Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 23-24.

The first thing I noticed today was that when the Sanhedrin brought Jesus before Pilate, they accused Him of opposing payment of taxes to Caesar.  That was a stand which they had tried to get Him to take, and He had refused to do so.  Interestingly, Pilate does not ask Jesus about that part of the accusation.  Instead, he asks Jesus about the second part of the Sanhedrin’s charges against Him: Was He the king of the Jews?  Jesus’ answer to that question always fascinates me.  It seems like somewhere between “I never claimed that” and “I won’t deny it.”  It is clear from what Pilate said the the Jewish leaders that he interpreted Jesus as refusing to claim kingship over the Jews.  I believe that Jesus answered the way He did in order to give Pilate the option to interpret Him as denying His kingship.  Jesus acted as He did before Pilate in order to make it clear that there was no legal basis for condemning Him to death.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 21-22.

After Jesus told His disciples that the Temple would be completely torn down, they asked Him when that would happen and what would be the sign that it was about to take place.  First, He told them to be careful not to be deceived because many would come claiming to be Him, or proclaiming that the time was near.  They will use the wars and uprisings which will take place to give urgency to their preaching, but we should not be frightened.  Jesus told His disciples that they would be seized and persecuted before the end came, that everyone would hate them.  He told them that they would be betrayed by their parents, relatives, and friends.  Some of them would even be put to death.  In all of this, they would have the opportunity to testify to God’s greatness, and God would give them words to defend themselves that no one would be able to refute.  I am firmly convinced that while this prophecy pertained to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, parts of it also apply to us.  If we stand firm when we face similar persecution, we will win life.  Jesus says one more thing I want us to remember.  He tells His disciples, and us, not to let our hearts get weighed down with carousing and the anxieties of life.  Let us watch and pray so that we may stand before Christ when He returns.

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

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

There are two aspects of the Parable of the Ten Minas (as the translators title that parable here) that I want to focus on.  One of them I am not sure I ever noticed before.  In the version of this parable which Matthew recounts, three servants received different amounts of money to manage.  Here in Luke, ten servants each received the same amount.  This puts a completely different perspective on the story, as Jesus only notes the outcomes for three of the ten.  This puts a completely different understanding of what this means.  Jesus doesn’t tell us what results the other seven had, I think we are to consider the one who invested and got a return of 10 minas and the one who hid it and gave his Lord back the mina he had been given with no return to both be outliers.  As a result, the one who earned ten minas is outstanding.  He did not start with any more than anyone else.  He just put in extra effort.  While the one who earned nothing looks even worse, because he had just as much to work with as the one who earned ten.  Finally, it seems like the majority did something similar to the one who earned five, but some of them may have only earned one.  In any case, only the one who did nothing with what he was given received punishment.

I have noticed the other thing I want to write about today, but I never thought it mattered.  In addition, I do not recall anyone ever commenting on it (except maybe in passing).  The man who gave out the money to his servants was going to a distant country to have himself made king, but the people of that distant country hated him and sent him a message saying that they did not want him to be king.  Yet, he was made king despite their objections.  First I want to point out that the man was going to have himself appointed king.  He was not called by someone in that distant country to come and be king.  He took the initiative to go and get himself made king over that country.  Second, the people of that country rejected him as king, but he was made king anyway.  I felt like as I spelled out this part of the parable to which we usually pay little or no attention I would come to some understanding about what message it added to the parable.  So, while I did not come up with why Jesus included this detail to the parable, I think it is important that we look at such details.  There is a reason Jesus, and Luke, included those details, when the time is right the Spirit will reveal it to us.

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.

I find it interesting that when the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, He first told them, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”  Then He followed that up with a short parable which had the point, “when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'”  Later in today’s passage, Jesus tells a story about a Pharisee and tax collector who were praying in the temple.  The Pharisee thanked God that he was a better person than those around him like the tax collector.  The tax collector on the other hand prayed, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Jesus told us we should be like the tax collector, not the Pharisee.  These two things together give us a clear picture how we should view serving God and those around us.  No matter what we have done, we are still unworthy of the blessings God has given us.  Equally, we are not better than others, not even those we perceive as not doing God’s will.  We need to stop worrying about if we have enough faith, or even thinking that our faith is not enough.  Jesus told us that we don’t need much faith, just the amount of a mustard seed, and that all we need to do is what God directs us to do.  We need to stop looking for the kingdom of God, because it is already in our midst, or, as the translators’ note for Chapter 17 verse 20 says, it is within us.  Let us not look for more faith, or for rest from our works.  God is within us and will give us the faith we need to do His will if we seek to do it.

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.

It struck me that we often miss part of the point of the parable of the banquet which Jesus tells here.  Everyone I have seen or heard comment on it says that the banquet in this parable is the kingdom of heaven, and that those who were initially invited were too busy to enter when the time came.  That is not wrong, just incomplete.  In light of what I wrote yesterday, it strikes me that they too busy to do what God asked of them.  They passed up on their opportunities to serve God and thus missed the blessings of doing so, the “banquet”.  All too often we miss Jesus’ point that the blessing of serving God is serving God.  Or, to put that another way, the joy we get out of doing God’s will is greater, and more fulfilling, than anything else we could do with our time and energy.

