Luke 17:20-37 Commentary

The Coming of the Kingdom of God
20 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is in your midst." [b]
22 Then he said to his disciples, "The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. 23 People will tell you, 'There he is!' or 'Here he is!' Do not go running off after them. 24 For the Son of Man in his day [c] will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

26 "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

28 "It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29 But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

30 "It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. 32 Remember Lot's wife! 33 Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. 34 I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35-36 Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left."

37 "Where, Lord?" they asked.
He replied, "Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather."



Dig Deeper
A couple of years ago, the two term limits of the forty-third President of the United States, George W. Bush, came to an end. In the time leading up to that inevitability, new candidates rose up and campaigned for the office, making their case for why they should be the next President. There were many contenders but eventually it came down to two primary candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama. After nearly a year of contentious and nasty campaigning, the election day came and went and Barack Obama was declared to be the forty-fourth President of the Untied States. A few months after the traditional November Presidential elections, the United States typically holds an inauguration for the new President. At that time, the old President relinquishes his power and presidency to the new President. That all sounds very basic and obvious but there is a very real truth imbedded into that whole process. You cannot have two presidents of the United States at the same time. Once a new one has come the whole must go. That is, of course, a very peaceful process in the Untied States, but it’s not that way everywhere in the world. The sad reality is that in many places, an old president is only replaced by the new one after a bloody and violent war that was aimed at taking down the structure of the old president’s regime. In fact, occasionally a new and powerful leader will raise up in some country and offer a deal. If the old president will go peacefully then there will be no problem but if he continues to cling to his power and status then he will be destroyed and taken out.

The coming of God’s kingdom was a long-awaited event within Judaism. It was the time when God would finally establish his reign and rule on the earth and exalt Israel above all the other nations. When this kingdom would come they believed that God would do away with those who had persecuted his people and kept the kingdom from coming. Inherent to the coming of the new kingdom was the fact that the old ones must go. You cannot have two kingdoms that would rule over the earth. This much was clear and somewhat obvious. What the people of Jesus’ day missed, however, was the fact that he was sending the clear message that the real enemy was sin, not Rome, and in fact, that the kingdom that was most standing in the way of God’s kingdom, and setting herself up the most in opposition to the Messiah was Israel herself, as was most obviously represented by the Temple in Jerusalem. Yet that was the old kingdom and the old Temple. Luke has made it very clear for us that Jesus was the new Temple. So, the simple truth was going to apply. When the New Temple came, that meant that the old one had to go.

The question on the lips of the Pharisees concerning the coming of the kingdom demonstrates a major misunderstanding on their part as to what the kingdom was. They thought that it was something that could be specifically watched for and marked by careful, scientific-style observation. What were the signs? In what order would they come? When would God take out the pagans and set up his rule on earth? The common expectation was that the kingdom’s coming would be part of the Day of the Lord, the great day of judgment on the pagan nations, and that specific cosmic signs would foretell it’s coming. But Jesus’ answer was a curve ball. The coming of the kingdom was not solely a cataclysmic, end-of-days-type event. Nor would it be marked with that type of coming. His point for the Pharisees was that the kingdom was being made available in the present. What is translated “in your midst,” is probably better understood as “in your grasp” or within your reach.” They were waiting for the wrong kind of kingdom in the wrong sort of way, all the while the hope of the kingdom was right there in front of them embodied by Jesus. As the last story showed, when the healed Samaritan returned and did at the feet of Jesus what one would normally do at the Temple, Jesus was the new Temple. He was the embodiment of the kingdom of God and he was unleashing God’s future reign of the age to come in the present lives and family communities of those who would reach out and grasp it. They didn’t need to look for the coming of the kingdom in the sky because it was already breaking into the present age. They had all the signs they needed.

Jesus then turned his attention towards his disciples, although the Pharisees were no doubt still within earshot. The time of the great crisis was coming. With the coming of the new, the old would have to be clearly done away with. When that process started, the disciples would long to see one of the days of the Son of man, but they would not see it immediately. The kingdom would come but they would have to wait, like a newly elected President waiting for his final inauguration, for the final vindication of the Son of Man.

It seems that what Jesus had in mind when he referred to the days of the Son of Man comes from Daniel 7. Theologian NT Wright best sums up this thought, saying, “’The days of the son of man’ seems to refer to the days when, as in the prophecy of Daniel (chapter 7), the ‘one like a son of man’ will be vindicated by God after suffering. The sign of this will be the destruction of the oppressor, the power that has opposed God’s people and God’s purpose. In Daniel, this power is the fourth ‘beast’, the greatest of the pagan armies. For Jesus, in one of the most dramatic twists of thinking, the force that has most directly opposed his teaching and his kingdom ministry is official Israel itself, focused on the Temple and its hierarchy, and the Pharisees whose thinking and practice derived from the Temple.” Wright goes on to say that Jesus time and again in Luke “warns of awful destruction coming upon his contemporaries for their failure to heed his message. Now he uses the ‘apocalyptic’ language of some Jewish prophecy to ram the same warnings home home. ‘The days of the son of man’ are the days in which this figure, representing God’s true people, is finally vindicated after his suffering.”

The big question is what form would that vindication take. The answer to that question seems to be the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the Temple (Luke will return to make this point even clearer in chapter 21). The people of the Temple had dug their feet in and refused to accept Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and that would seal their fate. They had become the enemy of God’s kingdom movement and God would one day soon vindicate the Son of Man by replacing the old Temple once-and-for-all with the new Temple, the body of the Messiah, which would consist of those who had entered into Christ by the time that the Temple was actually and finally destroyed in 70 AD.

This vindication event would not be an end-of-the-world event. Jesus was not talking about his final return and the time of the resurrection (Acts 1:11. Many Christians tend to read passages like this and assume immediately that we’re talking end-of-the-world here but that would be completely out of context with the larger context of the journey to Jerusalem and the mission to warn Israel of the coming disaster. Despite the fact that a lot of books have been sold in the last generation or two that have sensationalized passages like this (and chapter 21 as well), that just does not appear to be what this passage is about. There will be a time, of course, when Christ does return to restore all things (see, for instance, Matt. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Rev. 21:1-5), to break into the present age , and when judgment will come down disastrously on those who have ignored God’s call to join his kingdom.

This was all going to happen, though, to “this generation,” the people that would reject the Messiah would be the same generation to see him vindicated. The term “this generation” echoes Luke 7:31 as well as the people of the Exodus generation who were stubborn, stiff-necked, rebellious, and turned away from God’s purposes. They would be judged just as life was going on as it always had, just as the people of Noah’s day and the people of Sodom were when disastrous judgment befell them.

When that day came, Jesus’ disciples would need to maintain their focus on the kingdom of God and realize that what seemed like a national calamity at the hands of the mighty Roman army, was, in fact, the vindication of the Son of Man. Misplaced allegiance and looking back at one’s possessions or their life in Jerusalem would end in destruction, just as Lot’s wife looking back brought about her destruction. The tried and true reality of the Christian life, that whoever would lose their life would save it, would be realized during this event in a very real way. Choices needed to be be made and they would need to flee rather than trying to preserve the physical attachments of their lives in the present age. When this judgment came, loyalties would be revealed as one would be taken in judgment while others left. They had better know what was going on and not attach themselves to any sort of nationalistic feelings that would lead them to try to preserve Israel. This was not, in the reality of things, a disaster for God’s people but it was a simple vindication of the true Temple as the old one fell.

Verse 37 could be taken literally, which is pretty self-explanatory in that case. There is another possibility, however. The word “aetos” usually means “eagle,” but can also be translated “vulture.” Due to the reference of dead bodies, many translators have favored the rendering “vulture.” Yet, more likely in my opinion, is that “eagle” was the intended meaning of the phrase. The Roman legions used the eagle as the symbol on their imperial standards, so it is quite possible that Jesus was making a somewhat cryptic reference to Rome. Where would all this take place, the disciples wanted to know. The eagles of Rome would be swarming all over the corpse of the nation of Israel, would be the answer if this option is the correct one.

