Jesus and John the Baptist
18 John's disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them, 19 he sent them to the Lord to ask, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"
20 When the men came to Jesus, they said, "John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, 'Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?' "
21 At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. 22 So he replied to the messengers, "Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy [a] are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 23 Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me."
24 After John's messengers left, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? 25 If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear expensive clothes and indulge in luxury are in palaces. 26 But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27 This is the one about whom it is written:
" 'I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before you.' [b]
28 I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."
29 (All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus' words, acknowledged that God's way was right, because they had been baptized by John. 30 But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.)
31 Jesus went on to say, "To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other:
" 'We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not cry.'
33 For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' 34 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' 35 But wisdom is proved right by all her children."
Dig Deeper
In a recent post, I described my reluctance to switch over to DVD’s when they began to be popular. I had a huge collection of history documentaries and video on VHS tapes and simply did not want to switch over. To add to that I just don’t tend to like new things very much. I eventually did give in and get a DVD player and we have a few DVD’s now. In fact, I no longer have a working VCR and my tape collection sits in my basement collecting dust. But just as I began to get used to the whole DVD thing, albeit a few years after most people, I began to notice something new coming out called Blu-ray. At first, I didn’t pay any attention to it and thought it would go away. When it didn’t and more and more people began to talk about Blu-ray, I thought I might take a look at one. So, one day I was at a store and I picked up a box and looked at it. It looked just like a DVD to me and so I assumed that it was just another type of DVD that was perhaps a little clearer. I didn’t understand that it was entirely new technology and that you had to have an entirely different player for it. Blu-ray is not, in fact, just another type of DVD. It is something completely new, a whole new world of technology and you simply cannot cross over one to the other. Blu-ray discs won’t play on a DVD player and DVD’s will not do anything on a Blu-ray player. But once I finally watched a movie on Blu-ray I realized that these things really were incredible. They were a whole different thing than DVD’s and despite the fact that DVD’s were pretty good, not even the best DVD could come anywhere close to the technology and quality of picture that a Blue-ray can give.
This is something of Jesus’ point here as the attention turns back to John the Baptist for the first time since his arrest in chapter 3. John has been in prison for an undetermined amount of time and he apparently was beginning to have some questions and maybe even worries about Jesus and whether or not he really was the Messiah. His behavior was so different from what John was expecting that he was having trouble reconciling things. It all comes down to grasping that an entirely new reality was breaking into the present age. It was God’s new reality, his kingdom. But this new reality simply wasn’t compatible with the old age and could never be understood by using the old expectations and worldview. Even John would have to realize that the old ways of thinking wouldn’t work in this new world if one really wanted to understand and be part of what was going on.
Even the best of us can have days of doubt and disillusionment. John’s experience in prison is probably a good reminder of that. Many people have tried to come up with alternate explanations for John’s apparent confusion from prison but I don’t think we need to try to do any of that. The reality is that John was an incredible man of God, a prophet, but he was still just a man. He was weak, limited, and prone to his own preconceptions, even though he did have the Holy Spirit upon him, guiding and leading him. He was certainly capable of being led by the Spirit to speak more than he understood on his own terms. John, inspired by the Holy Spirit, had spoken rightly of Jesus as the coming Messiah, but that doesn’t mean that he completely understood fully what Jesus would be doing. John had spoken of the coming judgment of the Messiah (Lk. 3:17) but he likely had his own preconceived notions of what that would look like. His disciples had come to him in the prison and told him of Jesus’ incredible authority, but also that he was using that authority to minister to those on the fringes of the society. John surely was confused by this. Wasn’t this a time for the winnowing fork to come out? Wasn’t this the time to be cleansing Israel and bringing about a day of vengeance? Where was the ax that would be bringing down the tree (Lk. 3:9)? John doesn’t question whether Jesus was really sent from God or not. He needed reassuring of Jesus’ specific role. Was Jesus the Messiah or was he not? John’s problem was not with Jesus but with his expectations of what the Messiah would do. His conceptions were quite similar to the audience in the synagogue in Nazareth (Lk. 4:28-29). He had called for repentance and for people to prepare for God’s purging of the unrighteous. He simply couldn’t see how Jesus’ actions were related to that end.
Jesus’ response is somewhat cryptic but also very clear when we stop and look at his response carefully. He was far too wise to come up and say directly that he was the Messiah. This would have opened him up to all the misconceptions that people had about the Messiah but would also ramp up the intensity of those opposed to him before his time had come to go to his death. His response was a symphony of notes from different passages of Isaiah (35:5-6; 26:19; 29:18-19; 61:1). His ministry was to the blind, the lame, the ill and outcast, the deaf, and the dead. His ministry, in other words, was the one spoken of all throughout Isaiah, especially Isaiah 61. He was delivering and bringing judgment upon those who rejected him, but just not the way that John might have expected. John was still thinking in terms of the old world and was not seeing that this was God’s new reality breaking into the present. He simply could not grasp that Jesus’ ministry was pointing to God’s age to come when those who trusted in the life of Christ would be transformed and made completely whole. He could not comprehend that Jesus was calling people to embrace that future by giving out samples of what that would look like and then calling people to begin to live by the values of that age right now in the present.
John needed to change his categories and enter into the worldview of the new age and so did those standing there listening to Jesus. That was Jesus’ point in verses 24-28. What did they go out to see when they went into the wilderness? Jesus’ reference to a reed swayed by the wind could simply mean that they didn’t go to see someone who went along with the winds of public opinion but a more likely reference was to Herod Antipas, whose personal symbol that he had printed on coins was a reed. They didn’t go out to see just another reed, another man in fine clothes like Herod did they? No, they went out there to hear a prophet. But he was more than just a prophet. He was the one who would prepare the way for Jesus. If they went out there to hear something new from God, then they shouldn’t be surprised that they got much more than they bargained for. The new kingdom that they were getting simply far surpassed what they could expect under the old order of things. Jesus made this point clear by stressing that John was indeed more than a prophet, there was no one greater in the entire Old Testament than he as far as his vocation was concerned. Yet, even with all of that, Jesus makes the point that even the least in the kingdom of God is superior to John because he is of the old order. He would not live long enough to enter into the kingdom himself. The fact that the chief of the prophets would have less than anyone in the kingdom of God doesn’t speak to John’s deficiency but to the incredible access to God and privilege that those in Christ would have.
Luke adds the note onto Jesus’ exaltation of the new era that was dawning and the incredible grace that would be poured out to those in the kingdom by stressing that crowd that was gathered around, including even the reviled and lowly tax collectors knew that God’s way was right. But the leaders, the experts, and the Pharisees rejected it. They were too concerned with consolidating and keeping their own privilege and power in the present age and so would not accept John’s message of repentance and preparation for God’s new work. In rejecting John’s symbolic baptism, they would surely also reject true baptism into the life of Christ.
Jesus, as he often did, gave a descriptive example to show what that generation was like. The children’s song that he cited may have been a common folk song like a nursery rhyme or the like that would have been quite familiar to all of his listeners, although no one can say for certain where the song came from. The more important question, though, is what does it mean? This has been an oft debated and discussed topic through the years among biblical commentators and experts but the clue to the meaning of the little ditty is likely hinted at in the verses immediately following the lyrics in question. Jesus’ point was that many of the people, or at least those who considered themselves the religious leaders, were never satisfied. They were so beholden to their own expectations that they criticized and rejected whatever God sent. It was a classic case of the old saying, “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” John came “singing a dirge” about the wickedness of Israel and their need to repent before God judged the whole nation, but they rejected John’s serious and fiery message, claiming that he was demonic. So the message of condemnation didn’t work for the religious leaders but surely they would accept a more positive approach. Yet, Jesus came “playing the pipe” and they would not dance. He introduced the kingdom of God as a celebration and something that should be received with joy, singing, dancing, eating, and drinking. But that approach didn’t work with them either. The excuse became that he accepted sinners and those that should not be accepted and that he was acting like this was all a big party and thus demeaned the kingdom of God.
The fact is, “wisdom is proved right by all her children.” In other words, the discerning eye could see that these men weren’t going to accept anything other than their own will. John and Jesus’ message would be shown to be right in time. God would vindicate them and their message but the game of the religious leaders had been exposed. They were not going to accept God’s messengers regardless of what they said. They had decided that they would continue to follow their own blind guidance (Lk. 6:39).
Devotional Thought
Can you ever be like the religious leaders of this passage? Do you ever get so attached to how you want God to work that no matter what he does, you will reject it? It is so easy to pre-determine what you want God to do in your life and then sit back and miss the many things he sends into your life because it doesn’t match up with what you want. Are you refusing to dance to the pipe’s tune or cry at the dirge? Are you really open to God’s will?
Monday, March 15, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Luke 7:11-17 Commentary
Jesus Raises a Widow's Son
11 Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. 12 As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. 13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, "Don't cry."
14 Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, "Young man, I say to you, get up!" 15 The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
16 They were all filled with awe and praised God. "A great prophet has appeared among us," they said. "God has come to help his people." 17 This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
Dig Deeper
Not too long ago, my wife decided to buy me a new cell phone as a gift. I am appreciative for the gift but one problem has popped up since she gave it to me. It’s a great phone but I have trouble figuring it out. There are so many gadgets and new technological features that I just have trouble doing the simplest things on it. I am finally figuring out many of the features but in the first week that I had the phone I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to close this particular application that somehow got open. I spent over an hour trying to click on different things and move things around and I could not get that ridiculous application to close. Finally, after all that time, I got it closed but I wasn’t even sure what I had done. Imagine spending all that time and getting the desired result only to not really understand how you did it. Then my then six-year old son came into the room and heard me complaining that I got the thing closed but didn’t know how, which would be a problem if I ever got it open again, which I also didn’t know how to do that. My son, who to my knowledge had never seen a phone like that before, said “oh, let me see it dad, I’ll explain it to you.” I handed it to him, confidently knowing that he would be humbled by the overwhelming technological expertise needed to operate this space-aged item. Much to my chagrin, he grabbed the thing and in less than a minute had checked it out and was explaining to me how to both open and close the various applications.
It can be very frustrating when someone can figure out technology, put together a puzzle or read a book much faster or with much more ease than you ever could. It certainly demonstrates that they have talent or an ability that you simply don’t. In other situations, it can demonstrate that someone has an authority that you don’t have. The next time you’re at an airport, watch how much easier it is and how much quicker it is for a pilot to get from outside the airport and onto the plane than it is for you. Or think about how much easier it is for the President to get into the White House than it is for you. He simply has an authority that you don’t.
As we have seen already, Jesus seemed rather intent on representing Israel and at every turn showing that he is the true Israel. He has gone where God’s people in the past have failed and has succeeded in doing God’s will and being the true servant of God, the true Son of God. But he has gone beyond just reversing Israel’s failures. He also went to the great and memorable moments of Israel’s history, moments like the great healing miracles of Israel’s prophets of the past. Many of Jesus’ miracles, in fact, were intentionally mimicking the great miracles of those men of God but with an important twist. As we will see in this miracle account, it is very similar to one of the great miracles of the Old Testament but Jesus has an authority beyond any of the Old Testament prophets. So while there are many points of contact, and Luke is quite intent on making those echoes rather clear, Jesus performs this miracle with an ease, a power, and an authority that the prophets could never have even hoped to equal.
Just as the previous miracle brought to mind the healing of the leprous Naaman, this passage has seemingly obvious parallels with 1 Kings 17:7-24. As both stories begin, both Jesus (Lk. 7:12) and Elijah approach the town gate (1 Ki. 17:10). Both accounts deal with a grieving widow (Lk. 7:12; 1 Ki. 17:9, 17) and the death of an only son (Lk. 7:12; 1 Ki. 17:17). In both accounts, the son is brought back from the dead (Lk. 7:15; 1 Ki. 17:22). In each account, the risen son is given back to his mother, both physically and metaphorically (Lk. 7:15; 1 Ki. 17:23). And in both accounts the mother realizes that she has witnessed a great man of God (Lk. 7:16;1 Ki. 17:24). But as we shall see in a moment, there is one major difference between these two incidents (although there are many other minor details which vary as this miracle is an echo of Elijah’s miracle and not a recapitulation of it). Before we get to that, however, let’s enter into the scene that Luke has described.
As Jesus enters into this town, he was immediately struck by the sights, smells, and sounds of a funeral procession. It was the regular Jewish custom to bury a body on the day that the person died, partly due to the heat of their region and the smell that would quickly begin to emanate from a decaying body. The body would have been prepared, wrapped in a cloth tightly, placed on a board and carried through the town while the friends and family mourned and wailed loudly.
At the center of this crowd was a grieving widow who was surely stricken by the loss of her beloved son but the reality is that there were even more difficult times ahead for her. A widow was a common Old Testament picture of the most helpless person in society and the death of an only son as a sign of a truly crushing loss (Jer. 6:26; Amos 8:10; Zech. 12:10). A widow would find it very difficult to provide for herself and would have virtually no standing within the community. She would generally be at the mercy of the rest of the community. But even worse than that, this woman would be left alone with no children, with no protection, and the devastating reality that the family line had come to an end. This was a devastating event for this woman on virtually every level.
One thing we might notice, though, is missing from this account. Where is the faith? There is no faith mentioned on the part of this woman. No, Jesus seems much more moved by his own compassion than by any faith that this woman might have had. This is what it looks like when the radical love that Jesus taught in chapter 6 breaks into the real world. This is a combination of Jesus’ compassion, his love, and his unparalleled authority. Jesus’ heart went out to this woman and he comforts her, telling her to not cry. Jesus had said in Luke 6:21 that when the kingdom breaks into someone’s life, weeping is turned to laughter and that would truly be the case here.
As Jesus turned his attention to the dead boy, he reached up and touched the board on which he was being carried. This was an act that would have left him unclean for seven days according to Numbers 19:11 (simply touching the board on which the corpse laid was the same as touching the corpse itself according to the Jewish interpretation of the law). That touch, though, showed that Jesus was far more concerned with showing mercy to this woman and her son than with his own condition. It is a touching reminder to us that truly helping others and touching their lives generally requires that we get a little dirty and “unclean” ourselves. The last miracle-at-a-distance showed Jesus’ incredible authority but this moment of compassionate touch shows his overwhelming love and mercy.
Now for the major difference between this account and that of Elijah’s raising of the widow’s dead son. When Elijah raised the widow’s son, it took him a great deal of effort. Elijah cried out to God in distress and appealed to him in passionate prayer to do something mighty. He stretched his body out across the boy three times and again fervently appealed to God to raise the boy from the dead. It was the LORD himself who heard Elijah’s cries and answered his prayer, showing that Elijah was a man of God. But this is the major difference between Elijah and Jesus. We see none of that effort and pleading with Jesus. There is no fervent crying out to God, pleading with him to raise the boy. There is no stretching out over the boy. Jesus simply tells the young man, by his own authority, to get up. That’s it. There was no effort and no struggle needed. Jesus merely spoke and showed that he had authority even over death.
Who could possibly have authority over death itself but God alone? What the people there that day did not yet fully grasp is a point that Luke surely intended for his readers to catch. The people clearly caught the connections between Jesus’ healing and that of the prophets, though, and are quite ready to declare him a prophet. They were right inasmuch as they could comprehend but as Luke’s readers we already should start to be piecing together the clues that he was much more than just another prophet. This was what it looked like when the God of Israel fulfilled his promises to return. The God of the Exodus who had once dwelt directly with his people finally had returned to come and help his people. Thus, Jesus was a great prophet, but simply giving him the status of prophet was not enough. No prophet had the authority to simply speak on his own behalf and move the power of death to the side.
Before we close the book on this passage, though, there are perhaps two other things that we should take a moment to consider. The first thing is that surely this incident echoed back to the miracle of Elijah (as well as Elisha’s miracle of 2 Kings 4), but there are also echoes that point clearly forward to a time when Jesus’ own widowed mother will mourn at the site of his death and his body wrapped in cloth. And just as this man was brought back out of death, so Jesus would not be bound by the chains of death. But just as his miracles were far greater than those that any man of God could enact, so would his resurrection be beyond any resuscitation from the dead. Jesus would not walk backwards out of death, only to die again one day. He would storm into death itself and come out the other side, transformed, glorified, the same yet somehow different. This is only an echo of that, though, we will have to wait to get to the real thing.
The second thing that we should consider is how this passage plays out in our own lives. You may not be grieving the loss of a child right now but what area in your life needs that compassionate and healing touch of Jesus? What situation do you fear or dread that can only be healed by the touch of the Master? Whatever it may be, rest assured that though his healing touch may not come the way you would like, but God’s healing presence will come and carry you through if you only let him.
Devotional Thought
When Jesus saw this woman he took compassion on her and made himself unclean in order to reach into her life and assist her. Are you willing to do that? How can you reach into someone else’s life right now and touch them with compassion even if it means getting a little messy yourself?
11 Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. 12 As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. 13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, "Don't cry."
