Luke 11:14-28 Commentary

Jesus and Beelzebul
14 Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. 15 But some of them said, "By Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons." 16 Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven.

17 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. 18 If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebul. 19 Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. 20 But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

21 "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. 22 But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder.

23 "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

24 "When an evil [g] spirit comes out of anyone, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' 25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first."

27 As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, "Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you."
28 He replied, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it."

Dig Deeper
There is a remarkable scene in the movie, Amistad. It is a movie about Joseph Cinque and his amazing journey as he was captured by another tribe, sold to slave traders, taken to a slave auction in Cuba, and then escaped and took over the ship that was taking him to lifelong slavery. He and the other Africans on the ship were eventually captured and there was a trial that had to determine whether they were free Africans and would be released or would be put into slavery after all. The movie covers real events but it is to a fictional scene in the movie that I want to refer. In it, Cinque’s lawyer asks him, while he is still in jail, about rumors that Cinque had killed a lion with his bare hands while still in Africa (the event actually happened but the scene of discussing it with his lawyer is historical fiction). The lawyer was deeply impressed as were all of the Africans who had relayed the story to him. But Cinque thought it was nothing for which he should be honored. He went on to tell the lawyer that he been hailed as a great man in his village for killing this lion who was threatening his village but he shouldn’t have been. He then quietly tells his legal representative about how afraid he was and that he picked up a large stone in near desperation and threw it at the lion. The stone hit the lion just right in the head and actually killed it. He was no hero, said Cinque, because it all happened by sheer luck.

We often times, I think, tend to have that view of Jesus. No Christian doubts that he was brave and courageous and went through incredibly harrowing circumstances. But it seems that we often depict Jesus as a great preacher and teacher who was caught up in terrible opposition and awful circumstances during his final week and had to really keep his chin up and be brave as things swirled around him and violently blew him towards a tragic death, one that he, to make matters even worse, knew was coming and couldn’t avoid. That is just not the reality. Jesus was no Cinque. He didn’t get thrust into a fight that he didn’t want and then make it through with luck. That’s not the picture that the gospels give us of Jesus. Instead, we find a warrior. We find a Messiah that knew that his vocation included an assault on death, sin, and evil. And because of that we find a Jesus who made war wherever he went. He made war with the demonic. He made war with Satan. And ultimately he would make war death. No, he wasn’t a tragic figure who bravely faced a tragic end. He was a warrior who came to pick a fight.

As we look at this passage it becomes obvious that Luke is not so interested in this particular exorcism as he is the response to it. Jesus had won an initial victory over Satan after walking into the wilderness, the place of Satan’s victory over Israel in the war to get them to grumble against God, and had continue to make war with Satan’s demons ever since. There was no denying that Jesus had demonstrated some kind of incredible authority over the demons that could not be simply explained away or denied. This left two options. Either Jesus was working within the power of God or he was somehow in league with Satan. Some of his opponents claimed that he was working through the power of Beelzebul (a derogatory term for Satan that meant “Lord of the flies”). Others wanted a specific sign from heaven. Luke doesn’t tell us what that sign might be, but it may be the specific sign described in John 6 where we see that many Jews were expecting that when the Messiah returned he would bring back the provision of manna (which may have been the connection in Luke’s mind between the Jews asking for that sign and the previous passage which alluded to the daily bread of manna).

Jesus knew their thoughts though, something that tips his readers that he was far more than some charlatan operating under the dark forces of Satan. He then answers the objections that were being thrown out against him and shows the lack of logic and strength to those arguments. How could Jesus be operating by the power of Satan? His ministry was one of freedom and making people whole, calling them to do the will of God. Satan is certainly a counterfeiter and a trickster but surely he wouldn’t be engaging in the types of activity that were bringing down his own little kingdom. Satan’s strength comes through slavery, robbing people of their humanity, and persuading humans to do their own will rather than God’s. If Jesus was working with Satan, then Satan would be engaging in bringing down his own kingdom. This was war language that Jesus was using. A kingdom or a royal house that went to war against itself would make no sense but it would also be destroyed.

No, Jesus was not operating under the power of Satan. That should be obvious. And if they wanted a sign they wouldn’t get one. That was the whole problem was that they would not drop their preconceived notions of what the Messiah should be. The only sign they would get right now would be his word that he was driving out demons by the finger of God, a clear allusion to Exodus 8:19. The Pharaoh’s magicians conceded that Moses was doing things that their dark magic could not reproduce. It was only the finger of God that could do such things. But Pharaoh rejected that. His heart was hardened further by claim that this was the almighty God at work. The choice was now up to Jesus’ opposition. Would they accept the obvious point that this was the finger of God at work or would they harden their hearts like Pharaoh to the new exodus that was breaking forth as Jesus continued his march towards Jerusalem?

Make no mistake, though, this was a war that Jesus was engaging in. Satan had his own kingdom that he had set up on earth but Jesus was here to make war. Satan might be a strong man that was fully armed and prepared to guard his own house but a strong man can do nothing when a stronger man makes war on him. Jesus was that stronger man. He was attacking and overpowering Satan. This was a war. This was fight that Jesus was intentionally picking. Yet, he knew that this fight would end in his own violent death. That is what his disciples had such a hard time understanding. How could one defeat their enemy by dying? That didn’t make sense, of course, until they could grasp that Jesus was not just attacking Satan but was going to rob him of his most potent weapon, death itself.

With any war, sides must be carefully chosen. There is no sitting on the fence in this fight. One is either with Jesus, working to bring the kingdom of God into the world and continuing the assault on Satan’s stronghold or they are working against him, scattering what he is trying to gather. At first glance, this might seem at odds with Jesus’ words in 9:50, “Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.” Yet, his point there was that the disciples should not try to limit the kingdom to a small group of insiders. If someone was doing the work of the kingdom then they should be accepted as part of God’s people. The point here is not contradictory but complimentary. Those who have not taken up with Jesus in his fight will be fighting against him by default.

Jesus was on a mission to cleanse Israel and subsequently the whole world from the influence of evil and to reconcile the ruptured relationship between the family of fallen humanity and God. He was calling people to join God’s promised family and engage in the work of brining the kingdom of God to every part of Israel and the world. But before that could truly happen Jesus would engage in the fight. He would sweep the house clean and defeat the foes that Israel could not on their own. But that was also a serious warning. Jesus was fighting the evil that was in Israel and exercising authority. He was giving Israel the chance to follow him and find the salvation that they had waited for so long but if they didn’t truly embrace him there would be trouble. The time was short. He was sweeping the house so that they could see what God’s kingdom looked like but they needed to realize, in a sense, that they need not a cleaned house but a new one altogether. They needed to realize that the house of Israel was doomed and that Satan and his minions would come down upon Israel in a much more complete and final way than they were now after Jesus was gone. They needed to abandon their path and realize that the relief that Jesus was brining to Israel was only temporary. If they stayed where they were, things would be far worse than were originally.

As Jesus was wrapping up his remarks, a woman cried out to him a standard Jewish blessing upon his mother. If a son was acting in a honored way, then the honor and blessing extended to the whole family. The family, after all, was the source of their identity as the people of God. Yet, Jesus used this as an opportunity to make the point again that he was redefining family. Physical descent was not what showed one to be blessed or the people of God. The family of God were those who heard the word of God and obeyed it. They were those who engaged in the war. This is a stern reminder for us who can so easily slip into the comfortable thought that what we do doesn’t matter as long as we’re part of the right church and have the right doctrines. Those things are important, but the real question is this: “are we engaging in Jesus’ work”? Are we with him or against him? Are we truly acting like his family?


Devotional Thought
In John 8, Jesus said that the Jews showed themselves, by their actions, to not be part of God’s family but to be part of Satan’s. If someone were to look at your life right now, what signs would they see that you were part of the family of God? Would they see the family resemblance of the Father in your life?

Luke 11:1-13 Commentary

Jesus' Teaching on Prayer
1 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."
2 He said to them, "When you pray, say:
" 'Father, [a]
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come. [b]

3 Give us each day our daily bread.

4 Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. [c]
And lead us not into temptation. [d]' "

5 Then Jesus said to them, "Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' 7 And suppose the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity [e] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

9 "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened.

11 "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for [f] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"


Dig Deeper
I simply don’t remember where I was or how old I was the first time I learned the pledge of allegiance. It almost seems like one of those things that I’ve just always known, but I’m sure I had to learn it somewhere at some point. I do remember, going all the way back to kindergarten, however, standing with my hand placed solidly over my heart each morning and facing the American flag while reciting those now familiar words, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” If you’re American you know this pledge. You even know the familiar cadence which is universally used when reciting the pledge. I can say that pledge in my sleep without even thinking about it, and I’m sure that my American friends can as well. So, why do we say that pledge? I think a big reason is because it captures the essence of what we mean when we say we’re American. America was one of the few countries in the history of the world, if not the only one, that was built solely on an idea of personal liberty. You don’t have to necessarily agree with that statement, though, to realize that the point of the pledge is to capture, in an easily repeatable and memorable format, the basic ideals of the American movement. That’s certainly not to say that the pledge contains everything that we think being an American means, but it certainly serves as a great slogan-like reminder of where our loyalties are supposed to lie, and what type of people we, as Americans are supposed to be.