Just because this prophetic passage was warning of something that, for us, took place nearly two thousand years ago, when Jerusalem and her Temple were destroyed just as Jesus promised, does not mean that we should quickly slide by this passage thinking there is nothing in there for us. This coming judgment and vindication do point to the ultimate coming of Christ for which we all wait. God’s restoring and reconciling kingdom are within our grasp and waiting for us to take on the role of ambassadors. But for those who continue to reject him, a day of judgment is fast approaching.


Devotional Thought
Jesus here called for his disciples to stay focused on the kingdom of God even when circumstances around them got extremely difficult. They would need to have their loyalties to God’s kingdom set firmly above any national loyalties. Do you strive to have that same heart? Are your loyalties to God’s kingdom set firmly above your loyalties to anything else?

Luke 17:11-19 Commentary

Jesus Heals Ten Men With Leprosy
11 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy [a] met him. They stood at a distance 13 and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"
14 When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed.

15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

17 Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" 19 Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."


Dig Deeper
One of the most difficult things for my generation to comprehend about recent American history is the racial segregation that went on in the United States during the time period from the late 19th century all the way into the 1960’s. This was particularly a problem in the American South but it is still stunning to me to think that the people that are just a generation older than I, and those even older than that were alive and well at a time when there were actually public places that had signs indicating that they were for whites only or that there were things like water fountains and restrooms that were clearly marked for “whites” and “coloreds.” I recently saw one of those original signs in a museum and it was just disturbing. It’s difficult to imagine living in a world that was like that. It’s even more real for many of my dear friends that grew up in South Africa who lived under racial apartheid and saw that appalling reality come to an end less than twenty years ago. It is simply sad to live in a state where some people are not welcome in certain places solely for the color of their skin or some other superficial reason.

It is, in reality, a sign of a much deeper problem within a society. Separation of the nations in a manner like that is a symptom of sin that has shattered the unity of the human race going all the way back to the division-causing sin at the tower of Babel. One of the sure signs of sin is that fracturing of the family of humanity into separate pieces that exclude and hate one another. Of course, one might argue that Israel, under God’s direction, was exactly like that, with it’s exclusion of non-Jews. In one sense that is true as a result of sin, but in the fuller sense, God never intended to have things stay like that. He always pointed Israel to a time when things would be different. He promised Abraham a family that consisted of many nations and the prophets continually pointed to an Israel that would faithful to God’s purposes and would be a light to the nations, drawing them near to God. Israel had failed to be that light, though. They had begun to think of themselves as God’s special people that were almost entitled to their status. They wouldn’t say that, of course, but that was what the actions of the nation of Israel indicated. It was this mindset that made this next incident that Luke describes in the life of Jesus so subversive and shocking.

Luke had stopped us on the journey to Jerusalem for sometime as he detailed many of Jesus’ important teachings and response to questions about his ministry, but now he clearly signals that we are back on the road with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, a trip that Jesus has clearly implied will end in his own glorifying death. As he was on his way, he took the familiar route for Jews which went around Samaria even though going through Samaria would have been a quicker trip. There are actually many details that Luke doesn’t give us in this account, and, in fact, he seems intent on keeping certain things intentionally vague. That doesn’t indicate that this was not an authentic account of something that happened in Jesus’ life, however, it seems that Luke has left things somewhat vague to give a more universal feel to the story so that he can make a larger point with this healing miracle and the response of the recipients.

As Jesus was going into a village, which we are not told whether it was a Jewish or Samaritan village, his attention was drawn to ten lepers who had, according to the law, stood at a distance so that they didn’t risk making anyone else unclean (see Lev. 13:45-46; Num. 5:2-3). Lepers were expected to isolate themselves and that is what they did. Thus, in a real sense, they represent all of those who were marginalized and isolated in the first century world. They seemed to know, although we’re not told how, that there was something special about Jesus. They called to him for pity. Apparently, they believed that he could heal them even from a distance.

One striking feature here is that Luke does not tell us any distinguishing details about these ten men until verse 16 when we find that one of them is different from the rest. In the early part of the account, however, there is one thing that is clear. They are all equal in their leprosy. Just as sin does not discriminate between people whether they be Jew, Samaritan, or something else, neither does this leprosy discriminate. They were all equal before Jesus in their need to be healed.

The text doesn’t tell us when the men were healed, Jesus simply told them to go show themselves to the priests. We don’t know if they were healed instantly or along the way to see the priests, but it does seem that this story has echoes of Naaman’s healing in 2 Kings 5:1-19, where he is also told to take specific action before being healed. The reason for showing themselves to the priests was twofold. The first was that to do so would be in keeping with the law of Moses (Lev. 13:19; 14:1-11). The second was that being truly and fully healed from the skin disease of leprosy went far beyond just the clearing up of the skin condition. They needed to be made whole and be fully accepted and integrated back into the society. Only the priest could declare them ready to do that.

It seems that when they got to the priest, they were all healed. That should not surprise us. What is surprising is that only one came back to Jesus. What happened to the other nine? Luke now tells us, only at this juncture in the account, that the one who returned was a Samaritan, the implication being that the other nine were Jewish. This was of particular insult to the Jews as the Samaritans were a deeply reviled and hated group of people. What truly distinguished this man from the other nine, though, was not that he was Samaritan. If those differences didn’t matter when they all had leprosy and were in need of Jesus then it didn’t matter now. What set him apart was that he saw that he was healed and he knew who healed him.

The nine Jewish men didn’t return. We don’t know why and it really doesn’t matter. The only one who came to Jesus was a Samaritan. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet in the act of submission and acknowledgement of the authority of one greater than himself. He somehow knew that Jesus was the means through which the kingdom of God was breaking into the present age. He was, like the younger son in the parable of the lost son, dead in many ways, but Jesus had now brought him to life.

Who were those who might recognize that Jesus was God’s agent in creating his new family? The answer in this story is as shocking as it has been repeatedly throughout the Gospel of Luke. It was not the people that would have been expected. Everything about the man who returned was wrong. He was a Samaritan, and worse than that, he was a leprous Samaritan. He was a foreigner, meaning that he was from the wrong family, and would have been in the perpetual state of uncleanness that resulted from leprosy. Yet, he was the only one that saw that full restoration came through Jesus. The offer of healing and restoration was available to all who were in equal need before God (cf. Rom. 3:9), but only this outcast knew that Jesus was the way of full restoration and full reconciliation with God. He was the only one who knew that to properly praise God for his healing, he must go to Jesus. The nine Jews missed that point. They were no doubt praising God but they failed to see that the healing had come through Jesus and to praise God in true appreciation for his healing power, they must praise and worship Jesus.

It was apparently the nine who had not fully recognized the means through which they had been healed. They had failed to realize that the divine mercy had come from Jesus. He was the only one who recognized and came to honor Jesus as Lord. He was the one who came to worship God through Jesus. Thus, Luke pictures Jesus in the role that the Temple would normally play. The nine disappear, but the Samaritan, who would have never been allowed in the Temple in Jerusalem, had come to praise God at the feet of Jesus. The one who was born in the wrong family and who would have been denied access to the Temple was now the one who was behaving in the way that the true people of God should. He was coming to Jesus, the true Temple, and would find himself part of the true family of God.

In reaction to his proper response, Jesus tells him to “Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you well.” This seems like a rather run-of-the-mill response but there may be something more to Jesus’ response that Luke wanted his readers to see. The word “anistemi,” which is translated “get up” was a word that could just mean “to stand” or “rise up,” but it was also a word that the early Christian church used quite frequently as one of their popular words to denote the resurrection of those in Christ. It is quite possible that Luke would have expected for his early Christian readers to hear tones of that in Jesus’ word. This outcast, born into the wrong family and outside of the people of God, was now being restored in every way through Jesus Christ. He was being brought into the family of God and the great hope and promise of resurrection was his, just as it can belong to anyone who recognizes Christ as the path to God.


Devotional Thought
One thing that has been pointed out over the years about the Samaritan was that he returned with a heart of gratitude for what God had done for him while the others, if nothing else, failed to show gratitude to Jesus. Do you take time to show constant gratitude towards God for all that he has done for you in your life? If you haven’t done that for awhile, take some time to do it today.

