Luke 9:41

‘And Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, and bear with you? Bring here your son.” '

This is Jesus' verdict on what He has found concerning the whole generation of Israel at that time. It included the great crowd, which was in such contrast to His Father as it stood there clamouring and disputing. But it was also very much a verdict on His failing Apostles. They were the ones who should have had faith. His words suggest that Jesus felt that His disciples should have been able to deal with the matter, even without Himself, and Peter, John and James being there. He clearly considers that the disciples' own spiritual inadequacy was to blame, and He is grieved. It is because they have been dodging their quiet times with God

‘O faithless and perverse generation.' As Jesus looks around at them he recognises in them their whole unbelieving generation. They are all unbelieving, including His own disciples. In contrast with the glory and love He has enjoyed in the mountain this return to the world is almost unbearable. For He has had to recognise that the first problem here was that all who were there, but especially the disciples, were lacking in faith. The failure was because they were perverse in their behaviour (compare Deuteronomy 32:5; Deuteronomy 32:20). And we learn from the other Gospels that this was because they did not pray enough (Mark 9:29). They did not dwell enough in their Father's presence. They thought that they could get away with just relying on Jesus, and using Him as a crutch. They were spiritual cripples. Had they continually followed their Master's example and spent more time in prayer they would not have failed here. We lose much through our failure to pray.

‘How long shall I be with you, and bear with you?' Jesus had just been in His Father's presence, enjoying the glory which had been His before He emptied Himself. What had happened here now brought home to Him the great contrast between that and His life on earth. For a brief moment we have unveiled the continual loss that Jesus must have felt at being deprived of what could have been His, and at His having to endure the contradictions of the world, and especially of His disciples, not out of self-pity, but simply because of the contradiction of it with His own divine nature. It must have sometimes been almost unbearable. When we think of His sufferings we tend to overlook the things that could continually have exasperated Him among those who loved Him, and how we must exasperate Him too.

How we view His words depends on the tone that we read into them. We are probably to see it as a little like the fond exasperation of a mother with an erring child when it has been delving in mud and dirt. It is accepted with equanimity, and a smile, but if only it would not! He would have many more exasperating experiences with His disciples yet (see Luke 9:46).

Jesus then told the father to bring his son to Him.