Attack of the Man-Eating Church (Trans)Plant

Only feasting on God will keep us going

2012-02-04T10:31:00.000-08:00

Only feasting on God will keep us going in bringing his loveand truth to a needy world. When all isdying, we need to see the living God. When all is sad, we need to see the joyous God. We need to look away from ourselves and look toward his glory. Then, as we admire theexcellence of his being, from afar as it seems, we need to hear the good newsafresh that he has come near to us to share this eternal, glorious, divine lifewith us! We can look at the payment inprecious filial blood to be reassured that this utterly unexpected miracle istrue. By faith we know glimpsesof that shared Trinitarian life now, in this life, and by hope we lookforward to the fullness of the kingdom when Jesus returns. It is only in this knowledge that we can loveGod and each other in this meantime called human history, called 'everyday life'.

Luke 13:22-35

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

Luke 13:22-30

Jesus doesn’t give a direct answer to the question tosatisfy our curiosity, but instead warns his hearers to think about their ownsalvation, not the sum total of all to be saved and whether it is a ‘majority’or ‘minority’. I think this makes itpretty clear where our attention should be focused.

Furthermore, whilst his warning does allude to finaljudgment, he is also warning his listeners in the more specific and immediatecontext of Israel, her Messiah, and her Roman overlords. Will they side with Jesus in the kingdom ofGod or face the wrath of Rome as the judgment of God on their unwillingness(that comes to pass in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70)?

In both cases Jesus does make it clear that this is not a‘wait and see’ situation where you can side with him once he’s later vindicatedby saying you once were acquainted with him. He called the Israelites then and all people through the ages tosurrender to his good Lordship now, in the moment, following himhenceforth. Any hesitation and lack oftenacious commitment to him just shows a lack of understanding or willingnesson the part of the person faced with Jesus. If we really see him for who he is, we will gladly (even if painfully) laydown all to know and follow him.

Though Jesus clearly sees salvation as a ‘narrow gate’, hejust as clearly sees a massive, worldwide multitude pouring through that gateby God’s grace.

Thus we are left with two vivid pictures to ponder: on the one hand, a few stubbornJohnny-come-lately idlers standing outside the shut doors of the wedding feast,exposed to the elements and grinding their teeth and weeping. On the other hand we see multi-ethnicmultitudes streaming into God’s kingdom from every direction of the far reachesof the planet to a joyous feast with the Old Testament people and prophets ofGod.

And we are also left with a humbling paradox: ‘first’ and ‘last’ in this life do notnecessarily equate to ‘first’ and ‘last’ in God’s kingdom, here andhereafter. Maybe we shouldn’t really bethinking in these categories at all? Rather, we should rejoice in God’s grace for us, receive it with joy andthanksgiving, and then offer it freely and copiously to all others.

I think this passage hits just the right note about questionsof ‘how many will be saved’: it humblesus to the mysterious nature of any kind of answer to such a question but alsowarns us sternly that there is real salvation and damnation at stake. But rather than worrying about how manyothers are saved, we are made to consider whether we ourselves might bebreezily strolling past the ‘narrow gate’? No one will casually, accidentally meander into God’s kingdom. Jesus shows us we must intelligently andwillingly respond to his call on our lives to be his disciples and God’schildren. It takes decisiveintentionality and focus and obedience from us as God graciously enables us torespond to his gracious summons.

Luke 13:31-35

Right on the back of questions about the number of peoplesaved we see Jesus demonstrating his (and therefore God’s) tender compassionfor unwilling sinners, his great desire to shield them from the consequences oftheir own sins at the cost of his own skin. Clearly there is no divine glee at damning sinners going on here. Quite the reverse:

‘When a farmyard catches fire… some species have developedways of protecting their young. Thepicture here is of a hen, gathering her chicks under her wings to protectthem. There are stories of exactlythis: after a farmyard fire, thosecleaning up have found a dead hen, scorched and blackened – with live chickssheltering under her wings. She hasquite literally given her life to save them. It is a vivid and violent image of what Jesus declared he longed to dofor Jerusalem and, by implication, for all Israel. But, at the moment, all he could see waschicks scurrying off in the opposite direction, taking no notice of the smokeand flames indicating the approach of danger, nor of the urgent warnings of theone who alone could give them safety. This picture of the hen and the chickens is the strongest statement sofar in Luke of what Jesus thinks his death would be all about.’ (Wright,171-72)

(Semitically, the ‘fox’ imagery is probably one of dangerand sets up the chicks and hen scenario with another deadly force to shelterthe young from.)

The imagery of third-day completion of work together withthis image of the life-giving protective hen combine into a powerfulproclamation of salvation through the cross of Christ.

Furthermore, in relation to questions of who is saved wealso see Jesus here holding out hope to the unrepentant sinners to the veryend. They are on the brink ofdestruction and taking no heed of God’s mercy, yet Jesus still proclaims tothem the means by which they can escape judgment.

Notice too that as the previous passage opened with aquestion of whether only few would be saved, this passage closes on the note ofthe urgent solicitation for sinners to repent and be saved. The atmosphere created by the language hereis not one where our lives are forced to fit into predetermined, fatalisticgrooves of doom or glory, but rather a dynamic atmosphere of urgency, warning,danger, hope, and decision. And it isthe Lord himself who creates this wide-open, momentous scenario, who sets thestage for this drama in which he himself will be the sacrifice to save any whoare willing to receive such a priceless gift.

So, as with the previous passage, we are again left with asense of our need to assess our own response to Jesus. Are we trying to ‘fox’ Jesus or in any wayimpede him with our own illegitimacy (as was Herod’s attitude)? Are we mindless chicks running madly from hiscompassionate call to shelter under his wings from the wrath to come? Or do we welcome Jesus with glad, open armsand words of blessing in the name of the Lord?

Luke 13:18-21

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Luke narrates that Jesus says this 'therefore' - based onwhat's gone before. How so? Ponder this as we consider Jesus’ words.

Part of our continuing quest as we read, study, and inhabitLuke’s Gospel is to know, believe, and participate in what the ‘kingdom of God’means, since Jesus tells us to seek,pursue, chase after God’s kingdom rather than anything else in life (12:31).

Last weekend I heard Ellis Potter, a former Buddhist monkand friend of mine, teach on artists in the kingdom of God.

· He noted that in the Gospels Jesus says thekingdom is ‘coming’, ‘near’, ‘here’, ‘among you’, and ‘in you’.

· Hereminded us that the Greek for kingdom is basileia,which he believes indicates more of a kingshipthan a kingdom (more about theperson’s influence than a place, I think is what he meant).

o The kingdom, then, is ‘the rule of God’, an‘administration’ (and this latter term is exactly what Tim Keller brings out inhis teaching on the kingdom – a new ‘order’)

· He also noted what we see here: that Jesus often paused to involve the mindsand imaginations of his hearers with phrases such as ‘the kingdom of God is like...’ and ‘What do you think...’, followed by stories andimagery.

o Here he challenged us that one of the tasks ofan artist who is a Christian is to follow Jesus’ example here and to publiclyinvite analogy and thought about God’s kingdom.

· The kingdom of God, he further warned, is notabout us saying sort of ‘whatever’, but rather saying ‘I bet my life on this!’

· Finally, he noted that in his rule, his kingdomor kingship, God gives himself tous. That is why the Old Testament lawswere continually punctuated with the phrase ‘I am the Lord’.

o It seems to me that in this way God is alwaysconnecting us directly the person and presence of God himself, not keeping usdistant through rules and regulations, but through those holy laws drawing usinto communion with his holy goodness.

o It also occurs to me that because the Father sogenerously gives to his children (Luke 12:32), we are thereby enabled togenerously give ourselves to eachother, to the world.