Luke 17:1-10 Commentary

Sin, Faith, Duty
1 Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. 2 It would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around your neck than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3 So watch yourselves.
"If a brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. 4 Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying 'I repent,' you must forgive them."

5 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"

6 He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.

7 "Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? 8 Won't he rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "


Dig Deeper
My college education was full of classes about . . . well, education. I was a secondary social studies major in my undergraduate studies and I was going to school to be a history teacher. We were required to take a certain amount of history classes, of course, but I was surprised to find out that we had to take many more classes about education and educational theory than we took classes in our actual area of study. That was all well and fine and I threw myself into my studies and tried to learn the theories and philosophies behind the different aspects of education, planning, classroom management, and even discipline and motivation. But there was a certain point where, as good as the theories and teaching might have been, I had to learn how those things would work out in the real world of teaching. To simply sit in a laboratory, so to speak, and learn about what I should do when certain things happen, or to hear stories about what other teachers have done in certain situations, would only get me so far. In order for all of the teaching and theory to do any good I had to be able to take that information and put it to work in real situations that I would find myself. I would have to learn to apply it to my world and my teaching experiences.

The last two major parables described by Luke, that of the lost son and that of the rich man and Lazrus, were so powerful and so many-layered that they have continued to challenge, encourage, and inspire disciples for thousands of years. Yet, there is a reality that is true of every written or spoken lesson. It only goes so far. When Jesus told those parables, he was simply passing along information. Granted, it was powerful and timeless information, but information nonetheless. Those stories were pointed and sharp and intended to challenge the hearers with information that would move them to action. But information has to be applied. It has to be be able to be put into practice in the real lives and situations of those that receive the information. That’s what this little section seems to be all about; taking the teaching out of the world of parable and putting it into the real-world lives that the disciples would face as they formed the kind of communities and family to which Jesus was calling his people.

Directly on the heels of the charge against the Pharisees that they were like the brothers of the rich man in the parable who had so rejected the word of God that they wouldn’t listen or change their minds even if they saw someone raised from the dead, Jesus continued to teach his disciples. The focus of this teaching, as a whole, is simple, it is a call to not be like the Pharisees. As a way to put his teachings in real-world terms, Jesus expounded on the meaning of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in verses 1-2. “Things that cause people to stumble” was a phrase that meant to literally “put up an impediment” in someone’s way. In a sense it referred to something that served like a shut door. The reality was that obstacles would come. That’s the way life is and Jesus never promised that it would be any different for his people.

Lazarus, from the parable, had many obstacles in his path, and the rich man was, in some ways, responsible for many of them. Following Jesus would not remove those kind of obstacles. His people still needed to be obedient to the life that Jesus has called his family. That is life. But that does not remove the responsibility from those who, like the rich man, think only of themselves with no regard to the needs of others. Jesus here was primarily focusing on those that would walk in such a way that they would put up obstacles to the faith of others. It would be better to have an extremely heavy and large millstone tied around your neck and thrown into the sea. In other words, instant death would be better for someone whose actions would drive someone away from their faith, than it would be to face God’s judgment for such an offense.

They should be a family and a community that takes sin and commitment to the truth seriously. They should watch out for such things and be committed to holiness but if a sinner were to repent then that should invoke the family’s forgiveness. The fact is that many grievances, which may or may not be as large as they seem in the moment, but are moments nonetheless that can cause people to stumble, would take place within the community of believers. They should take sin seriously but the heart of the community would be their forgiveness. They would be a people who worked out the kind of grace, love, and forgiveness that had been shown to them by God. They would be a people that embraced the parable of the lost son as their own community-creating and value-forming story.

In fact, if one of their brothers and sisters in the family formed in Christ sinned against them, they should deal with it and not ignore it but when they repent, it should be forgiven. Forgiveness, in the fullest sense, does hinge on the repentance of the offender but Jesus’ people should be a people that get rid of anger and bitterness even before the repentance of the other party so that they are able to forgive (see Eph. 4:31). They should be a community that forgives just as God forgave them (Eph. 4:32). There could be significance to the fact that Jesus seemed to have often tied forgiveness of his family to the number 7 (cf. Matt. 18:21). In Jewish thought seven was a number that was generally related to the days of creation and thus, became a symbol for the formation or creation of something. Similarly, in passages like Leviticus 26:21-28 described the curses of breaking the Covenant in terms of seven-fold curses that signaled de-creation. In connecting their forgiveness to the concepts of seven in Jewish thought, if that is indeed what Jesus was doing, then Jesus was sending the message that in becoming a community of forgiveness, Jesus’ people would be creating the new genuine humanity created in Christ to be what God intended for human communities to be.

In response to being this kind of people, a community that ran on the fuel of forgiveness, the disciples realized how impossible this seemed. The only response that they could muster was a call for increased faith. If they were going to be a people that were faithful to this kind of model, then they realized that they were going to need help to realize that and to even believe that it could be accomplished. Jesus affirms for them, however, that with even a small measure of faith they could realize this. It’s not the size of faith that disciples have but the size of the God in whom our faith rests. In my living room, I have a large picture window and a row of small windows above that that look out into the front yard and the neighborhood. As long as I am up close to those windows, it doesn’t matter how big the window is. I can see the same thing looking out the large window as I can looking out the small windows. The view is the same regardless of the window. It’s similar with faith and God. As long as we’re close to God, we will see and experience the same God even if our faith starts out very small. With just a little faith, even faith that is as small as a mustard seed, the large mulberry tree could be uprooted (The mulberry tree was a type of sycamore tree that held figs and fig trees were an occasional OT symbol for Israel. This means that it’s possible that Jesus was hinting that the kingdom kind of faith would eventually supplant and send the old nation of Israel to the symbolic place of destruction, the sea. Matthew uses a similar saying from Jesus in Matt. 21:21 and, in the overall context, much more focuses on the destruction of the Old Covenant system angle).

The last small parable in verses 7-10 seem to also draw from one of the teaching points of the parable of the lost son. It hinges on the understanding that in this culture to “thank” a servant did not refer to a verbal expression of appreciation but rather meant that the master would be in the servant’s debt as though he had done something special for the master. A slave might go plow the fields, and tend the sheep but wouldn’t that just be his job? Wouldn’t he only be doing what he was supposed to do? In a society where doing something for someone would put them in your debt, it would be absurd to put such a situation in that category. A slave who engaged in such work and then began to think that the master somehow was in his debt or owed him one would be a slave who was in for severe disappointment. It would be simply ridiculous to even imagine such a thing. The master would be under no obligation to reward his slave in some way for such normal and expected behavior. It was not above and beyond the call of duty.

The older son in the parable of the lost son had acted just like the Pharisees were acting. They had begun to think that they were owed something by the master. The eldest son seems to have thought that his obedience somehow earned him honor and gave him the right to a reward. Disciples should not ever think like that. Yes, they would become a community that held to a level of obedience that was challenging and could be impressive by some standards. They would be communities that took sin seriously and held to the truth, while at the same time had radical forgiveness at the heart and soul of their existence. They would be the new humanity of the new creation as the family of God. They would have faith that would, through the power of God, accomplish great things, but at the end of the day, they were nothing more than slaves doing what they were called to do. That was all basic level discipleship and their response should be continuous joy and appreciation, and a commitment to never take on the entitlement attitude of the oldest son, the one that became so entitled that he turned his back on the father.


Devotional Thought
How are you doing in the area of forgiving others? Do you quickly deal with hurts and disappointments and then quickly forgive your spouse, co-workers, fellow Christian brothers and sisters? Do you have faith that you really can be part of a Christian community that breathes on the air of forgiveness or do you, like the disciples, need to go to Jesus and request an increase in your faith. If you do, you will realize, just like they did, that the issue is not how much faith you have but in the realization that you have faith in a big God.