To be honest, I don’t even know if other countries have pledges of that nature but I know that small recitations like that are quite common among different groups, organizations, and even religious communities. These types of scripts bind us together with others in our chosen group. They not only acknowledge our common identity but take part in creating it. But we shouldn’t think that this is a new phenomenon and it certainly isn’t something that began with the American pledge of allegiance, as much as Americans like to think that we invented everything. Going back to Jesus’ day and beyond, it was not uncommon for religious groups, especially within Judaism, who saw themselves as unique and different from everyone else around them, to have a small group identifying prayer. John the Baptist evidently had one and so would the followers of Jesus.

As Jesus was following his normal habit of praying, we learn that this commitment to go to God in prayer was not lost on the disciples. They want to learn to pray as Jesus does and to have their own community-identifying prayer. The prayer would serve as both a model for how they should pray and would also serve the purpose of providing them a slogan-of-sorts that would quickly sum up who they were as God’s people and what they valued. They were already beginning to grasp the reality that Jesus was forging them into a new community different than one that had existed before. They were being crafted into the new family of God.

When they went to God in prayer, they should approach him as their Father. Jesus was not just creating a new community that saw itself as a family, he was bringing to fulfillment the family that God had promised Abraham. This would be God’s own family, a people who could approach him affectionately as their own father (cf. Mark 14:36; Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). The disciples were becoming a family of those who did God’s will and who would be adopted into God’s family through the life of Christ as co-heirs. This community would always go through Jesus to join the family. As Jesus had declared, “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Luke 4:22). Jesus was not only introducing a new element of relationship with God, he was continuing his constant and repeated assertion that his followers were becoming the true Israel, the fulfillment of the family that God had promised and that Israel had only pointed to (Deut. 32:6; Isa. 63:16).

They would be a people that truly hallowed the name of God. The Jews had made an attempt to do this and had so hallowed the actual name of God that they would not utter except for perhaps one time a year. Yet, this is not what God desired. If we remember that “name” was not just a title or word but referred to the whole reputation, character, authority, and life of an individual, we can see that Jesus wanted a community that truly hallowed God’s entirety, not just a word. Today, groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses make the same mistake as the Jews. They revere his name (although they go the opposite route of the Jews and claim that his name must be used all the time—they continue to use the term “Jehovah” even though experts now realize that God’s name in the Old Testament was likely YHWH and that Jehovah was never an actual name or term) but distort who he is. The name or life that Jesus came to reveal was his own. God would be revealed through the life of Jesus who in turn revealed the aspect of God as the Father of the covenant family. Living the life of Christ with God as our Father, then, is the primary way that Christians revere the name of God.

The prayer would demonstrate that they were a family who lived in such a way as to bring God’s kingdom on earth. They would do his will as his people and would, like the Israelites who lived on the daily portion of manna, would rely on God for their daily bread. In Exodus 16:19-21, the Israelites were warned to trust God each day for his provision rather than engaging in activities of hoarding that fostered greed and demonstrated a lack of believing in God’s continued provision. The Messiah’s family would be people who trust God each day for their spiritual provision.

Part of that provision would be to rely on God’s continued forgiveness of sins. Those in Christ no longer live in the realm of condemnation as part of the family of fallen humanity (cf. Rom. 8:1) but are the promised family of many nations through whom sin would finally be dealt with and all people of the world could be blessed. It would be inconsistent as God’s people to expect something from God that we are not willing to gives ourselves. So, as we breathe in God’s forgiveness, we must continue to breathe it out to others in order that we might continue to breathe in God’s love and forgiveness.

Another aspect of that provision is to realize that without God we would walk straight into temptation and succumb to it every time. We would follow the example of Israel in the wilderness rather than that of Jesus who was led into the wilderness by the Spirit but did the will of God. The prayer, then, calls for God’s continued provision in keeping us from giving into temptation the way we would if left to our own provision.

To make the point clear that God wants to provide for his Messiah-shaped family Jesus gave two helpful illustrations. The first was a common situation in his day but with an ironic twist. If a friend needed bread, the cultural expectation was that he would be given the bread despite any inconvenience. His hearers simply couldn’t imagine someone who would actually refuse to provide hospitality on the basis of friendship. But Jesus wants them to go along and imagine such a case. In that unbelievable event, the man would still give the bread because of the persistent asking by the one in need. If humans would give the bread in any situation then how much more can they be assured that God will answer their persistent prayers. They need not hesitate to come to their father and pray persistently. If they ask, God will certainly answer their prayers. The Father will provide the needs that his people have. We would be abusing the context of the story to claim that Jesus was saying that we could ask for whatever we desired and expect to get it. His point was that we can rely on God for the things that we need.

The second example uses the same line of thinking as the first. This situation would surely not happen with humans, so why would you ever think that God would act that way? How can you not trust in the promises of God? What kind of father would give his son a snake rather than a fish or a scorpion rather than an egg? The answer would self evident. No kind of father would do that. If imperfect people give good gifts to those they love then would not our perfect Father in heaven do so all the more. Snakes and scorpions were common symbols for evil and the demonic so it is possible that Jesus was making a further allusion beyond just a bad or dangerous gift rather than a helpful one.

The fact is clear that Jesus was creating a kingdom people, a new family who had God himself as their Father. The way of breaking God’s will and his kingdom into the present age could be a tough go and the only way to do it is to rely fully on God. They would become a family that was devoted, among other things, to prayer and reliance on God as their Father. The new exodus had already begun and Jesus was providing bread, forgiveness, and the ability to not give into temptation to his followers. They would need to continue to rely on his provision for them to complete this lifetime journey, and so do we.


Devotional Thought
Do you really rely on prayer the way that Jesus urged? Do you reduce your need for prayer in your life and approach it almost as a nice extra rather than an absolutely vital aspect of your life as following Jesus?

Luke 10:38-42 Commentary

At the Home of Martha and Mary
38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"
41 "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. [f] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."


Dig Deeper
When I first became a Christian, there were certain aspects of learning to follow Jesus that were difficult but for the most part, as I look back on that time now I realize that, things were pretty easy. I didn’t have much to do when it came to my walk with God other than to just take care of my own personal time with God. Other disciples were constantly serving me and helping me to grow and all I had to do was to quiet myself and worship God, whether it was for a personal quiet time, or a worship gathering at church. I could just sit with Jesus and focus on my relationship with him. It never crossed my mind at the time that there would be a time when just doing that could become a challenge. Surely if I did ever think that just quieting myself in devotion, reflection, and worship of God would become difficult, I would have thought that it was because I was struggling in my faith. What I don’t think I ever imagined at that time was that as I became more spiritually mature and more devoted to God, it could actually become harder to devote myself to quiet worship of him.

As I became a more mature disciple I realized that I couldn’t just sit back and let everyone else serve me. I had to step forward and begin to serve others. I had to go about the work of teaching, training, and discipling other Christians. I had to start engaging in the necessary work of the church and carry my share of the load. As time went on I found myself serving in God’s kingdoms in ways that constantly demanded more time, more energy, more effort, and just more of me all around. I eventually found myself where I am today, serving as the minister of one of God’s churches and teaching his word.

That all sounds wonderful and it is. I cherish the opportunities that I have had to serve and work in God’s kingdom. It seems with each passing year that the responsibilities I have had have grown and that can be a wonderful thing. But with increased responsibility comes increased demand. I now find it more challenging than ever before to sit and just worship God sometimes. Every time I open the Bible I can feel a crush of needing to get another lesson or study prepared. Every time I go to a Sunday worship gathering I can get so focused on all of the things that need to be done that I can actually forget to stop and sit at Jesus’ feet and learn from him and be his disciple. I can get so busy doing the things that a disciple does that I can actually overlook the need to be a disciple of Jesus. Serving Jesus in his kingdom is a wonderful task, but it is just a harsh reality that I can get so busy doing that that I neglect to sit down and be with Jesus.

Luke connects this incident involving Mary and martha with the previous scene by pointing out that it took place as Jesus and his disciples continued on their journey. Yet, it seems clear, based on the location of this account in Bethany, that either Jesus took a weird zig-zagging pattern on his journey, coming close to Jerusalem and then working back farther away and then coming close again, or that Luke has ordered his account in a way other than chronological. Luke told his readers in the opening verses that he ordered his account thoroughly but only a modern Western mind would assume that that meant it must have been a chronological ordering. Luke is depicting Jesus’ journey towards Jerusalem and is showing how he redefined what it meant to be the people of God. In the previous passage, Jesus made clear that his kingdom people must be people who are not focused on sizing up the worthiness of others to be loved, served, and shown compassion but rather we are to be people who concern ourselves with be loving, serving, and showing compassion to all. The responsibility for love and service is on us not on others to be worthy of that status.

