Tag Archives: Luke

Daily Bible Study

October 25, 2019 Bible Study — People Will Get In Our Face and Demand That We Leave Them Alone

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 8

Luke mentions that Jesus began a teaching tour accompanied by the Twelve and some women He had cured.  I suspect that Luke named women were sources for parts of his account.  More importantly, Luke was telling his readers that these women, both those he named and the others who were there, were every bit as authoritative as to what it meant to be a follower of Christ as the Apostles.

I really want to explore the story about the homeless guy mentioned here.  We usually think of him as the demon-possessed man, and that is fine because that is what the passage tells us he was.  However it also tells us that he was homeless.  It helps me visualize him to think about the homeless men I have seen in various urban areas.  The locals had attempted to help him, but he reacted violently so they eventually gave up.  I wrote that because I do believe this passage should influence the way in which we deal with the homeless.  I am just not sure in what way.

Now that I started writing about this I want to point out one other lesson.  This guy approached Jesus and demanded to know why Jesus was interfering with him.  Jesus did not approach the demon possessed man.  We will run into such things with people around us.  They will come to us, then demand that we leave them alone. That does not mean that they are demon possessed.  I just want to point out that we will have to face situations like that.

Daily Bible Study

October 24, 2019 Bible Study — Blessed Are the Poor So Give To Anyone Who Asks

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

Having previously caught flack from Pharisees over their rigorous interpretation of the Law regarding the Sabbath, Jesus took the initiative when He saw a man with a deformed hand in a synagogue on the Sabbath.  Instead of allowing them to set the terms of the discussion, He did so Himself.  The Law said, “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. .. On that day no one in your household may do any work.”  The Pharisees focused on the second part which I quoted there.  Jesus moved the focus from that to the first part about keeping it holy.  He focused everyone’s attention on the fact that you do not keep the Sabbath holy by making those in need wait for another day before you help them.

Today’s passage also contains Luke’s account of the teachings which Matthew presents in the Sermon on the Mount.  I suspect that Jesus touched on these themes many times throughout His ministry.  In fact, these two slightly different accounts of these teachings may actually represent two different occasions (or perhaps more than two).  As a general rule, I prefer the more nuanced account given in Matthew.  However, I also find an appeal in the much more blunt way in which Luke relates the same teachings.  God blesses the poor and the hungry, while sorrow awaits the rich and prosperous.  Which puts a whole new light when Jesus says a few verses later that we should love our enemies and do good for those who hate us.  We need to think about what Jesus means when He says “give to anyone who asks” when we realize this follows Him telling us that the poor are blessed.  Of course, Jesus also tells us elsewhere to be as wise as serpents.

Daily Bible Study

October 23, 2019 Bible Study — Just Because It Didn’t Work the First Time Does Not Mean That We Should Stop trying

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

Yesterday I wrote that Jesus’ mother was almost certainly Luke’s source for chapter 2.  Today’s passage was clearly based on the recollections of Jesus’ disciples, but not necessarily members of the Twelve (we know from Acts that there were others who followed Jesus from the beginning).  A careful reading shows us that while Luke did his best to put the stories he relates into the order they happened he was not entirely sure how stories he got from one set of sources matched up with those from other sources.  For example, it seems likely that Luke’s story about how Peter, James, and John came to follow Jesus, which appears at the beginning of chapter 5, preceded the end of chapter 4.

Speaking of Luke’s account of how Peter, James, and John came to follow Jesus (the fact that Andrew is not mentioned suggests that he is Luke’s source for this account) I want to point out something I never thought about before.  When Jesus was finished speaking from Peter’s boat, He told Peter to put back out and let down the nets.  Peter’s response was essentially, “We fished all night and did not catch anything.  There aren’t any fish out there, but I will humor you and put out the nets.”  The result was a catch so large that, even after he called James and John to bring their boat out to help, it almost sank the boat.  Then Jesus called them to follow Him and told them that from now on they would be fishing for people. The story makes the point that sometimes God will direct us to repeat something we did in the past that failed.  To put it another way, we should not give up trying to reach people for God just because they rejected our message in the past.

Daily Bible Study

October 22, 2019 Bible Study — God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways

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 2-3

To this day when I read Luke 2, I hear it in my father’s voice.  Every year on Christmas Eve we celebrated our family Christmas and that celebration started with my father reading Luke 2, all the way through the account of Anna. (We celebrated on Christmas Eve because we went to my uncle’s house on Christmas day for my Dad’s family Christmas dinner).  It seems clear to me that Luke’s source for this chapter is none other than Jesus’ mother, Mary.  All of the stories recorded in Luke 2 are the sort of thing that a mother remembers. 

I love the story of the angels announcing Jesus’ birth to the shepherds.  God did not send His angels to announce The Messiah’s birth to the Temple and the high priest, nor did He send them to the palace and the king.  God did not send His angels to announce Christ’s birth to the high and mighty.  He sent them to announce it to the nobodies in the field.  The shepherds weren’t the people with the “important” jobs.  They were doing a job about which most of their contemporaries would have said, “anybody can be a shepherd.”  That is who God thinks are important enough to announce the birth of Christ

Daily Bible Study

October 21, 2019 Bible Study — The Facts and Nothing But the Facts

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 1

I love Luke’s introduction and what it tells us about what he is going to do.  Luke focused on writing what he believed (and I believe) to be a factual account of Jesus’ life.  It was more important to him that what he wrote be an accurate account of what happened than that it supported a particular belief system.  This does not mean that Luke’s belief system did not influence what he chose to record.  But it does indicate that Luke attempted to base his beliefs on the facts as he observed them.  I also believe that Luke was telling Theophilus, “of course there are not accounts about Jesus from nonbelievers.  If you saw this stuff happening and realized that it was important, you would end up as a believer.”

I find it interesting to compare and contrast the ways in which Zechariah and Mary reacted to the message they each received from the angel.  Neither one quite believed that what the angel told them would happen.  Yet Zechariah received a reprimand for not believing while Mary received an explanation.  Of course, that goes right along with how they expressed their lack of belief.  Zechariah asked for evidence that what the angel was telling him would happen.  Mary asked for an explanation, after essentially saying, “I know how this works, and that doesn’t apply here.”  Since Zechariah asked for a sign, he received a sign, a somewhat punitive sign, but a sign nonetheless.  Mary asked for an explanation, so that was what she got.  I want to point out that I believe that Luke included Mary’s comment about being a virgin to indicate that she was not a naive young woman who did not know how pregnancy happened.