Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 19-20.

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When Jesus told the Parable of the Wicked Tenants in today’s passage (the one about the tenants who killed the owner’s son), He implicitly states that He is the Son of God.  All Christians recognize that.  The other thing we all recognize is that the scribes and chief priests whom He was debating in the temple when He told the parable were the wicked tenants.  I never thought about, maybe didn’t even notice, the fact that the scribes and the chief priests recognized that Jesus was calling Himself the Son of God in this parable.  Yet they did not seek to arrest Him on a charge of blasphemy at that time because they were afraid of the people.  Actually, their fear of the people takes us back to their answer when He asked them about where John’s baptism came from.  In their debate among themselves about how to answer Him, they were unwilling to say that it came from heaven because they did not believe what John preached.  (If they had believed what John preached, then they would have had a defense against being accused by Jesus of not believing John).  On the other hand, they were unwilling to say that John’s baptism was of man because the people believed John to be a prophet.  They were not willing to say what they believed because they were afraid of the crowd.  So, we have two examples of the leaders refusing to act on what they believed because they were afraid of the people.  There are two important lessons here.  We should never follow leaders who equivocate, who are unwilling to state and act on what they believe.  Also, we should never equivocate about what we believe.  I want to note that does not mean allowing those who believe differently than we do to trap us into affirming a definitive position on which the teachings of God are nuanced.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 17-18.

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When the apostles asked Jesus to increase their faith, He responded in two ways.  First He told them that they need less faith than they thought.  We do not need to have great faith in order to do great things.  If we have faith as small as a mustard seed and believe that it is God’s will, we can tell a tree to move from here to there, and it will do so.  Next Jesus gave them an example of a servant who worked in the field all day, then came in and served his lord supper before being able to get his own meal.  We often miss that this story was meant to show how to grow our faith.  In order to grow our faith we need to follow the example which Jesus gives us.  We do not get to spend a few hours of our life serving God then expect Him to pamper us.  Instead, we need to spend our entire lives serving God while recognizing that doing so does not make us deserving of reward, rather doing so is just our duty.  When we have worked hard doing what God commands, we should look to Him and ask Him what we should do next.  As we do so, our faith will grow.  Or, to put this another way, if you lack faith, if you doubt God’s existence, do what He commands anyway.  Doing what God commands will show you that He exists.  Then do more of what He commands and your faith will grow.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 14-16.

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When Jesus tells the parable of the great banquet in today’s passage, he mentions that all of the invited guests have excuses as to why they cannot come to the banquet.  For the most part, these excuses seem to be poor reasons to pass up a great party which you knew was coming up.  They seem to be poor reasons to pass up the kingdom of heaven.  Then it struck me, these excuses resemble the reasons we find for passing on opportunities we have to serve those around us who have needs. “I’m sorry, I can’t give you a ride to your doctor’s appointment because I have scheduled a delivery that day.” “I’m sorry, I can’t provide a meal that week because I will be away on vacation.”  They seem like good reasons to us, but would we offer those if we saw serving those in need as entering into the kingdom of heaven?  If we saw serving those in need as an opportunity to serve Jesus?  We need to think a little harder about the opportunities we have to serve others.  In light of what I wrote yesterday. we need to recognize that opportunities to serve others are opportunities to partake in the kingdom of heaven.  Which sheds a whole new light on the next part of the passage where Jesus talks about counting the cost of following Him.  Are we willing, even eager, to give up our routine commitments in order to serve “the least of these”?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 10-11.

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When Jesus sent out the seventy-two in today’s passage He tells them two things.  First, He tells them that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.  There may be different ways to read this, but today it struck me as saying that there is always room for more people to be preaching God’s word.  If you feel called to a mission you should not feel that there are too many people doing that mission already (although, if you do feel that, you should speak to those already doing the mission to see what areas of that mission you can do things not already being done).  No matter the mission, there is room for more workers.  Then He tells them that He is sending them (and, by extension, us) out as lambs among wolves.  I think that Jesus tells us a few different things in that statement.  Just as lambs cannot force wolves to submit, we have not been sent out to force others to accept Jesus.  And, just as wolves view lambs as prey, so too the people of the world will view us as prey.

I want to point out the reason Jesus chose seventy-two men to send out.  By sending out seventy-two of His disciples Jesus sent out one for each of the seventy-two nations described in Genesis 10, which lists all of the nations descended from Noah.   Which means He was symbolically sending them out to all of the nations on earth.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 6-7.