The words ‘like’ and ‘compare’ are, as we’ve noted,analogical language. We’ve seenpreviously in Luke’s Gospel how Jesus sees the world under God’s good rule asCreator and Sustainer and Redeemer. Forexample, Jesus sees the world being:

‘Charged with God’ and thus able to teach usabout him through creation (flowers, birds, seeds, soil, weather, etc.)
Amply and faithfully provided for by God (which,again, we can see in how he feeds and ‘clothes’ birds and flowers)
A history that is meaningful and can beinterpreted in our own day and time (12:56)

Here we see Jesus’ worldview perspective on human languageand perception, especially as regards its capacity to describe and comprehendthe spiritual, heavenly, and divine. Inusing the analogical terms of ‘like’ and ‘compare’ Jesus at one and the sametime acknowledges that human language and thought about the divine are both difficult as well as effective. He shows that talking about and understandingthe kingdom of God are at one and the same time not just naïvely ‘straightforward’, yet there is a sense in whichthey’re ‘comparable’. Ultimately, thislinguistic and conceptual ‘play’ gives a fullerdefinition than merely analytical or abstract terminology that might be too‘precise’ in the wrong way—locking down and caging in meaning to too narrow anunderstanding.

Ellis Potter spoke about these definitional matters at theweekend also: he observed thatdefinitions are not, as we often think, pointsbut are rather circles containing aninfinite number of points withintheir circumference. In this conception,definitions do have ‘boundaries’ –there is an ‘outside’ to the circle. Yetthe ‘inside’ is wider and richer than a mere solitary point.

So Jesus, in all his varied teaching on the kingdom of God,in all his analogies and stories, and in all the miraculous and graciousactions that dramatize this teaching, is drawing a large circle filled withmany diverse points of what the kingdom is ‘like’. What ‘points’ does he give us here in thispassage? He gives us imagery todramatize the kingdom’s character. He shows us what the kingdom of God looks like, how it operates.

The 1st picture: a small seed is sown in a garden, grows tobecome a tree, so that birds nest in its branches. (Cf. Ezekiel 17:22-24; Daniel 4:10-12.)

The 2nd picture: alittle lump of leaven is taken by a woman, hidden inside three measures offlour, until all of the flour is leavened.

What is being communicated about God's rule, God'sadministration here? Both the mustardseed and the lump of leaven are smallthings that, when ‘planted’, expand,enlarge, grow, permeate, and have a huge and beneficial effect on other things.

In regard to Jesus own actions here in terms of the kingdomof God, healing just one woman on the Sabbath, straightening out what Satan hasperverted, enlarging the boundaries of the people of God to let more in—justone kingdom of God act is a small seed sown or a little leaven hidden. It will have its huge effect in time. In the gracious and awesome presence of Godin the person of Jesus Christ straightening out one human being, undoingsatanic influence, we have an instance of the kingdom of God is ‘coming’,‘near’, ‘here’, ‘among you’, and ‘in you’.

It seems the people are rejoicing in these glorious eventsand Jesus takes the opportunity to continue to expand their vision, to provokethem to see what God is doing and that it’s only going to grow. The implication is that he is inviting themto follow him in the expansion of God’s kingdom and be participants in God’sglorious work on earth.

And he shows them and us that the kingdom of God is not a‘top down’ sudden and decisive arrival (which many of the Jews may have beenexpecting), but, perhaps surprisingly, a ‘bottom up’ process and gradualappearance. That is why he is inviting all the people, not just certain‘types’. The kingdom of God always growsfrom small beginnings in this way and never arrives through heavy-handed force,even well-meaning programmes and the like.

We can have hope and confidence that it will grow in time tosomething ‘big and beautiful’, but it always begins as a seed planted and itwill always continue to retain this characteristic in terms of its on-goingspread and growth in the world. Jesusgives us vivid, real-life examples of how very small things really do have ahuge effect when planted. It’s somethingwe can picture, imagine, comprehend. It’snot beyond our grasp or totally unbelievable because we’ve never seen anythinglike it.

But it is callingforth our faith, our deep trust and dependence on God, because he is calling usto believe him that he can use us to accomplish this sort of thing we see inthe creation around us but at the humanlevel: individuals, communities,cultures, nations, the world—palpably experiencing God’s healing grace and loveand truth and justice, turning to Christ as Lord and Messiah and Saviour,surrendering all to his Lordship, seeking his kingdom, loving and trusting theFather through faith in Jesus, becoming a worldwide community of spiritual andphysical shelter and provision. It allbegins with a mustard-seed act of kingdom-shaped love in our own small world ofinfluence. That is the sowing or the‘hiding’. That is our small part inGod’s awesome plan. We must trust God heworks and develops his plans for the world in this way and we must thereforenot resort to some more man-made way that will actually end upcounterproductive.

When you think about it, this is such a strange way for akingdom to ‘arrive’! It iscounterintuitive to the militaristic expectations we might naturally have of akingdom. Indeed, it is perhaps strangeto think of a kingdom in organic terms at all, seeing it as a growing, livingorganism. Or to see it as being likebread rising, a fruit of the earth that serves to nourish people. But this is consistently communicated in theBible as being the uniquely divine nature of God’s kingdom. It is a rulethat arrives through the planting of seeds, that permeates all else in time asit spreads, as its branches stretch out to accommodate all, as it expands tofeed the creation.

Luke 13:10-17

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13:10

From outdoor teaching to indoor, synagogue, Sabbath-dayteaching.

13:11

‘disabling spirit’ – without necessarily looking for demonsin every medical problem, we can still recognise, in conformity with Jesus’ ownworldview, that physical ‘disability’ is due to a Fallen world of spiritual aswell as physical evil. God made theworld utterly interconnected and there are no hermetically sealed parts that donot affect one another.

Picture and ponder the woman: she was ‘bent over and shecould not fully straighten herself.’ Shehad not stood up straight for two decades. Imagine.

13:12

Compassion, Involvement, Authority, Liberation

Jesus sees her, Jesus calls her; he goes out of his way tonotice, pay attention to, understand, and have compassion on her.

With utter and total authority Jesus then succinctly anddramatically speaks his healing words into her life of suffering.

Jesus announces her physical healing in terms of liberationand freedom. Sickness, disease, anddisability are evil and dehumanising prisons of suffering that come from allthat is an enemy to the goodness, holiness, glory, truth, and love of God. Disability is one more unjust oppressor fromwhom the Lord comes to set us free, to deliver us from its captivity.

13:13

The Words and Hands and Creativity of the Lord

Though Jesus seems to be able to heal in just about anymanner he chooses (as long as there is a modicum of faith in the recipient),here he combines both word and touch and lays his hands on the woman as thesequel to speaking to her.

And thereby the healing is effected: ‘immediately she was made straight’. (Note the creative, creational connotation ofthe word ‘made’ – restored to the original upright intention of creation.)

The Bent One Made Straight

As with all of Jesus’ healings and other miracles, this onetoo dramatises central elements of his teaching: that we are sick sinners in need of thehealing of our ‘sin disease’ by the good physician (5:31-32). As already dramatised in the healings of theuntouchable leper and the helpless paralytic and in the exorcism of the outcastdemon-possessed man, so here we see a picture of our sinful condition beforeGod and his gracious salvation in the midst of our misery.

Cf. Ecclesiastes 1:15 and 7:13, 29—we can’t straightenourselves out. Only God in his Son JesusChrist can un-bend, un-twist, the tragically crooked condition of humanity madein God’s image but fallen and distorted through sin. (Note that Satan is called the ‘Bent One’ inC. S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy.)

Signs of the Kingdom Present and Foretastes of the New Creation Yet to Come

Again, we have here a foretaste of the full arrival of theKingdom of God in the Eschaton. Thishealing, as with the others, signals that the kingdom of God hasarrived, is present in Jesus, and yet it is also only a foreshadowing andforetaste of the full and final healing of the whole cosmos that is yet tocome, our hope (Romans 8:18-25).

See how these things relate to the full ‘Manger-Cross-Crown’gospel outline from Tim Keller’s ‘Dwelling In the Gospel’ talk. Jesus’ liberation and new creationdemonstrated here in this woman’s healing are why we do what we do asgospel people and gospel churches [see slide].