Luke 16:19-31 Commentary

The Rich Man and Lazarus
19"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

22"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23In hell,[c] where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'

25"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'

27"He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, 28for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'

29"Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'

30" 'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

31"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "


Dig Deeper
Over the years I have had many religious conversations with people that had different beliefs or opinions than I did. I have changed the mind of some of those folks and I have learned some things along the way as well. It can be quite pleasant to sit down and respectfully have a dialogue with someone who is genuinely open to the truth and ready to change their mind if it can be demonstrated that they have not been believing what is actually true. I have always tried to strike that balance between being firm in my convictions and beliefs while at the same time being open to being wrong from time to time and needing to adjust my understanding or beliefs. I have been amazed over the years, however, at how many people are just not open to the truth. They know what they know and will not be persuaded away from that regardless of how illogical or how based on experience or something other than facts their beliefs really are. It’s always amazing to me when someone can look at great biblical truths like the deity of Christ, the resurrection, or the truth of our need to be baptized into into Christ, and yet reject the clear facts in favor of what they just “know” or what someone they value has taught them, or something else along those lines. In fact, beliefs that are rooted in our emotions rather than those that are rooted in the facts can be dangerous because we are so much more unlikely to be open to the truth if it contradicts our emotionally based beliefs.

There has been much debate and speculation over the years as to what the primary meaning or purpose of this passage actually is. Is it about the great reversal of fortune that will be a reality in the kingdom of God? Is it about the dangers of the wealthy who refuse mercy and justice to the poor and downtrodden? Is it designed to teach us about the set-up of the afterlife? Is it’s primary point to teach that once we die, our destinations are sealed and cannot be changed? I suppose, from one angle or another, there are elements of all of those things within this passage, but none of those really seem to be the heart of the story. The core of this story is summed up, in fact, in the last verse of this chapter. This story, at it’s most fundamental level, is about being convinced. It was a warning from Jesus to take honest stock in your beliefs and who you were aligning yourself with and to consider whether you were open to being convinced by the truth of Jesus’ ministry or whether you were going to cling to your beliefs so tightly that nothing about the truth would ever convince you differently?

One question that often arises immediately with this account is whether it is a parable or not. It certainly appears that everything about this story point to it being a very specific type of parable like that of the “Good Samaritan” or even the parable of the “Lost Son.” It is remarkable among parables because it is the only one that uses a specific name, but we’ll examine why that might have been shortly. All signs point to this being a parable which means that it was a tool for Jesus to teach something about the kingdom of God as was being made manifest through his ministry. Some people tend to define parables as earthly stories that teach spiritual truths, but this definition is not satisfactory. Parables have specifically to due with Jesus’ ministry and the in-breaking of the kingdom of God.

There is one that is very clear about this parable. The contrast between the rich man and Lazarus could not be any more distinct. The rich man was covered in purple and fine linen, things often associated with royalty and the priesthood in ancient Israel. On the other hand, Lazarus was covered with sores, something that would have left him ceremonially unclean and a relative outcast. The rich man lived in a large house in the lap of luxury while Lazarus could only be carried by members of his community to beg at the gate of the rich man. This would have meant that those who laid him there could not help him with his needs beyond doing what they could, which was taking him to the gate of a rich man who could help but chose not to. The rich man ate the best of foods while Lazarus longed just to eat the scraps from his table. The rich man would have held large banquets with many important friends but Lazarus was left at the mercy of a mangy pack of stray dogs who came and licked up his sores, cementing his ongoing state of ceremonial uncleanness. When the rich died he was buried, no doubt in a lavish and pricey manner. But no mention is made of Lazarus being buried at all. Not being buried would have been the final insult to a man that had nothing to show for his life in the present age.

In death, everything has reversed. Once they enter into the realm of Hades and Abraham’s side, everything has dramatically reversed. The rich man, who had everything by the standards of the present age, finds himself in eternal torment. Lazarus, though, finds himself in paradise in the very presence of Abraham. (Many have debated the accuracy of the picture of the afterlife given here since it is a parable but Jesus always described accurate situations and then stylized them to make a point in his parable, so it seems quite likely that what he pictures was quite accurate. Before the resurrection of Christ the righteous did enter into paradise which was in proximity to the torment of Hades, separated by the bottomless Abyss. The Scriptures seem to point to the fact, however, that now those in Christ enter into heaven with the Lord and await resurrection). What is quite clear is that their positions are fixed once they enter into death.

The rich man demonstrates, despite the reversal of fortunes, that he still has not changed his perspective on Lazarus. He still views him as someone who can be sent off at his convenience. Could Lazarus come and comfort him? No, says Abraham. But perhaps he could be dispatched to go warn his five brothers to repent of a similar lifestyle that has landed him in eternal torment.

In the larger Lukan context, it would seem odd that Luke included this story to give some valuable information about the layout of the afterlife. Certainly there are some themes running through this story that deal with the ideas of the great upheaval that was being brought about by the coming of the kingdom of God. The rich man had everything in the present age but that is all that he cared about or pursued. He constantly and consistently did his own will and settled into a lifestyle that systematically ignored the will of God to care for the downtrodden. All the while, the rich man would have likely saw his good fortune and vast wealth as signs that God was blessing him. This, then, is a cautionary tale of the dangers of looking at “signs” for God’s approval rather than actually looking at God’s will and his word. Lazarus, on the other hand, had nothing in the present age but found himself part of the eternal inheritance that was due to God’s people.

If the point of this parable was simply about the dangers of wealth, though, then it would almost seem that Lazarus finds himself among the righteous for the sole reason that he was poor in the present age. But the true meaning of this parable goes beyond that as there is no inherent value to just being poor in the present age when it comes to one’s status in the family of God. At it’s heart, this is a story about Jesus’ ministry and the coming kingdom. In the previous chapter, Jesus told three parables that explained why he dined with and welcomed sinners into his ministry. In the early verses of chapter 16, Jesus challenged the Pharisees to the idea of sacrificing in the present with an eye on the eternal. Here, he clearly lays out why that is such an important decision.

In a very real sense, then, the rich man, dressed in the colors of royalty and the priesthood, was a representative of Israel, specifically the religious leaders of Israel. Lazarus was a representative of those sinners and outcasts that the Pharisees so badly wanted to do away with, but whom Jesus was so eager to bring under his wings. Israel was ignoring those who most needed the light of the kingdom of God and in doing so, were showing that they didn’t have the light of God themselves. They were sure that they were God’s people, but their treatment of the “sinners” were showing that they did not have God’s will in mind at all. They were in very real danger of finding themselves in the position of the rich man, permanently locked out of the kingdom of God, while those that they had so looked down upon were coming to Jesus’ kingdom in droves. But they had one advantage over the rich man’s brothers. They were receiving a warning before it was too late in the very form of this story.

But I would like to propose something else that adds a layer to this story. It seems curious that this would be the only parable that does have a proper name in it. It would seem to me that there was a purpose behind this. When Jesus told this story, it probably wouldn’t have registered much with his hearers. But the gospel of John tells us that a little while later Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the grave. This was a sign that was not part of the great and promised resurrection but certainly was a sample of and pointed to it in some ways. Many see verse 31 as a reference to Jesus’ coming resurrection but I don’t think that this was Jesus’ primary reference. Imagine the jaw-dropping power of putting together this story with the actual raising from the dead of Lazarus from John 11.

I would put forth the speculation that part of the point of this passage for Jesus was a subtle prophecy and a stern warning for those who would later read his words in Luke’s gospel. The Law and the prophets had long pointed to coming of the Messiah and to the one family of many nations and that was truly being fulfilled in Jesus. But most were so committed to their own vision that they refused to be convinced by anything Jesus did. Even if there was a Lazarus who really did come back from the dead, they wouldn’t be convinced because they weren’t really clinging to the Scriptures. They were clinging to what they wanted the Scriptures to say. So was Jesus correct? What was the response of the Jewish religious leadership when they saw that Jesus had quite publicly raised someone from the dead, someone named Lazarus no less? They demonstrated the truth that they were more afraid of Rome than God as they worried that if they “let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation” (Jn. 11:48). They decided to kill Jesus because “ it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish” (Jn. 11:50). Someone had risen from the dead to warn them and they would not listen because they had no interest in listening to God’s word.

This serves as a final reminder to how powerful Jesus believed the word of God to be. He saw the Law and the Prophets as even more able to change a heart and direct someone to the truth than even seeing someone raised from the dead. We can tend to think that there are so many important factors in brining someone to faith in Christ, but the reality is, nothing is more vital or more powerful than the word of God. We must always remember that and put the word of God first so that it might do it’s work.