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I have thought about this before but I have never quite known how to express it (or perhaps I did and have forgotten doing so).  In today’s passage, Jesus points out that both He and John the Baptist had called the same people to prepare themselves for the kingdom of God.  He also points out that they had different approaches, but were both condemned for the approach they took.  John the Baptist was an ascetic who separated himself from society in order to avoid being corrupted by sinners.  Jesus, on the other hand, joined in with sinners and spoke God’s message to them directly.  People condemned John the Baptist as a crazy man who stood outside of society, because he refused to associate with sinners (I am oversimplifying to make a point).  Then they condemned Jesus for associating with sinners.  What people overlooked was that both Jesus and John the Baptist considered everyone a sinner.  Something which Luke illustrates with his next account about the woman anointing Jesus with oil.  I believe illustrating that point is why Luke included that story immediately after this.  Jesus makes the point here that both approaches are acceptable.  Some of us are called to withdraw from society to live a simple life and illustrate how doing so can be a service to God.  While others of us are called to immerse ourselves in society while living a life dedicated to God.  In either case, we must speak God’s message to those who are hurting in society (which is everyone who has not been healed by Jesus).

I want to point out how Jesus, in the account of the woman who anointed His feet, gently points out to Simon the Pharisee that everyone has sinned and needs God’s forgiveness.  When Jesus tells Simon the story about the two debtors, Simon cannot have missed that Jesus was telling him that he was a sinner.  Perhaps the thing which touches me most in this story is that the way Luke tells it suggests that Simon became a disciple of Jesus, either prior to this point or later.  How do I know that Simon was a disciple of Jesus at some point?  How else would Luke know what he said to himself when he saw the woman anointing Jesus?  Clearly, Luke could only know that if Simon had shared that detail.  I further believe that Simon shared this story directly with Luke because Luke is the only Gospel writer who names him.  Simon had been one of those who considered himself pure and looked down on those who were more publicly sinful.  I genuinely think that Simon got the point of Jesus’ story and felt ashamed that he did not have the same level of love for Jesus as the woman whom he saw as a sinner did.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 4-5.

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Today’s passage begins with Jesus being led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, where the devil offered Him temptations.  I often explore how those temptations represent the temptations which everyone who wishes to make the world a better place face.  Those temptations are trying to provide for people’s physical needs (specifically feeding them), trying to use political power to fix what is wrong, and finally, focusing on being entertaining to get people to listen to what you have to say.  Today, I am not going to expand on that.

Instead, I want to look at Peter’s reaction to Jesus when He first called him.  The passage hints that this is not the first time that Peter interacted with Jesus, which would explain why Jesus felt comfortable getting into Peter’s boat and asking him to put out a little from land so that Jesus could teach the crowd.  When Jesus told Peter to put down the nets, I think that Peter’s response contained several subtexts.  First, Peter was saying, “I’m tired, we spent all night fishing and have nothing to show for it, but fine I’ll do it for you.  It’s not going to do any good, but I’ll do it.”  He was also saying, “I’m an experienced fisherman and there just aren’t any fish here right now, but if you want a little show of directing a fishing crew I’ll go along with the charade.”  And I think Peter was saying, “Are you sure you want me to do that? There aren’t any fish here right now and you are going to be embarrassed when we pull the nets back in empty, but that’s your call.”  Nevertheless, Peter did as Jesus asked, not expecting anything to come of it.  When Peter saw what happened as a result of doing as Jesus asked, he realized the same thing John the Baptist knew when Jesus came to him to be baptized.  Peter realized that he was not worthy to be in the presence of Jesus.  Jesus did not tell Peter he was wrong.  He just told him not to be afraid, that He had a new purpose for Peter.  In the same way, we should do as Jesus asks, even when we are sure it will be fruitless.  God has a plan for us and He will bring fulfillment to our lives if we listen to Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 2-3.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

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First I want to comment on Luke’s comment about the census happening when Quirinius was governor of Syria.  Some people argue that Quirinius was not governor of Syria until well after the death of Herod the Great, which would create a contradiction with the account of Jesus birth in the Gospel of Matthew.  So, there are multiple problems with that argument.  The first one is that the Greek here could be translated as “This was the registration before Quirinius was governor of Syria.”  I am unsure of why they suggest that as a possible translation, but that would eliminate the conflict between the death of Herod the Great and the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria.  Second, recently archeologists have found inscriptions which suggest that Quirinius was governor in Syria earlier than originally thought (the current understanding of those inscriptions is that Quirinius functioned as governor of Syria for two separate terms).  Finally, the dates for both Herod the Great’s death and Quirinius’ term as governor are primarily based on the writings of Josephus and Josephus is known for being imprecise in his dates.

There are two other things I want to bring up.  In chapter 2 verse 7, Luke says “she gave birth to her firstborn son…”  The fact that Luke says that Jesus was Mary’s firstborn son suggests that she had at least one son after the birth of Jesus.  Not everyone agrees with that understanding, but it supports other passages which carry similar implications.  I also want to point out that Luke also says at a couple of points that Mary treasured all of these things in her heart.  That supports the theory I proposed yesterday that Mary was Luke’s source for everything he recounts up until the beginning of Chapter three.  Chapter three would start to relay information which Luke could have gotten from multiple of Jesus’ early disciples.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.