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

In today’s passage, Jesus discusses what we must do to inherit eternal life.  He tells us, by agreeing with the man who asked Him about it, that all of God’s commands follow from two basic commands:

• Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind
• Love your neighbor as yourself

Really, the first of these should be sufficient, because if we truly love God with all of our heart, and all of our soul, and all of our strength, we will love our neighbor as ourselves.  However, we need the second because some of us, most of us, would try to claim we do the first command while treating our fellow man with contempt.  However, what I really want to look at is the story Jesus told to illustrate who our neighbor is.  He told the story of the Good Samaritan.  The Samaritan in this story practices love for his neighbor.  But, who was the Samaritan?  He was part of a social group which the man who fell victim to criminals held in contempt.  The Samaritan would have been an “oppressed” group to those in Jesus’ audience: they would have hated them.   The Samaritan was one of those whom many today would have said was justified to commit violence against the man he instead helped.  So, with this story, Jesus tells us that we should love and care for those who abuse and oppress 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 10-11.

When the seventy-two disciples whom Jesus sent out to announce His ministry returned, they were overjoyed at the miracles they had been able to perform.  Jesus validates their response, but tells them, and us, that we should not rejoice because we can perform miracles.  Rather we should rejoice about what those miracles say about us.   Our joy should come from the fact that God has chosen to acknowledge us as His.  Perhaps He does not do so by allowing us to perform miracles, but in the way in which we touch the lives of those around us.  In fact, Jesus seems to be suggesting that we should not seek to do miracles, although He also says that we will do them (perhaps not all of us, but we should all expect miracles to happen around us).  Which brings me to Luke’s second account of Jesus using the metaphor of people not lighting a lamp and hiding it.  Jesus says when people light a lamp they put it on a stand so that everyone who comes by can see its light.  Then He tells us that our eyes are the light of our body…if our eyes are healthy our body will be healthy, and if our eyes are unhealthy than our body will be unhealthy.  There is some definite real-world truth to this, but, interestingly, the translators’ notes for the NIV say that the Greek word translated as “healthy” here has the connotation of “generous”, while the word translated as “unhealthy” has the connotation of stingy.  So, Jesus was telling His audience, and us, that if we look upon others and feel generous towards them we are spiritually healthy, if, on the other hand they inspire us to be miserly, we are spiritually sick, and our bodies are full of darkness.

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.

We do no spend enough time looking at how the Lord’s Prayer is a model for how we should pray.  I know that I don’t, and I was struck by that insight from an article I read 15-20 years ago.  I want to make it clear that what I am about to write is not original with me, even though I forget the author who wrote that article.

• First, we honor God and acknowledge our submission to His will (some manuscripts include “May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” after “Hallowed be Your name”, however I think that is implied in “Hallowed be Your name” anyway.)
• Second, we make our requests.  These requests should be for our basic needs and for the needs of others.
• Third, we confess our sins and request forgiveness, while acknowledging that we need to forgive others (and asking God to help us do so).
• Finally, we ask God to help us avoid sinning going forward.

Having given us a template for our prayers, Jesus then reminds us of the importance of frequent and persistent prayer.  It is in this context that Jesus tells us to ask, seek, and knock.  Those who ask will receive, those who seek will find, and those who knock will be invited in.  That sums up prayer, ask, seek, and knock.

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

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 10-11

When I got to Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan I realized something I do not remember anyone ever making note of: In yesterday’s passage we had an account of a Samaritan village which refused to welcome Jesus so strenuously that James and John wanted to call down fire from Heaven on them.  Which puts Jesus’ telling of this parable in a different context.  Despite having only a short time before having been rejected by a group of Samaritans, Jesus uses one of them as the person we should emulate in a story He told.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the three people who passed the man on the road.  First, we have a priest.  He would have been trained from childhood on up on the proper ways to worship God and it was his job to care for the spiritual welfare of the people.  However, he was also required to keep to a very high standard of ritual purity and if the beaten man were to die while the priest was touching him, he would be defiled and unable to fill his duties.  Well, then we have a Levite (the NLT translation says “Temple Assistant”, which for most understanding of this parable is good enough).  He would have had similar training to a priest, but would not have had quite as strict purity requirements.   However, neither of these men stopped to help the beaten man.  Finally a Samaritan, who did not even truly understand how to worship God, came along.  This Samaritan, who was despised by the Jews as someone who distorted God’s commands and who thought the same of the Jews, sacrificed his time and money to help the beaten man.  Jesus’ instructions to be like the Samaritan applies to more than just helping those in distress.  In this story, the priest and the Levite were more concerned with getting the ritual’s correct than with people.  The Samaritan’s only focus was on people.