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

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

Today’s passage begins with the account of the woman giving two small coins.  Jesus tells us that she gave more than those who gave much larger sums because they gave from their surplus, while she gave everything she had.  We need to read this in light of the fact that elsewhere Jesus told the rich young man to sell all that he has and give it to the poor.  The lesson being that if our giving does not cause us to sacrifice at least some of our desires we are not giving enough.

However, there is more to this story than just that.  My brother pointed out to me a few years ago that we need to look at this story in the context of what was going on in the Gospel accounts where this is recounted.  He focused on the things which immediately preceded it, but I think what comes after is just as important.  So, what is the context?  Well, immediately before this Jesus had a confrontation with the leaders of Jerusalem over where He got the authority to drive the merchants out of the Temple. At the end of that confrontation, Jesus condemned those who publicly did showy things to gain admiration while privately cheating those with no power.  Immediately after this, He told His disciples that the Temple would soon be completely destroyed in response to their expressions of awe over the magnificence of its construction.  That section ends with a warning not to let our hearts be dulled by partying and the worries of this life.

So, the widow stands in contrast to those who spend their wealth on ostentatious display to impress others and those who spend their wealth on material pleasures, or even just attempting to secure their well-being.  I also want to point out that the placement of this account suggests that the widow was in such dire straits because she had been cheated, yet she gave anyway. As so often happens when I write these blogs, I find myself having failed to fully flesh out the thought that was in the back of my mind when I began writing.

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

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

The story of Zacchaeus has some interesting characteristics.  As children, Zacchaeus is presented as an example because he strives to overcome his limitations in order to see Jesus.  As adults, we look at Zacchaeus because Jesus’ presence in his life causes him to turn it around. The story of Zacchaeus really does provide us with a lot of important lessons.  The self-righteous wanted nothing to do with Zacchaeus because of his blatant sinfulness.  Yet ,despite his well-deserved reputation, and the knowledge that he was looked down upon by the righteous, Zacchaeus sought to see Jesus.  Then Jesus did the fateful thing, He accepted Zacchaeus.  In His acceptance, Jesus did not sugar-coat Zacchaeus’ sins, He did not downplay them.  He merely said that He had come to seek and save the lost.  Like Zacchaeus, we should seek to see Jesus, and we should do whatever is in our power to make recompense for the sins we have committed.  But, also, like Jesus we should accept sinners without accepting their sin.  When sinners seek Christ, let us make sure to show them that He has been seeking them.  Zacchaeus did not stop sinning in order to approach Christ, he stopped sinning when Christ came to him.

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

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

Perhaps Luke just wrote it this way to move from one thing to another, but this passage reads as if the disciples asked Jesus about how to increase their faith in response to His teaching about forgiveness.  So, that makes me think we need to realize just how hard obeying Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness is.  The disciples heard what He had to say and their first thought was, “How can I get enough faith to do that?”  If someone wrongs us repeatedly and asks for forgiveness each time, we are to grant that forgiveness each time, even if they do so seven times in one day.  Let’s be clear that Jesus was not saying that we only have to forgive people seven times in one day.  He was saying that if people wrong us and ask our forgiveness, we should give it to them, no matter how often they have wronged us.

Now, let’s look at what Jesus says about how we increase our faith.  Initially, I was going to start here, but then I realized what I wrote in the previous paragraph and I thought that was important to write about as well.  The first thing Jesus says in response to the question about how to increase our faith is that it doesn’t take much faith to accomplish miraculous things.  As to the answer to the question, it is both easier than we might think and immensely harder than we would like.  If you want to increase your faith, and you should desire to increase your faith, you need to do that which you know is God’s will with no expectation of thanks or reward.  The more we serve God, the more we will see His power, and thus the more we will have faith in what He can do.  We do not grow our faith by serving God in the hopes of reward.  We grow our faith by recognizing that serving God is our duty and then doing so.  Our reward for serving God will be more opportunities to serve Him.

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

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

As I was reading this I considered writing about various elements of this passage: Jesus’ teaching about humility, His parables about seeking the lost, His parable about the fired manager, and such.  However, when I got to the end, to the end of His story about Lazarus and the rich man, I was truly struck by what He said Abraham told the rich man.  Jesus said that when the rich man asked Abraham to send someone back from the dead, Abraham responded by telling him that if they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen if someone comes back from the dead.  That concluding statement reminds me of something I heard a Christian apologist say once.  When someone asks for proof of God’s existence, before trying to offer them proof, ask them what would constitute proof for them.  Jesus made the point that God has revealed Himself.  Those insisting that they need more proof do not want to believe that God exists; they want to believe that He does not exist.