But there is a real danger in becoming people of love, compassion, and service. We can get so focused on doing those “good things” that we can forget why we are doing them. The long history of the Christian road is littered equally on one side with those who just wanted to love and adore Jesus and enjoy their own relationship with him and ignored the call from the previous passage to radically love and serve others. But there are also those on the other side who became so focused on loving and serving others that they lost sight of Jesus and his teaching and purposes to reconcile the whole world to God. The previous story was an illustration of the need to love and serve. This story, however, stands in perfect tension with the previous one. Serve and love, yes, but don’t forget the all-important relationship with Jesus.

As they prepared for the meal, Martha was busy doing what was the normal role for women in that culture. She was preparing everything. She was working hard and serving others. Martha got so distracted and busy with all the work that needed to be done that she minimized the need to sit with Jesus and just “be” his disciple.

The fact that Martha’s heart needed redirecting is made clear by her question to Jesus. Her service had ceased to be about pleasing God and became about her. She was serving but Mary was not. Mary was not doing what she should be. In fact, it went beyond just that. Mary was not just neglecting her culturally-expected role to help prepare the meal, she had moved into the role that traditionally only men took. She was sitting at Jesus’ feet and learning from him as though she was a disciple on the same level with the men. This crossing of the gender lines would have been a small scandal in those times and that was no doubt irritating Martha as well. Only a woman of questionable reputation would do such a thing. Mary didn’t know her place and she was leaving all the work to Martha to get done. Her question is asked in such a way in the original Greek that Martha was expecting a positive answer from Jesus (in English it would be something like, “You care about this and want her to help me and not leave me to do the work alone, right?”).

Jesus gently rebukes Martha, however, rather than agreeing with her as she expected. He starts, though, by calling her name twice, a sign of closeness and affection in their culture. Jesus, we should note, doesn’t really rebuke Martha for her activities of serving. His rebuke is for getting things out of balance and judging Mary by her own standards. She was evidently outraged by the fact that Mary had crossed out of the realm that was proper for a woman and that had left Martha to do the work by herself. Just like he did with the expert of the law in the previous passage, Jesus wants to transform Martha’s thinking. She had become so focused on serving and doing that she lost sight of what her true motivation was to be in the kingdom and what was really important.

The fact is there is a danger that when we forget to sit at Jesus’ feet that our service can get to a point where it is no longer out of love, it is out of duty and we get quite frustrated with those who are just sitting at the feet of Jesus. The problem is not with them but with us as we have become unplugged from the source of our love, service, and devotion.

Jesus didn’t denounce Martha for her heart to serve but he was showing her that service is no good if it consumes us and we reduce discipleship to doing things. Mary had chosen the better way of devotion to Jesus. There was a time and place for preparation but this wasn’t that time. In addition to that, the very fact that Martha was upset by Mary’s actions demonstrated that something in heart was out of whack. Thus, the fact that she was upset with Mary and the fact that she was too busy to come sit at Jesus’ feet and take the position of a learner stood as dual witnesses to the truth that Martha had either forgotten or had yet to find the real reason for her discipleship. Only when we are truly devoted to sitting at the feet of Jesus and having a relationship with him can we really serve with a heart of compassion that pleases God.

But we should note that there is truth to the fact that Jesus was also radically redefining the role of women in his kingdom movement. When Mary took her place at Jesus’ feet she was not just taking the position of a learner and student, but was doing so because she wanted to be able to teach the word of God as well. There would have been no thought of learning for the sake of learning. She was taking the position of a disciple, and disciples learned so that they could then pass on what they learned. The role of women would be equal to that of men in the kingdom of God. Women in the family of God were every bit as much disciples as men. Jesus would have nothing of the idea that there was a space for women and a space for men and that, by and large, the space for men was in the realm of learner and disciple while the women should serve their role and function which did not include learning and teaching the word of God. In God’s new family there would be no distinction in status between men and women (Ga. 3:26-29). This is not to say that there were not biblical limitations to the scope of the equal roles of men and women because there certainly were (1 Tim. 2:12), but Jesus made it clear that women were as welcome at his feet as men were (the fact that the early Christian church was viewed as a family helps us to understand the different roles of men and women within the church family, including the expectation that men would have the role of leading the family).

Some commentators, like C.F. Evans, who see an intentional parallel between Deuteronomy and Luke 10-18, note that this passage seems to contain allusions to Deuteronomy 8:1-3 where the idea is to realize that “people do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deut. 8:3). This is what Martha needed to learn as do we all need a reminder from time to time. When life gets hectic or the demands on us get heavy, it seems that often the first thing to go is our time with God. This story is a stark reminder that there is never so much to do that we don’t have time to just sit at the feet of Jesus.



Devotional Thought
One of the ironic elements of this account is that Martha was so worried about what Mary was doing and was sure that Jesus was going to deal with Mary but he instead rebuked Martha. This is a great reminder for us to focus on our relationship with God and find the balance that God desires for us rather than worrying about what others are doing. Usually when we get all worked up about what others are doing and we want to see them get rebuked, we can let that serve as a sign that we are, in fact, the one in need of some correction. Look at your own life. Do you need to stop worrying about what others are doing and just sit at the feet of Jesus for awhile?

Luke 10:25-37 Commentary

The Parable of the Good Samaritan
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
26 "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

27 He answered, " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' [c]; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' [d]"

28 "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

30 In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii [e] and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

36 "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."



Dig Deeper
As Christians we all should be rather familiar with the call to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are equally familiar with the call to love our neighbor as ourselves and we well know that Jesus said that the identifying mark of his true disciples would be the way that we love one another. We know that in our head, but that can be much more challenge to actually live that all out. One of the things that can slowly creep into our hearts is the idea that we really only need to love our fellow Christians. Surely the call to love others as ourselves only applies to those who love God and are pleasant to be around. It cannot apply to a Middle Eastern terrorist or a neighborhood prostitute can it? Surely Jesus didn’t mean for us to love the drug dealer on the corner who is slowly bringing our neighborhood into worse and worse living conditions? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about hating or mistreating anyone, just the logical realization that Christians are members of the family of God and, thus, worthy of the self-giving love that Jesus called for. All others are deserving, perhaps, of a different kind of concern and care but certainly they are not the ones that Jesus was referring to when he called us to love our neighbors. Did Jesus really mean that we should love criminals, terrorists, drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes and the like in the same way that we love ourselves? Did he really mean that the way we love those kind of people would demonstrate how we truly love him?

But imagine that a man was walking home one night after his car broke down. The only way to get home was through the worst and most dangerous road in his town but he had no choice. Along the way, a gang of teenage thugs, who were well known in the neighborhood for dealing drugs and violent behavior, jumped this man, robbed him, and left him for dead. As he was laying on the side of the road, near dead, a car appeared in the distance. Driving the car was a local pastor from a nearby church. He slowed his car down, saw the man and his condition but decided that the best thing for him to do was to drive on and say a prayer for the man. He had a cell phone with him but didn’t call 911, thinking that it was best to not get involved, especially since he wasn’t entirely sure if the man was dead or if he was alive would make it before help could arrive. And besides, he was late for the midweek service anyway. A few minutes later, a lawyer who was a deacon from another church came by on a motorcycle. He too looked at the man but decided to leave him. After all, this was a dangerous neighborhood, but even more importantly, he was in a hurry, being that he was late for his men’s Bible study group that evening already. He was supposed to give the opening prayer for the group that evening and to stop might mean he miss fulfilling his responsibility. So, he made the choice to drive on and say a little prayer for the man as he continued on to church.

Just then, a local gang member came by. The young man had been in and out of jail his whole young life despite the fact that he had grown up Muslim. In fact, not only was he connected with local crime, he had used much of the money from his drug dealing to launder through various routes so that he could support Muslim terrorists in the Middle East. He also had five children with four different mothers and was not married to any of the mothers. But this man came by and took compassion on the injured man. He went over to him to see if he was okay. He picked him up and carried him to a nearby neighborhood clinic and took him in. Since the injured man’s identification was gone, including any insurance documentation, the young man offered cash for his care and said he would come back in a few days and take care of any expense that went beyond what he had already given.

Now, here is the important question. Who really loved the injured man? Who acted in a way that was truly the way that God would want his people to act? Whose actions looked more like the kingdom of God? Who loved the injured man the way God wants his people to love everyone?

Before we fully consider those questions, let’s look at today’s passage in Luke. The expert in the law that stood up to Jesus seems to have wanted to trap Jesus into making a controversial, if not heretical statement. His question as to what he needed to do to inherit eternal life was a standard Jewish question, but as the scene develops, it becomes clear that his intent was to expose what he thought was Jesus’ errors in his implications that God’s kingdom would be available to all equally.