14 Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, "Young man, I say to you, get up!" 15 The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
16 They were all filled with awe and praised God. "A great prophet has appeared among us," they said. "God has come to help his people." 17 This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
Dig Deeper
Not too long ago, my wife decided to buy me a new cell phone as a gift. I am appreciative for the gift but one problem has popped up since she gave it to me. It’s a great phone but I have trouble figuring it out. There are so many gadgets and new technological features that I just have trouble doing the simplest things on it. I am finally figuring out many of the features but in the first week that I had the phone I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to close this particular application that somehow got open. I spent over an hour trying to click on different things and move things around and I could not get that ridiculous application to close. Finally, after all that time, I got it closed but I wasn’t even sure what I had done. Imagine spending all that time and getting the desired result only to not really understand how you did it. Then my then six-year old son came into the room and heard me complaining that I got the thing closed but didn’t know how, which would be a problem if I ever got it open again, which I also didn’t know how to do that. My son, who to my knowledge had never seen a phone like that before, said “oh, let me see it dad, I’ll explain it to you.” I handed it to him, confidently knowing that he would be humbled by the overwhelming technological expertise needed to operate this space-aged item. Much to my chagrin, he grabbed the thing and in less than a minute had checked it out and was explaining to me how to both open and close the various applications.
It can be very frustrating when someone can figure out technology, put together a puzzle or read a book much faster or with much more ease than you ever could. It certainly demonstrates that they have talent or an ability that you simply don’t. In other situations, it can demonstrate that someone has an authority that you don’t have. The next time you’re at an airport, watch how much easier it is and how much quicker it is for a pilot to get from outside the airport and onto the plane than it is for you. Or think about how much easier it is for the President to get into the White House than it is for you. He simply has an authority that you don’t.
As we have seen already, Jesus seemed rather intent on representing Israel and at every turn showing that he is the true Israel. He has gone where God’s people in the past have failed and has succeeded in doing God’s will and being the true servant of God, the true Son of God. But he has gone beyond just reversing Israel’s failures. He also went to the great and memorable moments of Israel’s history, moments like the great healing miracles of Israel’s prophets of the past. Many of Jesus’ miracles, in fact, were intentionally mimicking the great miracles of those men of God but with an important twist. As we will see in this miracle account, it is very similar to one of the great miracles of the Old Testament but Jesus has an authority beyond any of the Old Testament prophets. So while there are many points of contact, and Luke is quite intent on making those echoes rather clear, Jesus performs this miracle with an ease, a power, and an authority that the prophets could never have even hoped to equal.
Just as the previous miracle brought to mind the healing of the leprous Naaman, this passage has seemingly obvious parallels with 1 Kings 17:7-24. As both stories begin, both Jesus (Lk. 7:12) and Elijah approach the town gate (1 Ki. 17:10). Both accounts deal with a grieving widow (Lk. 7:12; 1 Ki. 17:9, 17) and the death of an only son (Lk. 7:12; 1 Ki. 17:17). In both accounts, the son is brought back from the dead (Lk. 7:15; 1 Ki. 17:22). In each account, the risen son is given back to his mother, both physically and metaphorically (Lk. 7:15; 1 Ki. 17:23). And in both accounts the mother realizes that she has witnessed a great man of God (Lk. 7:16;1 Ki. 17:24). But as we shall see in a moment, there is one major difference between these two incidents (although there are many other minor details which vary as this miracle is an echo of Elijah’s miracle and not a recapitulation of it). Before we get to that, however, let’s enter into the scene that Luke has described.
As Jesus enters into this town, he was immediately struck by the sights, smells, and sounds of a funeral procession. It was the regular Jewish custom to bury a body on the day that the person died, partly due to the heat of their region and the smell that would quickly begin to emanate from a decaying body. The body would have been prepared, wrapped in a cloth tightly, placed on a board and carried through the town while the friends and family mourned and wailed loudly.
At the center of this crowd was a grieving widow who was surely stricken by the loss of her beloved son but the reality is that there were even more difficult times ahead for her. A widow was a common Old Testament picture of the most helpless person in society and the death of an only son as a sign of a truly crushing loss (Jer. 6:26; Amos 8:10; Zech. 12:10). A widow would find it very difficult to provide for herself and would have virtually no standing within the community. She would generally be at the mercy of the rest of the community. But even worse than that, this woman would be left alone with no children, with no protection, and the devastating reality that the family line had come to an end. This was a devastating event for this woman on virtually every level.
One thing we might notice, though, is missing from this account. Where is the faith? There is no faith mentioned on the part of this woman. No, Jesus seems much more moved by his own compassion than by any faith that this woman might have had. This is what it looks like when the radical love that Jesus taught in chapter 6 breaks into the real world. This is a combination of Jesus’ compassion, his love, and his unparalleled authority. Jesus’ heart went out to this woman and he comforts her, telling her to not cry. Jesus had said in Luke 6:21 that when the kingdom breaks into someone’s life, weeping is turned to laughter and that would truly be the case here.
As Jesus turned his attention to the dead boy, he reached up and touched the board on which he was being carried. This was an act that would have left him unclean for seven days according to Numbers 19:11 (simply touching the board on which the corpse laid was the same as touching the corpse itself according to the Jewish interpretation of the law). That touch, though, showed that Jesus was far more concerned with showing mercy to this woman and her son than with his own condition. It is a touching reminder to us that truly helping others and touching their lives generally requires that we get a little dirty and “unclean” ourselves. The last miracle-at-a-distance showed Jesus’ incredible authority but this moment of compassionate touch shows his overwhelming love and mercy.
Now for the major difference between this account and that of Elijah’s raising of the widow’s dead son. When Elijah raised the widow’s son, it took him a great deal of effort. Elijah cried out to God in distress and appealed to him in passionate prayer to do something mighty. He stretched his body out across the boy three times and again fervently appealed to God to raise the boy from the dead. It was the LORD himself who heard Elijah’s cries and answered his prayer, showing that Elijah was a man of God. But this is the major difference between Elijah and Jesus. We see none of that effort and pleading with Jesus. There is no fervent crying out to God, pleading with him to raise the boy. There is no stretching out over the boy. Jesus simply tells the young man, by his own authority, to get up. That’s it. There was no effort and no struggle needed. Jesus merely spoke and showed that he had authority even over death.
Who could possibly have authority over death itself but God alone? What the people there that day did not yet fully grasp is a point that Luke surely intended for his readers to catch. The people clearly caught the connections between Jesus’ healing and that of the prophets, though, and are quite ready to declare him a prophet. They were right inasmuch as they could comprehend but as Luke’s readers we already should start to be piecing together the clues that he was much more than just another prophet. This was what it looked like when the God of Israel fulfilled his promises to return. The God of the Exodus who had once dwelt directly with his people finally had returned to come and help his people. Thus, Jesus was a great prophet, but simply giving him the status of prophet was not enough. No prophet had the authority to simply speak on his own behalf and move the power of death to the side.
Before we close the book on this passage, though, there are perhaps two other things that we should take a moment to consider. The first thing is that surely this incident echoed back to the miracle of Elijah (as well as Elisha’s miracle of 2 Kings 4), but there are also echoes that point clearly forward to a time when Jesus’ own widowed mother will mourn at the site of his death and his body wrapped in cloth. And just as this man was brought back out of death, so Jesus would not be bound by the chains of death. But just as his miracles were far greater than those that any man of God could enact, so would his resurrection be beyond any resuscitation from the dead. Jesus would not walk backwards out of death, only to die again one day. He would storm into death itself and come out the other side, transformed, glorified, the same yet somehow different. This is only an echo of that, though, we will have to wait to get to the real thing.
The second thing that we should consider is how this passage plays out in our own lives. You may not be grieving the loss of a child right now but what area in your life needs that compassionate and healing touch of Jesus? What situation do you fear or dread that can only be healed by the touch of the Master? Whatever it may be, rest assured that though his healing touch may not come the way you would like, but God’s healing presence will come and carry you through if you only let him.
Devotional Thought
When Jesus saw this woman he took compassion on her and made himself unclean in order to reach into her life and assist her. Are you willing to do that? How can you reach into someone else’s life right now and touch them with compassion even if it means getting a little messy yourself?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Luke 7:1-10 Commentary
The Faith of the Centurion
1 When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3 The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, 5 because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." 6 So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."
9 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." 10 Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.
Dig Deeper
A few years back we had some friends ask if they could take our kids with them and their children for a day of fun at a museum and a few other places. We thought that that sounded like a great idea and quickly agreed. We reminded our children about what proper behavior would look like as they spent the day with another family and sent them on their way. As they all returned they recounted what a wonderful day they had but our friends were a little disturbed about something. As I asked them how our kids behaved they said that this was what they were worried about. “Were our kids a problem,” I asked. It wasn’t our kids, my friend responded, but their own. In fact they said that our kids were extremely well behaved all day and that they had no problems whatsoever with our kids. It was their own kids, they said, who were rude and disrespectful all day and who seemed to have a real problem with their authority. They wondered what they were doing so wrong if other kids were so respectful of their authority while their own children seemed to not have nearly the same respect. I assured them, that although they surely had some things that they needed to work on with their kids, that this was not an unusual phenomenon. For many different reasons, many parents report the disturbing phenomenon of having offspring that seem to behave better for other people than for them. It’s just one of those frustrating truisms of parenting, but oftentimes your kids will show more respect for the authority of others than for you on a consistent basis.
Throughout the first six chapters of Luke, our author has done a masterful job of weaving together several important themes including Jesus’ authority, the lack of respect and acceptance that he would receive from his own people, and the hints that his ministry would be inclusive of all people, including Gentiles. These themes all intersect here in this one encounter involving Jesus and a centurion. The big focus in this story is not the healing of the servant but rather the faith that this Gentile demonstrated. The perhaps odd thing about this account is that the faith that this man had and the respect for Jesus’ authority, far out-stripped any such respect shown by any of the Jews that Jesus had encountered to this point. And there you have it. It’s that same frustrating reality that so many parents have faced. Jesus is about to experience an outsider who seems to get the concept of true faith in his authority far more than any of his own people. In fact, that is one of the important points of this whole scene.
Luke has been dropping hints from the very beginning that what God is doing through the Messiah will be the fulfillment of the one family that he promised Abraham so long ago. This would be the one family, the true people of God, who would have their sins dealt with and through whom the whole world would have the possibility of being blessed. The strange thing was that God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of one family but also of many nations. What Luke has only hinted at so far and what he will continue to point to in Jesus’ actions in accounts like this one, he will make clear in his follow up to the Gospel of Luke, the book of Acts. The good news of the coming Messiah will not be just for the Jewish people but will truly be for all nations. All people of all nations would be able to enter into this one family of faith that had been promised to Abraham.
It seems quite probable that this event in Jesus’ life brought some clear allusions of the account of Naaman in 2 Kings 5 and Luke seems equally intent on drawing that story to mind. Luke has already referred to the account of Naaman in Luke 4:27 and the parallels between the two accounts are striking. Both Naaman and the centurion are well-respected Gentile officers (2 Ki. 5:1; Luke 7:2, 4-5). In both accounts, an intercession is made by Jews (2 Ki. 5:2-3; Luke 7:3-5). The centurion does not actually meet Jesus before the healing and neither did Naaman meet Elisha (Luke 7:6-9; 2 Ki. 5:5-10). And in both accounts, the healing takes place at a distance from the healer (Luke 7:10; 2 Ki. 5:14).
The main point of this story, though, is not the healing of the centurion. Luke has included this healing because he wants to highlight the faith of the centurion. That is the centerpiece of this story. This is the intersection of authority and faith. Luke has been busy demonstrating the unquestioned and unrivaled authority of Jesus, the Messiah, but that authority must be met with faith at the human level or it will not flow into someone’s life. Jesus does have all authority, but in keeping with the very nature of God, he will not force that authority into anyone’s life and he never overwhelmed anyone with his authority. Jesus’ authority was always subtle and deniable but quite open to anyone who would respond to his authority with faith. He continues to work that way with us. Jesus’ authority in our lives is always quiet, subtle, and prone to being ignored or drowned out, but it is always there if we just respond in faith.
The situation was that this Roman centurion was living in the Capernaum area. One of his valued servants had become extremely ill with an unnamed illness and is on the verge of death. We are not told what this centurion knew about Jesus and how he came to have such respect for him but this was a soldier. This was a man who understood what a person who had true authority looked like. Perhaps he had seen Jesus perform other miracles and knew from the way Jesus carried himself, that he was something quite different from ordinary men. Military men tend to be no nonsense guys who appreciate others who operate within the proper authority structure and who get things done. Jesus was the embodiment of proper authority and this Gentile seemed to know it.
But there is, it seems, another layer to this story about simple authority and faith. The culture of the Roman Empire was a system of patronage and honor. Social relationships that were based on patronage and putting someone else in your obligation were an extremely common form of controlling the actions of someone else. This centurion had been quite respectful to the Jewish culture around him and he had served as the patron to build the local synagogue which would have fostered local peace but also would have put the Jewish leaders in his debt. We simply don’t know whether this man had genuine respect for the Jews and their faith or whether he was simply extremely shrewd, but it makes little difference. Either way, they were in his debt in the Roman world.
The first group from the centurion that approached Jesus was comprised of the Jewish leaders. They did not approach Jesus and appeal to this man’s need or their genuine affection for him. They, instead, appealed to the concepts of insiders and outsiders, obligation and honor. This man was an outsider but he had put the Jews in his debt by building the synagogue for them. Thus, as a Jew, Jesus should feel obligated to answer this man’s patronage. The Jewish leaders demonstrated, by their own words, that they were beholden to this system of Rome rather than taking actions consistent with God’s true family.
We might ask, then, why Jesus would continue towards the man’s house. The reason was a demonstration of his words from chapter six. This kingdom is about loving enemies not just putting them in your debt. It is about turning enemies into friends by loving them. Jesus has outlined a new worldview for his family and he will now show what it looks like to live that out despite the attempt to manipulate him.
The fact that the centurion sent friends as Jesus got closer rather than sending the Jewish leaders a second time might indicate that he was not happy about them trying to put Jesus into his debt. He apparently did not want to do that and so he sends friends who appeal to him on a far more respectful level. He recognized Jesus’ authority and believed in it without question. In fact, he attempted to show the ultimate deference and respect for his authority by urging Jesus to not come to the house of a Gentile and make himself unclean. He knew that Jesus had such authority anyway, that coming any closer was not necessary. He had an authority over nature and illness that the centurion could not explain but could certainly recognize and respect. He knew well what it meant to give an order to a man and have it obeyed without question on nothing more than that man’s fear and respect of his authority. He knew that Jesus had that kind of authority and could dispel this illness at nothing more than a command from a distance.
What Luke has shown his readers is a snapshot of the Jewish elders who were captive to a worldly system that was being rendered null by the coming kingdom of God. It was not they, but the Gentile who saw and recognized Jesus’ authority and it was he who abandoned that system of obligation and patronage, and appealed to Jesus on nothing more than the fact that he had faith in Jesus’ authority. That’s all he needed. That’s all we need to have for Jesus’ authority manifest itself in our life.
This account brings together many of Luke’s themes to this point. Jesus’ identity was clear to this man and he would , just as Jesus urged in chapter 6, respond to that identity and his authority by trusting in Jesus. This Gentile amazed Jesus which was quite a switch for a man who usually had that effect on others. He had more sensitivity, perception, and pure faith in Jesus than anyone Jesus had encountered in Israel thus far, and his faith was not misplaced. At the moment that this man’s faith connected with Jesus’ authority, his servant was healed. At some level, perhaps even underneath his obedience to Jesus’ authority, this man seemed to sense that the God of Israel and all of his authority was somehow present in this one man.
Think of the faith of this centurion, though. Do you have this kind of faith? Is your faith in Jesus so strong that you are willing to go against the currents of your culture and live by nothing more than that faith? Do your prayers reflect the kind of faith that this man showed where you ask boldly and know that the answer might be no, but that Jesus has complete authority to answer any prayer you might offer up? If this centurion had that kind of faith, why can’t we?
Devotional Thought
Do you have the kind of faith that would amaze Jesus? Do you obey Jesus’ word for no other reason than your faith in his authority? Where is God calling you in your life right now to increase your faith and submit to his authority?
1 When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3 The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, 5 because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." 6 So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."
9 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." 10 Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.
Dig Deeper
A few years back we had some friends ask if they could take our kids with them and their children for a day of fun at a museum and a few other places. We thought that that sounded like a great idea and quickly agreed. We reminded our children about what proper behavior would look like as they spent the day with another family and sent them on their way. As they all returned they recounted what a wonderful day they had but our friends were a little disturbed about something. As I asked them how our kids behaved they said that this was what they were worried about. “Were our kids a problem,” I asked. It wasn’t our kids, my friend responded, but their own. In fact they said that our kids were extremely well behaved all day and that they had no problems whatsoever with our kids. It was their own kids, they said, who were rude and disrespectful all day and who seemed to have a real problem with their authority. They wondered what they were doing so wrong if other kids were so respectful of their authority while their own children seemed to not have nearly the same respect. I assured them, that although they surely had some things that they needed to work on with their kids, that this was not an unusual phenomenon. For many different reasons, many parents report the disturbing phenomenon of having offspring that seem to behave better for other people than for them. It’s just one of those frustrating truisms of parenting, but oftentimes your kids will show more respect for the authority of others than for you on a consistent basis.
