Category: Luke 6

Categories
Luke Luke 6

Good news

Luke

There seems to be some dispute as to whether the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew and the teachings from the Sermon on the Plain in Luke were actually the same message or not.

Some think they are, stating that the “level place” in Luke could very well have been on that mountain mentioned in Matthew.

I would guess, however, that these are two different messages, although with repeated themes that at times were altered because of the audiences Jesus was speaking to.

I strongly doubt that Jesus taught completely unique messages wherever he went. As he traveled from place to place, he probably taught variants of the same message.

In this passage, I get the impression that he was speaking to a lot of poor people. Literally poor. People who had little money, and little hope for the future.

Perhaps they were widows. Or disabled. Or immigrants from another land. And as such, Jesus tailored his message a bit for them. In doing so, he fulfilled Isaiah’s prophesy which said,

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor. (Isaiah 61:1-2)

So Jesus said to them,

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. (Luke 6:20-21)

This of course is not a blanket statement that all who are poor and depressed will enter his kingdom and be blessed.

The underlying caveat behind all this is that they are people who pursue God. That if Jesus is your Lord, though you may be poor, though you may be hungry, though you may be weeping, there are better times coming.

And in a world that’s less than perfect, that’s good news.

How about you? Is your life hard? Are you struggling because of your circumstances? There is hope. There will be better times. But only if you make Jesus your Lord. Paul wrote,

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

Are you in love with Jesus Christ? And are you living for his purposes or for yours? Who are you living for?

Categories
Luke Luke 6 Mark Mark 3 Matthew Matthew 10-1

Called to be with him, called to go out

The gospels

In these passages, we see the increasing popularity of Jesus, and perhaps it was because of these increasingly great crowds and their needs that Jesus decided to choose 12 people as his trained disciples.

As a man, Jesus was limited to one place at one time. As a result, to minister more effectively, he needed people around him to share in his work.

It truly was a motley crew he chose.

You had fishermen, a former tax collector and collaborator of the Roman government, and a former zealot who was highly nationalistic.

You also had a variety of personalities. You had the brash and bold (Peter), the skeptical (Thomas and Nathanael), and the short-tempered (James and John).

They were all quite different people. But there were three things that Jesus wanted of them. It says in Mark 3:14-15,

He appointed twelve–designating them apostles–that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.

First and foremost, Jesus wanted people that would be with him. People who would spend time with him, and to learn from him.

Jesus still desires that today. He desires that we share in his life. That we might know him. And that we might grow to be more like him.

Second, Jesus wanted people that would go out and share the message he had given them.

So often, people read their Bibles, and they grow in their relationship with God. But it’s not enough to just know the Word. God wants us to share that message with others so that they can share in what you have.

Third, Jesus wanted people who would fight spiritual warfare. You may or may not drive out demons from people as the disciples did, but you will have to fight the spiritual forces that are out there.

As Paul wrote,

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)

Jesus calls us to fight. Not against people, but against Satan and his spiritual forces that would blind people and doom them to eternal hell. He calls us to fight for the souls of men and women everywhere.

Every day, people are dying and going to hell. But God doesn’t want that. He wants us to go and fight that they may be saved.

That’s what it means to be a disciple of Christ. To be with Jesus. To go out and share the good news with others. And to engage in spiritual warfare.

How about you? As Christ’s disciple, are you doing these things?

Categories
Luke Luke 6 Mark Mark 3 Matthew Matthew 12

What grieves Jesus

The gospels

This is one of those stories where each of the gospels gives us a little piece of the puzzle to what happened. Here’s my take on the whole story taking into account each of the stories.

Jesus was in the synagogue, and he sees a man there with a shriveled hand. But he also notices the scrutiny he’s getting from the Pharisees and teachers of the law, and he knows that they’re waiting to see if he will break their rules concerning the Sabbath and heal the man. (Mark 3:1-2)

So Jesus deliberately calls the man to come up, and as he does, the religious leaders ask,

Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? (Matthew 12:10)

Jesus, as he typically does, responds to the question with a question of his own.

I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it? (Luke 6:9)

This was of course an unanswerable question for these leaders. They would have sounded stupid if they had said it was wrong to do good on the Sabbath or to save a life. How can you dishonor God on the Sabbath by doing good and saving lives?