Devotional Thought
Do you have as much reverence for the power of the word of God as Jesus did? Are there any areas of your life that you have had trouble in changing or someone that you would like to help become a disciple but have had trouble? Have you really put the word of God to use as your primary weapon?

Luke 16:14-18 Commentary

14 The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. 15 He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God's sight.

Additional Teachings
16 "The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and people are forcing their way into it. 17 It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.

18 "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.



Dig Deeper
There is, in the United States these days, a growing chasm between people with large differences in their political and philosophical ideologies. At one time, it seems like the differences between different sides of the American spectrum were not that wide but they are growing day-by-day now. These two side are often characterized by the terms “liberal” and “conservative.” America is unique, though, in the larger swath of the world, because most political disagreements in America don’t come down to what is best for the country (although that is what both sides claim to want) but they usually come down to what is Constitutional (a phrase in America that has come to mean something that is in keeping with the principles of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence). One of the great themes in American life that was put into our DNA as a country from the Declaration of Independence has been the right that every American citizen has to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are familiar with those items and place great value on them while vehemently opposing anyone who we might perceive as trying to impinge upon those things. One American issue that has really brought out this topic is the reforms in healthcare. Opponents of this reform have charged that those in favor of healthcare want to institute an aspect of healthcare reform that would encourage older Americans to end their life. They then have charged them with favoring socialistic policies that would infringe on people’s personal freedoms to make decisions for themselves like whether or not to have healthcare coverage. All of this reform, they argue, will ultimately destroy the American economy and cause, for the first time, a generation of young people who cannot hope to do better than their parents.

At the heart of this, in the American mind, is not really a debate over those specific issues. Wise Americans understand that those three arguments are, in many senses, an appeal back to the Declaration and the very ideas of what it means to be American. The hope of those who take those positions is that Americans will hear those three arguments and put it together that those are all aspects of what it means to be a “Constitutional” American: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their hope is that people will come to share their point of view that those who favor a certain type of healthcare reform are actually embracing un-American ideas.

Because those arguments are all concerning healthcare, it is easy to see the connection. But when we look at passages like this one in Luke, it seems like Luke has given three rather different and unconnected topics. It’s quite probable, granted, that Jesus didn’t put these exact three thoughts together, one after the other like this, but that Luke has taken three different quotations from Jesus and put them together. One of the great mysteries that puzzles many commentators is how these three topics (the love of money, the coming of the kingdom as it relates to the Law, and divorce) come together. I believe, in agreement with scholars like Joel Green and others, that the best way to understand the connection of these passages is to see that Luke has put together these three aspects of Jesus’ teaching to appeal to a common Jewish belief that there were three “nets” in which Israel was snared (this is described, for instance, in the Qumranic text, the Damascus Rule, which was part of the Dead Sea Scrolls). These “nets” were the love of riches, profaning God’s word and the Temple, and fornication. It is quite possible that it is to these three abominations that Luke is appealing here.

The first charge mentioned by Luke against the Pharisees is in response to the fact that they have now devolved into full out ridicule of Jesus. They were apparently listening as Jesus charged his disciples with giving up their present ideas of wealth and the like to make friends in the eternal sense. Rather than being lovers of the eternal reality though, the Pharisees were lovers of money and the things of the present age. In the biblical times, the advantage of wealth went beyond it’s buying power and was seen as having the double value in the currency of status and honor. The more wealth one had, the more honored and the higher status they were. Thus, it was common in Luke’s day to use phrases like “loved money” to refer to idea that loving money was really loving self. They were caught up in the worldly system that they would have been so quick to denounce.

Jesus pointed out that rather than finding their status as God’s people, being justified, in God’s sight, they sought it out in the eyes of men. This is clearly demonstrated in passages like Matthew 12:45-46 in which we are told that the Pharisees wanted to arrest Jesus but didn’t because of their fear of the crowds. God was not their priority. What people thought of them was their true priority. If they really did think that Jesus was a blasphemer and that obeying God was all that mattered, then they should have sought to have him arrested regardless of what the crowds wanted or thought. They were caught up in being shown to be God’s people according to the values of man rather than valuing what God truly valued. They were clearly, Luke wants us to see, ensnared in the net of riches. That was strike one.

The second charge against the Pharisees, then, has to due with their lack of discernment and commitment to God’s will and covenant as found in his kingdom. Just as they were guilty of idolatry in serving money and the things of their own will rather than God’s will, they were equally guilty of idolatry in seeking their own version of the kingdom. All of the Scriptures, referred to as the Law and the Prophets, were proclaimed right up until the coming of John. John was the threshold of change, though. The Law and the Prophets pointed to and promised something new and it had now come. As the prophet Jeremiah had promised, “’The time is coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers. . . . I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer. 31:31-34).

The time of that promise had come, but people were trying to force their way into God’s kingdom rather than being justified into God’s family according to the promises that God had always promised through the Law and the prophets. The Scriptures had always pointed to the fulfillment of the scriptural promises and the new thing that God would do. It would be easier for heaven and earth to pass away (this was a common figure of speech that did not imply the actual passing away of heaven or earth but spoke of the ridiculousness of the thought that the thing being referred to could actually pass away) than for God’s promises in the law to pass away. Those who turn to this verse (and it’s parallel in Matthew 5:17-18) as a proof text to bolster their claim that the Old Testament Law is still binding in the New Covenant miss the point of Jesus’ words. His point was that the promises of God as found in the Old Covenant Scriptures were being fulfilled in his ministry. Not one of those promises were being dropped out and they never would be.

They were ones that were misinterpreting, or abolishing (the figure of speech used in Matthew 5) the law. Jesus’ ministry was fulfilling the Scriptures. The Law and the prophets shouldn’t be thought of as having no relevance or simply passing away, rather that they should be interpreted and understood in light of Jesus’ new kingdom announcement and ministry. In clinging to their own version of how God should work, the Pharisees were the ones who were misinterpreting, and thus profaning, the word of God and his new Temple, Jesus Christ. That was strike two.

They were guilty, declared Jesus, of loving riches and profaning God but what about fornication? From one angle, their idolatry of self could have justified the charge of spiritual fornication, but Luke drives the point home further by demonstrating one example of their loose interpretation of Scriptures and how that act of profaning God’s word had actually led them into fornication.

Anyone who divorced his wife, said Jesus, for the purpose of marrying another woman was guilty of adultery, which was a form of fornication. The commitment among God’s people to stay married was a commitment to stay married. To break that commitment was to engage in adultery. (this was not to say that anyone who has ever divorced and remarried cannot be forgiven and brought into God’s kingdom as a full member of his family, rather Jesus’ point had to do with their acceptance and embracing of divorce as a viable option despite the fact that this was contrary to God’s word).

As Luke has made clear, the Pharisees in their commitment to the idolatry of money and self, their profaning and rejection of God’s word, and divorce were actually distancing themselves from the very word they claimed to uphold. Luke will drive this irony home even further in 18:9-14 when he depicts a Pharisee standing up to pray to thank God that he was not like other men, a robber, an evildoer, or an adulterer. The very thing that they claimed to not be, is precisely what they were.

The unifying theme throughout this whole section, going back to the beginning of the chapter, is a matter of being loyal to God’s kingdom over the kingdom of self and the world. The Pharisees, as a representative group, had made their choice and rejected God’s truth as was evidenced by their actions. In the eyes of Jesus’ contemporaries they were firmly ensnared in the net of the world. The warning for us is to ensure that we avoid those nets and are people who are firmly committed to reflecting God’s image to the world around us.


Devotional Thought
We have seen that the three “nets” of the Jewish people were riches, profaning the word and the Temple, and adultery. If we were to create three “nets” for the people of your country or culture what would they be? How is your church family doing in casting off those nets and then helping others in your culture to escape them as well? What are some things that you all could be doing to better help people escape those particular nets?