Glorifying God in Response to His Liberating Voice and Touch

What does the woman do in response to Jesus’ liberating wordand restoring touch?

As with so many others in Luke’s account so far, ‘sheglorified God’. What does thatmean? What precisely did she do from herheart for this to be said of her?

She credited and thanked and praised God for his mercifulhealing of her condition through the presence and power of Jesus Christ.

How does this further help us understand what it might meanfor us to glorify God?

If glorifying God is in some part a response to his healingliberation in our lives, then how we do fulfil Paul’s command: ‘whether you eat or drink, or whatever youdo, do all to the glory of God’ (1 Corinthians 10:31)? It seems we have to relate everything we areand do in life—every role, relationship, task, etc.—to God’s loving liberationin our lives, to his healing of our sinfulness and its consequences, so thatall we are and do is offered up to him as thanksgiving and praise for his kindand gracious salvation in Christ.

Every piece of art created or culture made, everyrelationship joyfully and self-sacrificially fostered, every field of researchstudied, every vote cast, every political involvement, every charity given toor worked for, every purchase of wants and needs, every business transaction,every hammer nailed, every dish washed, every game played, every entertainmentenjoyed, every meal eaten, every drink and sweet and snack we are refreshed by,every kiss and hug given and received, every song listened to or sung, everyprofessional decision, every day worked in whatever work—each and everyone ofthese innumerable things is a ‘thank you’ to God, a praise to his name, inremembrance and tribute to all that he has done for us in Christ, if we ‘do allto the glory of God’. (Cf. also 1Timothy 4:4-5; Philippians 3:17, 23-24.)

We must ourselves experience God’s loving, liberating,healing word and touch in our lives to be able to live all of life from thisplace of thankfulness and praise and glory. Have you experienced God’s gracious salvation? In what ways? Do you see it, recognise it? Howare you responding?

Read aloud again Luke 13:12-13. Can this be a parable of our own lives?

13:14

Opposing Christ’s Mercy and Power

‘But’ – Into this joyous scene enters conflict yetagain. So many of the good works thatJesus does are met with opposition! Andusually from the very spiritual leaders who are supposed to lead God’s peopleinto his goodness, grace, and mercy!

This is something of a repeat of the scene in 6:6-11. The synagogue ruler does not have therepentant heart that John the Baptist and Jesus have called for. He has not made his heart tender and open andready to hear from and follow the Lord. In the face of this release of divine power for freedom and healing inpeople’s lives all he can see is a broken rule. Where is his sense of awe and wonder and worship at the majesty andmercy of God? There’s not even a tensionfor him—say, a half rejoicing at God’s gracious power and compassion combinedwith half confusion at the seeming breaking of a God-given commandment. He is therefore not teachable. He lacks the humility to be surprised,shocked, and to learn. He is not‘declaring God just’ but instead ‘rejecting God’s purpose for himself’ (7:29-30).

13:15

Again, Luke as narrator slips in a reference to Jesus as‘Lord’, peppering acknowledgement of his Lordship into the narration, so thatthe final destination of his ‘ground-up’ portrait of Jesus is being anticipatedall throughout.

The Sabbath is the Perfect Day for Doing Good and Saving Life

Jesus calls them out on their hypocrisy. They know perfectly well that the meeting ofbasic creational needs is perfectly acceptable, desirable, and even necessaryon the Sabbath day.

His vivid, down to earth example of liberation and ministrydone on the Sabbath here is an excellent embodiment of the question he posed inthe earlier similar scenario: ‘I askyou, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or todestroy it?’ (6:9).

Jesus reminds them that they do good tc o and save the livesof their very beasts every Sabbath!

13:16

If the beasts are privy to this care on the Sabbath, howmuch more ought a ‘daughter of Abraham’ be?

Either Satan has directly been divinely permitted the powerto bind humans to a degree with disabilities and other afflictions or due tothe malignant God-defying influence he is allowed in the world, afflictionsresult as ‘collateral damage’. Eitherway, Satan binds and Jesus looses, sets free, unbinds, liberates.

The Divine Warrior Sets Captives Free from Satan's Bondage

Here again we see the Divine Warrior motif at play: Jesus conquering the demonic, Satanic forcesof evil by his mighty deeds of liberation. Jesus sets free Satan’s military captives and slaves by attacking,overcoming, and taking the armour of the ‘strong man’ and thereby Jesus‘divides his spoil’ (11:21-22). He‘steals back’ what the enemy has stolen from the Father. He shatters the fetters on those bound bySatan’s wicked oppression and gives them freedom again.

13:17

For the moment, Jesus wins a public victory in terms ofapprobation and ‘popularity’. All thesescenes where Jesus is publicly vindicated and those who oppose him are morallyand spiritually shamed add up to a testimony of his goodness and his innocenceof sin or wickedness, making his later trial and execution all the more clearlyan unjust travesty and tragedy.

Will we too rejoice ‘at all the glorious things… done byhim’ and continue to do so even in the face of opposition andpersecution? Or will we be a ficklecrowd, eventually swayed by the opinion against him, or simply be too cowardlyto stand by him because we know he’s good and right and the Lord though theworld may reject him?

Will we ‘interpret the present time’ aright in terms ofJesus’ true identity and mission (12:56)?

Luke 13:1-9

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Opening: read Isaiah 5:1-7.

13:1-5

13:1

It seems something of Jesus’ warnings about being firm through persecution got through to some of the crowd. They bring up an instance of persecution from Roman overlordship. They seem to do so to see if he can illuminate this troubling and tragic occurrence. They essentially bring him a test case of ‘interpreting the present time’.

13:2

As so often, he responds first with a counter-question, jogging the brain cells of his listeners and getting them to examine their own hearts, not just try to figure out what’s right or wrong about ‘those people’.

Jesus perceives that they have a certain perspective on this event. Is it a Job’s comforters-like equation between personal suffering and personal sin? Is it that they saw this as a warning of the judgment God was bringing on his people who don’t follow his will?

‘In the ancient world, unlike the modern, people were slow to attribute evil to the deity’s carelessness or non-involvement. Certainly they believed in evil spiritual forces, but they assumed that tragedy generally reflects God’s judgment for sin committed. If tragedy comes, responsibility lies with the person who experiences the tragedy.’ (Bock, 237)

Their ‘problem of evil’ lay in the exact opposite direction to the modern version! They were too quick to see suffering as God’s retributive judgment applied to personal sin.

13:3

Just as with the inheritance dispute brought to him in 12:13, Jesus brings the question posed to him (or news brought to them) here into his current discourse. He won’t be thrown off topic: he continues to urge vigilance and faithfulness in a world full of disastrous distractions and false visions and hopes.

Similar to the wording in 12:51, if this is what they were thinking, Jesus outright contradicts it.

Jesus warns us: don’t look at the calamities of others and your own lack of calamities and think ‘well, they’re obviously doing something wrong and I’m obviously doing something right’. (These people may have thought those who were tragically killed by Pilate must be the ‘unfaithful’ stewards of Jesus’ parable that had been ‘cut to pieces’ in judgment.)

‘No’, he says. All are in the same boat of suffering in this life due to humanity’s overall sin-disease – the choice of humanity to place themselves above God and its dire consequences. ‘Repentance’ is the way to receive the cure, the way to avoid ‘likewise perishing’.

Jesus is here giving another stern warning and urgent call to humility of attitude and action, turning from being self-centred to God-centred, turning away from any humanly concocted agenda to seeking instead the kingdom of God.

Repent = ‘turn’, ‘turn back’, or ‘return’ in Hebrew (i.e. away from one thing and to another) and ‘think differently afterward’ or ‘change one’s mind’ in Greek.

Change your mind, turn around, or you too will perish tragically.

