Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 9.

I recently learned that many of those who study the Gospels divide Jesus’ ministry (and thus each of the Gospels) into three phases.  It seems to me that the middle phase begins when Jesus sends the Apostles out to preach His message and perform miracles in His name.  Certainly that marks the transition from His Early Ministry to the Middle phase.  It is in the middle phase of His ministry that Jesus began openly stating that He was the Messiah, at least to His disciples.  In addition, it is here in the middle phase of His ministry where Jesus highlights the cost of following Him.  I was going to expand on that, but then I saw His exchange with John about the man who was casting out demons in Jesus name, but was not one of His disciples.  When John told Jesus that they had told the man to stop because He was not one of them, Jesus told that him that they should not stop the man because whoever was not against them was for them.  Now this seems to contradict what He said in Matthew 12 verse 30, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. ”  In Matthew, Jesus was referring to those who attributed His acts of kindness to malice, while here Jesus is referring to those who seek do use Jesus’ prestige to accomplish good.  So, we should not attempt to stop those who seek to do good in Jesus’ name, even if they do not appear to follow His teachings in any other way.  I have seen many examples of where those who sought good goals for secular reasons found the Lord because Christians embraced them when they came to work with Christian groups which were already working towards those goals.

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