Luke 16:1-13 Commentary

The Parable of the Shrewd Manager
1Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
3"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg— 4I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'

5"So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'

6" 'Eight hundred gallons[a] of olive oil,' he replied.
"The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'

7"Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?'
" 'A thousand bushels[b] of wheat,' he replied.
"He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'

8"The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

10"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?

13"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."


Dig Deeper
Anyone who has been over to our house in the last three years knows that we have a rather energetic young terrier named Johnny Cash. Johnny is a lovable and good-natured dog, but one (with all apologies to my wife) who is just not the sharpest knife in the drawer. In other words, he is a good dog but he’s just not very smart. He loves to play, though. In fact, he is always read for a good game of catch, tug, or chase. One of his favorite games is to chase anything that you throw, even if it is not something that you really wanted him to go get and bring back to you. One of the funniest things that he does though happens when you throw two things at him. Like I said, he is not the brightest bulb, and throwing two things at once confuses him. He hilariously jumps back and forth between the two items, trying to pick them both up with his mouth at the same time. He goes back and forth between the two items, trying to figure out how to carry both of them at a more and more frantic pace. If you feign like you are going to take one of his items away, then he really gets crazy, moving his mouth quickly back and forth, picking up one item, then dropping it to pick up the other. He does this quickly and repeatedly but one thing never changes. The canine genius simply cannot carry two things at once, he must choose one or the other.

Jesus has been systematically redefining, through the pages of Luke’s gospel, what his family of disciples would look like. He has redefined what it means to follow God and be part of that family, and he has drastically redrawn the lines of who would be welcomed into that family. He has shown that his brothers and sisters in that family needed to think and act in dramatically different ways than the culture in which they found themselves, wherever that might be. In chapter 15, Jesus told of the shocking grace and love that the Father was willing to shower on those who would but recognize that they had squandered what God had given, would admit that they were lost, and would do nothing more than to allow the Father to find them. But to experience that, a clear choice has to be made. Who will your master be? Will it be your possessions, your wealth, and ultimately your own will, or will it be God? Above all, Jesus knew that to truly abandon one’s own agenda and follow him meant that we must be willing to give up any thoughts of our plans and advancement, and trust in God alone.

Virtually every commentator and biblical teacher will agree, if on nothing else, that this is one of Jesus’ most difficult parables to understand and interpret. There are, in fact, so many different potential interpretations of this passage, that we simply do not have the space to consider all of the possibilities. When a passage is so difficult, though, it usually is a signal that there are some cultural explanations or usage of figures of speech that are difficult for us, who are separated by a vast cultural gap and time gap, to understand. The keys, I believe, in understanding this complicated passage, are to understand a bit of the cultural example that Jesus gives along with our continued consideration of the larger context of this new Exodus passage that stretches from Luke 9-19.

One of the clues to better understanding this parable is to recognize that it comes on the heals, at least in Luke’s ordering of things, of the parable of the lost son. He has now turned to his disciples to specifically teach them something important about decisions that must be made to turn away from the Israel that the religious leaders and Pharisees were calling people to, and to turn to the true Israel that Jesus was calling them to.

Another important clue is to give consideration to the fact that this is indeed a parable. Parables were short stories that used common, everyday occurrences to demonstrate some truth about the kingdom of God. As a general rule, the intent of the parable was not to expound upon the actual topic of the parable, although it may at time shed some moral light on the subject area of the example. But, for instance, the main thrust of Jesus’ parable about the man who threw a great banquet (Lk. 14:16-23) did not have to do with what one should do if they throw a party and no one comes. Nor was the main point of his parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) meant to be sage advice on how virgins should prepare for a wedding. And certainly the purpose of the parable of the sower (Lk. 8:1-15) was not an examination of good farming techniques. In the same way, although there may be some valuable principles for how one handles money, the parable and the subsequent explanation that we have in this passage have much more to do with a truth of the kingdom of God and what it means to follow Jesus.

In general, it was a safe assumption in first century Israel that if someone told a story of this nature about a manager and a master that the master was generally representative of God and the manager was Israel. Although, there are differing ways to interpret this parable, I believe that this is probably the best explanation. Jesus describes a manager that is about to lose his position due to poor behavior which leaves him with a choice of what to do. He looks at the inevitability of the situation and makes the decision to take care of his future rather than clinging to his practices of the past. Biblical scholar Duncan Derret has ably demonstrated that what the manager did to soften the blow of the situation he was in, was to forgo the commission that a manager in this situation would have received, which would have been a significant amount. Continuing in his previously dishonest practices would have done him no good so he needed to abandon them and do something to create good will. His gesture would have put the clients in his debt and ensured that they would treat him kindly when he was eventually fired by the master. He took advantage of the time that he had to turn away from his dishonesty and to give up what he might have had coming in the present to put himself in a better situation in the long run. The master admired the fact that the manager had created good will for himself by acting shrewdly in a way that softened the blow for him but did not further cheat the master.

As we have seen, a large portion of the content of Jesus’ teachings had to do with the warnings to Israel for her failure as a nation to be God’s light to the world. The time was running short for them to embrace the Messiah as the true identity of the people of God. Israel was about to permanently lose their position as God’s manager of his creation. In the face of that impending removal, what should they do? Well, they should learn from an example of a shrewd and worldly person. They should start thinking long term rather than short term. They should start to think more about their position in the eternal age to come rather than clinging to how they had always done things. That time was coming to an end. To follow Jesus meant to think of one’s position in light of the eternity of the resurrection age and to give up what might seem like profitable things in the present age (things such as land, money, inheritance, and family status) so as to live a life that was preparing them for that future age.

The manager had finally shown that he was ready to give up the dishonesty that cost him the job and he turned to a solution that meant giving up a little profit in the present for a long-term solution, one that was not built on dishonesty or ripping off the master. He had learned the true priorities and what it took to provide for himself in the long run.

Apparently, most of Israel was not that wise yet. They were not thinking about their long-term status but were instead clinging to every little drop of their own commission in the present that they could squeeze out. If they were going to cling to the present ideas of status before God rather than the values of the age to come, as was evidenced by the importance they placed on wealth, inheritance, and land, then they would never be able to embrace the values of being God’s true people. They had poorly handled the affairs that God had given them and they were unwilling to change in light of their inevitable dismissal.

Why would God give his true inheritance to a people that had squandered what they had been given? Maybe Israel was behaving more like the younger son of the previous parable then they would care to admit. They had wasted the possessions and advantages that had been given them as God’s people (Luke uses the exact same phrase in 16:1 that he used in 15:13 to describe the younger son’s squandering of his possessions) so why would they be given more?

When it came down to it for Israel, or for anyone who would take up the challenge of the life of Christ, it was a matter of which master was going to be served. Would it be the master of self and making weak and futile attempts to provide for self by clinging to the practices of the past? Or would they have the shrewdness and wisdom to read the signs and see that things were changing radically. Either we drop the idea of temporary gain and think from the perspective of God’s coming future age or we will find ourselves with nothing at all. It is a choice of masters. We embrace one and sever ties with the other, plain and simple. We can’t have two masters anymore than my little dog can carry two balls in his mouth at once. It must either be the master of self and thinking of the present, as most visibly characterized by money, or the master of God. The choice must be made decisively.


Devotional Thought
Take a long, hard look at your life. Can you truly say that you serve only one master or do you sometimes find yourself acting like a dog trying to carry two balls at the same time? Many of us have made that decision and are serving God as best we can, but some of us haven’t, perhaps, ever fully made that choice.

Luke 15:11-32, part 3 Commentary

The Parable of the Lost Son
11 Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.

13 "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

17 "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.' 20 So he got up and went to his father.

"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 "The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'

22 "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

25 "Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'

28 "The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'

31 " 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' "



Dig Deeper
Human beings are creatures that enjoy and connect with stories. We love stories whether they are in written form, in a movie, or even recounted verbally to us. Stories are not just entertaining either, they are powerful. We have all, I’m sure, been moved by the power or emotional connection of a story at one time or another in a way that hearing the same information in a straightforward but non-story format simply could not accomplish. We can identify with stories and put ourselves in the situation in ways that any other medium just cannot achieve. In fact, if you have something monumentally difficult for someone to accept, one of the most effective ways to get them to hear what you have to say is through the timeless medium of a story. They will often be able to connect with the emotional themes of the story and open up to the moral behind it, or even the rebuke behind the story before they realize that you have aimed the story at them. That is the ideal, although not always the case. Because stories do tend to stir our emotions so powerfully, there is always the risk of a person violently rejecting the technique of using story in this way.