First, we have to understand that when inquired about eternal life, he was not speaking of getting to heaven and living there eternally in a spirit-like state. “Eternal life” was literally “the life of the coming age.” He wanted to know how Jesus would define the boundary markers of those who would take part in the resurrection as God’s people and live in God’s age to come. Jesus’ answer was also not particularly unique by appealing to the law. Surely this was not what the expert expected from Jesus, but he gave the standard answer which was to love God in the manner described by the Shema (an important Jewish daily prayer that comes from Deuteronomy 6:4) and to love your neighbor in the manner described in Leviticus 19:18.

Apparently Jesus wasn’t going to fall into a trap and say something that could be misused against him, but this expert wanted to make sure that his conception, the popular Jewish one, was correct. The belief was that God had called his people to love their neighbor but many defined the term “neighbor” down to mean those in Israel who were righteous. Surely the rest were sinners who should rightly be avoided. If Jesus were to contradict this tightly held belief he would, no doubt the expert thought, discredit himself. But just as Jesus would not directly state that he was the Jewish Messiah and so feed into misconceptions (he instead answered questions about his messianic identity by directing people to look at what he was doing and thus redefined their notions about what the Messiah would be like), he would not directly answer this man and feed into his preconceived notions. He would instead answer through what has become one of the most famous and beloved parables of all time.

One of the problems with stories that are so well known and well-loved are that they can lose much of their original punch and intended meaning because of our familiarity with them. This has certainly happened to this parable. We must be careful not to reduce this to a pithy little story about our need to be a “good Samaritan” and help those in need. This story would have been powerful, even to the point of being distasteful in Jesus’ day. He purposefully set the story on one of the most dangerous roads in Israel, a road that he was soon to take himself. The expectation would have been that the hero of the story would have been the socially acceptable and respected priest or Levite. But Jesus blows the story up by having a Samaritan be the hero. It would have been difficult in Jesus’ day to manufacture a more hated protagonist than a Samaritan. It would be on par with telling this same story in Israel today and having a Palestinian or Iranian take the role of hero.

To fully appreciate and understand this story, we have to try to enter into it and put it in our own cultural context. This is why I tried to re-tell the story above and do just that. The opening question that the expert had was who exactly his neighbor was. Who did he have to treat with love and respect? Who would be in God’s age to come? The hero in our version was someone who runs afoul of many of our cultural boundaries. He was a drug-dealing, Muslim terrorist-supporting, illegitimate child-producing, street thug. It would be hard for an American, from our cultural perspective to invent someone more deserving of being left out of God’s kingdom, someone less deserving of being loved as our neighbor. And that is just the point. Everything in us tells us to despise this person. The question is not whether or not the man by the side of the road is our neighbor and whether or not we should help him. That’s what we often reduce this story to and that would be to miss the point. The point is that the Samaritan was the neighbor. The drug-dealing terrorist was a neighbor.

What Jesus did in essence was to turn the question upside-down and indeed he upended the entire worldview of the questioner. The priest and the Levite lived in a world where they were regarded as righteous because of who they were regardless of their actions. They were sure that their status as descendants of Abraham automatically made them the people of God (cf. Lk. 3:7-9). Many who were standing in Jesus’ presence would probably have even applauded the decision of the men to avoid the injured man. (Sirach 12:1-7, a popular Jewish non-canonical book of wisdom of the time, said “If you do good, know to whom you do it. . . Give to the one who is good, but do not help the sinner.”) What set apart the Samaritan was nothing more than his compassionate love, which stood in stark contrast to their inaction.

Jesus didn’t answer the question of who was the expert in the law’s neighbor but flipped the question to ask who acted as a neighbor. The expert in the law would have wanted to know if the injured man was really his neighbor and really required help. Jesus makes that a non-issue. Jesus’ presupposition is that everyone is already a neighbor, the question is whether we love like God’s people or not. He has successfully undermined the entire worldview of this man by making clear that a new reality has come. The issue is not one of assessing people and determining who is worthy of God’s radical love but of being a kingdom person yourself. Rather than worrying about who is your neighbor, Jesus calls us to be a neighbor to all. If even the Samaritan can act like a neighbor to someone he didn’t know, then why wouldn’t someone who wants to be part of God’s people?

This scene ends with a bit of a mystery, though. Has the point gotten through to the expert in the law? Jesus has turned his entire world of what it means to be God’s people, how one is to view others, and his justification of prejudice completely on its head. He has made the most reviled of all people a symbol of what God’s people should be like. Jesus assaulted every stronghold this man had in a few short sentences and sometimes things like that take time to sink in. He still so reviles the idea of a Samaritan being exemplified that rather than speaking of his nationality, he simply calls him “the one who had mercy on him.” Jesus’ rebuking challenge is not to try to determine who is a proper neighbor to love but to go and be a neighbor, a loving kingdom person to everyone. He has heard the word of God, but the question remains. Will he do it? Will he go and do likewise? And even more importantly for today; will you?



Devotional Thought
Can you identify with the expert in the law? Do you sometimes find yourself drawing boundaries on who you will love and accept? What is Jesus’ radical call to love others and be a neighbor to all calling you to do today? Where do you need to change your mind? How does this parable challenge your worldview?

Luke 10:17-24 Commentary

17 The seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name."

18 He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

22 "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

23 Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."



Dig Deeper
When I was a kid I participated in many different kid’s sports leagues, especially in baseball and basketball. They were always fun but there was a big focus back then on winning. That was really considered to be the point of playing sports even for those of us who were very young. Our understanding of success did not stretch any farther than whether we won the game or not. Now that I am older and have my own children playing in sport’s leagues in many different sports including soccer, football, and basketball, I have seen a dramatic shift in the purpose of kid’s sports leagues. No longer is the focus on winning. The primary purpose of the kid’s sports leagues now is to have fun. Everyone is a winner, they tell them, just for participating. I tend to think that they’ve gone a little overboard in all of that. Winning certainly isn’t the only thing, but they exaggerate it to the point where they don’t even keep score anymore, which seems a little pointless to me, I have to admit. A few weeks ago, though, my six year old’s basketball team had won their game convincingly. How do I know they won, you might ask if no score is kept? Because, as I explained to my wife, every man in the gym knows the score of the game whether they put it up on the scoreboard or not. As the kids were coming off of the court celebrating their win, I heard the kids being corrected several times by the workers at the league, reminding them that the important thing was that they all had fun not that they won the game.

Sometimes we, as humans, have a tendency to celebrate the wrong things (although I have to admit, I’m not sure that the above example actually does fall into that category—I’ll leave you to decide that for yourself). We can easily get focused on the things that don’t really matter that much and over-emphasize them. We celebrate the external looks of someone over their internal spiritual beauty. We judge people’s success by how much money and possessions they have rather than by how consistently they do the will of God in their life. It just seems to be part of our fallen human state to focus on the wrong things and miss what is truly important. Despite the incredible privilege of following Jesus on a day-in-day-out basis, the disciples were just as prone to that error as any other human being. As they continue their crash-course in true discipleship of Jesus, they will learn that great victories are not the true spiritual measure of success.

The time for Jesus’ kingdom announcing mission to Israel was running short. As part of the urgent nature of his mission, Jesus had selected seventy-two disciples (a likely symbolic number for the traditional number of Gentile nations) to take part in proclamation of the coming kingdom. Strangely, Luke never records the success or failure of the mission itself. The disciples themselves seem to want to celebrate the fact that they had exercised incredible authority that came from Jesus over the demonic. The Twelve had been given authority over demons and then seen failure in casting out demons when they failed to rely on God alone. So, it’s not difficult to understand why they were so enthralled at having authority over the forces of evil. But if the disciples had gotten a bit off track in the true nature of their mission and what defined success for them on this mission, then why doesn’t Luke himself record whether they were well received or not? He simply never tells us whether or not they succeeded.

Perhaps this was no oversight on Luke’s part but was, instead, part of the whole point of his reporting of this section. Whether or not the audience listens to or responds positively to God’s chosen mouthpiece is never the measure of success. As God warned the prophet Ezekiel, “Say to them, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says.' And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house. You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you” (Ezek. 2:4-8). The measure of success for the disciples, as for Ezekiel, was whether they had obeyed God in spreading his message not whether people listened to that message.

The fact that they had made an assault on the demonic forces was not inconsequential. That was part of Jesus’ mission. He was not just spreading a new religious message, he was indeed making an assault on Satan himself. He had come to defeat Satan, sin, and death itself and their conquest over the demonic was a very real demonstration of that. It was, in fact, a continuation of the conquest and defeat of Satan and his demonic forces that Jesus had begun in the wilderness, resisting the temptations of Satan. In their continued assault on the forces of evil, Jesus says that he saw “Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” an obvious allusion to Isaiah 14:12. It seems unlikely that Jesus was just throwing in an odd bit of information that he was around and had seen Satan cast out of heaven, an incident to which Isaiah 14 seemingly refers. More likely was that Jesus’ point was that as the kingdom advanced, Satan was losing power. He was being cast out of strongholds just as he had once been cast out of heaven. But ultimately this was Jesus’ fight and it wasn’t yet over. It was not the primary focus of their mission and so they should not celebrate it as such.