13:4

Jesus adds another tragic example to the one already mentioned and applies the same line of questioning about their interpretation of the event. ‘Rather than a political tragedy, this is a natural catastrophe, something akin to a hurricane or tornado… Jesus’ interpretation is exactly as before. Without repentance all die similarly. What is imperative is that each person repent.’ (Bock, 239; see his following paragraph also.)

13:5

He then repeats his contradiction to this interpretation and interprets it aright.

There is an interesting emphasis on geography and/or demographics in both instances – Galilee and Jerusalem respectively. Some might think one people group or demographic ‘deserved’ judgment more than another. But Jesus’ use of ‘all’ four times in this segment emphasises the universality of the human scenario under God.

‘There is a more fundamental issue than “them” and “their sin.” Mortality is evidence of the presence of sin in our world (Gen 3). More important than the timing or cause of death is this: only repentance can change death from a tragic end into a bridge to a new kind of life… The event shows life’s fragility. Disaster looms for the unresponsive.’ (Bock, 238)

Death at any time is a reminder that we are all doomed in a fallen world and our only hope for resurrection is repentance and faith in Jesus.

Jesus also here forestalls the future criticism that because he was executed by Roman authorities at Jerusalem, he must have deserved it, must be cursed by God. Calamity in one’s life does not equate to God’s direct judgment on an individual for his or her own personal sins, as the cross supremely shows (for Jesus was personally sinless and suffered rather for the sins of the world). All suffering in this life, however, is a result of sin and the Fall and we all suffer under the overall cursed nature of the earth at this time, due to our own sins, the sins of others, and the state of a Fallen world awaiting its Redemption (remember the Manger-Cross-Crown gospel outline).

However, it is probably also right to see this as, for God’s people of that time, a ‘terrifying warning, about the political and military consequences of not heeding his call’ (Wright, 163). If they allow themselves to be led into a national rebellion against Rome instead of following Israel’s true Messiah into God’s true way of peace, then they will perish in the eventual destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

Does this apply to us today in some way as well?

13:6

Keeping on the theme of repentance and salvation from perishing, Jesus enters storytelling and imagery mode: he tells a parable.

Picturing the Context

The fruit tree is ‘planted’ in a ‘vineyard’. (Cf. Isaiah 5:1-7 – but a more direct allusion is found later in Luke 20.)

What is the man’s relation to the fig tree and what does he have in mind and what are his resources for this? This scenario speaks of prior intention and purpose as well as copious provision and care in a context of ownership and plenty and order and fruitfulness.

Perceiving the Goal

The man came ‘seeking fruit’. His goal is revealed. The purpose of planting the fig tree was to produce figs.

What role does the tree play in this story? The tree’s purpose was to grow and produce the fruit appropriate to its nature and good for the world in which it played a part.

Encountering the Seeker

It is awe-inspiring to think of God ‘seeking’ us. (We often speak of people seeking God, but what of God seeking us?)

He comes to us, seeking the fruit he made us in his own image to produce, the product of his wise and kind and gracious cultivation and husbandry.

Just think of what God has provided and is providing for you to grow spiritually and humanly. Do you see his provisional, cultivating hand in your life? Are you aware of his coming to you, seeking the fruit he desires of you as the purpose for which he created you?

Neither we nor he are static, as if ‘seeking’ one another were optional, a luxury perhaps. We are made to seek after God and he graciously chooses to seek after us too.

Finding Fruitfulness

We seek from God our source of life and fruitfulness and he seeks from us the fruit he made us to produce: trusting love, obedience, and worship of God, loving our neighbours as ourselves, wisely and righteously stewarding God’s world and glorifying his name in all of life.

This ‘fruitful’ theme has been rather massively emphasised in Luke so far: 3:7-9; 6:43-45; 8:4-15.

Finding Nothing

Now consider the gravity and tragedy of the fact that the man seeking fruit from the tree he planted in his vineyard ‘found none’. Feel the weight of that.

It’s kind of like the moment in a film where something pivotal is revealed: perhaps someone is found missing when they should be there, or someone’s hitherto unknown identity or role becomes suddenly clear and momentous, etc. It’s that moment where we stop, perhaps startled, unconsciously hold our breath, sit forward, cover our mouths with wide eyes, etc.

In this context of all this provision and purpose, feel the shock of finding no fruit.

13:7

Feeling the Loom of Doom

Vineyard-owner and vinedresser confer: This fruitlessness was not a one-off, but a repeated occurrence. The man has exercised patience in waiting year after year to see the fruit for which he planted the tree.

It here becomes clear that if the tree is unfruitful, it does not serve its purpose and must be excised to make room for something more fruitful. It has no meaningful place in the vineyard. ‘If his plant does not bear fruit, he can find other ways to get fruit.’ (Bock, 240) Cf. Romans 11.

Again, we feel the gravity of this situation. Doom looms.

13:8

Surprised By Mercy

Yet more time and patience is requested. More investment, more cultivation, more depth and moisture and fertiliser are promised.

One thing Jesus is driving at is that it is not our ‘sanctity’ keeping us from judgment, but God’s mercy. We are proud and self-deluded to imagine otherwise. Comparison with this same imagery used in similar parables by others of that time apparently shows ‘what a novelty the motif of clemency would have been’ (Green, 515).

Why so much investment for something so fruitless? Clearly, this tree is not a whimsical, throw-away purchase or planting! It is a well-cared for tree (‘his pleasant planting’) and its intended purpose is very hard to thwart. Setting it aside from its intended fruitfulness is not easily or readily done. Cutting it down is an absolutely last, ‘no-other-option’ action to take.

What is being communicated to us here? (Cf. Isaiah 5:4 – ‘What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it?’.)

The Triune God is prepared to go on making all things possible for our deepening and watering and ultimate fruitfulness. What will we do in light of such persistent mercy and grace?

13:9

Final outcomes: ‘Well and good’ or ‘cut it down’

The ‘well and good’ outcome is for the tree to bear the fruit it should. It is only when this is finally ruled out after much effort from its cultivators to avoid this end that cutting it down can really be considered as an option.

Why? Because we deserve it, we have a right to this time and investment? No, but because God is gracious and merciful and longsuffering. May we not presume upon his patience and love.

Looking for the Resolution of the Drama

Note how the parable is open-ended. Jesus gives us a total cliff-hanger! ‘What will happen next?’ we want to know. How will it end?

The ending emotional note is simultaneously ominous and hopeful, a highly dramatic tension left unresolved. Interestingly, the parable definitely gives the distinct impression that the tree has a responsibility to respond to the gracious and merciful care of its owner and will be held to account for its response.

‘Not incidentally, the parable also holds forth the possibility of fruit-bearing in spite of a history of sterility—or, in human terms, the possibility of change leading to faith expressed in obedience to God’s purpose. If it announces a warning of judgment, then, it also dramatizes hope… Now is the time to repent and live fruitful lives’ (Green, 515, 516).

How Will We Respond to God’s Gracious Cultivation of Our Lives?

This is the crowning passage of all that Jesus has been saying about ‘vigilance in the face of eschatological crisis’ (Green, 513) from 12:1 onward. His finale? REPENT and LIVE! (Cf. Ezekiel 18:32; see also 2 Peter 3:9.)

As well as to individuals throughout time, this passage had a specific application to the people of Israel at that time: God would give them over to judgment and use other nations of the world for his mission in Christ if they did not repent. And, tragically, this is what happened historically. But again see Romans 11 for the future hope of Israel.

Will we heed Jesus’ warnings? Will we repent and thereby avoid perishing? Will we humbly and gratefully receive the copious cultivation the Lord is patiently providing for our lives and bear the fruit he desires and requires of us? He ‘has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing’ (Ephesians 1:3). See also 2 Peter 1:3-11; Galatians 5:22ff.

God delights to graciously and powerfully enable us to be fruitful. We need but trust in his Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God, Saviour, Lord. This is entering and seeking the kingdom of God.

Luke 12:49-59

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Opening: read Luke 1:79; 2:14; 7:50; 8:48; 10:5-6 (cf. Acts 10:36).