2 Samuel 12 is a powerful example of the effect of story. It takes place shortly after David had taken a married woman, Bathsheba, into his own bed and arranged for her husband to be killed. Nathan knew that he could not simply come in and accuse the King of blatant sin. He would not be heard and would likely be punished before he could finish. So he told a story of a rich man who stole the sheep of a poor man rather than killing one of his own flock. The story connected with David deeply and enraged him that someone would do such a thing. David had so completely bought into the emotional connection of the story that he demanded to know who the man was so that he could punish the evildoer. It was then that Nathan gave him the shocking detail that the man was him. The point of the story was a rebuke aimed at David’s own actions. The connection was so powerful for David that he immediately confessed and humbled himself before Nathan.

As chapter 15 opened Jesus was asked why his ministry and table fellowship were so open to the types of sinners that would normally be excluded from inclusion in a religious group. He has responded with three important stories that have demonstrated why he was teaching that the kingdom of God was open to those types of people and why it was such a celebration everywhere he went. But he also had some hard things to say to those who asked him those questions and to the leadership and direction of Israel as a whole. Throughout his ministry, Jesus communicated these hard things in many different ways, but none is more pointed and powerful than the story of the lost son. This wasn’t just a story, after all. This was a story about Jesus’ ministry, about the kingdom of God, and about how the Jewish nation was receiving it. The question was “would they connect with the story and let if effect them humbly or would it enrage them and cause them to sink even further into their morass of rejection?”

When it comes down to it, the Pharisees and other critics of Jesus were concerned about his doctrine of sin and what it would take to be part of God’s family. Why was he acting like sinful people were welcome into God’s family? He was hanging around sinners and this concerned them because they saw sinners as the problem. Sinners were, in their eyes, the very reason that the new Exodus, for which they were all waiting, had not yet come. God would return and purify ethnic Israel, defeat her enemies, and exalt his people to rule over God’s age to come only when Israel was cleansed of the very people that Jesus seemed so ready to have around. The response of the Pharisees to sin, then, was to urge people to cling tighter to the observances of the law like purity, food, circumcision, and the Sabbath to show themselves to be the true people of God that were not like the sinners.

But Jesus’ response was bold and decisive. He is basically saying, “You think my doctrine of sin is shallow. You’re wrong. I think rebelling against God is so disgusting that it is like a young Jewish boy who demands his father’s inheritance while his father is still in good health. He sells the estate while his father is still living on it, goes away from the holy land and loses the money to Gentiles. He ends up feeding the pigs of Gentiles and even longs to become a pig so that he may eat their food. That’s how disturbing I think sin is.” The likely response from the Pharisees would have been to applaud this doctrine of sin. They couldn’t have said it any better themselves. Sin was the problem. Those who were not following God’s laws were indeed as offensive as Jesus’ wayward son in his parable. Sin against God, for Jesus, was to desire the death of God. It was to want the gifts without any reference or respect to the giver. The Pharisees would have agreed with that in principle.

But then, as he so often did, Jesus turned this all on its head. The father was not someone they would have respected. He was full of grace and mercy and took this sinner back with no pre-conditions. Not to be missed throughout this story is that Jesus was doing something quite common in his day. He was basically re-telling the broad narrative of Jacob and Esau. This was so common in his day that the Pharisees almost assuredly would have understood this to be the case. But we must not forget that Jesus was answering questions about his ministry. What this means is that he has clearly put himself in the position of the father. Usually the father role was a symbol for God himself, so Jesus was being outrageously bold in casting himself in the role of Yahweh himself. This meant that the younger brother, the Jacob of this narrative, were those sinners that came to Jesus in humility and repentance (or, as the story made clear, they often come for their own reasons only to be overwhelmed by the genuine grace and mercy of God). The shocking part, then, was that Jesus clearly cast folks like the Pharisees (ones who had “never left” God, at least not in their own eyes, and who held tightly to the law as the marker of God’s people) in the role of the older brother, the Esau of this story.

The point was that they were being like the older brother. In holding so tightly to the laws, they were not honoring the father, they were actually working against him. They were opposing and dishonoring the work of the father every bit as much as they thought the “sinners” were doing. That they were being like Esau is what they would have clearly understood Jesus’ point to be. Esau was the ancestor of the Edomite people, and Edom became, throughout the Old Testament, a common symbol for sinners. Malachi 1 contrasts the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, as being hated (which meant severed or rejected as the inheritance people) by God. Jesus was turning everything upside down. Yes, he was saying, sin is horrendous and it wounds God deeply. But they had God all wrong. He wasn’t an angry and vengeful God waiting to strike down the sinners and the pagan hordes so that he could finally show off his faithful son to them. No, Jesus’ ministry was the perfect embodiment of what God was doing. He was the expectant father that was closely looking for his lost son, the one that was dead to him, so that he could run out and find him and restore him to to the life that he wanted for his son all along. The people that the Jewish religious leaders thought were the problem were the very people that Jesus was now saying were being welcomed into God’s kingdom and celebrated over. But they were the ones that were opposed to all that. Everything was upside down. The son who thought himself so faithful was the one that actually was opposing what God wanted to do.

One of the most striking aspects of this narrative is that the end is missing. It is not that there was an ending and it has been sadly lost to the cruel waves of history. No, Jesus never ended this story properly. A story like this would have been typically balanced in equal stanzas for easy remembering. In this story, in the Greek, the first half has seven stanzas but the second part has only six. The ending is missing. Where is the ending and does it matter? It actually makes all the difference in the world.

The exclusion of an ending is signal from Jesus that this was the path down which they were heading, but that the final decision had not yet been made. It was a warning and a plea. The end was up to them. We can read this and hope that the parable would end with the older son entering the house, joining in the festive banquet, and reconciling with his brother and father. Then the father could rejoice with the two sons that he had found and brought to life. But in the case of the nation of Israel, we sadly know that this was not the ending. Instead, the older brother picked up a wooden stick and beat the father to death. He was so angry that he could just never accept that this is how the father was going to handle things. The older son beat the father to death, or should we say more appropriately, they hung him on a cross.

As with all of Jesus’ parables and other teachings, though, we need not leave this story in the first century and chalk it up as something that is quite irrelevant for us. The principles of this story continue to apply to all lost men and women throughout the ages. We must recognize where we have gotten ourselves in our rebellion against God, whether we have wandered off from him or grew up considering ourselves to be “faithful” to him. We must all realize at some point in our life, that we are lost. We must understand that we often come to God and try to hustle him for our own advantage or for the things that we want. We cannot through our own understanding or repentance reconcile to God. It is his kindness, love and grace that make reconciliation a possibility. All we need to do is to humbly accept that offer. If we do so and recognize that we really were lost, the father will wrap the robe around us and put sandals on our feet and a ring on our finger. He will bring what was once dead to life and restore us to the family of God. What was once dead is now alive. What was once lost is now found. And the party in God’s presence will strike up.

There is also a stern warning in this story for us. We must recognize our tendency as “religious” people to begin to think and act like the older brother. We can ever-so-subtly begin to think that we deserve certain things. Or we can start to get angry when God’s grace of love is shown to sinners. Of course, we don’t like to think that we would do such a thing, but what about some young sinner who comes into God’s family and suddenly seems to be changing much faster than you ever did or being put in positions of leadership quicker than you have? Then our true older-brother-like-tendencies can come out if we’re not careful. Or what about the uneasiness we feel when someone who is in the throes of their lost state comes into church and plops down right next to us? If we ever start to think this way, let us return to this story and challenge us just as surely as it challenged its first hearers. And may we add on an ending of reconciliation to the story.



Devotional Thought
There are so many points within this story on which we can reflect. Spend some time today and over the next few days reflecting on this story and what it means for you. How is God challenging you through this parable?