The real source of joy, the real thing that they should be celebrating was the fact that they were among those who were obedient to God’s word. They were speaking the words given to them and showing that their names are written in heaven, a reference to the Book of life where the righteous will be named (Ex. 32:32; Ps. 69:28; Isa. 4:3; Dan. 7:10; 12:1; Phil. 4:3; Rev. 3:5; 20:12, 15; 21:27).

The very act of them going about and declaring Jesus’ message and sharing in his authority was the point. The defeat of the demonic was not the primary thing to focus on, it was that they were aligned with God’s will that was truly important. This is what brought Jesus an incredible burst of joy and was what they should be celebrating. The wise and the learned were not the ones that were embracing the kingdom message, they were rejecting it.

Yet God showed his glory through these disciples, these little children (the word is literally “infants” but was often used as a metaphor for one who was untaught or unskilled). This is the nature of the gospel. “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27). The coming kingdom would result in the great reversal that Mary had spoken of before Jesus’ birth (Lk. 1:51-53). God always chooses the weak, unskilled, and unimpressive to declare his message so that there will be no mistake made between the power of the message and that of the messenger (see 2 Cor. 4:7). God honors, uses, and ultimately exalts those who humbly rely on him fully.

It is those who rely on Jesus alone who will have the Father revealed to them. The authority of the Father is placed in the Son and it is the Son alone who reveals the Father. This is reminiscent of Jesus’ declaration in John 14:6 that he is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that no one can come to Father except by the Son alone. There is, then, an important chain that Luke has linked together in this passage. In verse 16, Jesus declared clearly that whoever listened to their message listened to him and whoever rejected their preaching likewise rejected him. Now Jesus has confirmed that he is the only way to the Father. Thus, those who rejected the message of the disciples were rejecting any access that they might have to God. Jesus alone is the way and in rejecting the preaching of the disciples, they were rejecting that one way.

Luke, we should note, seems to continue to follow the pattern of Deuteronomy in his quest to show that this journey to Jerusalem is primarily about revealing the true people of God. In Deuteronomy 3:23-4:40, Moses thanks God for his perfect law which had given to his people and which caused the other nations to look and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deut. 4:6). The disciples were blessed, not through any work or effort of their own. They didn’t need to celebrate in anything more than that they had been allowed to hear the message of the kingdom, to see its coming, and to become God’s people through the Messiah. Many prophets and kings had longed for the coming of God’s kingdom and had never seen the day. In recounting the lives of the great heroes of the Bible who had never seen the kingdom of God for themselves, the writer of Hebrews proclaimed “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (Heb. 11:39-40).

Jesus was making his way to Jerusalem where he would make his final assault against Satan, evil, and death itself but the results of that victory were already beginning to take seed. Jesus would go into death and lay down his own life like a seedling, but the result would be the defeat of death and the flowering of a new creation of people who would come to know the Father himself through the Son and would become the very family of God that he had always promised.


Devotional Thought
Is God enough for? Is obeying his word and drawing close to him enough for you to celebrate or do you need constant “spiritual victories” in order to feel validated or that you are close to God? Do you celebrate at the fact that your name is written in heaven rather than whether you are “successful” in other ways or not?

Luke 10:1-16 Commentary

Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-two
1After this the Lord appointed seventy-two[a] others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.
5"When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' 6If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. 7Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

8"When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. 9Heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'The kingdom of God is near you.' 10But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11'Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.' 12I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

13"Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. 15And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths.[b]

16"He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me."


Dig Deeper
I learned many lessons over the years while playing sports but one of the important lessons that I learned is that things change when time is running short. There are a lot of players who can play calm and collected when its early in the game and there is no pressure but the number of players who can still play in the same controlled manner shrinks significantly when the game is in its last few minutes. When the clock winds down things are simply more urgent. You tighten up a little more, things get more intense, and each and every play matters a whole lot more than it did at the beginning of the game. As a game starts it seems like you have all day to make plays and so a failed play or two don’t matter that much but near the end of a game that all changes. A failed play seems huge and can even cost you the entire game because that clock is quite unforgiving. When the clock is up, its up. Actually the whole tenor of a game changes in the last few minutes. Teams play with an intensity and effort that simply could not be sustained for a whole game. In other words, there are actions that are specifically taken when time is running short that you would not necessarily take during normal times.

This all seems like a fairly common-sense idea but it actually does relate to this opening passage in chapter 10 quite nicely. Luke has informed us in 9:51 that Jesus has resolutely set out on a mission of New Exodus to Jerusalem. He has also given clues that this new mission would involve finalizing the verdict on a Jewish nation that was on the verge of rejecting the very Messiah that they had waited for and whom God was now sending. As we follow Jesus on this final Exodus we will notice that he will constantly redefine the people of God around himself and those who reject him will find themselves outside of the family of God. This would be disastrous for the nation that once took their status as the people of God for granted. The definition of what Israel was, was about to be redrawn and this mission was the last-ditch effort to warn the people of Israel that the time was running short. Just as a game changes in the last few minutes because of the urgency of the situation, so would things be different as Jesus sent out his messengers to warn the people of Israel. The situation was urgent and time was quickly running out.

This chapter opens with a bit of a puzzle. There was obvious and intentional symbolism behind Jesus’ choice of the Twelve, as that related to the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus’ seemingly obvious point was that he was forming the new Israel, the new family of God around himself. Now he sends out seventy-two in a mission that is quite similar to the mission that he sent the Twelve on in the previous chapter. So, are we to see a significant symbolism in that number? To make matters more difficult, about half of the manuscripts that we have read “seventy-two” while the other half read “seventy.” So what’s the deal with that? Given the pattern of important symbolism in Luke, it is a fair bet to assume that Luke did see important symbolism in the number of disciples that were sent out. In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT), Genesis 10 identifies the nations of the world as numbering seventy-two. The Hebrew version, the Masoretic Text, however, has seventy listed which probably led to the confusion in Luke’s later manuscripts. What seems to be the most likely scenario, then, is that Jesus was sending out a number that related to the symbolic number of Gentile nations in the world. [Although some prefer to attach the symbolism of this story to Numbers 11:16-25 where Moses chooses seventy elders, plus two “intruders” who were not part of the original group, to lead. In that scenario then, Jesus would be choosing these men as symbolic leaders of his New Exodus. Either option is perfectly acceptable and it is possible that allusions to both scriptural concepts was intended.] The sending of the seventy-two were an important prefiguring of universal mission of the gospel that would eventually take full form in the book of Acts and beyond.

Although this was symbolic of that time, their mission here was specific and temporary. There is no evidence that the early church saw missions like this as a model or paradigm to be copied. No, this was a specific mission. The harvest was plentiful, the fruit was ripe and when the fruit is ripe that means there is usually only a very short time to bring it in before it spoils. Their job was to go from town to town and announce that the time was short. The time for Jesus’ work to come to a completion was rapidly approaching and when it did the door for Israel as a nation to join in on God’s new kingdom movement was drawing to a close. After Jesus’ death, individual Jews could certainly still come to salvation in Christ but the time for the nation of Israel as a whole would be over. In fact, it seems that from here through Luke 18, Luke will intentionally follow the pattern of Deuteronomy to show that one of the major aspects of Jesus’ kingdom message had to do with being the new people of God. There are certain parallels in this passage with Deuteronomy 1-3:22 as Moses leads Israel away from the mountain where they encountered God and began the wandering period of the Exodus as they made their way toward the promised land.

Jesus was radically reconstituting what it meant for Israel to be God’s people. He was redefining the boundary markers that identified the people of God and he was reconstituting their hope for the coming of God’s resurrection age. Much of Israel was waiting for war. They were waiting for a great military leader that would lead them to throw off Roman oppression. That’s who they wanted for a Messiah. That’s who they saw themselves as the people of God. But Jesus’ way was different. It was a way of peace. It was an Exodus, not from a political oppression but from sin. It was the defeat, not of the enemy of Rome, but of the enemy of death. This New Exodus would not end in some great historical moment like the crossing of the Jordan and entrance into the promised land. It would end in Jesus’ death and those who wanted to follow him going to their own peaceful deaths in baptism and entrance into his life.

The emissaries of this mission should go out two-by-two so that they would provide a biblical witness (Lev. 19:17; Deut. 19:15). This would not be a mission of pure victory like the previous mission of the Twelve seems to have been (Lk. 9:1-10). This was a mission of pronouncing the peace of God through the Messiah, but this message would be largely rejected. They would be like lambs among the wolves so they shouldn’t think of this as a mission where they were going to go out, be well-received, and make a living by moving from place-to-place. They would rely on God to provide as he provided through the few who did embrace their message. If they were embraced in their message that the kingdom of God was perilously near for those who rejected it, then they would be able to unleash a sampling of the kingdom by healing and bringing the wholeness of biblical peace to those who welcomed them. But those who rejected Jesus by rejecting their message would receive the symbolic act of judgment as they dusted off their feet and moved on.