Throughout the first six chapters of Luke, our author has done a masterful job of weaving together several important themes including Jesus’ authority, the lack of respect and acceptance that he would receive from his own people, and the hints that his ministry would be inclusive of all people, including Gentiles. These themes all intersect here in this one encounter involving Jesus and a centurion. The big focus in this story is not the healing of the servant but rather the faith that this Gentile demonstrated. The perhaps odd thing about this account is that the faith that this man had and the respect for Jesus’ authority, far out-stripped any such respect shown by any of the Jews that Jesus had encountered to this point. And there you have it. It’s that same frustrating reality that so many parents have faced. Jesus is about to experience an outsider who seems to get the concept of true faith in his authority far more than any of his own people. In fact, that is one of the important points of this whole scene.
Luke has been dropping hints from the very beginning that what God is doing through the Messiah will be the fulfillment of the one family that he promised Abraham so long ago. This would be the one family, the true people of God, who would have their sins dealt with and through whom the whole world would have the possibility of being blessed. The strange thing was that God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of one family but also of many nations. What Luke has only hinted at so far and what he will continue to point to in Jesus’ actions in accounts like this one, he will make clear in his follow up to the Gospel of Luke, the book of Acts. The good news of the coming Messiah will not be just for the Jewish people but will truly be for all nations. All people of all nations would be able to enter into this one family of faith that had been promised to Abraham.
It seems quite probable that this event in Jesus’ life brought some clear allusions of the account of Naaman in 2 Kings 5 and Luke seems equally intent on drawing that story to mind. Luke has already referred to the account of Naaman in Luke 4:27 and the parallels between the two accounts are striking. Both Naaman and the centurion are well-respected Gentile officers (2 Ki. 5:1; Luke 7:2, 4-5). In both accounts, an intercession is made by Jews (2 Ki. 5:2-3; Luke 7:3-5). The centurion does not actually meet Jesus before the healing and neither did Naaman meet Elisha (Luke 7:6-9; 2 Ki. 5:5-10). And in both accounts, the healing takes place at a distance from the healer (Luke 7:10; 2 Ki. 5:14).
The main point of this story, though, is not the healing of the centurion. Luke has included this healing because he wants to highlight the faith of the centurion. That is the centerpiece of this story. This is the intersection of authority and faith. Luke has been busy demonstrating the unquestioned and unrivaled authority of Jesus, the Messiah, but that authority must be met with faith at the human level or it will not flow into someone’s life. Jesus does have all authority, but in keeping with the very nature of God, he will not force that authority into anyone’s life and he never overwhelmed anyone with his authority. Jesus’ authority was always subtle and deniable but quite open to anyone who would respond to his authority with faith. He continues to work that way with us. Jesus’ authority in our lives is always quiet, subtle, and prone to being ignored or drowned out, but it is always there if we just respond in faith.
The situation was that this Roman centurion was living in the Capernaum area. One of his valued servants had become extremely ill with an unnamed illness and is on the verge of death. We are not told what this centurion knew about Jesus and how he came to have such respect for him but this was a soldier. This was a man who understood what a person who had true authority looked like. Perhaps he had seen Jesus perform other miracles and knew from the way Jesus carried himself, that he was something quite different from ordinary men. Military men tend to be no nonsense guys who appreciate others who operate within the proper authority structure and who get things done. Jesus was the embodiment of proper authority and this Gentile seemed to know it.
But there is, it seems, another layer to this story about simple authority and faith. The culture of the Roman Empire was a system of patronage and honor. Social relationships that were based on patronage and putting someone else in your obligation were an extremely common form of controlling the actions of someone else. This centurion had been quite respectful to the Jewish culture around him and he had served as the patron to build the local synagogue which would have fostered local peace but also would have put the Jewish leaders in his debt. We simply don’t know whether this man had genuine respect for the Jews and their faith or whether he was simply extremely shrewd, but it makes little difference. Either way, they were in his debt in the Roman world.
The first group from the centurion that approached Jesus was comprised of the Jewish leaders. They did not approach Jesus and appeal to this man’s need or their genuine affection for him. They, instead, appealed to the concepts of insiders and outsiders, obligation and honor. This man was an outsider but he had put the Jews in his debt by building the synagogue for them. Thus, as a Jew, Jesus should feel obligated to answer this man’s patronage. The Jewish leaders demonstrated, by their own words, that they were beholden to this system of Rome rather than taking actions consistent with God’s true family.
We might ask, then, why Jesus would continue towards the man’s house. The reason was a demonstration of his words from chapter six. This kingdom is about loving enemies not just putting them in your debt. It is about turning enemies into friends by loving them. Jesus has outlined a new worldview for his family and he will now show what it looks like to live that out despite the attempt to manipulate him.
The fact that the centurion sent friends as Jesus got closer rather than sending the Jewish leaders a second time might indicate that he was not happy about them trying to put Jesus into his debt. He apparently did not want to do that and so he sends friends who appeal to him on a far more respectful level. He recognized Jesus’ authority and believed in it without question. In fact, he attempted to show the ultimate deference and respect for his authority by urging Jesus to not come to the house of a Gentile and make himself unclean. He knew that Jesus had such authority anyway, that coming any closer was not necessary. He had an authority over nature and illness that the centurion could not explain but could certainly recognize and respect. He knew well what it meant to give an order to a man and have it obeyed without question on nothing more than that man’s fear and respect of his authority. He knew that Jesus had that kind of authority and could dispel this illness at nothing more than a command from a distance.
What Luke has shown his readers is a snapshot of the Jewish elders who were captive to a worldly system that was being rendered null by the coming kingdom of God. It was not they, but the Gentile who saw and recognized Jesus’ authority and it was he who abandoned that system of obligation and patronage, and appealed to Jesus on nothing more than the fact that he had faith in Jesus’ authority. That’s all he needed. That’s all we need to have for Jesus’ authority manifest itself in our life.
This account brings together many of Luke’s themes to this point. Jesus’ identity was clear to this man and he would , just as Jesus urged in chapter 6, respond to that identity and his authority by trusting in Jesus. This Gentile amazed Jesus which was quite a switch for a man who usually had that effect on others. He had more sensitivity, perception, and pure faith in Jesus than anyone Jesus had encountered in Israel thus far, and his faith was not misplaced. At the moment that this man’s faith connected with Jesus’ authority, his servant was healed. At some level, perhaps even underneath his obedience to Jesus’ authority, this man seemed to sense that the God of Israel and all of his authority was somehow present in this one man.
Think of the faith of this centurion, though. Do you have this kind of faith? Is your faith in Jesus so strong that you are willing to go against the currents of your culture and live by nothing more than that faith? Do your prayers reflect the kind of faith that this man showed where you ask boldly and know that the answer might be no, but that Jesus has complete authority to answer any prayer you might offer up? If this centurion had that kind of faith, why can’t we?
Devotional Thought
Do you have the kind of faith that would amaze Jesus? Do you obey Jesus’ word for no other reason than your faith in his authority? Where is God calling you in your life right now to increase your faith and submit to his authority?
Monday, March 08, 2010
Luke 6:39-49 Commentary
39 He also told them this parable: "Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 Students are not above their teacher, but all who are fully trained will be like their teacher.
41 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 42 How can you say, 'Friend, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person's eye.
A Tree and Its Fruit
43 "No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44 Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. 45 Good people bring good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and evil people bring evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
The Wise and Foolish Builders
46 "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? 47 As for those who come to me and hear my words and put them into practice, I will show you what they are like. 48 They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. 49 But those who hear my words and do not put them into practice are like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete."
Dig Deeper
It’s easy to sit and listen to a great speaker and get inspired by them. Think of how many times in your life you’ve gone to hear a motivational speaker or a good preacher or even just an emotional speech in a movie and you got inspired. You can feel the swell of emotion and desire to make a difference well up in you and you just want to go and act heroically on what you heard. Most of us, though, tend to let that initial wave of desire to act wane a bit. We begin to examine the specifics of doing something and the reality begins to set in. So, we begin to think more and talk more about it. In fact, we can often begin to talk about something so much and get in so much detail about it that we don’t actually take action. I recall being a teacher and spending meeting after meeting after meeting talking about some new idea or program but we got so bogged down in thinking about it and working out every little imaginable detail that we seemingly never acted on anything, and eventually the ideas would just fade into the background. At some point we have to take action. At some point, we cannot sit by any longer as idle listeners and evaluate the pros and cons of taking action. There is certainly a time and place to determine the cost of taking action but at some point, we need to act on what we’ve heard. We need, in short, to make a decision.
In many senses, this is what Jesus is saying in this passage to his listeners. They have seen the miracles and they have listened to his shocking new teaching and what the kingdom of God was going to be about in this new era. Some obviously immediately rejected it and some quickly embraced Jesus’ teaching and decided to follow him. But we get the sense that the majority of his listeners that day were like us. They sat and listened to Jesus and many, no doubt, got excited about the possibilities of this strange but exhilarating new humanity to which he was calling people. But they had to make a decision. They had to decide who they were going to follow. Would it be the Pharisees and the teachers of the law or would it be Jesus? At some point they needed to stop listening and getting vaguely inspired and decide which way of life they were going to go after and who they were going to follow. They just needed to make a decision.
Luke gives us a barrage of four separate sayings from Jesus that all have to do with, in one way or another, who his listeners are going to follow. Whose version of the kingdom of God are they going to embrace? We tend to read these sayings in a very serious and somber tone, and when we do so, we lose something of the original intent. There is a serious point behind each of these sayings, but they were meant to be a little bit humorous. Sometimes well-placed humor can challenge us far more than something said seriously. Jesus had an incredible way of teaching by using local humor and everyday things to get across very important points.
His first little saying concerning the blind sets the tone and topic for the other three sayings. The question is clear. What happens when you are blind and don’t know where you’re going but choose to follow another blind person? How is that going to work out for you? Do you really want to follow another person that is simply groping along, trying to find their way or do you want to follow someone who can see and who knows where they are going? A student is not above his teacher, so if the teacher is blind and about to go in a ditch, where does that leave the student? It was typical in Jewish literature to metaphorically use “blind” to refer to someone who lacked spiritual insight and it would seem that the Pharisees and teachers of the law are Jesus’ main target here. There is a bit of suspense in verse 39-40 that Luke leaves hanging. The crowd has listened to Jesus up to this point and now what will their response be? Which teacher will they follow? Will they hear and take Jesus’ message to heart by acting on it or not? If one becomes like their teacher, how will they become like their teacher? Jesus’ unstated but obvious point was that there is only one teacher that can truly see and who should be followed.
The question was did they want to follow a teacher who was truly showing them another way to live, God’s fresh solution to the problems of a world entangled in sin, or did they want to follow hypocritical teachers who did little more than to find fault with everyone around them and blame them as the sinners who were the cause of the problems? He illustrated this point with the ridiculous example of someone examining someone else’s life so closely that they see a speck of sawdust in their eye, all the while paying no attention to huge plank of wood hanging out of their own. It doesn’t take too much imagination to picture Jesus actually demonstrating this silly scenario by holding a large stick up to his eye which would have, no doubt, made the crowds chuckle at the spectacle while at the same time challenging them to think about the absurdity of such hypocrisy. The problem with the hypocritical sin sniffer that Jesus described was that their supposed devotion to God and personal piety lead them to censure the failings of others, but their behavior was not being determined by the kind of love and mercy that God really wants for his children. The heart and the action are inconsistent.
The brilliance of this example is that Jesus was not just pointing out the problem of teachers like the Pharisees but he was also challenging his listeners, and us who read his words today, to live by his standard. His challenge was to reject that kind of hypocrisy and follow him rather than the blind guides. Ultimately, though, we must realize that Jesus was criticizing hypocritical judgment not the act of lovingly helping another with their sin. His rebuke was against those who criticize and lose sleep over little tiny aspects of the law or their pet religious practices, and all the while ignore the main things like God’s love, mercy, and justice (see Matt. 23:23-24 for similar sentiment). This doesn’t mean that Jesus was calling for his followers to never challenge others on their sin. The ideal situation, said Jesus, was to remove the plank and then be able to help your brother remove the speck. He wanted the speck removed but not before the plank was dealt with.
So how could one know a blind teacher from one that could see? How could one recognize the teacher that did not have a plank hanging out of his own eye? Jesus said to check the fruit. In another example of exaggeratory humor he gave a picture of a fig coming from a thorn brush or a grape from briers. Everyone knew the silliness of such a suggestion. It just didn’t happen. One of the ways (although certainly not the sole way) to tell a good teacher from a bad one is to look at the outcome of their lives. Good people produce good words that come from a good heart.
Verse 46, then, is really the application of the fruit example that Jesus gave in verse 43-45, and a bridge to Jesus’ final illustration in verses 47-49. In the fruit example, Jesus warned of those who would have inherent inconsistency between their lives and what they said. Those who claim Jesus as “Lord” but then don’t obey are a clear example of that. Jesus wanted the crowd to embrace his vision of the kingdom and reject the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and he realized that a large part of doing that would be to truly embrace Jesus as Lord by embracing his radical worldview and the new family to which he was calling his people. To claim Jesus as “Lord” and then not really do what he said would be to follow the way of the blind guides who showed themselves to be blind in the fact that the fruit of their lives did not match up with their words. This is also an issue of authority. How can one call Jesus “Lord,” and give him authority in word, while keeping the real authority for ourselves by not living according to his authority?
The imagery for Jesus’ final illustration comes primarily from Ezekiel 13. In that passage, God promises that he will send the violent winds and waves to wipe out the flimsy walls of those false prophets who have spoken presumptively in God’s name. They will be wiped out, says Ezekiel. Jesus uses that imagery to make the point that those who build their lives on his teaching will not have those kinds of concerns. Following Jesus is the only way that one will be able to withstand the coming judgment of God. Any other foundation than the word of God revealed through the life of Jesus. The structure that is built on any other foundation will last for a while but eventually will not stand the judgment of God. This brings us to the importance of understanding the context of Ezekiel 13, the passage to which Jesus alludes. We often think of the flood in this illustration as being the troubles of life, but the fact is that there are other things one can build their “house” on which can withstand difficult times in life. But building on the foundation of Jesus is the only thing that can stand up to the flood of God’s righteous judgment. Following Jesus as our teacher certainly will help us through the winds and waves of life, but it is the only thing that will withstand the storm of God’s righteous judgment.
All of this calls us to make a decision and follow Jesus as well but each teaching has a very personal and practical application to our own lives. Are we following blind guides (including ourselves) or are we truly following Jesus and acting as though he is truly the Lord of our life in more than just word? Are we quick to point out the specks in the eyes of others while ignoring the planks in our own lives? Do we have fruit in our lives that betrays the vine from which we claim to come? Do we look good on the outside but have hearts that remain unchanged? Have we built without the true foundation? These are questions that we would all do well to spend some serious time considering.
Devotional Thought
Jesus points out the folly of calling Jesus “Lord” but then not really doing what he says. Do you see that folly play out in your life at times? In what area of your life do you most need to start doing what Jesus says and truly make him Lord rather than just calling him that?
41 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 42 How can you say, 'Friend, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person's eye.
A Tree and Its Fruit
43 "No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44 Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. 45 Good people bring good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and evil people bring evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
The Wise and Foolish Builders
46 "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? 47 As for those who come to me and hear my words and put them into practice, I will show you what they are like. 48 They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. 49 But those who hear my words and do not put them into practice are like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete."
Dig Deeper
It’s easy to sit and listen to a great speaker and get inspired by them. Think of how many times in your life you’ve gone to hear a motivational speaker or a good preacher or even just an emotional speech in a movie and you got inspired. You can feel the swell of emotion and desire to make a difference well up in you and you just want to go and act heroically on what you heard. Most of us, though, tend to let that initial wave of desire to act wane a bit. We begin to examine the specifics of doing something and the reality begins to set in. So, we begin to think more and talk more about it. In fact, we can often begin to talk about something so much and get in so much detail about it that we don’t actually take action. I recall being a teacher and spending meeting after meeting after meeting talking about some new idea or program but we got so bogged down in thinking about it and working out every little imaginable detail that we seemingly never acted on anything, and eventually the ideas would just fade into the background. At some point we have to take action. At some point, we cannot sit by any longer as idle listeners and evaluate the pros and cons of taking action. There is certainly a time and place to determine the cost of taking action but at some point, we need to act on what we’ve heard. We need, in short, to make a decision.
In many senses, this is what Jesus is saying in this passage to his listeners. They have seen the miracles and they have listened to his shocking new teaching and what the kingdom of God was going to be about in this new era. Some obviously immediately rejected it and some quickly embraced Jesus’ teaching and decided to follow him. But we get the sense that the majority of his listeners that day were like us. They sat and listened to Jesus and many, no doubt, got excited about the possibilities of this strange but exhilarating new humanity to which he was calling people. But they had to make a decision. They had to decide who they were going to follow. Would it be the Pharisees and the teachers of the law or would it be Jesus? At some point they needed to stop listening and getting vaguely inspired and decide which way of life they were going to go after and who they were going to follow. They just needed to make a decision.