Luke 15:11-32, part 2 Commentary

The Parable of the Lost Son
11 Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.

13 "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

17 "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.' 20 So he got up and went to his father.

"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 "The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'

22 "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

25 "Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'

28 "The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'

31 " 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' "



Dig Deeper
Years ago now, when I was still a young Christian, and an extremely immature one at that, I was playing in a basketball league that was organized by our church and that consisted of disciples from within our church. As great and fun as that league was, one of the hallmarks of that Saturday morning league was that the refereeing was not of top quality. Of course I look back now and realize that there should have been no such expectation and it didn’t need to be “top of the line.” It was a bunch of brothers having a good time together and the referees consisted of other brothers that were playing in the league that weren’t playing in a particular game. I should have been understanding and patient with that as well as grateful but I wasn’t. Anything that I felt like was not a good call (and I’m sure a lot of calls that I thought were bad were actually just fine) would elicit an extremely negative and vocal response from me. After one such call, I really blew up and screamed and hollered. After getting a well-deserved technical foul, I screamed some more and stomped out of the gym, telling everyone just what I thought of all of them. It was brash, arrogant, and downright sinful, not to mention that what I said was more rooted in emotion and was not at all how I really felt.

But that didn’t matter. I stormed out of the gym and went to my car, only to find out that I had left the lights on and run my battery down. The car wouldn’t start. You just cannot convince me that God doesn’t have a sense of humor. I tried quietly to go to the woman at the front desk of the facility where we were playing and ask her if there were any jumper cables available. She said she would check and I was hoping desperately that she would hurry before any disciples came out and saw me there. She came through the door and said “good news, this gentleman will help you.” I didn’t want to look up because I was sick with the thought that she might have went and found a disciple. Sure enough, it was George. He was a wonderfully mature Christian who had studied the Bible with me and was one of the guys who I had just stomped past and screamed at. I seriously felt like turning around and running out but George walked up to me quickly, put his arms around me, and said “I love you buddy.” That did it. Nothing else he could have said would have broken me down in that moment but his incredible mercy and love that he had just shown were enough. I humbly apologized and made amends as best I could. Looking back now, I’m so glad that day happened because I learned more from George’s love and patience than I ever could have had I not made the glaring mistakes that I did.

Undeserved patience and love like that have the ability to break someone down and show them their need for repentance perhaps more than anything else in the world. As we have already seen, the actions of the son were aggressive, hurtful, shameful, and ultimately selfish. Everything he did was for himself with no consideration of the father. Even his return to the father was for his own advantage. But he then encountered the lavish and unselfish love of the father who saw him at a distance and ran to his son with peace in his heart (echoing the language from Isa. 57:19). The father demonstrated costly love and grace that was given freely. It was not (as some translations imply) because the son had “come to his senses.” The son was still coming back for his own benefit and according to his own plan. But he was stopped in his tracks but the father’s incredible grace that had not one bit of self-seeking behavior to it. His grace was given before the son could say anything, confess anything, or present his plan. And that grace and love caused true repentance on the part of the son who was left with only words of true sorrow and repentance with not hint of his plan to restore his own status and honor.

For the first time, as the son declares himself to be a sinner that was unworthy of the father’s family, he no longer is seeking to gain his own advantage. He no longer has a solution because he now sees that the real problem is not his lost inheritance or honor but the ruptured relationship between he and his loving father. He surrenders his plan and lets his father find him. The only condition that the son needed was to realize that he was lost and needed to be found. He was truly transformed by his father’s costly demonstration of love, not by his own realization of his situation or his own plan.

The father’s response to his son’s humility is nothing short of complete restoration and reconciliation. There is no grilling about what happened to the inheritance. There is no lecture and no demand that the son prove himself. The father quickly called for the best robe that would show that he was once again the rightful recipient of the family inheritance. He demanded that the servants put a ring on his finger which would have had the family insignia and shown that he was restored as a member of the family. And he put sandals on his feet, for it was servants who went around barefoot. Sons wore sandals and this was his son.

Not only that, but the father wanted to have a great celebration. The fattened calf would have been prepared for some major event and the father could not think of something more worthy of a celebration than this one. He would have a feast and invite the entire town to celebrate in his joy. The banquet would be had not just because he had come home but because he was lost and had now been found. He was still dead even at the edge of the village until he accepted that he could not enact reconciliation and would accept being found. That is what brought life back to the son.

As the older brother approached he noticed that an unusual party was going on. He asks the young servant and asked him what was going on. The servant answers from the perspective of the village. The party is going on because the father had received the son with peace and reconciliation. The party was for the father, not the son. It is for the father who had lost and had now found his son. Rather than going through a “Kezahah,” (the shaming ceremony for a son that lost his inheritance) the son was participating in the joy of restoration that was achieved at the great cost of the father. It was the older brother, according to verse 30 that, in his own anger, took the position that the feast was for the younger brother. Even though that was not the case at all, it is often the position that we take. It is important to get the details of Jesus’ parable correct. The banquet was not in honor of the boy but was in honor of the father’s efforts in creating peace, reconciliation, and wholeness in the relationship. It was a lost and found party not a welcome home gala. It was the father, not the son that should be congratulated. We have saved any comment to this point on the meaning of this passage, but it is worth a reminder here that Jesus is using this story to explain the celebrations that was his ministry and why sinners are always welcomed.

As the story moves into the second act, the younger son fades into the background and the older son takes center stage with the father. The older son must have been quite angered and shamed by the actions of the younger son. All that he could see was that money was lost, inheritance had been squandered, and that now he was being reconciled back fully without having to pay back what he shamefully lost. Grace had been offered and accepted rather than the brother meeting the requirements of the law and of societal standards. How could this prodigal be accepted back into the family without making some sort of amends for his behavior? Why, in the eyes of the older brother, this acceptance was more scandalous than the shady behavior of the son.

He was so sure that the younger brother had acted inappropriately and should be dealt with harshly. But the older brother failed to see something rather important. He thought that he was the one in the right. He felt that if the younger brother was reconciled with, through nothing but the grace and love of the father, that he was somehow injured by this. What he failed to see was that he had so set up expectations for how he thought the father should act that he was in very real danger of breaking relationship with the father himself. He started by refusing to go into the banquet. This would have been a major insult to the father but the older brother wanted nothing to do with a father that was going to act like this. The older brother was willing to rupture their relationship not because the father had harmed him in anyway but because of the great patience and love that he was showing to that sinner and the fact that he just could not tolerate a father that would act like that.

The older brother was secure and haughty about his perception that he had always done right by the father. It was the other son who had caused the father grief but not he. Yet, he failed to see that his response to the grace and love that the father was showing to his brother was just as dishonoring, just as presumptive, and just as selfish as anything his brother had done. By cultural standards, the father should have publicly ignored the elder son’s refusal to join the party and then beat him later privately for his insolence, but once again, he fails to act according to cultural expectations. For the second time, the father gave costly and unexpected love. This time he showed it to the law-keeping son rather than the law-breaking son. But the father, once again, publicly shamed himself by acting outside of expectations for the benefit of his son. He went out from the party to find another lost son, the elder son that thought he was anything but lost.

The response to the father’s grace is important. The younger son acted horribly and tried to return to the father only for his own benefit, but the matchless grace and love of the father overwhelmed that desire. All he had to do was to accept being found and he did that. The elder son, however, did not. He attacked both the younger son and his father and continued to cling to the way things should be done according to his perception of the law, the law that he was himself breaking. The father should have, according to the cultural expectations, exploded and publicly lashed the son for his insolence and insults, but again he offers love. If the older son will only accept that love, he will be treated just as the younger son had. The choice was entirely his.

All the father wanted was for the older son to accept that he was as lost as his younger brother and to accept the father’s love and grace for both of them. What would be the response of the older brother? The full answer to that lies in the fact that the ending of this story is missing? We will attempt to solve that mystery in part three, the final section, tomorrow.


Devotional Thought
Do you ever feel the elder brother in this story where you get very upset at others for the way they are treating God or other people, and completely forget to notice that you can act just as reprehensibly towards God at time? What about this story helps you to keep centered on the fact that you need God’s grace as much as anyone else?