12:49-53

v. 49—‘I came to…’: the very proclamation and mission of 4:18-19 kindles judgment when people respond to it one way or the other (cf. 5:32).

v. 50—Cf. Mark 10:38-39, 45

Prince of Peace or Prince of Division?

v. 51—‘peace on earth’ (note opening verses)

v. 52-53—borrowing language from Micah 7:6, Jesus continues with his household theme of the previous passage. This time instead of an image of household servants abusing one another, we see real family members divided from one another in their loyalties.

Jesus ‘has already made clear, a decision to adopt his canons of faithfulness to God would require a deeply rooted and pervasive transformation of how one understands God and how one understands the transformation of the world purposed by this God. This would involve Jesus’ disciples in dispositions and forms of behavior that could only be regarded as deviant within their kin groups.’ (Green, 509)

Whereas 12:4-12 prepared disciples for persecution from society and authorities, here Jesus warns that disciples will also have to endure deep family tensions. Cf. Luke 8:19-21; 9:59-62 (14:25-33; 18:28-30). The family of God in Christ takes absolute priority over one’s blood relations.

Doesn’t God Like Families?

Why? Does God not care about shalom in our families? He does indeed, but he knows that giving top allegiance to family members who oppose Christ will only do more damage in the long run for you and for them.

Imagine being born into a mafia family and being called by an Authority you morally respect to freely choose to practice a different way of life! That would not happen without ‘tensions’, to put it mildly.

There is no loyalty greater than our loyalty to Jesus. Only allegiance first and foremost to God’s family will bring any hope of healing, reconciliation and peace to our own families and all the families of the earth.

12:54-56

Poetry of Crisis

Notice the chiasmic parallelism of Jesus’ twin sayings about judgment here:

Fire (49)

Baptism (50)

Showers (54)

Heat (55)

(a, b, b, a)

As C. S. Lewis remarked, Jesus was soaked in the poetry of his country. You see that here in the memorable and thought-provoking Hebraic form of his speech.

Images of two kinds of cleansing, scouring, and testing agents are echoing in our minds and imaginations as we take in Jesus’ teaching here.

These images communicate that the ‘heat is on’ as it were. Jesus is issuing a ‘severe weather warning’.

This is what divine judgment is all about. This is the ‘division’ of v. 51. Just as John the Baptist had said (3:16-17), Jesus baptises with fire and ‘winnows’ the nation into wheat and chaff. (Cf. 1:52-53; 2:34-35; 6:20-26, 46-49; 7:29-30; 9:24-26; 10:13-14; 11:29-32; 12:8-9, 43-48.)

There is a crisis coming for Israel in their relation to their overlords and to the Messiah. This event will sift them.

Our Response to Jesus Shows Us Which Side of the Divide We Are On

And throughout the generations and today, to encounter Jesus is to be thus deluged in fiery testing, scouring, and cleansing. It is to find out who you are, of what stuff you are made.

So, Jesus is clarifying the angelic announcement: he brings not ‘peace on earth’ under just any circumstances, but through the grace of God transforming lives and communities and nations and the world. Those who will join his divine justice and peace movement will share in its benefits, but necessarily those who oppose his justice and peace will be brought to justice through judgment.

Indeed, the very peace that Jesus proclaims and creates is what sparks the division – e.g. 7:36-50.

The Present Time Should Be Something We Are Deft at Reading

In 12:22-34 Jesus showed us his worldview of God’s care in creation. Here he shows us the additionally crucial feature of that worldview: God’s purpose in history.

Just as God designed the world to run on certain life-giving patterns, so the unfolding of human history itself does so according to his life-giving plans and purposes. Therefore, just as we can ‘read’ and ‘interpret’ the meaning of (say) weather conditions, so we can and ought to read and interpret the meaning of historical events and eras. (E.g. these events and circumstances will likely lead to this or that—historical cause and effect and significance.)

We were just learning in English Literature lectures about ‘naïve readers’ such as Frankenstein’s monster who reads Paradise Lost and various novels as literal history, completely unskilled and ignorant of genres such as poetry, fiction, and so on. Are we as God’s people monstrously semi-literate in our in our ability to interpret our own times according to God’s word, Jesus and his gospel of the kingdom?

This is an amazing concept and prospect and responsibility that Jesus lays on the people of God.

‘The church has from early on read this chapter as a warning that each generation must read the signs of the times, the great movements of people, governments, nations and policies [and I would add cultures to his list], and must react accordingly. If the kingdom of God is to come on earth as it is in heaven, part of the prophetic role of the church is to understand the events of earth and to seek to address them with the message of heaven. And if, like Jesus, we find that we seem to be bringing division, and that we ourselves become caught up in the crisis, so be it. What else would we expect?’ (Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, p. 160)

Do We Know Which Way the Wind is Blowing?

Jesus is basically warning them: you don’t even know which way the wind is blowing! This generation of Israel that he’s talking to needs desperately and urgently to discern just what’s happening in the ministry of Jesus and, rather than criticising, condemning, and dismissing him as the religious leaders do, they need to fall in with him as the disciples do.

Do we know which way the wind is blowing? Especially in regard to trusting and following Jesus in the world today, in a society and culture that may reject or try to ‘co-opt’ him?

If we are not fundamentally aligned from our hearts with God and his messianic-salvific agenda (think of the arc of the ‘Manger-Cross-Crown’ gospel outline), then we will be unable to read our times rightly. In fact, we’ll out and out read them erroneously. We will misunderstand our own times that we’re living through.

Conversely, of course, in following Jesus wholeheartedly and being shaped thoroughly by discipleship to him, we will understand the times we’re living through and be skilled in graciously and prophetically living and speaking into our generation.

12:57-59

Think For Yourself!

Observe how Jesus wants us to make a right judgment for ourselves! We must individually think, discern, conclude. We cannot rely on the governing, ‘authoritative’ judgment of our given cultural context, especially regarding the will of God and the person and mission of Jesus. We can’t just go with the flow, in church culture or the wider culture. We must personally wrestle with God ourselves and in community.

Peace with God

The people of Israel must act now rather than later and avoid this eschatological judgment. Just as the Israelites at that time, so we need to make it our priority to ‘make peace’ with God through faith in Jesus. This very warning is God’s gracious, loving hand held out to us in Christ to save us and make us fully human forever in his kingdom.

He has paid the ‘last penny’ of our debt for us, received the fiery judgment due us into his own person, so that we need not suffer debtor’s prison for our damning transgressions but can instead rejoice in the good news of our forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration to God’s family and kingdom: Luke 7:41-43; Colossians 2:13-14. (This is the ‘atonement’ or ‘cross’ part of the Incarnation-Atonement-Resurrection/Re-Creation or Manger-Cross-Crown gospel outline we looked at recently.)

This is where real ‘peace on earth’ comes from and will be found. Cf. Ephesians 2:13-22; Colossians 1:20; Isaiah 53:5). (Cf. Luke 19:42; Acts 10:36.)

Luke 12:35-48

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Remember that the sobering command to vigilance in this passage comes straight out of the compassionately reassuring words of the previous passage: ‘Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom of God.’ (12:32)

We’ve been instructed to seek not food and clothing but the kingdom of God. Now Jesus gives us a picture of the attitude this will require and something of what we are seeking.

35-40

35-36

‘Make sure you’re dressed and ready with your lamps alight’ (N. T. Wright translation).

Dressed for Action, Lamps Burning, Waiting to Open the Door when the Master Knocks

‘dressed for action’ – literally, ‘keep your loins girded’ (love that phrase!)

This takes preparation. This is an attitude of readiness. This doesn’t happen randomly or spontaneously. It is planned for. It takes prior resolve, a decision that this is the perspective you will take that will shape how you live your life.

Dressed for a sudden journey – Exodus 12:11. See also 1 Kings 18:46 (2 Kings 4:29; 9:1); 1 Peter 1:13; Ephesians 6:15.