Luke gives us a barrage of four separate sayings from Jesus that all have to do with, in one way or another, who his listeners are going to follow. Whose version of the kingdom of God are they going to embrace? We tend to read these sayings in a very serious and somber tone, and when we do so, we lose something of the original intent. There is a serious point behind each of these sayings, but they were meant to be a little bit humorous. Sometimes well-placed humor can challenge us far more than something said seriously. Jesus had an incredible way of teaching by using local humor and everyday things to get across very important points.
His first little saying concerning the blind sets the tone and topic for the other three sayings. The question is clear. What happens when you are blind and don’t know where you’re going but choose to follow another blind person? How is that going to work out for you? Do you really want to follow another person that is simply groping along, trying to find their way or do you want to follow someone who can see and who knows where they are going? A student is not above his teacher, so if the teacher is blind and about to go in a ditch, where does that leave the student? It was typical in Jewish literature to metaphorically use “blind” to refer to someone who lacked spiritual insight and it would seem that the Pharisees and teachers of the law are Jesus’ main target here. There is a bit of suspense in verse 39-40 that Luke leaves hanging. The crowd has listened to Jesus up to this point and now what will their response be? Which teacher will they follow? Will they hear and take Jesus’ message to heart by acting on it or not? If one becomes like their teacher, how will they become like their teacher? Jesus’ unstated but obvious point was that there is only one teacher that can truly see and who should be followed.
The question was did they want to follow a teacher who was truly showing them another way to live, God’s fresh solution to the problems of a world entangled in sin, or did they want to follow hypocritical teachers who did little more than to find fault with everyone around them and blame them as the sinners who were the cause of the problems? He illustrated this point with the ridiculous example of someone examining someone else’s life so closely that they see a speck of sawdust in their eye, all the while paying no attention to huge plank of wood hanging out of their own. It doesn’t take too much imagination to picture Jesus actually demonstrating this silly scenario by holding a large stick up to his eye which would have, no doubt, made the crowds chuckle at the spectacle while at the same time challenging them to think about the absurdity of such hypocrisy. The problem with the hypocritical sin sniffer that Jesus described was that their supposed devotion to God and personal piety lead them to censure the failings of others, but their behavior was not being determined by the kind of love and mercy that God really wants for his children. The heart and the action are inconsistent.
The brilliance of this example is that Jesus was not just pointing out the problem of teachers like the Pharisees but he was also challenging his listeners, and us who read his words today, to live by his standard. His challenge was to reject that kind of hypocrisy and follow him rather than the blind guides. Ultimately, though, we must realize that Jesus was criticizing hypocritical judgment not the act of lovingly helping another with their sin. His rebuke was against those who criticize and lose sleep over little tiny aspects of the law or their pet religious practices, and all the while ignore the main things like God’s love, mercy, and justice (see Matt. 23:23-24 for similar sentiment). This doesn’t mean that Jesus was calling for his followers to never challenge others on their sin. The ideal situation, said Jesus, was to remove the plank and then be able to help your brother remove the speck. He wanted the speck removed but not before the plank was dealt with.
So how could one know a blind teacher from one that could see? How could one recognize the teacher that did not have a plank hanging out of his own eye? Jesus said to check the fruit. In another example of exaggeratory humor he gave a picture of a fig coming from a thorn brush or a grape from briers. Everyone knew the silliness of such a suggestion. It just didn’t happen. One of the ways (although certainly not the sole way) to tell a good teacher from a bad one is to look at the outcome of their lives. Good people produce good words that come from a good heart.
Verse 46, then, is really the application of the fruit example that Jesus gave in verse 43-45, and a bridge to Jesus’ final illustration in verses 47-49. In the fruit example, Jesus warned of those who would have inherent inconsistency between their lives and what they said. Those who claim Jesus as “Lord” but then don’t obey are a clear example of that. Jesus wanted the crowd to embrace his vision of the kingdom and reject the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and he realized that a large part of doing that would be to truly embrace Jesus as Lord by embracing his radical worldview and the new family to which he was calling his people. To claim Jesus as “Lord” and then not really do what he said would be to follow the way of the blind guides who showed themselves to be blind in the fact that the fruit of their lives did not match up with their words. This is also an issue of authority. How can one call Jesus “Lord,” and give him authority in word, while keeping the real authority for ourselves by not living according to his authority?
The imagery for Jesus’ final illustration comes primarily from Ezekiel 13. In that passage, God promises that he will send the violent winds and waves to wipe out the flimsy walls of those false prophets who have spoken presumptively in God’s name. They will be wiped out, says Ezekiel. Jesus uses that imagery to make the point that those who build their lives on his teaching will not have those kinds of concerns. Following Jesus is the only way that one will be able to withstand the coming judgment of God. Any other foundation than the word of God revealed through the life of Jesus. The structure that is built on any other foundation will last for a while but eventually will not stand the judgment of God. This brings us to the importance of understanding the context of Ezekiel 13, the passage to which Jesus alludes. We often think of the flood in this illustration as being the troubles of life, but the fact is that there are other things one can build their “house” on which can withstand difficult times in life. But building on the foundation of Jesus is the only thing that can stand up to the flood of God’s righteous judgment. Following Jesus as our teacher certainly will help us through the winds and waves of life, but it is the only thing that will withstand the storm of God’s righteous judgment.
All of this calls us to make a decision and follow Jesus as well but each teaching has a very personal and practical application to our own lives. Are we following blind guides (including ourselves) or are we truly following Jesus and acting as though he is truly the Lord of our life in more than just word? Are we quick to point out the specks in the eyes of others while ignoring the planks in our own lives? Do we have fruit in our lives that betrays the vine from which we claim to come? Do we look good on the outside but have hearts that remain unchanged? Have we built without the true foundation? These are questions that we would all do well to spend some serious time considering.
Devotional Thought
Jesus points out the folly of calling Jesus “Lord” but then not really doing what he says. Do you see that folly play out in your life at times? In what area of your life do you most need to start doing what Jesus says and truly make him Lord rather than just calling him that?
Friday, March 05, 2010
Luke 6:27-38 Commentary
Love for Enemies
27 "But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Judging Others
37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Dig Deeper
A few years ago I watched a movie called “Space Cowboys” which was about a group of former astronauts that were well past their sixtieth birthday. They were going to go into space again and some officials in NASA were skeptical that they would be able to handle the rigors of space at their age. Before they would agree to send them, the men had to go through rigorous training and preparation to spend even a short time in space. No one will ever confuse that movie for a factual documentary but it did depict one thing quite accurately. When someone is going to go into space they have to prepare intensely for it. Vigorous training is necessary to prepare oneself to be able to function at a maximum level when in outer space. I watched a video recently on the training that real astronauts actually have to undergo in order to prepare themselves for time in space. It’s difficult to describe in the written word the many aspects of their training but suffice it to say, they get spun around a lot, they strength train, and they even have to learn how to move, walk, and eat in low gravity environments.
Imagine, though, if you knew that you were leaving in a year and were going to live in space for the rest of your life. Would you prepare yourself or just that you were ready when that time came? Of course, you would want to prepare yourself. You would spend great amounts of time learning to live in your new reality and environment. In fact, you would probably practice for your future life at every opportunity. Yet, much of the things that you do to prepare for such an event would seem quite crazy from an earthly perspective. In fact, if you were not going into space the vast majority of those things would make no sense to do at all. These training exercises only take on any significant meaning if the future prospect of going into space is a reality.
This is the way it is with the challenging and often demanding way of life to which Jesus called his disciples. Many people get off course and misunderstand Jesus’ teachings as some sort of new kind of law or rules that must be adhered to without thought. That’s to miss the whole point, however. Jesus’ teaching and principles, like those in this passage, are not rules but training principles. They are designed to give us rules-of-thumb through which we begin to train and transform who we are at a deeper level than most people ever consider going. We simply will not understand these sorts of guidelines, though, unless we comprehend that these are part of a training regime. His new family, said Jesus, are people that are rejecting wholesale the values of this age and choosing to live in the age to come, the resurrection age where we will live with our King forever. We would never think that an astronaut’s training program meant that he was earning his way into space, though. No, we understand the difference between earning your way and preparing for what is ahead. This way of life laid out by Jesus is preparation, training his people for the reality that we will live in when we are in God’s presence for eternity. And just like the astronaut training, it would make no sense if the future prospect of the resurrection age was not a reality.
At the heart of Jesus’ instructions on the new way of living that his people are to embrace is the radical kind of love that is God. It is the love that makes little sense if one demands to view the world from a viewpoint of what is “fair”. It is the type of love that takes the breathtaking stance of turning enemies into friends. It means living and loving the way that God loves. It means truly treating all other people the way that God treats people.
Jesus’ words in this passage concerning the way his people are to think about their enemies could hardly be more challenging. To put it simply, this is big-boy stuff. This is not the kind of thing that can be done half-heartedly or even out of simple obedience. Obedience is the starting point to come to Jesus but to truly follow him as disciples we must go beyond that. This is what Jesus meant when he said “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because servants do not know their master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn. 15:12-15). The point is that we know that the master’s business is to transform us into people that will be prepared for the age to come not to just create a bunch of people that can follow a few rules. We are to move beyond mere obedience and into being Jesus’ friends.
This means having the kind of love that only God can have and doing what seems crazy to the world. Jesus’ point in his examples in verses 28-31 are all examples of the principle given in verse 27: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” This type of love and generosity is absurd and even naive if we look at it from the values of this present age. It only makes sense when we recall that we are called to this type of mercy and generosity because this is what God is like and we are becoming like him so that we can dwell him forever. Many look at this ethic that Jesus lays out and think of it as weakness but it actually takes incredible strength to live like this.
Does this radical kind of love and mercy really have any effect, though? The life of Jesus demonstrates that it does. Jesus didn’t just call people to live like this and not demonstrate himself. When people would slap him, punch him, mock him, steal his clothes, and try to take everything from him, he responded in grace and mercy, even asking the Father for forgiveness for those who had persecuted him. As mentioned, the greatest effect of this kind of love is to transform enemies into friends. Nowhere is this seen more clearly in the Bible than in the life of Saul who would change his name to Paul following his conversion. He was the chief persecutor of the church and personally oversaw the stoning death of Stephen. As he lay dying, Stephen prayed “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” and surely God did not hold it against Saul as he was transformed by God in answer to Stephen’s prayer.
We should not think for a minute that this kind of living is easy. It is challenging especially because it is to be applied to enemies and not those who love you. In fact, says Jesus, loving those who love you doesn’t demonstrate all that much to the world because the world is familiar, at least in theory, with that kind of love. The world loves those who love them. The world lends and extends credit to those who can repay. Those kind of actions make sense. But quite frankly, Jesus doesn’t what the kind of people that make sense. He wants people that are committed to loving like He loves. He wants people who will love their enemies, curse those who bless them, and lend without any expectation of receiving reciprocity.
Let’s be honest with all of this. It doesn’t make sense and that’s the point. At least it’s not common sense from the values of this age. It does open up Christians to be taken advantage of. It does open us up to not being treated “fairly”. But that’s only from the vantage point of this age. Surely we are to balance this radical kind of love with Jesus’ reminder to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16) and not be dangerously naive but he does call us to a love that only makes sense from the vantage point of the age to come. These are actions that only make sense if we realize that we are not people who are going to live by the patterns of this age in eternity and increasingly want to shed ourselves of those patterns now. Jesus was calling his followers to be like those astronauts in training and begin to live, as much as possible in this age, according to the way that we will live in the age to come. It doesn’t make sense to share and love with abandon in this age but those will be the norms in the resurrection so our job is to begin to model that age for others and to begin to conform ourselves to those values and prepare ourselves for that time. This is what God’s family looks like. This is, in fact, what separates Christianity from all religions. There is no religion that calls people to live by these sort of non-sensical values.
What this all means is that the children take on the nature of the merciful Father and begin to live out that same mercy. Not only are we becoming like our Father in heaven but the truth is that we will be treated by God according to the values that we embrace. If we want to cling to the world’s ethic of what’s “fair,” then God will treat us “fairly,” which will not mean a pleasant time of judgment for any human. But if we cling to God’s mercy that he has shown us and pass that on to others, then we will stay in that place of mercy before God. Thus, if we want to not be judged by what we deserve, not be condemned the way our actions warrant, and to be forgiven lavishly then we must hold to those values in our own lives. The measure we want used for us is the one that we will use with others.
This all sounds good but the reality is that Jesus’ people haven’t done such a good job of consistently living by these values down through the years. We have, I fear, gone way too far in taming and applying logic to what Jesus said. It’s not that the truths of God’s kingdom have changed or weren’t meant to be followed. At some point Christians have to face that fact that we have watered down some of Jesus’ most challenging teachings. Perhaps when we get back to living by the radically futuristic values of the age to come will we really be able to have the kind of impact in the world that his first followers had.
Devotional Thought
What about this passage is most challenging to you? Do you look at this passage and long to live like that or does it make you feel like you have a pit in your stomach? What do you need to change right now to begin to live according to this kind of mercy and love?
27 "But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Judging Others
37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Dig Deeper
A few years ago I watched a movie called “Space Cowboys” which was about a group of former astronauts that were well past their sixtieth birthday. They were going to go into space again and some officials in NASA were skeptical that they would be able to handle the rigors of space at their age. Before they would agree to send them, the men had to go through rigorous training and preparation to spend even a short time in space. No one will ever confuse that movie for a factual documentary but it did depict one thing quite accurately. When someone is going to go into space they have to prepare intensely for it. Vigorous training is necessary to prepare oneself to be able to function at a maximum level when in outer space. I watched a video recently on the training that real astronauts actually have to undergo in order to prepare themselves for time in space. It’s difficult to describe in the written word the many aspects of their training but suffice it to say, they get spun around a lot, they strength train, and they even have to learn how to move, walk, and eat in low gravity environments.
Imagine, though, if you knew that you were leaving in a year and were going to live in space for the rest of your life. Would you prepare yourself or just that you were ready when that time came? Of course, you would want to prepare yourself. You would spend great amounts of time learning to live in your new reality and environment. In fact, you would probably practice for your future life at every opportunity. Yet, much of the things that you do to prepare for such an event would seem quite crazy from an earthly perspective. In fact, if you were not going into space the vast majority of those things would make no sense to do at all. These training exercises only take on any significant meaning if the future prospect of going into space is a reality.
This is the way it is with the challenging and often demanding way of life to which Jesus called his disciples. Many people get off course and misunderstand Jesus’ teachings as some sort of new kind of law or rules that must be adhered to without thought. That’s to miss the whole point, however. Jesus’ teaching and principles, like those in this passage, are not rules but training principles. They are designed to give us rules-of-thumb through which we begin to train and transform who we are at a deeper level than most people ever consider going. We simply will not understand these sorts of guidelines, though, unless we comprehend that these are part of a training regime. His new family, said Jesus, are people that are rejecting wholesale the values of this age and choosing to live in the age to come, the resurrection age where we will live with our King forever. We would never think that an astronaut’s training program meant that he was earning his way into space, though. No, we understand the difference between earning your way and preparing for what is ahead. This way of life laid out by Jesus is preparation, training his people for the reality that we will live in when we are in God’s presence for eternity. And just like the astronaut training, it would make no sense if the future prospect of the resurrection age was not a reality.
At the heart of Jesus’ instructions on the new way of living that his people are to embrace is the radical kind of love that is God. It is the love that makes little sense if one demands to view the world from a viewpoint of what is “fair”. It is the type of love that takes the breathtaking stance of turning enemies into friends. It means living and loving the way that God loves. It means truly treating all other people the way that God treats people.
Jesus’ words in this passage concerning the way his people are to think about their enemies could hardly be more challenging. To put it simply, this is big-boy stuff. This is not the kind of thing that can be done half-heartedly or even out of simple obedience. Obedience is the starting point to come to Jesus but to truly follow him as disciples we must go beyond that. This is what Jesus meant when he said “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because servants do not know their master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn. 15:12-15). The point is that we know that the master’s business is to transform us into people that will be prepared for the age to come not to just create a bunch of people that can follow a few rules. We are to move beyond mere obedience and into being Jesus’ friends.
This means having the kind of love that only God can have and doing what seems crazy to the world. Jesus’ point in his examples in verses 28-31 are all examples of the principle given in verse 27: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” This type of love and generosity is absurd and even naive if we look at it from the values of this present age. It only makes sense when we recall that we are called to this type of mercy and generosity because this is what God is like and we are becoming like him so that we can dwell him forever. Many look at this ethic that Jesus lays out and think of it as weakness but it actually takes incredible strength to live like this.