This was not a gentle invitation into a new religious option. This was a last-ditch effort to get people to turn to the Messiah and away from Israel’s path to ruin and destruction. They were going the way of destruction, the way of Sodom. Sodom had refused to properly welcome God’s messengers and chose instead to cling to their evil lifestyle and was rightly judged by God as fire and brimstone rained down on the city. The ultimate destruction of Israel rejecting the Messiah and choosing the way of violence would end, not in fire from heaven, but in the utter destruction of the Temple and the entire city of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman army in 70 AD (a topic which Jesus will specifically warn of and prophesy about in chapter 21).

Jesus’ disciples were carrying a message of invitation and warning. Those who would accept would be welcomed into the family of God but those who rejected it were courting disaster. To reject this message would be to head in the opposite direction of God’s kingdom. If towns like Korazin, Capernaum, and Bethsaida continued in their rejection of the kingdom message of the Messiah’s people then they would find themselves in worse shape than Sodom. Even the classic examples of cities opposed to God, Tyre and Sidon, would have repented had they seen the miracles that Korazin, Capernaum, and Bethsaida had. If the people of Israel wanted to act like the enemies of God then they would be treated like the enemies of God, or even worse. Jesus was walking straight into a final showdown to make war on the forces of evil. To reject his messengers now, was to reject him, and to ultimately reject God and take up sides with the forces of evil.

We are not part of the same urgent message to Israel to turn from their path of rejection of the Messiah, yet we do have a message that is just as urgent. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:14-21) to call the world back to the family of God by having faith in the Messiah and entering into his life. This message is just as urgent in many ways and to reject it is just as dangerous. We are to call the world to be part of God’s great reconciliation project. This is a challenge to those who want to reduce salvation to an individual experience and then think that they have all the time in the world. God wants each of us to pick up the transforming work of his kingdom now and take part in the reconciliation of the world through Christ. This message is urgent and the workers are few. There is no time to waste.



Devotional Thought
Do you view the message of the gospel as being an urgent one for your friends, family, and neighbors to hear? Do you approach the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ as something that needs to be heard by all urgently? How can you go about being more urgent in your evangelism?

Luke 9:51-62 Commentary

Samaritan Opposition
51As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them[c]?" 55But Jesus turned and rebuked them, 56and[d] they went to another village.

The Cost of Following Jesus
57As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."
58Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

59He said to another man, "Follow me."
But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."

60Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

61 Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family."

62Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."



Dig Deeper
I just recently completed watching a fascinating documentary film about LeBron James, an American professional basketball player. The movie was focused on James’ rise as a youth basketball player and a high school phenomena who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated while still a junior in high school. The film shows footage from James and his best friends playing in an 8th grade AAU game for the national championship, a game which James and his teammates lost. From that point on, James and his friends decided that they were going to focus on nothing else than winning a national championship together. Everything they did and every decision that they made was done in the light of that march towards a national championship. They made a surprising decision to go to a high school together that was outside of their neighborhood, for instance, because even though it made some other things tougher on them, they felt that it gave them the best opportunity to win the high school national championship. As the film progresses through their lives it shows how they stayed focused on that goal despite several hiccups, twists, and turns along the way. In fact, I realized that if someone came into the film late and didn’t catch the early information that they were so singularly focused on winning a national championship, many of the decisions that they made in their lives and many of the things that they did as a team just wouldn’t make a lot of sense. The national championship was their mission and their destination, one that they would finally reach at the end of James’ senior year.

In a very real sense, Jesus is setting out on his own mission. It’s one that’s far more significant than winning a national championship in basketball. Yet the analogy of James’ mission is instructive because it demonstrates a bit of the focus that is necessary to stay committed to a mission of this nature. Like the film, we must understand from here on out that Jesus is setting off on a specific mission to work his way to Jerusalem. Everything else that Luke will tell us must be interpreted and understood in the light of his march towards his own death. Jesus is not being swept along by a swirl of events that will snatch him up and carry this poor, helpless figure towards a cruel end. No, Jesus is about to turn his face towards Jerusalem and march straight into the forces of evil and darkness that have amassed themselves against God. He is not being swept along at all, he is making war on death and evil. That is his mission and it will end in Jerusalem.

During his transfiguration Jesus had communed with Elijah and Moses and they had spoken of his coming Exodus. This was his journey to assault death itself and destroy man’s cruelest enemy. He would march towards Jerusalem and, as he made clear to his disciples in the previous passage, would meet rejection and ultimately death. But he would not be conquered by that foe as it might have seemed at the moment. Luke can sit back from the perspective of hindsight and realize that Jesus wasn’t just marching towards his death. He was marching towards his assault on death, his resurrection, and his ascension to heaven. The time for his mission had come and it would end with him being taken up to heaven, an allusion to Elijah whose ministry ended in a similar manner.

So, he “resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” This passage literally reads, “He set his face to go to Jerusalem.” What a great figure of speech. To set one’s face was a figure of speech that is used several times in the Old Testament (Gen. 31:21; Jer. 21:10; 44:12). It carried the idea of being absolutely determined in your action. It was something that one said when they were undertaking an endeavor from which they would not be deterred. But there was a second connotation to this phrase as used here as well which had to do with the preaching of repentance. It is likely that Luke intended his phrase to be an allusion to Ezekiel 21:3 which says, “Son of man, set your face against Jerusalem and preach against the sanctuary. Prophesy against the land of Israel and say to her: 'This is what the LORD says: I am against you. I will draw my sword from its scabbard and cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked.” Ezekiel was sent with a message of condemnation and judgment for those that did not heed God’s word. Jesus will do the same. His kingdom message will be one of invitation and hope for those that will embrace God’s covenant family accessible through the life of the Messiah but it will be a message of judgment for the nation of Israel that would reject the Messiah as a whole. When Jesus finally arrives in Jerusalem, he will weep for a city that has rejected the long-awaited return of Israel’s God and this judgment will be upon them.

Malachi 3:1 spoke of God sending messengers on ahead before he returned to his Temple in Jerusalem and that is precisely what Jesus does as he sends messengers ahead of him as he begins his mission. Luke also continues the heavy Elijah allusions in this passage as he describes the outset of the mission. Jesus wanted to go through a Samaritan village but they refused. Samaritans did not like Jews, especially Jews who were on religious missions and so they refuse him entry into their town. If they are going on a mission of proclamation and judgment with one who is greater than Elijah, then surely the rejection of the Samaritans should be met with a response in the vein of Elijah’s calling down fire from heaven to destroy his opposition (2 Ki. 1:9-16). But Jesus’ mission to Jerusalem is not about condemnation but salvation. The disciples show once again that they have still not fully embraced or understood the new reality that Jesus was proclaiming.

It is probably no mistake that Luke has chosen three questions to discuss the difficulty of following Jesus. This was going to be a hard road. He was marching straight into his death and those who would follow him should not expect any sort of comfortably rewarding journey. The three-fold aspect of the call to follow Jesus likely echoes the three-fold call of Elisha to follow Elijah found in 2 Kings 2:1-6. At each turn in that passage, Elisha affirms that he is committed to stay with Elijah despite Elijah’s attempts to deter Elisha from doing just that. This call is different, though, in that, just as Jesus is greater than Elijah, so following him in discipleship is a much more difficult task than was following Elijah. It will take uncommon commitment to follow Jesus in his mission.

The first question involved a man who likely wanted to follow Jesus in a rabbi-student type situation where he would follow Jesus and learn from him. But the nature of discipleship of Jesus is much more than that. Following Jesus would be more like following an itinerant prophet who traveled from town to town with no obvious means of support. Following Jesus is not a sure endeavor. It calls one to faithfulness to God rather than a sure existence in this age. It means to turn your full attention to God’s kingdom and trust in him to provide for the necessities of life.

The second conversation is initiated by Jesus’ call to a man to follow him. The man’s request to first go and bury his father was a reasonable request in Judaism as honor for parents and burying one’s parents was absolutely expected. When Elijah called Elisha to follow him Elisha requested and was granted the right to go and say goodbye to his parents. This man’s request was not an example of him trying to weasel out of following Jesus. It was, rather, an opportunity for Jesus to teach him the true nature of following him. To follow Jesus in this mission was much more demanding than following Elijah. It meant ultimate commitment and focus. It meant putting the kingdom of God above all else. The important task of family funeral customs paled in comparison to the importance of following Jesus.

The third exchange again demonstrates that Jesus is not necessarily laying down timeless rules of what it means to follow him but he was stressing the primacy and demand of following him over discipleship to the archetypical mentor, Elijah. The demands are a bit exaggeratory but make the point of the difficulty of the mission. When Elijah called Elisha to follow him, Elisha specifically requested to return and set affairs with his family, including burning his plow. Picking up on that imagery, Luke includes Jesus’ conversation with a man who wanted to go back and do precisely what Elisha did. But in this context, Jesus views this more along the lines of looking back while plowing. The kingdom of God demands priority over everything else in life. Just as one cannot plow in a straight line while looking back, so one cannot hang onto to the old reality of life and still embrace the new reality of Jesus’ kingdom. Above all else, this is an Exodus journey and the demands of an Exodus journey are extreme. Following Jesus would be rigorous and demanding.

