saying, "You saw a demon flee a possessed man in Galilee. I saw the prince of demons himself cast down from his place of authority." Their exorcisms were not the cause of Satan's fall; they were the consequence of it. They were mopping up operations in a war whose decisive battle had already been won by their commander. Jesus, in His preexistence, witnessed the original fall of Lucifer. In His incarnation and ministry, He was enacting that fall on earth. Their success was simply a ripple effect from the massive boulder He had already thrown into the pond.
He then confirms their authority, but notice its source.
"Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you." (Luke 10:19)
The authority is real, but it is derivative. "I have given you." It is not their own. They are wielding a borrowed sword. The promise that "nothing will injure you" is not a promise of a life free from hardship, persecution, or even martyrdom. Many of these very men would die violent deaths. It is a promise of ultimate, spiritual invulnerability. The enemy can kill the body, but he cannot touch the soul. He can win a skirmish, but he cannot reverse the outcome of the war. Their true safety was not in their power, but in the one who gave it to them.
The Foundational Joy (v. 20)
Here we come to the central point of the passage, the great recalibration.
"Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven." (Luke 10:20)
This is one of the most important "neverthelesses" in all of Scripture. Jesus draws a sharp distinction between circumstantial joy and foundational joy. He tells them to stop glorying in their function and to start glorying in their status. Rejoicing in your power over demons is rejoicing in something you do. Rejoicing that your name is written in heaven is rejoicing in something that has been done for you.
This is the difference between Arminian joy and Reformed joy. One is based on performance, the other on grace. One is based on the variable of human success, the other on the unchangeable decree of God. Your power over demons might seem to ebb and flow. Some days you might feel like a spiritual giant, other days a spiritual pygmy. If your joy is tied to that, it will be a rollercoaster. But the registration of your name in the Lamb's book of life is an objective, settled, eternal fact, written in indelible ink before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8). That is a rock to build your joy upon, not the shifting sands of ministry results.
To rejoice in your name being recorded in heaven is to rejoice in sovereign election. It is to rejoice that your salvation depends not on your grip on God, but on His grip on you. This is the bedrock of all true Christian assurance and all lasting Christian joy.
The Joy of the Trinity (vv. 21-22)
Having corrected His disciples' joy, Jesus then erupts in His own joy. And we must pay close attention to what makes the Son of God rejoice.
"At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, 'I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants...'" (Luke 10:21)
What fills Jesus with joy? The sovereign pleasure of the Father in election. He rejoices in the great reversal of the kingdom. God has deliberately concealed the truth from those who are wise in their own eyes, the credentialed experts, the religious elites, the self-sufficient. And He has, by His own good pleasure, revealed it to "infants," to the helpless, the dependent, the uncredentialed, the nobodies. These seventy were not Pharisees or Sadducees. They were fishermen and tax collectors. They were infants.
This is a glorious offense to our democratic and egalitarian sensibilities. We think God ought to make the truth plain to everyone in the same way and let them decide. God does not operate that way. He hides, and He reveals, according to His own good pleasure. And this divine prerogative is not a point of embarrassment for Jesus; it is a source of profound joy. He delights in the Father's sovereign freedom.
He then makes one of the most staggering claims of His ministry:
"All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." (Luke 10:22)
Here, Jesus claims absolute authority over all things and exclusive authority as the mediator of all knowledge of God. You cannot get to the Father except through the Son. And the Son reveals the Father sovereignly, "to anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." The Father elects, and the Son reveals. Salvation is a thoroughly Trinitarian and a thoroughly sovereign affair, from beginning to end. This is the source of divine joy.
The Joy of Fulfillment (vv. 23-24)
Finally, Jesus turns to His disciples privately to explain the immense privilege of their historical position.
"Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them..." (Luke 10:23-24)
He tells them that the greatest saints of the Old Testament, men like Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah, looked forward with longing to this day. They saw the promises from afar. They saw the shadows, the types, the prophecies. But these disciples, these "infants," were seeing the substance. They were hearing the voice of the Son of God with their own ears. They were witnessing the fulfillment of millennia of redemptive history.
And this privilege extends to us. We live on this side of the cross and the empty tomb. The dimmest believer in the new covenant stands on a mountain of revelation that the greatest prophet in the old covenant could only dream of. We have the completed canon of Scripture. We have the indwelling Holy Spirit. We see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ with a clarity that was impossible before His coming. Our joy should be grounded in this immense, unearned privilege. We get to see what the prophets and kings only yearned to see.
Conclusion: Ground Your Gladness
So where is your joy? Is it tethered to your performance? To your successes in ministry, in parenting, in your personal spiritual disciplines? If so, it is a fragile joy, and the devil knows exactly where to attack it. He will ensure you have seasons of failure and frustration, and he will watch your joy wither on the vine.
Jesus commands us to ground our gladness elsewhere. We are to rejoice, first and foremost, that our names are written in heaven. We are to rejoice that the Father, in His good pleasure, chose to reveal His Son to us, the infants. And we are to rejoice that we live in the days of fulfillment, seeing and hearing what the saints of old longed for.
This is a joy that cannot be shaken by circumstance. It is a joy that is not diminished by failure or inflated by success. It is a joy that is as secure as the sovereign decree of God Himself. This is the joy that is our strength. This is the grammar of true gladness. Learn it, speak it, and live in it.