Does this radical kind of love and mercy really have any effect, though? The life of Jesus demonstrates that it does. Jesus didn’t just call people to live like this and not demonstrate himself. When people would slap him, punch him, mock him, steal his clothes, and try to take everything from him, he responded in grace and mercy, even asking the Father for forgiveness for those who had persecuted him. As mentioned, the greatest effect of this kind of love is to transform enemies into friends. Nowhere is this seen more clearly in the Bible than in the life of Saul who would change his name to Paul following his conversion. He was the chief persecutor of the church and personally oversaw the stoning death of Stephen. As he lay dying, Stephen prayed “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” and surely God did not hold it against Saul as he was transformed by God in answer to Stephen’s prayer.
We should not think for a minute that this kind of living is easy. It is challenging especially because it is to be applied to enemies and not those who love you. In fact, says Jesus, loving those who love you doesn’t demonstrate all that much to the world because the world is familiar, at least in theory, with that kind of love. The world loves those who love them. The world lends and extends credit to those who can repay. Those kind of actions make sense. But quite frankly, Jesus doesn’t what the kind of people that make sense. He wants people that are committed to loving like He loves. He wants people who will love their enemies, curse those who bless them, and lend without any expectation of receiving reciprocity.
Let’s be honest with all of this. It doesn’t make sense and that’s the point. At least it’s not common sense from the values of this age. It does open up Christians to be taken advantage of. It does open us up to not being treated “fairly”. But that’s only from the vantage point of this age. Surely we are to balance this radical kind of love with Jesus’ reminder to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16) and not be dangerously naive but he does call us to a love that only makes sense from the vantage point of the age to come. These are actions that only make sense if we realize that we are not people who are going to live by the patterns of this age in eternity and increasingly want to shed ourselves of those patterns now. Jesus was calling his followers to be like those astronauts in training and begin to live, as much as possible in this age, according to the way that we will live in the age to come. It doesn’t make sense to share and love with abandon in this age but those will be the norms in the resurrection so our job is to begin to model that age for others and to begin to conform ourselves to those values and prepare ourselves for that time. This is what God’s family looks like. This is, in fact, what separates Christianity from all religions. There is no religion that calls people to live by these sort of non-sensical values.
What this all means is that the children take on the nature of the merciful Father and begin to live out that same mercy. Not only are we becoming like our Father in heaven but the truth is that we will be treated by God according to the values that we embrace. If we want to cling to the world’s ethic of what’s “fair,” then God will treat us “fairly,” which will not mean a pleasant time of judgment for any human. But if we cling to God’s mercy that he has shown us and pass that on to others, then we will stay in that place of mercy before God. Thus, if we want to not be judged by what we deserve, not be condemned the way our actions warrant, and to be forgiven lavishly then we must hold to those values in our own lives. The measure we want used for us is the one that we will use with others.
This all sounds good but the reality is that Jesus’ people haven’t done such a good job of consistently living by these values down through the years. We have, I fear, gone way too far in taming and applying logic to what Jesus said. It’s not that the truths of God’s kingdom have changed or weren’t meant to be followed. At some point Christians have to face that fact that we have watered down some of Jesus’ most challenging teachings. Perhaps when we get back to living by the radically futuristic values of the age to come will we really be able to have the kind of impact in the world that his first followers had.
Devotional Thought
What about this passage is most challenging to you? Do you look at this passage and long to live like that or does it make you feel like you have a pit in your stomach? What do you need to change right now to begin to live according to this kind of mercy and love?
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Luke 6:12-26 Commentary
The Twelve Apostles
12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13 When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: 14 Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, 15 Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
Blessings and Woes
17 He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, 18 who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil [a] spirits were cured, 19 and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.
20 Looking at his disciples, he said:
"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.
23 "Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
24 "But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Dig Deeper
We have experienced a fair amount of upheaval in the last couple of years in American politics. There has been a seemingly increasing divide over the expectations, hope, and ideologies that people have and politics have gotten more contentious than they have been at least in my lifetime. Many people recently have completely lost faith in their representatives to do the right thing, regardless of their own political party or philosophy, or that of their representative. In the last year a unified movement of those who are discontent with the current direction of the American government and American politics has arisen. Those people call themselves the Tea Party movement (deriving their name from the American historical protest known as the Boston Tea Party which took place shortly before the American War for Independence). The primary unifying principles of these people, whether you agree with their beliefs or not, are that government needs to be answerable to the people and needs to be smaller.
Imagine, though, if suddenly one unifying figure rose out of the Tea Party movement and declared that a new era of government had come. Then that individual said that he was forming a group that would ensure that this new era would be built around a group of himself and twelve other individuals that would travel around together and take their new agenda to the people all around the country. It wouldn’t be possible for these thirteen individuals to enumerate every single specific item that they were going to expect in government but they would have a few cardinal rules of thumb. A few things that they supported like smaller government, tax cuts, and balanced budgets, and a few things that they would stand opposed to in all situations like tax hikes, socialistic programs, and corruption. When groups do things like that, one of the clear markers you can use to judge them is by who their enemies become. You can tell a lot about a person if they have the right enemies. A group like that would likely see it as a badge of honor if they were persecuted by the big mainstream media and those who wanted government to continue to get bigger and more powerful.
It’s important, though, to notice one particular detail from the previous imaginary scenario. A group that was talking about a revolution in governmental practices, reducing the power of the government, and getting back to the way things used to be, who declared thirteen people to be the leaders of this movement, would be making an obvious American statement wouldn’t they? Why thirteen? That would be an obvious appeal to the thirteen founding colonies of the United States and would be making a clear statement about the values and beliefs of the movement.
These are exactly the sorts of things that Luke is describing here about Jesus’ new kingdom movement. A deeply symbolic number of leaders, a handful of easily identifiable and repeatable core values that would stand as a good rule of thumb, and of course, the reality of making the right enemies. When we put all of those things together, we get a very clear statement about the values and beliefs of the kingdom of God that was breaking into the world through Jesus’ ministry.
Before Luke gets into any of this, though, he reminds us of the foundation of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus was getting ready to take a big step in his ministry and like he always did, he stopped to align himself with God’s will through the vital discipline of prayer. Jesus didn’t just pray at convenient or noticeable times but he prayed constantly, consistently, and sacrificially. He is often remembered to have prayed early in the morning before most people were awake, or like here, right through the night.
As morning dawned, Jesus chose twelve men who would serve as a the leaders of his movement. The fact that he chose twelve had obvious symbolic undertones to it. Jacob had twelve sons which had eventually developed into the twelve tribes of Israel. The concept of the twelve tribes was practically synonymous with the very idea of being God’s people. So when Jesus chose twelve men to be the symbols and leaders of his kingdom movement, the point was obvious. The twelve tribes of Israel were God’s special people through whom he would work to bless the world but since the destruction of Jerusalem and exile over 500 years before this time, the twelve tribes were a memory and a symbol more than any kind of living reality. Jesus was coming into a storm of all kind of different people claiming new and different ways of being God’s true people but in Luke’s mind, only Jesus had demonstrated the necessary authority to actually do that. The clear symbolism of his choice of twelve was that he was, in his own way, reconstituting Israel. This would be the foundation of God’s new special people, his new family. They were, in fact, God’s renewed Israel but this would be far deeper than just the symbolism of the opening imaginary scenario regarding the Tea Party folks. This really would be the start of God’s renewed people. In fact, this idea of symbolism of twelve and being God’s renewed Israel would go on to become a recurring them for several New Testament writers (Matt. 18:28; Jam. 1:1; Rev. 7:3-8; 21:12, 14, 16, 21; 22:2). There was also, perhaps, bold significance in the fact that just as Israel had twelve historic tribes who were led by God himself, that Jesus was not part of the Twelve but stood apart from them, leading them and taking on the role of God himself.
With his leadership of the renewed Israel firmly in place through the guidance of an overnight prayer session and the Holy Spirit, Jesus is ready to begin to give out samples of what this new kingdom will be all about. It is a place of healing and wholeness. The people were so convinced of his power and authority that they were, no doubt, pushing in on one another just to be able to touch Jesus. Now they were ready to hear the rules of thumb of the kingdom of God. These were not the whole of the values of the kingdom but simply slogans and principles that could be easily remembered and applied to one’s way of life in general which would then guide his followers in most specific events that might arise. These were not requirements to enter the kingdom but were, rather, descriptions of the values of the resurrection age. These values are completely the opposite of the normal values of human society. That’s the whole point here. The woes and blessings are generalizations intended to teach those who would follow Jesus and be part of the renewed Israel that they needed to upend their values and no longer conform to the patterns of thinking that they had learned in the world (cf. Rom. 12:1-2).
Each of the four blessings from verse 20-22 correspond to the four woes given in verses 24-26. But we must stress again that these are not intended to be specific truths as though you really are blessed for being poor and that being rich is automatically something that will disqualify you from the kingdom of God. The point was that the renewed kingdom of God would bring good news to the oppressed and outcast, those who had no reason to expect much good news in this age. Those who put the values of the resurrection age and lived according to God’s will rather than by the things of the world would truly be blessed. This is best captured quickly by saying that those who are poor, hungry, who weep and who are hated for the sake of the Messiah are those who will embrace the kingdom of God.
Those who embrace the things of the world and seek after success according to the values of anything other than in Jesus’ kingdom will find themselves cursed and outside of the new family of God. Those who value earthly riches, comfort, prestige, and their own will, will laugh now, thinking that they have “conquered the world,” but soon enough that will all be shown to be a wasted life. The idea of wasting your life and forfeiting your soul by seeking the things of this world and doing your own will is one that Luke will return to again and again.
But just because someone desired to be part of this renewed humanity and be part of the family of God through whom the whole world would be blessed, they shouldn’t begin to think that this would bring comfort, power, or prestige but just in a different way. God’s people are those who completely reject those things from earthly sources and realize that they can only find those things in the resurrection age of Christ. This means being prepared to be hated and rejected by the world. If Christians are truly embraced by the world then that is probably a pretty good sign that they have become like the world. Truly sticking to Jesus’ counter-cultural values would get Jesus’ kingdom people the same sort of treatment that the prophets of the Old Testament got. They were the ones who spoke God’s words and called Israel to do God’s will and it wasn’t as if they were ever treated very well, says Jesus. The prophets were generally rejected, ignored, hated, and eventually killed. The ones who were embraced and spoken well of were the false prophets. That should always serve as a stark reminder to the dangers inherent in the desire to be well thought of and celebrated in the world.
This would be the shape of God’s family, his kingdom. But it’s not as though we should fool ourselves into thinking that this was some temporary, radical measures that can now be relaxed as we can fit into the culture around us a little more. We are still called to be the renewed Israel built on the foundation of the twelve, the new and special people of God. And that means that we are stilled called to live by the sharp standard of those blessings and curses in ways that turn our world upside-down just as much as it did then.
Devotional Thought
When you have a major event coming up or decision do you turn to prayer as consistently as Jesus did? Do you follow his example of sacrificial prayer? When was the last time that you prayed for something so fervently that you even came close to praying though the night? Remember, it’s not so much the act of praying through the night but the sacrifical heart behind it.
12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13 When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: 14 Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, 15 Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
Blessings and Woes
17 He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, 18 who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil [a] spirits were cured, 19 and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.
20 Looking at his disciples, he said:
"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.
23 "Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
24 "But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Dig Deeper
We have experienced a fair amount of upheaval in the last couple of years in American politics. There has been a seemingly increasing divide over the expectations, hope, and ideologies that people have and politics have gotten more contentious than they have been at least in my lifetime. Many people recently have completely lost faith in their representatives to do the right thing, regardless of their own political party or philosophy, or that of their representative. In the last year a unified movement of those who are discontent with the current direction of the American government and American politics has arisen. Those people call themselves the Tea Party movement (deriving their name from the American historical protest known as the Boston Tea Party which took place shortly before the American War for Independence). The primary unifying principles of these people, whether you agree with their beliefs or not, are that government needs to be answerable to the people and needs to be smaller.
Imagine, though, if suddenly one unifying figure rose out of the Tea Party movement and declared that a new era of government had come. Then that individual said that he was forming a group that would ensure that this new era would be built around a group of himself and twelve other individuals that would travel around together and take their new agenda to the people all around the country. It wouldn’t be possible for these thirteen individuals to enumerate every single specific item that they were going to expect in government but they would have a few cardinal rules of thumb. A few things that they supported like smaller government, tax cuts, and balanced budgets, and a few things that they would stand opposed to in all situations like tax hikes, socialistic programs, and corruption. When groups do things like that, one of the clear markers you can use to judge them is by who their enemies become. You can tell a lot about a person if they have the right enemies. A group like that would likely see it as a badge of honor if they were persecuted by the big mainstream media and those who wanted government to continue to get bigger and more powerful.
It’s important, though, to notice one particular detail from the previous imaginary scenario. A group that was talking about a revolution in governmental practices, reducing the power of the government, and getting back to the way things used to be, who declared thirteen people to be the leaders of this movement, would be making an obvious American statement wouldn’t they? Why thirteen? That would be an obvious appeal to the thirteen founding colonies of the United States and would be making a clear statement about the values and beliefs of the movement.
These are exactly the sorts of things that Luke is describing here about Jesus’ new kingdom movement. A deeply symbolic number of leaders, a handful of easily identifiable and repeatable core values that would stand as a good rule of thumb, and of course, the reality of making the right enemies. When we put all of those things together, we get a very clear statement about the values and beliefs of the kingdom of God that was breaking into the world through Jesus’ ministry.
Before Luke gets into any of this, though, he reminds us of the foundation of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus was getting ready to take a big step in his ministry and like he always did, he stopped to align himself with God’s will through the vital discipline of prayer. Jesus didn’t just pray at convenient or noticeable times but he prayed constantly, consistently, and sacrificially. He is often remembered to have prayed early in the morning before most people were awake, or like here, right through the night.
As morning dawned, Jesus chose twelve men who would serve as a the leaders of his movement. The fact that he chose twelve had obvious symbolic undertones to it. Jacob had twelve sons which had eventually developed into the twelve tribes of Israel. The concept of the twelve tribes was practically synonymous with the very idea of being God’s people. So when Jesus chose twelve men to be the symbols and leaders of his kingdom movement, the point was obvious. The twelve tribes of Israel were God’s special people through whom he would work to bless the world but since the destruction of Jerusalem and exile over 500 years before this time, the twelve tribes were a memory and a symbol more than any kind of living reality. Jesus was coming into a storm of all kind of different people claiming new and different ways of being God’s true people but in Luke’s mind, only Jesus had demonstrated the necessary authority to actually do that. The clear symbolism of his choice of twelve was that he was, in his own way, reconstituting Israel. This would be the foundation of God’s new special people, his new family. They were, in fact, God’s renewed Israel but this would be far deeper than just the symbolism of the opening imaginary scenario regarding the Tea Party folks. This really would be the start of God’s renewed people. In fact, this idea of symbolism of twelve and being God’s renewed Israel would go on to become a recurring them for several New Testament writers (Matt. 18:28; Jam. 1:1; Rev. 7:3-8; 21:12, 14, 16, 21; 22:2). There was also, perhaps, bold significance in the fact that just as Israel had twelve historic tribes who were led by God himself, that Jesus was not part of the Twelve but stood apart from them, leading them and taking on the role of God himself.
With his leadership of the renewed Israel firmly in place through the guidance of an overnight prayer session and the Holy Spirit, Jesus is ready to begin to give out samples of what this new kingdom will be all about. It is a place of healing and wholeness. The people were so convinced of his power and authority that they were, no doubt, pushing in on one another just to be able to touch Jesus. Now they were ready to hear the rules of thumb of the kingdom of God. These were not the whole of the values of the kingdom but simply slogans and principles that could be easily remembered and applied to one’s way of life in general which would then guide his followers in most specific events that might arise. These were not requirements to enter the kingdom but were, rather, descriptions of the values of the resurrection age. These values are completely the opposite of the normal values of human society. That’s the whole point here. The woes and blessings are generalizations intended to teach those who would follow Jesus and be part of the renewed Israel that they needed to upend their values and no longer conform to the patterns of thinking that they had learned in the world (cf. Rom. 12:1-2).
Each of the four blessings from verse 20-22 correspond to the four woes given in verses 24-26. But we must stress again that these are not intended to be specific truths as though you really are blessed for being poor and that being rich is automatically something that will disqualify you from the kingdom of God. The point was that the renewed kingdom of God would bring good news to the oppressed and outcast, those who had no reason to expect much good news in this age. Those who put the values of the resurrection age and lived according to God’s will rather than by the things of the world would truly be blessed. This is best captured quickly by saying that those who are poor, hungry, who weep and who are hated for the sake of the Messiah are those who will embrace the kingdom of God.
Those who embrace the things of the world and seek after success according to the values of anything other than in Jesus’ kingdom will find themselves cursed and outside of the new family of God. Those who value earthly riches, comfort, prestige, and their own will, will laugh now, thinking that they have “conquered the world,” but soon enough that will all be shown to be a wasted life. The idea of wasting your life and forfeiting your soul by seeking the things of this world and doing your own will is one that Luke will return to again and again.