We can get into trouble with passages like this if we don’t carefully consider the context. Jesus was speaking of the specific task of following him on his Exodus mission. Time was short and the mission was demanding. We get into trouble if we pull his words out of context and try to apply them directly to following Jesus today. Yet, we should not think that following Jesus is any less demanding. Although we are not called to follow Jesus on his specific Exodus journey to Jerusalem we are called to follow him and the demands are no less challenging, although different. We still need to consider that following Jesus means a willingness to spurn comfort. It means putting nothing above him in priority. It means putting our hand to the plow and constantly looking forward to the new reality of the kingdom rather than being like Lot’s wife and looking back to the old way. Jesus had set his face to march straight into his own death. Being his disciple today means doing the same. Jesus is still calling us to set our face towards the age to come and take on the journey of dying to self and following him. As his disciples we must always be prepared to follow him wherever he goes. That’s what a disciple does.


Devotional Thought
Take a moment to think of Jesus’ image of putting one’s hand to the plow and looking back. In what ways are you tempted to look back since you have put your hand to the plow? What would be the effect of that? How do Jesus’ exhortations here help you to stay resolved to not look back?

Luke 9:37-50 Commentary

The Healing of a Boy With an Evil Spirit
37The next day, when they came down from the mountain, a large crowd met him. 38A man in the crowd called out, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39A spirit seizes him and he suddenly screams; it throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It scarcely ever leaves him and is destroying him. 40I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not."
41"O unbelieving and perverse generation," Jesus replied, "how long shall I stay with you and put up with you? Bring your son here."

42Even while the boy was coming, the demon threw him to the ground in a convulsion. But Jesus rebuked the evil[b] spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to his father. 43And they were all amazed at the greatness of God.

While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did, he said to his disciples, 44"Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men." 45But they did not understand what this meant. It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.

Who Will Be the Greatest
46An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. 47Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. 48Then he said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all—he is the greatest."

49"Master," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us."
50"Do not stop him," Jesus said, "for whoever is not against you is for you."



Dig Deeper
A few years ago I saw a video that has become increasingly popular in certain segments of the Christian community. In this video a leader in the sect of Emergence Christianity captivatingly paints a picture of Jesus approaching a boat in the Sea of Galilee. The boat is filled with his disciples. He recounts the incident where Jesus then urges Peter to come out to him on the water. Peter begins to walk on the water just as Jesus is but then he begins to sink. He had taken his eyes off of Jesus and immediately began to sink. He began to believe the sight of the wind and waves around him more than he believed in Jesus once he took his eyes off of the perfecter of faith. But this teacher doesn’t mention that he. Instead he adds his own interpretation to the event, one not found in Scripture. He claims that Peter’s problem was that he lacked faith in himself. He goes on to passionately describe how God has faith in us and our ability. He urges his watchers to think about that and to dwell on how much God believes in us. He then attempts to demonstrate this point by appealing to the idea that Jesus had faith in the disciples to change the world after he was gone and he points out triumphantly that they did so. If we just have faith in ourselves and know that God has faith in us, claims this leader, then we could change the world as well.

Admittedly, the video is extremely passionate and it is inspiring on some levels. I have personally witnessed a room full of wonderful Christians sitting and watching this video and being initially moved by the inspiring thoughts of trusting in ourselves, having faith that we can accomplish great things, and believing that God has faith in us. The problem with that is that it’s false. The ideas presented by this leader are not just false but actually downright dangerous, I believe. What he presents is thinly veiled humanism, which is the over valuing of human beings. Besides reading into the text of walking on water, the non-existent idea that Peter lost faith in himself, and ignoring the obviously stated problem that he took his eyes off Jesus and begin to worry about the waves, he also fails to mention an infinitely important point about the world-changing activities of the disciples. Jesus did not believe in the disciples at all. In fact he told them clearly to stay put in Jerusalem until they had been clothed in power by the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t have faith in them but he trusted in the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t have faith in us but he trusts in the Holy Spirit. We shouldn’t recklessly and dangerously put faith in ourselves but in the Holy Spirit.

In fact, the problem of putting too much faith in themselves, and not yet fully relying on Jesus and operating by the values of the new kingdom he was unleashing into the present age, is exactly the issue at hand in this section here. The inability of the disciples to work according to their own means and operate according to their own understanding is exactly what Luke puts on display here.

Immediately as Jesus returns from the most incredible communion with God that left him momentarily displaying his full glory rather than just reflecting glory as Moses did, we see that things will be even tougher from now on. The enemies will be fiercer, the opposition stronger, and the need for the disciples to rely on God will be even greater.

Earlier in this chapter, Jesus had sent out the disciples and given them the authority over demons but, evidently, that authority only extended as far as Jesus specifically defined their mission. They should never begin to think that they had authority that was independent from him. They should never begin to have in faith in themselves. When they did, they failed. The demons that they faced in this boy were the perfect object lesson.

In essence, Luke gives us a picture of contrasts. Jesus has been up in the mountain in the very presence of the Father, while the disciples were down at the base of the mountain relying on their own strength and not waiting for a word from God. This contrast brings to mind clear echoes of Mt. Sinai where Moses ascended the mountain to receive God’s word and commune with God while the Israelites engaged in base idolatry and self-reliance at the bottom of the mountain. They could not cast out the demon because they needed to learn to rely on God’s word and Jesus alone. And if they were going to act like the rebellious wilderness generation then Jesus would rebuke them like the children of that generation (Deut. 32:4-5). How long would Jesus stay with them until the One would come who could truly transform their hearts, the Holy Spirit? That would, of course, happen after his death in Jerusalem. In the meantime, they needed to learn in no uncertain terms and until they clearly understood that “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you” (Isa. 46:4).

The situation for this father was crucial. If his only son was not healed his family line would come to an end. Once again, though, Jesus, in a now familiar pattern, exercised his authority over the demon with nothing more than a spoken word. Jesus, fresh from powerful prayer and communion with the Father, had done what they could not do on their own.

Jesus didn’t stand around and bask in the glory of praise that came from the crowds, though. He turned to teach his disciples a very important concept. The very Messiah whom they had just seen demonstrate incredible power and authority would be betrayed and eventually killed. They understand his words to a point or they wouldn’t have been afraid to ask. But it had been hidden from them. Not by God, but by their own lack of fully embracing the new kingdom reality and worldview that was the very substance of Jesus’ message. They could not envision a world where marching straight into suffering and shame could actually fulfill the will of God for his servants rather than being a sign that they had drifted from that will. They simply could not yet comprehend how a person that they had just recognized as the Messiah could be betrayed and rejected. God’s servant should be exalted not despised. They had yet to embrace Jesus’ kingdom view of the world and because of that they could not yet fully understand the nature of their own discipleship, as is displayed in verses 46-50.

The later argument amongst the disciples (Luke does not give any indication of how long of a time, if any, passes between verses 45 and 46) is a clear demonstration that the disciples still had to change their worldview and trust in Jesus’ vision of the new reality that was coming rather than operating by the old patterns of the world. It would have been quite normal in the world in which they lived to be quite concerned with the status and rank with the group and appropriate behavior based on that status and rank. It would have been quite logical even, to argue about it. But that is only if they were still operating by the old way of thinking, which they were. The very fact, though, that they were having such an argument was a clear indication that they had failed to fully internalize and embody the turning-the-world-upside-down nature of Jesus’ message. They were not being called to merely follow another great teacher or be really religious and pious. They were being called to embrace, live, and proclaim an entire new reality and way of living that permeated every aspect of one’s life. They were being called to live in the new creation.

Despite their shortcomings, Jesus patiently taught them an incredible object lesson. He took a little child and brought him forward. He put the child in a position of honor and said that he should be welcomed, which meant to extend full status and social relations to someone. To “welcome” someone in that culture meant to treat them with the full measure of hospitality and honor. This would be a strange request because one would normally only welcome someone of equal or greater status, never someone lower, and there was no group lower on the social strata of that day than a child. There was no benefit and no value to welcoming a child or affording them a social status of any kind and it simply would not have been done under normal circumstances. Children might be expected to perform acts of hospitality but never to receive them as the objects of honor. Jesus had just taken the social pyramid of his day and turned it upside down in a shocking fashion. He had undermined the very ground on which the disciples stood when they engaged in an argument over relative greatness and status. Such a concept had no place in God’s new reality, his kingdom. It is important, then, to note that this was an object lesson that Jesus was clearly teaching his disciples about the need to do away with cultural preconceptions of status and greatness. He was not, as some have claimed, demonstrating that small children could enter into the kingdom of God at an age before having reached an appropriate level of accountability and cognizance. To arrive at that conclusion would be to completely divorce verse 48 from the surrounding context. In the kingdom, the least is the greatest, which means that all are the greatest. There is no status hierarchy in the kingdom of God.