I am using 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 have spent significant effort trying to figure out how to word my thoughts on this passage.  Jesus talks about not fearing those who can kill our bodies but not effect our souls.  He then goes on to tell us not to worry about anything and to put more effort into pleasing God than in accumulating material possessions.  If our first priority is to seek the Kingdom of God, God will meet all of our other needs.   Jesus even gives us a contrast to work with.  Determining how to meet their material needs dominates the thoughts of unbelievers throughout the world.  Determining how to fulfill God’s will should dominate the thoughts of believers.  If we place our trust in God, we will be freed up from spending time and resources on securing our material future so that we can spend our time and resources pleasing God.  Luke goes on to write about an incident which brings Jesus’ point into focus.  When the synagogue leader berated the woman whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath for being healed on the Sabbath, Jesus berated him for being unwilling to see someone released from suffering because it was the Sabbath. His point here being that we should seek to aid those in need whenever the opportunity presents itself.  Then Luke presents two related teachings from Jesus: one about the mustard seed, and one about yeast.  In seeking to bring in the Kingdom of God we should do even the things which seem small and insignificant because small and insignificant things often have results much greater than we would expect.

I am using 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 was struck by something in the Parable of the Good Samaritan today.  I have always heard people interpret it by saying that we should love those whom our society teaches us to despise the way the Jews of Jesus’ time were taught to despise the Samaritans.  Now, while this is not wrong, I realized that was not what Jesus was teaching here.  Rather, He was saying that we should love, and do good for, those who despise us the way that the Jews of His time despised the Samaritans.  I am not sure why this comes as a revelation to me today, because I know full well that Jesus also taught that we should not view anyone, any member of any group, the way that the Jews of His time viewed the Samaritans. Yet, despite the fact that I have often heard that we should seek to do as the Samaritan in this story did, I have also heard people tell me to put myself in the position of the man beaten by robbers.  However, we should evaluate this situation from the perspective of the Samaritan.  He could have thought, “This man does not really want help from someone like me.  This is a well traveled road, surely someone he would rather have help from will be along shortly to help him.”  But the Samaritan did not do that.  He could not know that those whom the man would have expected to help him had already passed by and chosen not the help.  He just saw someone in need and helped them.  We should do likewise.

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

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

When I began reading today’s passage, I was feeling like it would be a passage I would have trouble commenting on.  Then I came to verse 6:27, “But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you.”   I think that we as Christians spend too little time talking about what this verse and those which follow mean about how we should live our lives.  It is in the context of the above statement that Luke records Jesus giving us the Golden Rule, “Do to others as you would like them to do to you.”  And it is worth noting that we cannot take Jesus’ statement of the Golden Rule as a transition into the next thing He talks about because a few verse later He repeats “Love your enemies.”  Right here Jesus spells out what it takes to truly be His follower.  I want to note that He talked about loving our enemies just a few verses after He said in 6:22-23, “What blessings await you when people hate you and exclude you and mock you and curse you as evil because you follow the Son of Man.  When that happens, be happy! Yes, leap for joy! ”  If we truly want to follow Christ, we need to do good things to and for those who abuse us.  And we need to expect that they will abuse us.  This passage is the basis for Chapter XII of “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo.  While it is not quite true as the Bishop says that we can buy someone’s soul from evil by this sort of action, after all, Jesus has already purchased their soul with His death, we can perhaps show people that their souls have been purchased by such action.

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

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

Every time I read the account of the temptations which Jesus faced in the wilderness I see them as representing the temptations by which everyone who sees the wrong in this world is tempted.  One of those temptations is the temptation to think that if we could just solve everyone’s material needs, all would be well.  Another temptation is the belief that if we just had the right people in positions of political power, they could fix what is wrong with our world.  The last temptation is in some ways the most insidious.  We are tempted to think that all we need to do is to get people to worship God correctly, all of their other problems would go away.

Each of these temptations fall short of what God wants from us.  Each of these temptations represent real problems in the world.  At different times to different people it will seem like the solution to these problems is just to work at whichever one most touches our soul.  Ultimately, none of these problems exists in isolation and, more importantly, we cannot fix them on our own.  We find in Jesus’ answers that the key to solving these problems is to realize that we cannot solve them.  And this is where I find trouble expressing the meaning this passage conveys to me.  So, let me give you Jesus’ answer to each of these temptations”

• “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word which comes from the mouth of God.”
• “You must worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.”
• “You must not test the Lord your God.”

Do you see what each of them has in common?  That’s right.  When we seek to solve this world’s problems our first step needs to be to turn to God, and to point others to Him as well.  We want one-size-fits-all answers, and there is only one of those.  That answer is that of Jesus on the Cross.  Jesus was victorious because He was willing to die to get His message across.  We cannot make people serve God, they have to want to serve Him.  We can’t make people experience what is best for them, they have to accept God’s word for it.