But just because someone desired to be part of this renewed humanity and be part of the family of God through whom the whole world would be blessed, they shouldn’t begin to think that this would bring comfort, power, or prestige but just in a different way. God’s people are those who completely reject those things from earthly sources and realize that they can only find those things in the resurrection age of Christ. This means being prepared to be hated and rejected by the world. If Christians are truly embraced by the world then that is probably a pretty good sign that they have become like the world. Truly sticking to Jesus’ counter-cultural values would get Jesus’ kingdom people the same sort of treatment that the prophets of the Old Testament got. They were the ones who spoke God’s words and called Israel to do God’s will and it wasn’t as if they were ever treated very well, says Jesus. The prophets were generally rejected, ignored, hated, and eventually killed. The ones who were embraced and spoken well of were the false prophets. That should always serve as a stark reminder to the dangers inherent in the desire to be well thought of and celebrated in the world.
This would be the shape of God’s family, his kingdom. But it’s not as though we should fool ourselves into thinking that this was some temporary, radical measures that can now be relaxed as we can fit into the culture around us a little more. We are still called to be the renewed Israel built on the foundation of the twelve, the new and special people of God. And that means that we are stilled called to live by the sharp standard of those blessings and curses in ways that turn our world upside-down just as much as it did then.
Devotional Thought
When you have a major event coming up or decision do you turn to prayer as consistently as Jesus did? Do you follow his example of sacrificial prayer? When was the last time that you prayed for something so fervently that you even came close to praying though the night? Remember, it’s not so much the act of praying through the night but the sacrifical heart behind it.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Luke 6:1-11 Commentary
Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath
1 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"
3 Jesus answered them, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions." 5 Then Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."
6 On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Get up and stand in front of everyone." So he got up and stood there.
9 Then Jesus said to them, "I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?"
10 He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 11 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.
Dig Deeper
One of the curious things about athletes is that the higher they go in their level of play, the more attached they seem to become to a certain jersey number. This seems to be particularly true of basketball players, although I’m sure players in other sports are the same way. But this oddity isn’t just limited to college or pro players. I’ve seen guys at recreation adult city leagues get all worried because they couldn’t have their specific jersey number. It’s crazy how important it can be for some guys to have what they feel is their specific number. You couldn’t imagine how much I had to deal with this issue as a high school basketball coach. It seemed like each year we would have some sort of conflict when it came time to assign guys numbers for the year, as a couple of guys would want the same number. If one player was a returning player and the number was his in the last season and one player was new, then the returning player would get his number. If, however, we had two new players that both wanted the same number, it wasn’t as easy of a solution.
I recall one year in particular where two players wanted the number 23. This was the number that they had each always worn and it was a number of particular importance to many basketball players because it was Michael Jordan’s jersey number. Neither of the two would back down and thought that they had the right to the number. I appealed to them to think of the importance of team and putting teammates first over the importance of a number but neither one would budge. They were simply letting the importance of a jersey number become way overblown, so I needed to send a clear signal to them. I came to them before our first game and told them that I was the one in charge and that neither one would be wearing 23 that year. Because they had lost sight of the real importance of their jersey number as opposed to other things that really did matter, I was going to remind them quite clearly that I was the one with the authority in this situation. I was the one who would decide how important jersey numbers were and who would have what jersey. Neither player was particularly thrilled but they both got the point.
Observance of the Sabbath was extremely important to the Jewish people, especially the Pharisees. Sabbath observance was one of the main markers of following the law and being the people of God. It was, for them, one of the main ways that they showed that they were God’s people and others were not. Those that broke the Sabbath laws had, in the mind of the Pharisees, clearly demonstrated themselves to be anything but the true people of God. The problem came in that the Old Testament law was not very specific about what it meant to keep the Sabbath holy. It forbade working on the Sabbath but didn’t give very many specific examples of what that meant. By the time of Jesus, though, a rather complex number of laws and definitions had risen up that defined what was okay to do on the Sabbath and what was forbidden. These rules, quite frankly, went way beyond anything given in Scripture but had taken the level of Scriptural commands in the minds of many Jews of Jesus’ day. When it comes down to it, they had lost sight of what was really important and what the whole point of the Sabbath was. They needed someone to step in with the authority to put the Sabbath in its proper perspective.
In going through a field and grabbing some grain to eat, Jesus’ disciples were only doing what was permitted under the law (Deut. 23:25) where grain could be taken from someone else’s field with your hands but not with a sickle. The issue was whether in the act of taking the grain and rubbing it they were violating the prohibition from working on the Sabbath. One question that arises that Luke does not answer is why the Pharisees were even there. They were apparently following Jesus and his disciples around, seemingly waiting for them to make a mistake. What is really a minor issue can become a major issue and a point of extreme annoyance when you have already determined that you hate someone and want to see them fail. But the Pharisees jump on the tiniest of infractions although even the reality of this being an actual unlawful infraction rests on whether or not one accepted a particularly sctrict interpretation of the law.
Jesus doesn’t make any attempt to apologize for the behavior of his disciples or to argue with the Pharisaical interpretation of Sabbath work laws. What he is does is to infuriate the Pharisees even further by asserting an authority that they don’t recognize or embrace. Jesus gives a slight insult by asking them if they have never read what David did. Of course they had read this account, but the point is really that they have not understood what they read. David was the rightfully anointed king of Israel who had yet to be seated on the throne. He was on the run from Saul who would not recognize his position and authority and ultimately wanted him dead.
When we take a step back and look at the example that Jesus was using, the point sharpens into focus a little more. He was doing a whole lot more than simply saying that there was one time when David did something that was technically unlawful and that he was going to rest on that precedent and claim that it was alright for his guys to do something slightly unlawful as well. The point was not whether David ate the bread that was reserved for priests alone but that David, as the rightfully anointed king, had the authority over the strict interpretation of the rules. David had rightful authority to do what he did. So did Jesus. That’s his point, but it goes even deeper than just that. David was the properly anointed and true king of Israel who was on the run from his enemy and had yet to take the throne and be recognized as king. That was the exact position that Jesus was in. He was the rightful king of Israel. He was the anointed one (the literal meaning of “Messiah). He was also, though, on the run, in many respects, from his enemies who increasingly wanted to have him killed. And like David, he had yet to be recognized as the rightful king and sit on his throne. Because Jesus was in the same position as David and had authority, just like David, to supercede normal rules or protocol.
In fact, Jesus’ authority went beyond that of David’s. David was appointed by God and anointed by Samuel as the king of Israel, but Jesus was the Son of Man. He was identifying himself in somewhat enigmatic terms as being the one like the Son of Man that Daniel had written of. He was, in other words, claiming the authority as the one who “was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14). Why could the disciples go ahead and rub grain in their hand and eat it on a Sabbath even though it was against the normal interpretations of what was lawful? Because Jesus was the Lord of the Sabbath. He had the authority and that was really all they needed to know.
The reason, though, that the Pharisees had so much trouble with accepting Jesus’ authority over the Sabbath and his claim to be able to bring a new understanding to what the Sabbath was all about was because they failed to understand the purpose of the Sabbath from the very beginning. It is for this very reason that Luke, I believe, decided to include the next incident in verses 6-11 between Jesus and some Pharisees concerning a Sabbath matter.
In the first confrontation, it seemed that the Pharisees were following Jesus around looking for a problem. The second account, however, seems that Jesus was intentionally instigating this situation as an opportunity to teach an important principle. He intentionally went into the synagogue and found a man with a shriveled right hand. Certainly, Luke says, the Pharisees were watching him closely and were looking for him to violate their Sabbath laws again. But Jesus seems more than happy to accommodate them. At stake here is the issue of the purpose of the Sabbath. Was it solely to forbid certain activities or was it a day on which God would be honored.
What was the Sabbath for? Was it a day when evil should be done or good? Was it to save life or destroy? Once again, Jesus didn’t technically do anything that would constitute work even by the strictest interpretations of the law. He simply told the man to stretch out his hand. When the man obeyed Jesus at his word, he was healed. Luke has thus combined three important themes from the early chapters of his Gospel. First, faith is productive when people obey Jesus solely on the basis of his word (just as Peter and the others had the fishing haul of their life by doing nothing more than obeying Jesus). Second, Jesus could heal and even suspend the normal expectations or law of the Sabbath because he was the coming king who had every right and the authority to do so.
In both situations, Jesus put the Pharisees in seemingly difficult situations. If David had the authority to suspend Sabbath laws in certain situations then so did Jesus. If God had created the Sabbath to honor him then wouldn’t it be right to do good things that brought life rather than evil (the assumption Jesus has is that to do nothing in situations like this when you are capable of doing good would be to do evil)? In both cases, it didn’t come down really to breaking Sabbath regulations, it came down to the all-important issue of authority and the identity of Jesus. If he was who he was subtly claiming to be then he absolutely had the authority to do what he was doing. That was the real problem for the authorities. It wasn’t so much Jesus’ actions that were driving them nuts, but the authority he was claiming in order to take those actions.
Luke is setting the stage and showing us that Jesus was methodically shaping a new family of believers that found their identity as God’s children around obedience to Jesus not through regulation and ritual. He was creating God’s new family and preparing them to live in God’s age to come according to an entirely new ethic. It is this way of life for the Messiah’s new family to which Luke is about to turn but we cannot help but see the sharp contrast between the new people of God, the new Israel, that Jesus was creating and the old way of the Pharisees. If they would have just realized that rather than rejecting Jesus’ authority, that they too, like the crippled man, could have reached out to Jesus and found themselves completely restored.
Devotional Thought
Do you ever get so caught up with people looking “right” and acting “right” at church that you forget about God’s mercy and love? Do you ever find yourself drifting back to the old mindset of rules, regulations, and religion rather than allowing room for the mercy and love that God really wants from his family?
1 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"
3 Jesus answered them, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions." 5 Then Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."
6 On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Get up and stand in front of everyone." So he got up and stood there.
9 Then Jesus said to them, "I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?"
10 He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 11 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.
Dig Deeper
One of the curious things about athletes is that the higher they go in their level of play, the more attached they seem to become to a certain jersey number. This seems to be particularly true of basketball players, although I’m sure players in other sports are the same way. But this oddity isn’t just limited to college or pro players. I’ve seen guys at recreation adult city leagues get all worried because they couldn’t have their specific jersey number. It’s crazy how important it can be for some guys to have what they feel is their specific number. You couldn’t imagine how much I had to deal with this issue as a high school basketball coach. It seemed like each year we would have some sort of conflict when it came time to assign guys numbers for the year, as a couple of guys would want the same number. If one player was a returning player and the number was his in the last season and one player was new, then the returning player would get his number. If, however, we had two new players that both wanted the same number, it wasn’t as easy of a solution.
I recall one year in particular where two players wanted the number 23. This was the number that they had each always worn and it was a number of particular importance to many basketball players because it was Michael Jordan’s jersey number. Neither of the two would back down and thought that they had the right to the number. I appealed to them to think of the importance of team and putting teammates first over the importance of a number but neither one would budge. They were simply letting the importance of a jersey number become way overblown, so I needed to send a clear signal to them. I came to them before our first game and told them that I was the one in charge and that neither one would be wearing 23 that year. Because they had lost sight of the real importance of their jersey number as opposed to other things that really did matter, I was going to remind them quite clearly that I was the one with the authority in this situation. I was the one who would decide how important jersey numbers were and who would have what jersey. Neither player was particularly thrilled but they both got the point.
Observance of the Sabbath was extremely important to the Jewish people, especially the Pharisees. Sabbath observance was one of the main markers of following the law and being the people of God. It was, for them, one of the main ways that they showed that they were God’s people and others were not. Those that broke the Sabbath laws had, in the mind of the Pharisees, clearly demonstrated themselves to be anything but the true people of God. The problem came in that the Old Testament law was not very specific about what it meant to keep the Sabbath holy. It forbade working on the Sabbath but didn’t give very many specific examples of what that meant. By the time of Jesus, though, a rather complex number of laws and definitions had risen up that defined what was okay to do on the Sabbath and what was forbidden. These rules, quite frankly, went way beyond anything given in Scripture but had taken the level of Scriptural commands in the minds of many Jews of Jesus’ day. When it comes down to it, they had lost sight of what was really important and what the whole point of the Sabbath was. They needed someone to step in with the authority to put the Sabbath in its proper perspective.
In going through a field and grabbing some grain to eat, Jesus’ disciples were only doing what was permitted under the law (Deut. 23:25) where grain could be taken from someone else’s field with your hands but not with a sickle. The issue was whether in the act of taking the grain and rubbing it they were violating the prohibition from working on the Sabbath. One question that arises that Luke does not answer is why the Pharisees were even there. They were apparently following Jesus and his disciples around, seemingly waiting for them to make a mistake. What is really a minor issue can become a major issue and a point of extreme annoyance when you have already determined that you hate someone and want to see them fail. But the Pharisees jump on the tiniest of infractions although even the reality of this being an actual unlawful infraction rests on whether or not one accepted a particularly sctrict interpretation of the law.
Jesus doesn’t make any attempt to apologize for the behavior of his disciples or to argue with the Pharisaical interpretation of Sabbath work laws. What he is does is to infuriate the Pharisees even further by asserting an authority that they don’t recognize or embrace. Jesus gives a slight insult by asking them if they have never read what David did. Of course they had read this account, but the point is really that they have not understood what they read. David was the rightfully anointed king of Israel who had yet to be seated on the throne. He was on the run from Saul who would not recognize his position and authority and ultimately wanted him dead.
When we take a step back and look at the example that Jesus was using, the point sharpens into focus a little more. He was doing a whole lot more than simply saying that there was one time when David did something that was technically unlawful and that he was going to rest on that precedent and claim that it was alright for his guys to do something slightly unlawful as well. The point was not whether David ate the bread that was reserved for priests alone but that David, as the rightfully anointed king, had the authority over the strict interpretation of the rules. David had rightful authority to do what he did. So did Jesus. That’s his point, but it goes even deeper than just that. David was the properly anointed and true king of Israel who was on the run from his enemy and had yet to take the throne and be recognized as king. That was the exact position that Jesus was in. He was the rightful king of Israel. He was the anointed one (the literal meaning of “Messiah). He was also, though, on the run, in many respects, from his enemies who increasingly wanted to have him killed. And like David, he had yet to be recognized as the rightful king and sit on his throne. Because Jesus was in the same position as David and had authority, just like David, to supercede normal rules or protocol.
In fact, Jesus’ authority went beyond that of David’s. David was appointed by God and anointed by Samuel as the king of Israel, but Jesus was the Son of Man. He was identifying himself in somewhat enigmatic terms as being the one like the Son of Man that Daniel had written of. He was, in other words, claiming the authority as the one who “was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14). Why could the disciples go ahead and rub grain in their hand and eat it on a Sabbath even though it was against the normal interpretations of what was lawful? Because Jesus was the Lord of the Sabbath. He had the authority and that was really all they needed to know.
The reason, though, that the Pharisees had so much trouble with accepting Jesus’ authority over the Sabbath and his claim to be able to bring a new understanding to what the Sabbath was all about was because they failed to understand the purpose of the Sabbath from the very beginning. It is for this very reason that Luke, I believe, decided to include the next incident in verses 6-11 between Jesus and some Pharisees concerning a Sabbath matter.
In the first confrontation, it seemed that the Pharisees were following Jesus around looking for a problem. The second account, however, seems that Jesus was intentionally instigating this situation as an opportunity to teach an important principle. He intentionally went into the synagogue and found a man with a shriveled right hand. Certainly, Luke says, the Pharisees were watching him closely and were looking for him to violate their Sabbath laws again. But Jesus seems more than happy to accommodate them. At stake here is the issue of the purpose of the Sabbath. Was it solely to forbid certain activities or was it a day on which God would be honored.
What was the Sabbath for? Was it a day when evil should be done or good? Was it to save life or destroy? Once again, Jesus didn’t technically do anything that would constitute work even by the strictest interpretations of the law. He simply told the man to stretch out his hand. When the man obeyed Jesus at his word, he was healed. Luke has thus combined three important themes from the early chapters of his Gospel. First, faith is productive when people obey Jesus solely on the basis of his word (just as Peter and the others had the fishing haul of their life by doing nothing more than obeying Jesus). Second, Jesus could heal and even suspend the normal expectations or law of the Sabbath because he was the coming king who had every right and the authority to do so.
In both situations, Jesus put the Pharisees in seemingly difficult situations. If David had the authority to suspend Sabbath laws in certain situations then so did Jesus. If God had created the Sabbath to honor him then wouldn’t it be right to do good things that brought life rather than evil (the assumption Jesus has is that to do nothing in situations like this when you are capable of doing good would be to do evil)? In both cases, it didn’t come down really to breaking Sabbath regulations, it came down to the all-important issue of authority and the identity of Jesus. If he was who he was subtly claiming to be then he absolutely had the authority to do what he was doing. That was the real problem for the authorities. It wasn’t so much Jesus’ actions that were driving them nuts, but the authority he was claiming in order to take those actions.
Luke is setting the stage and showing us that Jesus was methodically shaping a new family of believers that found their identity as God’s children around obedience to Jesus not through regulation and ritual. He was creating God’s new family and preparing them to live in God’s age to come according to an entirely new ethic. It is this way of life for the Messiah’s new family to which Luke is about to turn but we cannot help but see the sharp contrast between the new people of God, the new Israel, that Jesus was creating and the old way of the Pharisees. If they would have just realized that rather than rejecting Jesus’ authority, that they too, like the crippled man, could have reached out to Jesus and found themselves completely restored.