John’s question, then, can actually be seen as a challenge to Jesus’ statement that there is no hierarchy in the kingdom of God. How can that be? Surely they are part of the inner circle and have the ability and authority to quiet someone who was trying to work in Jesus’ name but who was an outsider. He did not belong to their community and must be put in his place. The irony was that this man had been successful in the very area that the disciples had just failed. He had cast out a demon in Jesus’ name. Jesus’ response should not be taken out of context and applied to every false teacher, effectively giving anyone a pass on their behavior, regardless of the truth of their teaching. Jesus’ point was that the kingdom of God would not be limited to the Twelve or the small band of insiders. There would be many would be sent out to carry on the work of reconciling the world to the kingdom of God. This would be an important lesson years later as an outsider named Paul would seek to be welcomed by the apostles as one of their own.


Devotional Thought
Take an honest look at your own heart. Do you fully rely on Jesus for everything you do or have subtly began to trust in your own strength and have faith in yourself? What do you need to do today to return to full reliance on Jesus Christ?

Luke 9:28-36 Commentary

The Transfiguration
28About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. 29As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. 30Two men, Moses and Elijah, 31appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. 32Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. 33As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, "Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." (He did not know what he was saying.)

34While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35A voice came from the cloud, saying, "This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him." 36When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves, and told no one at that time what they had seen.



Dig Deeper
As a former history teacher, there are so many things that have taken place in the history of the world that I would love to be able to somehow go back and see the event happen. There are conversations that I would love to hear and things that I just want to see so badly. I would love, as the old saying goes, “be a fly on the wall” during those times. There are certain things that just sound so incredible as you study them out that, no matter how many eyewitness accounts you hear or how many books you read, it just doesn’t quite do the scene justice. It’s one thing, for instance, to study out battles of the Civil War and learn about them, but it’s an entirely different thing to have actually been there. There would be sights, sounds, smells, and just over-all experiences that you simply cannot fully duplicate in written accounts. All I can think of when I read about things like that is how wonderful it would be if I could have been there.

The Bible is full of moments like that. What must it have looked like to have been present when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea? What did it sound like when the walls of Jericho crashed down around the city. What would it have been like to see David defeat Goliath and watch the great Philistine warrior fall before the eyes of his horrified fellow-soldiers? Oh to be present the night that Jesus was born and see everything for myself, and then to be able to see just one miracle that Jesus performed during his ministry. Of all the biblical moments that would be beyond words to actually see and experience, I’m not sure if any of them would be more stunning and more incredible than the scene that Luke describes here. This is truly one of the most incredible, puzzling, and stunning moments in Jesus’ entire ministry. Yet to just be there for a moment. Now that would be incredible.

Once again Luke informs us that before an important even takes place in Jesus’ life that he went to pray. This time he took the inner circle of three from within the Twelve up on the mountain with him. Some have speculated about which mountain this was but since Luke and the other Gospel writers make no attempt to tell us, we can safely conclude that there is no significance in that detail. Luke has already depicted Jesus as one who operated in the manner of Moses and Elijah but who surpassed them as well. This event will only cement that reality.

As we read about this event, there seems to be obvious echoes of Exodus 24 and 33-34, passages in which Moses’ goes up into the mountain to meet God and comes down with a shining face after having been in his presence. In both accounts we find a cloud that covers the mountain (Lk. 9:34; Ex. 24:16). God’s voice is present in both accounts (Lk. 9:35; Ex. 24:16). Both accounts single out three companions that accompany Jesus and Moses respectively (Lk. 9:28; Ex. 24:1, 9). And a Transformed appearance is important to both events (Lk. 9:29, 31; Ex. 34:30).

As Jesus was praying, Luke tells us that a dramatic change took place in the appearance of his face and clothes. Suddenly Jesus became “as bright as a flash of lightning.” We can only imagine what that would have looked like and it certainly recalls and surpasses the description of Moses in Exodus 34:29-34. But what is even more amazing is the revelation that Jesus is not alone. Moses and Elijah appear in glorious splendor with him. Imagine the shock of dozing off while Jesus was praying, to be shaken awake by the sight of the man who had just climbed up the mountain with you, appearing as normal as as anyone else, only to see him bright and splendorous as lightning and standing with the equally glorious Moses and Elijah. It was no mistake that these are two great figures of the Old Testament, who typified the two major divisions of God’s word, that appeared. Moses was the representative of the Law, while Elijah represented the prophets of the Old Testament.

As they stood there, the three men began to discuss his departure which he would “bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem.” The word translated “departure” is the Greek word “exodos,” which is literally the word “exodus.” It is the same word used in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) to refer to Moses’ Exodus. It could also refer simply to one’s death but it seems almost certain that it is used here to refer to Jesus’ Exodus. He is about to begin a journey (see Lk. 9:51) that will certainly end in his rejection and death but through which the New Exodus will begin. This would be the New Exodus when God would finally bring about the freedom of his people from their slavery, the thing that he had always promised. It would entail the march to Jerusalem and ultimately, his death on the Cross which would be the culminating point of that exodus. If ever I had wanted to be a fly on the wall to hear a conversation or to be present at an historical event, it would be this moment. That is simply a conversation that I would love to have witnessed.

Peter and the others were still shaking the sleep from the skulls when the moment appeared about to end as quickly as it began. Peter, in a mixture of excitement and confusion, asks if he should build three shelters for the three glorious figures. That he even had the presence of mind to speak at all outweighs, in my mind, any of the criticism that Peter gets for his somewhat amusing statement. But his question wasn’t as random as it might seem. This event likely took place during the Feast of Tabernacles (Feast of Harvest), an event which recalled God’s provision of Israel in the desert during the Exodus and which looked forward to the arrival of the age to come when God would finally return to be with his people (see Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Lev. 23:34; Deut. 16:13). Did the return of Moses and Elijah during this very festival signal that the time of fulfillment had come? He doesn’t want this moment to slip away. As much as he thinks this may be the time of fulfillment, he probably was hoping that it was. Yet, he wanted to build three booths as though these three figures were equal in rank. He didn’t know what he way saying.

While Peter was still speaking, the glory cloud of the Shekinah presence of YHWH enveloped them. The glory cloud in the Old Testament was a symbol of the divine presence of YHWH himself and now it was here. During Jesus’ baptism the divine voice signaled that Jesus was in fact the unique Son of God, but it is quite likely that only Jesus heard the confirmation of his identity as the Messiah, as God’s special Son. Luke has made much of the fact that Jesus knew his identity but that was still something that those around him must discover for themselves.

Now that Peter and the others had come to the realization that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, God confirmed it for them in a stunning way. This is God’s Son. That he is the chosen one comes from Isaiah 42:1. He would be God’s chosen servant to represent God’s people, but that also means that he would be the one to be rejected, suffer, despised, and be put to shame and death (Isa. 53). The exhortation to “listen to him” comes from Deuteronomy 18:15. Jesus was the unique prophet that was prophesied about. He was the culmination of all of the prophets; the one who should be listened to above all others. The disciples needed to listen to Jesus carefully as he led them into the new family that God had always promised. They didn’t need to build booths, they needed to listen to the word of Jesus. When God’s word goes out from his mouth, “it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11). If they would listen to God’s chosen and unique son, his words would bear fruit in their lives. We shouldn’t think that the call to listen to Jesus only stretched to the men present on that mountain. Those words are as true for us today as it was for them on the mountain. We must decide whether or not we will listen to God’s Son.

Just as surely as God’s glory had appeared on Mt. Sinai and caused the face of Moses to shine, now God’s Son had appeared on this mountain in all of his glory and his entire body was transfigured. He didn’t just reflect God’s glory as Moses had, he was the very embodiment of it. Herod had asked in 9:9 who this man was, and here was the dramatic and definitive answer to Peter and the others. He is the Son of God appearing in his glory. They weren’t able to fully understand the glory of God on that day. Years later Peter was still reflecting on it (2 Pet. 1:16-18). Neither, though, would they be able to immediately grasp that the fullness of Jesus’ glory would soon enough be displayed in Jerusalem on a very different hill in a very different way.

This passage is so instructive for us today in that we will probably never have an experience quite like this but there will be many times we will have no clue what God is doing in our lives. We will stand their completely bewildered and unsure of what action to take next, completely unaware of the full implications of our situation and what God can do through it. Yet, the same word of God that comes to through the Scriptures beckons us to the same humility and the same call to leave everything behind and follow Jesus. This is God’s Son, “Listen to him.”



Devotional Thought
Are you struggling with something confusing in your life right now, or do you know someone else who is? How does God’s exhortation to listen to his son challenge or comfort you? How can you use those words to challenge or comfort someone else today?