But if they had said it was lawful, Jesus would have said, “You’ve just answered your own question,” and immediately healed the man.

On the other hand, there was no way they could say it was lawful to do evil or destroy life on the Sabbath.

So in the face of this unanswerable question, they remained silent. For as the old saying goes, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”

Luke tells us that Jesus looked around the room for an answer, but Mark adds a bit more information in chapter 3 verse 5. He says,

He looked around at them in anger…deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts (NASB — “hardness of heart”).

So Jesus probes them further, saying,

If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?

How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! (Matthew 12:11-12a)

In other words, “You are willing to help your sheep if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath? Which is more important, a person or a sheep? And if people are more important, how can you accuse me of breaking the Sabbath when I heal a man?”

So Jesus concludes,

Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:12b)

He then healed the man.

The irony of all this? Jesus had asked them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to save life or destroy it?”

And right after this event, on the Sabbath, the religious leaders started plotting to kill Jesus. (Mark 3:6)

But the verse that strikes me is Mark 3:5. That when Jesus saw these leaders’ hardened hearts, it grieved him.

They were so hardened by their legalism and by their traditions, God’s word and truth could not penetrate their hearts. Even when they had to know deep in their hearts they were wrong (as proven by their silence), they would not admit it.

How about you? You may not be as legalistic as the Pharisees, but are there areas in your life where you’ve hardened your heart to God?

You’re doing something wrong, or your way of thinking is wrong, and God has spoken to your heart and shown you your error and your sin, and you know you’re wrong. You know you need to change.

But instead, you cling to your old way of thinking. You cling to your sin. This kind of hardness of heart grieves God.

It grieves him because he wants so much better for you. It grieves him because by refusing to repent, you not only hurt him, but you hurt yourself, and those around you.

Let us have hearts softened to him. Receptive to his word. May we not bring grief to Jesus who died for us, but let us bring him joy.

Categories
Luke Luke 6 Mark Mark 2 Matthew Matthew 12

Condemning the innocent

The gospels

We have already seen in John the problems the religious leaders had with Jesus for “breaking” the Sabbath. Actually, all he did was break the rules that they had added to God’s original commandment to keep the Sabbath.

Here again, we see another confrontation between Jesus and these leaders concerning the Sabbath.

This time, Jesus and his disciples were walking by a field, and because his disciples were hungry, they took some grain to eat of it.

By the way, it was perfectly acceptable to take grain from another person’s field back in those days, as long as you weren’t taking a sickle to it. (Deuteronomy 23:25)

The problem was not the picking of the grain, the problem was that the Pharisees considered this “work,” which was of course forbidden on the Sabbath.

But Jesus refutes this in two ways.

First, the priests always worked in the temple on the Sabbath, and were not considered guilty of sin.

Second, there are some laws that God considers higher than others. Namely, the preservation of life was considered more important than keeping the letter of the Sabbath law.

Even the Pharisees accepted this to some degree as I’ve mentioned before. (Doctors could save a person’s life on the Sabbath, but could only do enough to keep them alive until the next day, from where they could give full treatment to the patient).

And once again, Jesus quotes Hosea to them, saying,

If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. (Matthew 12:7)

One mistake that people make about God is that they think he’s most interested in rules. That rules are the most important thing to him, and that he’s just waiting to blast us for every mistake we make.

God is far more interested in people than he is in rules.

But because the Pharisees didn’t understand this, they set up multiple rules around the laws God had made, and they were quick to condemn anyone who didn’t meet the standards they had set up.

But Jesus told the Pharisees,

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)

I think you could say the same for all the rules God has set up. They were made for us. We were not made for them. God didn’t make rules solely for the sake of making us dance to them. He made them for our benefit.

And if we understand that, we can better understand the purpose for each rule, and what it means for our lives.

But if we fail to understand that, we’ll end up like the Pharisees, misunderstanding and misinterpreting the law of God, and condemning people who are innocent in his sight.

How about you? How do you see God’s rules? Are you seeing them as something God has set up just for the sake of setting them up?

Or do you see them as something God has set up for your benefit? Do you understand the whys for each rule?

If you do, you’ll be far less likely to unjustly condemn others for “breaking the rules.”