Devotional Thought
Do you ever get so caught up with people looking “right” and acting “right” at church that you forget about God’s mercy and love? Do you ever find yourself drifting back to the old mindset of rules, regulations, and religion rather than allowing room for the mercy and love that God really wants from his family?
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Luke 5:27-39 Commentary
Jesus Calls Levi and Eats With Sinners
27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"
31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
Jesus Questioned About Fasting
33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."
34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."
36 He told them this parable: "No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And none of you, after drinking old wine, wants the new, for you say, 'The old is better.' "
Dig Deeper
When I was a young man I absolutely loved collecting cassette tapes. There was a particular type of music that I grew up with and enjoyed and I so I took great pleasure in the fact that I had developed a rather large collection. I had such a large collection that I regularly had people come to me to ask me to borrow tapes. It got to the point that I had several tape carriers that were full of tapes that I carried in my car at all times and I also had many boxes at home that were full of tapes. As I passed through my teens and into my twenties, however, cassette tapes began to go quickly out of style and everyone around me began to get CD’s. I resisted that for a long time and refused to buy CD’s. I just simply did not want to accept CD’s because I didn’t really like them and I knew that it would render my incredible tape collection worthless. As people began to tell me more and more each day how great CD’s were, I grew stiffer and harsher in my opposition to them. I would, I declared, never own a CD player. Then I became a Christian and my taste in that particular kind of music faded and so it didn’t matter that much anymore but my new pride and joy was my collection of VHS tapes that were full of historical documentaries and films. I knew that these would never go out of style and I had spent an incredible amount of time working on recording, marking, and creating these tapes. I got to the point where I had over 1,000 hours of video tape and some incredible historical videos. Then all of a sudden, this new format called DVD’s started slowly gaining steam. Once again, I would not accept this. I hated DVD’s and never wanted one. What would I do with my VHS collection? I resisted getting a DVD player for years but finally my wife got one after our VCR broke. Now we don’t even have a VHS player and all of those video tapes sit in dusty boxes in my basement.
That’s what happens, though, when new things break into the old world. Those who have so much invested in the old order of things just will not accept the new. They don’t like it, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want it because they think it will make everything that is important to them useless. And in some respects that’s true. I cannot mix my old technology with the new. I cannot play my tapes on a CD player or my VHS tapes on a DVD player. I had to put away all of my tapes and embrace the fact that these new things were not only different, they are much, much better than the old way.
We should not lose sight of the fact that Luke is continuing to demonstrate the authority of Jesus as he reveals that the much-anticipated kingdom of God will be very different, as it breaks into the present age, than most people were expecting. Jesus continued to call disciples to follow him which was highly unusual in two respects. One, was that it appears that the common practice at the time was for students to approach the rabbi or teacher from whom they wanted to learn and then hope to be selected by them as worthy (this rabbinic training was apparently a still rather informal process in the 1st century that would be not be formalized until the 2nd century) . For a teacher to go around choose disciples was very uncommon if not unheard of.
The second unusual thing was in the type of followers that Jesus was choosing to be his disciples. These were not men of impressive stature. If a Messiah-figure was going to around and gather disciples the expectation might have been for him to put together a collection of the best and brightest rabbis, teachers of the laws, and religious experts. But these men were fishermen and now a hated tax collector. Tax collectors were viewed as traitors who worked in league with the oppressive Roman state. In fact, tax collectors were so reviled that they were seen as unclean under the law. In fact, it was common to not even allow a tax collector into one’s home because of the belief that it would make the entire home unclean.
At the heart of this scene, then, is the kind of people that Jesus is spending his time with. If the Messiah was sent to purify Israel from sin and unrighteousness, as the Pharisees believed, then how could anyone making any messianic claims seriously hang around these kind of people? The fact that he would share table fellowship with the likes of men like Levi (an alternate name for Matthew) demonstrated to them that Jesus was not the kind of Messiah they were expecting. Jesus’ associations constantly raised opposition from those who did not approve of the fact that he would spend time with those who were separated from God. The Pharisees, on the other hand, radically pursued a lifestyle that avoided sinners and saw them as the problem that was keeping God from returning to Israel. To add to that, table fellowship was very important to the Jewish people. For the Jewish people, banquets were a symbol of God’s age to come which was often symbolized by referring to that time as the time of the feast of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt. 8:11). For Jesus to share table fellowship with these sinners meant that he was embracing the idea that there might be a place for people like this in the age to come. That they would be accepted at the table before repenting was simply unacceptable.
The aim of the Pharisees was to remain quarantined from the lowly like of sinners and tax collectors. Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t quarantine himself. His aim was the recovery and reconciliation of those that had a ruptured relationship with God? Jesus saw his ministry as one that could be likened to that of a doctor. How good would it be to have a doctor who refused to go around the sick and injured because he didn’t want to catch what they had or deal with their less-than-palatable conditions? How good would it be if you had a doctor who would only go around other doctors or those that could demonstrate that they were passably healthy?
Why would Jesus spend such time with obvious sinners and people that were sinful and separated from God in both heart and actions? Because those were the ones that needed healing. His point was not that the Pharisees and their types weren’t sinners or were actually righteous but that they thought they were and would be wholly incapable of being spiritually healed until they realized that they were the sick, they were the sinners just like everyone else. Jesus came to bring sinners to repentance not meet his own needs by hanging out with people who agreed with everything he said and pleased him with every word that came out of their mouths. This is such a vital point for us to remember today. As soon as we find ourselves not wanting to be around someone because of their “sin,” we have completely lost sight of who we are as sinners ourselves and what Jesus called us to be for the world. We are not called to gather a group of Christians and quarantine ourselves off from the world but instead, we are called to take up Jesus’ vocation as doctors that bring the healing message of the gospel to those who so desperately need it. When we break it down to simplest terms, the Pharisees wanted to see repentance before table fellowship was offered, while Jesus knew that showing them that the kingdom of God could be open to them would lead to their healing and repentance.
The fact was, though, that the Pharisees just couldn’t comprehend or accept the new era that Jesus was bringing to light. Fasting was a part of Jewish life. It was required by the Old Testament only for the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:29) and to remember the destruction of Jerusalem (see Zech. 7:3, 5; 8:19). But the Pharisees had taken fasting far beyond that and, like John’s disciples, engaged in a large amount of fasting. The Pharisees fasted twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Part of the reason for their constant fasting was to show their religious commitment and as a necessary part of their preparation for Israel’s long-awaited redemption and the end of their long exile from God. Fasting for the Pharisees, then, was a sign that God’s kingdom had not yet arrived. But that was exactly the rub between their deeply held beliefs and what Jesus was doing. They were fasting and hoping for God’s mercy and Jesus was saying that God’s mercy was there, that is was breaking into the present age in new and radical ways that they could not imagine. God’s mercy wasn’t something that needed to be somberly hoped for, it was there in exciting ways inviting all to come in and be healed. The kingdom was like a party. In fact, it was more like a wedding banquet than a funeral. You simply wouldn’t go to a wedding and abstain from the celebratory act of eating and drinking. That wouldn’t make sense. A time would come when Christ would die and be absent from his people, said Jesus as he is already beginning to allude to his death. The groom was there, so it makes sense that Jesus’ disciples don’t fast. When the groom has left, then God’s people will long for and anticipate the time of his return and the completion of their redemption. Jesus doesn’t give any hard and fast rules about fasting during this time but he does confirm that fasting is appropriate during that time.
Jesus’ three short parables are really vivid demonstrations of our opening illustration. The new will not mix with the old. You can’t tear out a piece of a new article of clothing and try to patch it into an old article of clothing. In doing so, you will ruin both garments. And you can’t pour new wine into an old leather wineskin because it will cause the skin to burst. For that matter, when someone drinks the old wine, is used to the old wine, and is invested in one way or another in the old wine, they simply find it very difficult to ever accept new wine. Just like you cannot jam a VHS tape in to a DVD player with ruining both, you simply cannot take bits of the old way and combine it with Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God. Jesus knows the sad truth that most of the Jews that hear him will not switch their expectations and allegiances easily. We get used to the old ways and new things intimidate us.
Our challenge today is to constantly be ready to allow God’s kingdom to challenge us in new and fresh ways even though it has now been around for a very long time. It is crucial that we don’t become the people who cling to our old ways and don’t constantly allow the kingdom to break afresh and anew into our own lives. It is our task to live out the new kingdom life that Jesus has brought into our lives and to remember that we simply cannot mix our old and comfortable ways with the new.
Dig Deeper
Do you ever find yourself being a little like the Pharisees here and wanting to separate yourself from the unsaved rather than getting messy and being around them, with all that that brings with it? How does Jesus’ example here challenge you right now? Is there any attitudes or actions of yours that you need to change?
27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"
31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
Jesus Questioned About Fasting
33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."
34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."
36 He told them this parable: "No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And none of you, after drinking old wine, wants the new, for you say, 'The old is better.' "
Dig Deeper
When I was a young man I absolutely loved collecting cassette tapes. There was a particular type of music that I grew up with and enjoyed and I so I took great pleasure in the fact that I had developed a rather large collection. I had such a large collection that I regularly had people come to me to ask me to borrow tapes. It got to the point that I had several tape carriers that were full of tapes that I carried in my car at all times and I also had many boxes at home that were full of tapes. As I passed through my teens and into my twenties, however, cassette tapes began to go quickly out of style and everyone around me began to get CD’s. I resisted that for a long time and refused to buy CD’s. I just simply did not want to accept CD’s because I didn’t really like them and I knew that it would render my incredible tape collection worthless. As people began to tell me more and more each day how great CD’s were, I grew stiffer and harsher in my opposition to them. I would, I declared, never own a CD player. Then I became a Christian and my taste in that particular kind of music faded and so it didn’t matter that much anymore but my new pride and joy was my collection of VHS tapes that were full of historical documentaries and films. I knew that these would never go out of style and I had spent an incredible amount of time working on recording, marking, and creating these tapes. I got to the point where I had over 1,000 hours of video tape and some incredible historical videos. Then all of a sudden, this new format called DVD’s started slowly gaining steam. Once again, I would not accept this. I hated DVD’s and never wanted one. What would I do with my VHS collection? I resisted getting a DVD player for years but finally my wife got one after our VCR broke. Now we don’t even have a VHS player and all of those video tapes sit in dusty boxes in my basement.
That’s what happens, though, when new things break into the old world. Those who have so much invested in the old order of things just will not accept the new. They don’t like it, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want it because they think it will make everything that is important to them useless. And in some respects that’s true. I cannot mix my old technology with the new. I cannot play my tapes on a CD player or my VHS tapes on a DVD player. I had to put away all of my tapes and embrace the fact that these new things were not only different, they are much, much better than the old way.
We should not lose sight of the fact that Luke is continuing to demonstrate the authority of Jesus as he reveals that the much-anticipated kingdom of God will be very different, as it breaks into the present age, than most people were expecting. Jesus continued to call disciples to follow him which was highly unusual in two respects. One, was that it appears that the common practice at the time was for students to approach the rabbi or teacher from whom they wanted to learn and then hope to be selected by them as worthy (this rabbinic training was apparently a still rather informal process in the 1st century that would be not be formalized until the 2nd century) . For a teacher to go around choose disciples was very uncommon if not unheard of.
The second unusual thing was in the type of followers that Jesus was choosing to be his disciples. These were not men of impressive stature. If a Messiah-figure was going to around and gather disciples the expectation might have been for him to put together a collection of the best and brightest rabbis, teachers of the laws, and religious experts. But these men were fishermen and now a hated tax collector. Tax collectors were viewed as traitors who worked in league with the oppressive Roman state. In fact, tax collectors were so reviled that they were seen as unclean under the law. In fact, it was common to not even allow a tax collector into one’s home because of the belief that it would make the entire home unclean.
At the heart of this scene, then, is the kind of people that Jesus is spending his time with. If the Messiah was sent to purify Israel from sin and unrighteousness, as the Pharisees believed, then how could anyone making any messianic claims seriously hang around these kind of people? The fact that he would share table fellowship with the likes of men like Levi (an alternate name for Matthew) demonstrated to them that Jesus was not the kind of Messiah they were expecting. Jesus’ associations constantly raised opposition from those who did not approve of the fact that he would spend time with those who were separated from God. The Pharisees, on the other hand, radically pursued a lifestyle that avoided sinners and saw them as the problem that was keeping God from returning to Israel. To add to that, table fellowship was very important to the Jewish people. For the Jewish people, banquets were a symbol of God’s age to come which was often symbolized by referring to that time as the time of the feast of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt. 8:11). For Jesus to share table fellowship with these sinners meant that he was embracing the idea that there might be a place for people like this in the age to come. That they would be accepted at the table before repenting was simply unacceptable.
The aim of the Pharisees was to remain quarantined from the lowly like of sinners and tax collectors. Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t quarantine himself. His aim was the recovery and reconciliation of those that had a ruptured relationship with God? Jesus saw his ministry as one that could be likened to that of a doctor. How good would it be to have a doctor who refused to go around the sick and injured because he didn’t want to catch what they had or deal with their less-than-palatable conditions? How good would it be if you had a doctor who would only go around other doctors or those that could demonstrate that they were passably healthy?
Why would Jesus spend such time with obvious sinners and people that were sinful and separated from God in both heart and actions? Because those were the ones that needed healing. His point was not that the Pharisees and their types weren’t sinners or were actually righteous but that they thought they were and would be wholly incapable of being spiritually healed until they realized that they were the sick, they were the sinners just like everyone else. Jesus came to bring sinners to repentance not meet his own needs by hanging out with people who agreed with everything he said and pleased him with every word that came out of their mouths. This is such a vital point for us to remember today. As soon as we find ourselves not wanting to be around someone because of their “sin,” we have completely lost sight of who we are as sinners ourselves and what Jesus called us to be for the world. We are not called to gather a group of Christians and quarantine ourselves off from the world but instead, we are called to take up Jesus’ vocation as doctors that bring the healing message of the gospel to those who so desperately need it. When we break it down to simplest terms, the Pharisees wanted to see repentance before table fellowship was offered, while Jesus knew that showing them that the kingdom of God could be open to them would lead to their healing and repentance.
The fact was, though, that the Pharisees just couldn’t comprehend or accept the new era that Jesus was bringing to light. Fasting was a part of Jewish life. It was required by the Old Testament only for the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:29) and to remember the destruction of Jerusalem (see Zech. 7:3, 5; 8:19). But the Pharisees had taken fasting far beyond that and, like John’s disciples, engaged in a large amount of fasting. The Pharisees fasted twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Part of the reason for their constant fasting was to show their religious commitment and as a necessary part of their preparation for Israel’s long-awaited redemption and the end of their long exile from God. Fasting for the Pharisees, then, was a sign that God’s kingdom had not yet arrived. But that was exactly the rub between their deeply held beliefs and what Jesus was doing. They were fasting and hoping for God’s mercy and Jesus was saying that God’s mercy was there, that is was breaking into the present age in new and radical ways that they could not imagine. God’s mercy wasn’t something that needed to be somberly hoped for, it was there in exciting ways inviting all to come in and be healed. The kingdom was like a party. In fact, it was more like a wedding banquet than a funeral. You simply wouldn’t go to a wedding and abstain from the celebratory act of eating and drinking. That wouldn’t make sense. A time would come when Christ would die and be absent from his people, said Jesus as he is already beginning to allude to his death. The groom was there, so it makes sense that Jesus’ disciples don’t fast. When the groom has left, then God’s people will long for and anticipate the time of his return and the completion of their redemption. Jesus doesn’t give any hard and fast rules about fasting during this time but he does confirm that fasting is appropriate during that time.
Jesus’ three short parables are really vivid demonstrations of our opening illustration. The new will not mix with the old. You can’t tear out a piece of a new article of clothing and try to patch it into an old article of clothing. In doing so, you will ruin both garments. And you can’t pour new wine into an old leather wineskin because it will cause the skin to burst. For that matter, when someone drinks the old wine, is used to the old wine, and is invested in one way or another in the old wine, they simply find it very difficult to ever accept new wine. Just like you cannot jam a VHS tape in to a DVD player with ruining both, you simply cannot take bits of the old way and combine it with Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God. Jesus knows the sad truth that most of the Jews that hear him will not switch their expectations and allegiances easily. We get used to the old ways and new things intimidate us.
Our challenge today is to constantly be ready to allow God’s kingdom to challenge us in new and fresh ways even though it has now been around for a very long time. It is crucial that we don’t become the people who cling to our old ways and don’t constantly allow the kingdom to break afresh and anew into our own lives. It is our task to live out the new kingdom life that Jesus has brought into our lives and to remember that we simply cannot mix our old and comfortable ways with the new.