Ready to move, to up and go. Jesus is telling us our faith is active, not static, in process, not finalised. Christians have not arrived. We are on pilgrimage to our true home rather than at our stopping point (cf. Hebrews 11).

We have not settled in to this world in its present un-redeemed state. We are looking for our Master’s return, ready to go with him into New Creation, the resurrection and renewal of the world.

‘lamps burning’ – watchful at all hours, ready in all seasons and circumstances; everything we are and everything we do at all times is geared toward, directed toward, God’s kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. Every square inch of life is lived for the glory of God, so that there is no dark corner that is not prepared and ready and waiting to open to the Master when he knocks to take us with him.

In our work, our rest, our play, our relationships, our creativity, our thinking, and so on we surrender it all to his will and his glory so that we are in all ways at all times ready and waiting to go with him at his return.

‘waiting’ (to ‘open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks’) – so oriented to Christ’s return that we could respond instantaneously with welcome and obedience when he comes.

Darrell Bock calls this being ‘prospective’ in our attitude: ‘We can act now in light of what we hope will happen in the future… That kind of perspective is harder, because it requires faith and counts on events that have not yet occurred. It is very different from living strictly according to present needs and gratifications. Christians are supposed to live prospectively. Believers know that Jesus is returning and that all will give an account for their stewardship… The nature of the future helps to determine present priorities… Faith means trusting God, not only for the present but also for the future, by walking faithfully with him until he returns. What God will do affects what we do.’ (Bock, 230)

The Wedding Feast of the Master

As so often in Luke (both metaphorically and literally), we again have a picture of feasting and celebrating.

Jesus in this scenario is the Master, the Lord, the One who calls the shots, the One we live to serve in total allegiance and full obedience. But note that he is a joyful Master here, returning home with his Bride and we serve that purpose. We are members of his household who await and live for that moment and reality, who share in the love and joy of our Master.

37-38

Blessings Come to Those Who Stay Awake

‘Blessed’ – a lesser known beatitude – sometimes ‘blessed’ is translated ‘Oh how happy’. Do you know what ‘blessing’ and ‘blessed’ means? If we think this just means ‘bonus points’ or you’ll feel pretty good or something, then we’ll never take any of the Bible’s beatitudes at all seriously.

To be blessed is to be enlarged and enriched and made whole and totally at peace in the joy of the Lord without fear – to be ‘approved’ and accepted and provided for by the Granter of the Blessing. It is granted by the Most High and cannot be revoked by anything in creation. It is the opposite of being cursed. (For those cursed, nothing can go right in the end. For those blessed, then, everything will go right in the end.)

‘awake’ (‘when he comes’) – alert; vigilant

Blessing, as defined above, is what is promised to those servants who stay awake.

What, more specifically, is the nature of being blessed, what does it look like? Jesus actually gives us a vivid picture of it here. What does the opposite of being cursed look like? Here it is:

‘he will come and serve them’ – I find this picture amazing: as if it wasn’t already enough that the Lord of all the universe came and served us in the incarnation and crucifixion (Mark 10:45; Philippians 2:7), he will come again and serve us yet more as a reward to our life of lovingly serving him in his world as his faithful stewards.

Note the typically Lukan topsy-turvy, role-reversing theo-comedy! The Master waits on the servants who had just been waiting on him! What a beautiful joyous joke! What divine slapstick! What holy farce! (I mean here a ‘joke’, not in the sense of being either pathetic or untrue, but in being fun and funny and unexpected and pleasant and happy.)

But, of course, really what we’re seeing here is the very heart of the Trinitarian God overflowing in salvation just as it does in creation. Whenever you see something in the Bible and in the gospel about God serving us, or the Son serving the Father or the Father honouring the Son, or the Holy Spirit glorifying the Son and the Father and so on—what you are seeing is the overflow of the Trinity, the spilling out of the abundance of the Divine Life, what ancient theologians called the perichoresis at the heart of all things, the ‘dance of God’. This Trinitarian divine life is the everlasting, omni-abundant source of all God’s grace and love toward his creation.

Really this service that Jesus will perform for us when he returns is all part of one great cosmic motion of service toward his creation that springs from the Eternal God into time, from Beginning to End. The service to us that comes at Jesus’ Parousia (the Greek word for his ‘coming’ or ‘appearance’ or ‘arrival’) is just the completion or fruition of the service he rendered us in the Incarnation and Atonement. God delights to serve his creation and we haven’t even seen the half of it!

Now can you understand what kind of divine aura surrounds all this talk about God’s people being his ‘servants’? Do you realise we are being invited into the eternal, divine dance? We are being drawn in to the very life of God almighty!

I find being a servant one of the single most challenging things about the call to discipleship to Jesus. But he shows us there just is no other true life or meaning. This is dynamic, interpersonal energy at the centre of the universe that makes it run. This is where the power and glory and beauty and joy and fullness are found. Nowhere else.

‘at table’ – it is always about the fellowship feast of the Father’s love; this is pointing forward to a joyous and beautiful and celebratory occasion; this is our hope (cf. ‘the marriage supper of the Lamb’ – Revelation 19:7-9).

Emphatic repetitions: ‘he comes’; ‘awake’; ‘blessed are those servants!’

39-40

‘the thief’ – this rather strange image seems to suggest the possibility of loss if we are not living lives in readiness for Christ’s return. Loss that could be prevented. (Or is it only used to denote the sheer unpredictability of the Master’s return and nothing more?)

Ready for the Unexpected One

‘be ready’

‘the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect’

This is about living every moment for the kingdom of God, a life that always anticipates the fullness of that kingdom when he returns.

41-48

41-42

In keeping with so many other encounters with Jesus so far in Luke, Peter here addresses him as ‘Lord’, thus acknowledging that he is the Master of the parable. Asking questions is important to discipleship for it is conversational and participatory, but a disciple does this from a place of humility and loyalty and obedience. We ask our questions of the Lord.

Note that Luke himself as narrator at this point also echoes Peter’s confession of Jesus as Lord by narrating that ‘the Lord said’. And thereby Luke also acknowledges that Jesus is the master of the parable.

As so often, Jesus answers a question posed to him with his own question posed in turn to the questioner. If we can identify the person he describes to us, then we know the answer to the question of who Jesus is addressing in this parable.

‘faithful’

‘wise’

‘manager’ – ‘A steward in ancient culture was a slave who was left in charge of domestic affairs when the master was away… The steward’s major responsibility was to care for the other servants’ welfare, especially to allot food to them. Food might be handed out daily, weekly or monthly. A steward’s job was to serve, not to exercise power.’ (Bock, 232)

This probably has some special application to leadership in the church, but the end of the parable makes it clear that it is applicable much more widely.

What has God put you in charge of, given you management of? How does he expect you to ‘spend’ what he has given you? How are you handling that God-given stewardship?

Are you being faithful with God’s gifts (roles, skills, abilities, talents, etc.), holding onto them, guarding them, developing them, using them in service of God, his people, and his world?

Are you being wise with what God has given you? Do you understand it at all? Are you becoming knowledgeable and skilful in managing God’s gifts? Have you considered what goal you are using them toward and the best way to get to that goal? These are the questions of wisdom.

‘set over his household’

‘to give them their portion of food at the proper time’

We usually all have some responsibility for someone else in some sense to some degree. Again, though this most likely speaks somewhat directly to the pastoral role, we are probably all involved in ‘feeding’ one another in some sense.

Cf. 1 Corinthians 4:1-5 (cf. 3:10-15)

43-44

The Master's Blessing On the Servant 'Caught' Being Faithful and Wise

The Promotion: Luke 19:17; 1 Corinthians 6:2-3; Revelation 20:1-6

45-46

The Punishment of the Unfaithful and Abusive Servant

This is about not living in the light of Christ’s return and thereby wasting what God has given you charge of on things other than the kingdom of God. Jesus wants us to understand what’s at stake here. As so often, he paints the end points of two opposite roads (recall, for example, 6:20-26; 47-49; 11:34-36; 12:8-9).