When I first read today’s passage my first thought was about the final line of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”  This is another one of those things that we tend to overlook.  We get caught up in the main point of the parable and miss this point.  I really think that what Jesus is saying here ties in with what Paul wrote in Romans 1:18-20.  Specifically, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”  In the case of this parable which Jesus told, Jesus is speaking particularly about the lessons to offer care for those in need out of our resources, while Paul is talking more generally about belief in God and what how He commands us to act.  I wrote that last sentence and realized those two points are not as far apart as I thought the were when I began writing it.  Both Jesus and Paul are telling us that there are no arguments we can use to convince those who choose not to believe in God.  If they have chosen to reject the words God has spoken through His prophets, and the evidence He has made plain in the very nature of the universe, they will also reject any evidence we can provide them.  That does not mean that we do not try anyway.  We just need to remember that only the power of the Holy Spirit will change their minds.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 12-13.

I want to focus on Jesus’ teachings in today’s passage about being ready for when He returns.  Actually, as I think about it, I believe that it starts with Jesus’ reaction to the man who asked Him to tell his brother to share his inheritance with him.  Jesus used that question to teach us not to become focused on accumulating wealth, not even under the justification of preparing for our future needs.  We have no idea when our end will come, or when He will return.  So, if we spend our effort accumulating wealth against future need, we may leave this life unprepared for the next.  We should not worry about our needs in this world.  Instead, we should focus on doing what it takes to be prepared to enter God’s kingdom.  He knows our needs, and if we focus on doing His will, He will meet our needs.  Jesus goes on from that to tell His disciples that they need to be sure to be ready for His return at all times, even in the middle of the night.  When His disciples asked Him if that message was just for them, or if it was for everyone, Jesus told them that those who know the Master’s will and are not prepared, or do not do that will, will be punished severely.  While those who do not know and do something deserving of punishment will receive a lighter punishment. When you have an opportunity to do God’s will, do it.  Don’t put it off, because it may be your last such opportunity.

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.

I find it interesting that in today’s passage Luke presents a sort of “second take” on some of the things which he described Jesus teaching earlier.  The passage starts with Jesus sending out seventy-two of His disciples to preach in places where He was going to go shortly, an expansion of when He had earlier sent out just the Twelve.  This gives us a kind of model for how ministry should work.  Jesus sent out twelve, then He sent out seventy-two.  Luke tells us that He sent the seventy-two our in pairs.  He did not send them out alone, but with someone to give them support.  In both cases, those who were sent out came and back and were debriefed.  That is they reported the results of their ministry and the lessons they had learned.   Jesus then helped them put their experience in perspective.  He told them that while He had given them power over spirits and had given them protection against danger, their joy should not be in the power they had, but in being citizens of heaven, citizens of God’s kingdom.

Further on in today’s passage, Luke recounts how Jesus said, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”  (Yesterday I quoted that from Matthew because I had forgotten that it was here)  As I said yesterday, this seems like a contradiction of what He told them in yesterday’s passage, but it is not.  This saying and the one from yesterday are two sides of the same coin.   In yesterday’s passage, the person who led Jesus to say, “whoever is not against you is for you,” was casting out demons in Jesus’ name.  In today’s passage, Jesus says that those who are not with Him are against Him when people accused Him of driving out demons with the power of demons.  In the previous case, someone had recognized, and was using, the power of Jesus’ name to accomplish good.  Here, people were claiming that the good Jesus was doing (driving out demons) was evidence that He was evil.

I was going to write about Jesus using the idea that no one lights a lamp in order to hide it in a different way in today’s passage, but I have run out of time to work on this.  So, perhaps another time, but I wanted to point out yet another place where Luke showed that Jesus revisited an earlier teaching with a different take on the lesson.

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.

In today’s passage Luke recounts a sermon by Jesus which is very similar to the one recorded in  Matthew as the Sermon on the Mount.  Some people think see the differences between them as indicating contradictions between the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew in a “Well, which way did Jesus say it? The way Luke recorded it or the way Matthew did?”  I see them as two different deliveries of the same basic sermon at different places and times, much like many public speakers deliver variations on the same speech to different audiences (I’ve done it myself).  I believe that Jesus delivered variations on this sermon multiple times throughout His three years of ministry.  In fact, I believe that this was probably the core of most of the sermons He preached.

Now, having said all of that, let’s get to what He actually said, as recorded by Luke.  Here the Beatitudes have a completely different slant.  Matthew recorded, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”, Luke records, “Blessed are the poor…”  Matthew, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”, Luke, “Blessed are the hungry…”.  Luke adds a series of “Woes” after his list of Beatitudes.  They are the opposites of the blessings.  I think the one to which we need to pay the closest attention is the last one. “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”  That is a really tough one.  We all want people to speak well of us, but Jesus tells us that if everyone speaks well of us, we are probably guilty of misrepresenting God’s words when we speak.  From there I want to go into Luke’s account of what Jesus taught about the golden rule.  The context really makes it clear what Jesus meant when He told us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.  Jesus says that right after telling us to love our enemies and to pray for those who mistreat us.  You can’t get any further from this world’s take on the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as they do unto you.”  No, Jesus tells us that it is even more important to do nice things to those who treat us badly.  All too many of us think that being a nice person means being nice to those who are nice to us, but it’s OK to be rude to those who are rude to us.  Well, Jesus tells us that if we want credit for being nice we need to be nice to those who are mean to us. 

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