Dig Deeper
Do you ever find yourself being a little like the Pharisees here and wanting to separate yourself from the unsaved rather than getting messy and being around them, with all that that brings with it? How does Jesus’ example here challenge you right now? Is there any attitudes or actions of yours that you need to change?
Monday, March 01, 2010
Luke 5:17-26 Commentary
Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralyzed Man
17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven."
21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, "Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, "Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." So he said to the paralyzed man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, "We have seen remarkable things today."
Dig Deeper
Many years ago when I was playing basketball I had a teammate my first year in college who was very unusual. He seemed to be a pretty good player in practices before the season started but you also got the sense that he was not playing very hard. It wasn’t that unusual to see guys who wouldn’t give full effort during practices but would save up their best efforts for games, though. What was unique was that he had never dunked the basketball. He hadn’t done it in practice, in scrimmages, and not even before and after practice when most guys would mess around and try to outdo one another in dunks. Dunking well was kind of a status symbol at that time so it was something of a small scandal that he had never done it. To add to the problem for him was that he was 6 feet 5 inches tall (1.96 m). If he had been a small guy, he might haven’t gotten away with not dunking, but because of his height he took a great deal of abuse about his lack of throwing one down. His only response was always that he only dunked in real games. He didn’t “waste his energy,” was always his claim. Of course that’s easy to say, so no one believed him and even gave him a harder time about it. Then our first game came. A few minutes into the game he caught the ball outside of the three-point line, took a few quick dribbles towards the basket, and then took off, flying past his defender and thunderously slamming the ball into the basket. He didn’t say a word and didn’t look in the direction of the rest of the team, but we all knew. Not another word was said on the subject of his dunking. He had proven that what he said was true all along.
To say that you can do something is one thing. In fact, it’s pretty easy to make claims. Our world is full of people who make claims about various things, but to back up those claims is an entirely different thing. Think of how many times in your life you have heard claims being made that just could not be backed up by the subsequent actions. My friend claimed that he could dunk, although he never made a big deal out of it, and he could. Yet, I’ve known a few guys who would say that they could but then they really couldn’t. Luke made some big claims about the authority that Jesus had and purported to have but he knew that those claims were not really very impressive if not backed up with demonstrable action to verify that authority. Jesus had already shown that he had the authority over demons and illnesses, but now he was about to make a claim of authority that goes way beyond that. Could it be that he really had the power to forgive sin? How could one possibly ever know the truth of that claim? Luke is about to show us.
Jesus’ notoriety has spread enough that, even though Jesus was still in Capernaum, people had come from all over Galilee to see him. In fact, it went beyond just people from Galilee. The big boys had come out to see him. Luke tells us that Pharisees and teachers of the law had come not just the area of Galilee but as far away as Judea and Jerusalem. This is the first time Luke mentions the Pharisees who will serve as Jesus’ main source of opposition throughout his ministry. The Pharisees, we should note, were not an official group at the time. They were an informal pressure group. They were the ones that went around speaking of the coming of the kingdom of God so when someone else was out making claims about God’s kingdom, that was certainly going to catch their attention. What they would quickly discover, however, was that Jesus’ version of the kingdom was diametrically opposed to the one that they had embraced. They were thoroughly convinced that the reason that the kingdom hadn’t yet come was because of the many sinners in Israel. They were keeping God from returning to his people and if they would just stop sinning and hold to the law tighter then he would finally return and crush Israel’s enemies. This led them, in many ways, to look down on others as the problem and to see themselves as the example and the solution. So they offered up more and more rules and regulations for people to follow so that they could escape their status as sinners, if they would only take up this heavy yoke then they might be accepted by God.
But Jesus was offering something very different and quite opposed to that mindset. Rather than clinging more tightly to rules, regulations, and their heritage as Jews, Jesus didn’t appear to have a heavy yoke of laws that would help the lowly sinners improve their plight. He seemed to be more interested in faith and obedience to himself than in anything that people did or were born as to improve their plight. Of course if people did believe in his authority and live in submission to it, they would find that they would be better off, but that change would be real change that slowly came from within, not the more visible change that would come from conforming to the standards of others. Those were big claims and one would need a whole lot of authority to be able to make the radical claims that Jesus was making. But how could he possibly demonstrate the truth of such claims. Anyone, after all could say such things, but how could people know that what he was saying was true?
That is where the miracles came in. Jesus was healing people and demonstrating the power of the kingdom of God to make people whole through the physical reality of miracles. So many people were coming to Jesus that it was apparently becoming next to impossible to get in to see him. Surely this had to irritate the Pharisees who, although were respected in the community in many respects, certainly didn’t have throngs of people pressing in to see them and hear them talk about the kingdom of God. But Jesus did. Luke tells us of one man and his friends who so badly wanted to experience the healing touch of Jesus that they climbed up on the roof and dug their way through the thatch to lower their friend down to Jesus. Jesus was struck by the loyalty that these men were showing to their paralytic friend (paralytics were of little to no value in the society and often left to fend for themselves in many ways). He saw their faith, Luke tells us, which is a clue and a key to this whole story. Their faith was demonstrated by their actions. We tend to view faith as a mental exercise, but the people of Jesus’ time just did not see it that way. You acted on what you believed in such a way that your actions always demonstrated your beliefs. For someone to say, “well I did this but that’s not what I believe or what is in my heart,” is something that would make no sense to the Jews of Jesus’ day. You did what you believed, end of story. Thus, Jesus’ sees the demonstration of their faith and he will respond with a demonstration of his own.
Their great hope was that Jesus would heal this man and allow him to walk home but Jesus did way more than that. The kingdom of God, after all, was not primarily about physical healing. The physical healing merely pointed to the true power of the kingdom of God to heal the lives of sinners. Because this man had demonstrated the determined kind of faith that was necessary for one to accept the kingdom of God, Jesus would demonstrate his position as the savior of the world who had the authority, even though he had humbled himself to become a man limited by the flesh, to forgive sins. It is important to note, that although those around him were still not fully cognizant of the fact that Jesus was claiming to be God (Luke will get to that soon enough), that Jesus was doing things that only Israel’s God could do as savior. AS the prophet Isaiah wrote, “I, even I, am YHWH, and apart from me there is no savior” (Isa. 43:11).
The Pharisees certainly got the underlying point of the claim to forgive sin. If Jesus was claiming the authority of sin forgiver and savior, then he was claiming the authority and identity of God. They simply would not stand for this, especially when his message was so fundamentally opposed to the one that they embraced. This demonstrates an important truth in Jesus’ ministry. The miracles were great demonstrations of Jesus’ true authority but they weren’t enough by themselves. They had to mingle with submission and obedience in order to produce the necessary faith of a true kingdom person. As Jesus’ ministry will show, it was just as easy to see those miracles and still reject Jesus’ authority.
Jesus knew that the Pharisees’ were thinking that he was making claims that he could not back up. His ability to tell them what they were thinking was another clue of his true identity, one that they rejected. In order to demonstrate his true authority, though, and give every opportunity to the Pharisees and the whole crowd to believe, Jesus will show that he does indeed have the power and authority that he has claimed in being able to forgive sins. First, he asks an important question. Is it harder to forgive sin or to heal a lame man and give him the power to walk? There is no good way for the Pharisees to answer that question and so they don’t. But Jesus commands him to get up and walk. Surely the crowd was amazed and at least some realized that this was a clear demonstration that he did have the power to forgive sin just as he claimed.
In claiming his authority to forgive sins, though, Jesus dropped another clue that at least some in the crowd, not the least of those being the Pharisees, picked up on. Jesus used the somewhat mysterious phrase “the son of man.” This is the first time that Luke has described that phrase from the lips of Jesus and it is no small thing. The phrase could simply mean “just another man,” but by the time of Jesus, the phrase had almost exclusively taken on the meaning of its use in Daniel 7 and been applied to the messianic figure from that passage. In Daniel 7, the son of man is the one who is brought before God, suffers persecution, and is given all authority over the whole world. He was the Messiah through whom God would bring his kingdom into the world. Jesus was subtly indicating that he was Daniel’s Messiah. He was the one who had authority over the whole world to forgive sin and to make the lame walk. His works showed that his authority was genuine just as our actions demonstrate the genuineness of our faith.
The people standing there that day were amazed and they certainly saw much more than they expected. Imagine that this was the first time that you had ever read the Gospel of Luke or even heard of Jesus. From that perspective, we should recognize that feeling of amazement because as we read through Luke we find that Jesus is much more than we could ever expect. Jesus made a life of doing things that people never expected and he will continue to do the unexpected in our lives if we recognize his authority.
Devotional Thought
Jesus differed from the religious leaders of his day because he offered the people hope and true transformation rather than just blaming them for being sinners. Does you tend to reflect Jesus’ approach or that of the religious leaders? Take an honest look and assess whether you really present the gospel as a message of hope or one of condemnation.
17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven."
21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, "Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, "Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." So he said to the paralyzed man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, "We have seen remarkable things today."
Dig Deeper
Many years ago when I was playing basketball I had a teammate my first year in college who was very unusual. He seemed to be a pretty good player in practices before the season started but you also got the sense that he was not playing very hard. It wasn’t that unusual to see guys who wouldn’t give full effort during practices but would save up their best efforts for games, though. What was unique was that he had never dunked the basketball. He hadn’t done it in practice, in scrimmages, and not even before and after practice when most guys would mess around and try to outdo one another in dunks. Dunking well was kind of a status symbol at that time so it was something of a small scandal that he had never done it. To add to the problem for him was that he was 6 feet 5 inches tall (1.96 m). If he had been a small guy, he might haven’t gotten away with not dunking, but because of his height he took a great deal of abuse about his lack of throwing one down. His only response was always that he only dunked in real games. He didn’t “waste his energy,” was always his claim. Of course that’s easy to say, so no one believed him and even gave him a harder time about it. Then our first game came. A few minutes into the game he caught the ball outside of the three-point line, took a few quick dribbles towards the basket, and then took off, flying past his defender and thunderously slamming the ball into the basket. He didn’t say a word and didn’t look in the direction of the rest of the team, but we all knew. Not another word was said on the subject of his dunking. He had proven that what he said was true all along.
To say that you can do something is one thing. In fact, it’s pretty easy to make claims. Our world is full of people who make claims about various things, but to back up those claims is an entirely different thing. Think of how many times in your life you have heard claims being made that just could not be backed up by the subsequent actions. My friend claimed that he could dunk, although he never made a big deal out of it, and he could. Yet, I’ve known a few guys who would say that they could but then they really couldn’t. Luke made some big claims about the authority that Jesus had and purported to have but he knew that those claims were not really very impressive if not backed up with demonstrable action to verify that authority. Jesus had already shown that he had the authority over demons and illnesses, but now he was about to make a claim of authority that goes way beyond that. Could it be that he really had the power to forgive sin? How could one possibly ever know the truth of that claim? Luke is about to show us.
Jesus’ notoriety has spread enough that, even though Jesus was still in Capernaum, people had come from all over Galilee to see him. In fact, it went beyond just people from Galilee. The big boys had come out to see him. Luke tells us that Pharisees and teachers of the law had come not just the area of Galilee but as far away as Judea and Jerusalem. This is the first time Luke mentions the Pharisees who will serve as Jesus’ main source of opposition throughout his ministry. The Pharisees, we should note, were not an official group at the time. They were an informal pressure group. They were the ones that went around speaking of the coming of the kingdom of God so when someone else was out making claims about God’s kingdom, that was certainly going to catch their attention. What they would quickly discover, however, was that Jesus’ version of the kingdom was diametrically opposed to the one that they had embraced. They were thoroughly convinced that the reason that the kingdom hadn’t yet come was because of the many sinners in Israel. They were keeping God from returning to his people and if they would just stop sinning and hold to the law tighter then he would finally return and crush Israel’s enemies. This led them, in many ways, to look down on others as the problem and to see themselves as the example and the solution. So they offered up more and more rules and regulations for people to follow so that they could escape their status as sinners, if they would only take up this heavy yoke then they might be accepted by God.
But Jesus was offering something very different and quite opposed to that mindset. Rather than clinging more tightly to rules, regulations, and their heritage as Jews, Jesus didn’t appear to have a heavy yoke of laws that would help the lowly sinners improve their plight. He seemed to be more interested in faith and obedience to himself than in anything that people did or were born as to improve their plight. Of course if people did believe in his authority and live in submission to it, they would find that they would be better off, but that change would be real change that slowly came from within, not the more visible change that would come from conforming to the standards of others. Those were big claims and one would need a whole lot of authority to be able to make the radical claims that Jesus was making. But how could he possibly demonstrate the truth of such claims. Anyone, after all could say such things, but how could people know that what he was saying was true?
That is where the miracles came in. Jesus was healing people and demonstrating the power of the kingdom of God to make people whole through the physical reality of miracles. So many people were coming to Jesus that it was apparently becoming next to impossible to get in to see him. Surely this had to irritate the Pharisees who, although were respected in the community in many respects, certainly didn’t have throngs of people pressing in to see them and hear them talk about the kingdom of God. But Jesus did. Luke tells us of one man and his friends who so badly wanted to experience the healing touch of Jesus that they climbed up on the roof and dug their way through the thatch to lower their friend down to Jesus. Jesus was struck by the loyalty that these men were showing to their paralytic friend (paralytics were of little to no value in the society and often left to fend for themselves in many ways). He saw their faith, Luke tells us, which is a clue and a key to this whole story. Their faith was demonstrated by their actions. We tend to view faith as a mental exercise, but the people of Jesus’ time just did not see it that way. You acted on what you believed in such a way that your actions always demonstrated your beliefs. For someone to say, “well I did this but that’s not what I believe or what is in my heart,” is something that would make no sense to the Jews of Jesus’ day. You did what you believed, end of story. Thus, Jesus’ sees the demonstration of their faith and he will respond with a demonstration of his own.
Their great hope was that Jesus would heal this man and allow him to walk home but Jesus did way more than that. The kingdom of God, after all, was not primarily about physical healing. The physical healing merely pointed to the true power of the kingdom of God to heal the lives of sinners. Because this man had demonstrated the determined kind of faith that was necessary for one to accept the kingdom of God, Jesus would demonstrate his position as the savior of the world who had the authority, even though he had humbled himself to become a man limited by the flesh, to forgive sins. It is important to note, that although those around him were still not fully cognizant of the fact that Jesus was claiming to be God (Luke will get to that soon enough), that Jesus was doing things that only Israel’s God could do as savior. AS the prophet Isaiah wrote, “I, even I, am YHWH, and apart from me there is no savior” (Isa. 43:11).
The Pharisees certainly got the underlying point of the claim to forgive sin. If Jesus was claiming the authority of sin forgiver and savior, then he was claiming the authority and identity of God. They simply would not stand for this, especially when his message was so fundamentally opposed to the one that they embraced. This demonstrates an important truth in Jesus’ ministry. The miracles were great demonstrations of Jesus’ true authority but they weren’t enough by themselves. They had to mingle with submission and obedience in order to produce the necessary faith of a true kingdom person. As Jesus’ ministry will show, it was just as easy to see those miracles and still reject Jesus’ authority.
Jesus knew that the Pharisees’ were thinking that he was making claims that he could not back up. His ability to tell them what they were thinking was another clue of his true identity, one that they rejected. In order to demonstrate his true authority, though, and give every opportunity to the Pharisees and the whole crowd to believe, Jesus will show that he does indeed have the power and authority that he has claimed in being able to forgive sins. First, he asks an important question. Is it harder to forgive sin or to heal a lame man and give him the power to walk? There is no good way for the Pharisees to answer that question and so they don’t. But Jesus commands him to get up and walk. Surely the crowd was amazed and at least some realized that this was a clear demonstration that he did have the power to forgive sin just as he claimed.
In claiming his authority to forgive sins, though, Jesus dropped another clue that at least some in the crowd, not the least of those being the Pharisees, picked up on. Jesus used the somewhat mysterious phrase “the son of man.” This is the first time that Luke has described that phrase from the lips of Jesus and it is no small thing. The phrase could simply mean “just another man,” but by the time of Jesus, the phrase had almost exclusively taken on the meaning of its use in Daniel 7 and been applied to the messianic figure from that passage. In Daniel 7, the son of man is the one who is brought before God, suffers persecution, and is given all authority over the whole world. He was the Messiah through whom God would bring his kingdom into the world. Jesus was subtly indicating that he was Daniel’s Messiah. He was the one who had authority over the whole world to forgive sin and to make the lame walk. His works showed that his authority was genuine just as our actions demonstrate the genuineness of our faith.
The people standing there that day were amazed and they certainly saw much more than they expected. Imagine that this was the first time that you had ever read the Gospel of Luke or even heard of Jesus. From that perspective, we should recognize that feeling of amazement because as we read through Luke we find that Jesus is much more than we could ever expect. Jesus made a life of doing things that people never expected and he will continue to do the unexpected in our lives if we recognize his authority.
Devotional Thought
Jesus differed from the religious leaders of his day because he offered the people hope and true transformation rather than just blaming them for being sinners. Does you tend to reflect Jesus’ approach or that of the religious leaders? Take an honest look and assess whether you really present the gospel as a message of hope or one of condemnation.
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