‘This steward had no faith in the master, only selfishness. The fact that his stewardship went so totally in the opposite direction of the master’s request evidenced this. There had been no heart-change indicative of a genuine faith. Instead the unfaithful steward seems to represent someone who had associated with the new community without any genuine, heartfelt commitment. To feel no accountability to Jesus in light of his return is evidence of absence of relationship with him. The fruit only indicated what the heart had always lacked.’ (Bock, 234)

The one exposed as an unbeliever and ‘cut in pieces’ (dichotomeo) in the end seems to be speaking first and foremost of false teachers, but again is applicable more widely. Ultimately, for such intractable unbelief and opposition to the Lord’s way there is a final severing and Jesus is warning us to save us from that end.

47-48

To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required

There are also, however, those true believers who either knowingly or less knowingly disobey the Lord’s will and receive the just discipline.

What has been given to you by the Lord for you to steward for him? What has he entrusted you with? What do you know is his will for you? That much is what is required of you. You must take what he’s given you and ‘get ready according to his will’. Are you employing his gifts for his kingdom purposes in readiness for his return and the full arrival of that kingdom? Or are you using his gifts for your own selfish pursuits or neglecting them altogether?

All is given; hence it is grace. This is about responding in loving obedience and trust and creative activity to that grace and by that grace. This is not about justifying ourselves through our works.

DWELLING IN THE GOSPEL - Manger, Cross, Crown

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This is what we've been looking at for the past few weeks as a church plant. It is based very closely and mostly word for word on Tim Keller’s talk and article of the same title, both of which I highly recommend:

Dwelling in the Gospel (audio)

The Gospel in All Its Forms (article)

Colossians 3:16 – ‘let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ (that is, the gospel, the word about Christ, the message of Christ)‏

Luke 24:25-27; 44-47 – Scripture = not a mish-mash of laws and narratives and proverbs, etc. out of which you’re supposed to derive various principles for living.

The Bible is all about the gospel, about God’s salvation; it all points to Christ: you’ve got to see the plotline of the Bible, which is salvation by grace through Christ.

Traditionally， we have communicated the gospel something like this:

1) God made you and you must have a relationship with him,

2) but your sin separates you from God.

3) Jesus, God’s Son took the punishment your sins deserved.

4) If you repent for your sins and trust in his work for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified and accepted freely by grace, and indwelled with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.

Many gospels?

Synoptics: gospel = the Kingdom of God

John: gospel = Eternal Life

Acts: gospel = Resurrection

Paul: gospel = Atonement/Justification

1 Corinthians 15:1, 11 – ‘Now I would remind you, brothers,1 of the gospel gI preached to you, which you received, in which you stand… Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.’

Galatians 1:6-12 – ‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! …I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

One Gospel in Several Forms

Galatians (1:8) 2:7 – ‘they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised’

1 Cor 1:22-25 – ‘For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.’

The Gospel according to…

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Mark 10:17, 23-34; Matthew 25:34,46, and John (3:5,6 and 17) - ‘entering the kingdom of God’ and ‘receiving eternal life’ are virtually the same thing

Matthew 18:3, Mark 10:15 and John 3:3,5 - conversion, the new birth, and receiving the kingdom of God ‘as a child’ are the same move

John = individual, inward, spiritual

Synoptics = corporate, outward, social

One gospel, diverse emphases

PAUL

* Romans 1:3-4; Phil 2:4ff. - Jesus was the promised Messianic King and Son of God come to earth as a servant, in human form.

l *1 Corinthians 15:3ff. - by his death and resurrection Jesus atoned for our sin and secured our justification by grace, not our works

l*Col 2:13-15; Rom 8:18ff. - on the cross Jesus broke the dominion of sin and evil over us and at his return he will complete what he began by the renewal of the entire material creation and the resurrection of our bodies

SYNOPTICS

* Mark 1:1 - Jesus, the Messiah, is the divine Son of God

* Mark 10:45 - Jesus died as a substitutionary ransom for the many

* Mark 1:14-2:12; Matthew 19:28 - Jesus has conquered the demonic present age with its sin and evil and will return to regenerate the material world

What is the one gospel?

INCARNATION, ATONEMENT, RE-CREATION

1) In the person of Jesus God emptied himself of his glory and became human.

2) Through the work of Jesus God substituted himself for us and atoned for our sin, by grace bringing us into fellowship with him in the church.

3) At the return of Jesus God will restore creation and make a new world in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.

MANGER, CROSS, CROWN

1) In the person of Jesus--God emptied himself of his glory. Jesus, the promised Messianic King and the divine Son of God was born into the world in a stable, as a poor, humble, and mortal man. He took upon himself a human nature and the life of a servant. He spent his entire life serving others—feeding the hungry, healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching and teaching.

2) Through the work of Jesus--God substituted himself for us. Sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, serving as our own Saviors and Lords, putting ourselves where only God deserved to be. In Jesus, God substituted himself for us. He made full atonement and absorbed the punishment our sins deserve, putting himself where we deserved to be. This secured justification and acceptance freely by grace.

3) At the return of Jesus--God will make a new world. At the beginning the Triune God created the world to be a place of community, peace and joy. Sin brought evil and suffering into the world. But at the end of history, God will restore this material creation, destroying death, disease, injustice, and suffering of all kinds. It will be a world in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever. Sometimes in the Bible the good news of Jesus is called the ‘gospel of the kingdom.’ A new ‘kingdom’ is an administration, a new order of things.

The context surrounding the gospel and the One it points to:

TRINITY

↓

CREATION

↓

INCARNATION, ATONEMENT, RE-CREATION

↓

The Emptied One, The Substitute, The Restorer

The three aspects of the gospel enumerated above brings ‘God’s new order of things’ in three ways:

1) It’s an ‘upside-down’ kingdom.

2) It’s an ‘inside-out’ kingdom.

3) It’s a ‘forward-back’ kingdom.

(theo-comedy!)

1) It’s an ‘upside-down’ kingdom.

Luke 6:20ff.

A reversal of values: the poor, the sorrowful, and the persecuted are above the rich, recognized, and satisfied... because Jesus emptied himself of his glory. Though he was rich, he became poor. Though he was a king, he served. Though he was the greatest, he made himself the servant of all. He triumphed over sin not by taking up power but by sacrificial service. He ‘won’ through losing everything... a complete reversal of the world’s way of thinking, which values power, recognition, wealth, and status. The gospel creates a new kind of servant community, with people who live out a whole alternate way of being human.

Racial and class superiority, accrual of money and power at the expense of others, yearning for popularity and recognition--all these things are marks of living in the world, and are the opposite of the mindset of the kingdom.

2) It’s an ‘inside-out’ kingdom.

Luke 11:39-41

Romans 14:17

The inner spiritual nature of the kingdom: the emphasis is not on externals, but on a regenerated heart of peace and joy in the Holy Spirit... because Jesus took our place on the cross and accomplished salvation for us, which we receive freely as a gift. Traditional religion teaches that if we do good deeds and follow the moral rules in our behavior on the outside, God will come into our hearts, bless us and give us salvation. I.e.—if I obey, God will come into my life and love and accept me. But the gospel is the reverse of this—if I know in my heart God has accepted me and loved me freely, by grace, then I can begin to obey, out of inner joy and gratitude. We are justified by grace alone, not by works; we are beautiful and righteous in God’s sight. Once we get this understanding on the inside, it revolutionizes how we relate to God, ourselves, and others on the outside.

3) It’s a ‘forward-back’ kingdom.

Luke 9:26-27; 11:2-4; 12:31-34

(Romans 8:18-25; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, 54-58)

The coming of the Messianic King is in two stages. At his first coming, he saved us from the penalty of sin, and gave us the presence of the Holy Spirit. But at the end of time he will come to complete what he began at the first coming, saving us from the dominion and very presence of sin and evil. He will bring a new creation, a material world cleansed of all brokenness. Christians now live in light of that future reality. We evangelize, telling people about the gospel and preparing them for the judgment. We also help the poor and work for justice, because we know that is God’s will and eventually all oppression will be put down. And we teach Christians to integrate their faith and their work, so they can be ‘culture makers,’ working for the common good and human flourishing. The ‘already’ but ‘not yet’ of the kingdom keeps us either from utopian, triumphalistic visions of ‘cultural takeover’ or pessimism and withdrawal from society.

So:

ABC

gospel

vs.

A-Z

gospel

Embodying this gospel (Galatians 2:14):

1) INCARNATION/MANGER: 'upside-down' kingdom = deep community, cell groups or house churches, radical giving and sharing of resources, spiritual disciplines, racial reconciliation, living with the poor (looks like an Anabaptist ‘peace’ church)‏

2) ATONEMENT/CROSS: 'inside-out' kingdom = personal conversion, experiential grace renewal, evangelism, outreach, church planting, world mission (looks like an 'evangelical-charismatic' church)‏

3) RE-CREATION/CROWN: 'forward-back' kingdom = seeking the welfare of the city & neigbourhood, civic inolvement, cultural engagement, training people to work in 'secular' vocations out of a Christian worldview (looks like a mainline church or perhaps a Kuyperian Reformed church)‏

Preaching this gospel (1 Corinthians 15:11):

1) INCARNATION/MANGER: sin = personally rejecting God; judgment = personal relationship broken, estrangement, alienation; salvation = birth of Christ: nearness, reconciliation, family restoration

2) ATONEMENT/CROSS: sin = breaking God's law, rebellion; judgment = penal sentence, punishment, death; salvation = death of Christ: changing places with the guilty, paying the legal debt by self-sacrifice, declaring criminals 'not guilty', 'there is therefore no condemnation'

3) RE-CREATION/CROWN: sin = injustice to fellow humans, exploitation of environment, wrecking God's shalom in the world; judgment = a world given over to social breakdown and environmental disaster; salvation = resurrection of Christ in a glorified body as 'firstfruit' of cosmic resurrection, justice and peace reign in the end, eternally righteous society in a new heavens and new earth

This creates:

Community, not individualism

Grace, not legalism

Liberation, not injustice

Whole-life, not dualism

Luke 12:22-34 – Bodily Life is MORE THAN Food or Clothing, So What Are You Searching For ?

2011-09-03T04:25:00.000-07:00

The final three words of Jesus’ previous parable were that profound and pregnant little phrase: ‘rich toward God’. Now he unpacks something of what that means and looks like.

22-23

Jesus directly addresses his disciples here. We are being taken further along the path of discipleship to Jesus. Lord, give us ears to hear and willing hearts to obey.

‘Therefore’ links the preceding parable with the instruction Jesus now gives. We might be tempted to think, from the previous parable, that since God will ‘require’ our soul from us some day, perhaps unexpectedly, he’s sort of ‘out to get us’ and we should therefore go around kind of cowering and cringing. Jesus wants to assure that this is not the lesson to draw from the parable.

What conclusions should we draw then?

Don’t Be Anxious About Your Life and Body

First, Jesus commands us: Don’t be anxious about your life and body. Specifically: about what you’re going to eat and wear.

Are we listening? Do we hear this? Is it sinking in?

Pause and imagine for a moment what it would be like to live this way, without anxiety about your life and body, food and clothing. Gauge your emotional, intellectual, and volitional reactions to this thought experiment (i.e. the state of your heart, mind, and will) and allow that to inform your prayers as you hear God’s word.

Why should we not be anxious, how is this the right and wise thing to do? Firstly, we are incited to think higher, wider, and deeper about bodily life. Jesus opens out our view and broadens our horizons of existence.

Life Is, the Body Is

Jesus here again gives us very memorable and pregnant phrases. ‘Life is _______, the body is_______.’

As part of Luke’s building portrait of Jesus, we’re seeing here how he, opposed to other messianic expectations, defines human life in God’s kingdom for God’s people. Some may be expecting a message of material prosperity when the pagan overlords are overthrown. And, like in so many other cases, Jesus does not meet that expectation but rather turns it on its head.

Jesus has challenged us that discipleship to him means building our lives on the sure rock of obedience to his words. So his definition of life is going to be crucial here.

Now, if you’re already prepared for it, and you’ve already seen Jesus for who he is according to the full portrait of the entire New Testament, then you may step back and see his words here from an even larger perspective: The Lord of all, the ‘Author of life’ (Acts 3:15), is about to tell us what life is.

Are we listening with baited breath, keen mind, and open heart?

Life Is MORE THAN

How does Jesus define life and the body? Well, he starts by giving us precursor definitions to prepare the way for fuller understanding.

He has already given us a definitional disavowal of what life is not (‘one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions’, Luke 12:15).

Here he inches the divine picture of human life another notch forward and says life is more than_______, the body is more than_______.

Stopping Short

Those two words are important and suggestive.

First of all, they indicate that our perspective is going to tend to be limited and small and narrow and Jesus wants to widen our scope and deepen our understanding. Whatever we think life and the body are on our own human thinking, without God’s gracious aid, Jesus’ view is going to be bigger and better, fuller and richer. Be prepared to open and expand your heart and mind.

Secondly, with these words ‘more than’, Jesus shows us he is not saying bodily life is something other than food and clothing. God created us this way so that we require food and raiment. (The latter since the Fall at least.)

Jesus is not asking us to be something other than human. He’s acknowledging that bodily life does involve food and clothing, but provoking us to realise that it is not only about that. There is more to it than that.

If we stop at feeding and clothing ourselves, then we have stopped short of the divine design for human life, we have stopped short of bodily life in the kingdom of God. We have settled for something less than God intends.

On the way to a fuller definition of human life, Jesus has so far told us what life is not and what it cannot only be, but he still stops short of his punch line.

Now he wants to further prepare our hearts and minds with some theological observations of nature.

Seeing God’s Good Hand in the Care of His Creation

‘Consider…’

Jesus’ is the model of a thoughtful, observant human being, humbly wise and teachable before God and thereby fiercely intelligent and always growing in knowledge and understanding (Luke 2:40, 52; cf. Proverbs 2:2-6).

His eyes are wide open to the creation all around him and his is a God-charged world. (‘The whole earth is filled with his glory.’)

This is an outdoor moment in Jesus’ ministry and we need to really feel that. We need to get the open-minded, open-hearted sensation one gets when being in the midst of a natural setting.

Jesus helps us see what he sees in the miracle of creation.

Think of it: If a miracle is the effective influence of the supernatural on the natural, the work of the divine in the material world, then, biblically, creation and life itself just is one grand miracle: for it does not contain or explain or sustain itself, but comes in its basis and its entirety directly from the creative will of God—Gen. 1:1: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’

Jesus brings the Genesis account near and makes the creation account palpable and present. His Father is truly the Creator and he never forgets it, nor ceases to teach and indeed display that same life-giving power and presence for good in the world.

The Dirty Ravens

We should really think about the birds for a moment and acknowledge God’s providential care for their life cycle.

Interestingly, by choosing to have us look at ravens (or crows), ‘Jesus has gone to the “bottom of the creature barrel” for this example’ (Bock, 227). They would have been considered unclean animals, and yet even these are fully provided for (perhaps a tiny echo of Jesus’ own ministry to the outcasts and cast-offs).

Not a Pinch-Fisted God

‘and yet God feeds them’—what an amazing, provocative phrase when you think about it. According to Jesus, when you observe the birds obtaining their necessary food, you are witnessing the Invisible Hand of God in action in his world.

Thus, if we step into Jesus’ worldview, we should not be thinking of God as pinch-fisted or stingy, heavy-handed or cold-hearted, careless or neglectful, far-away or forgetful, but open-handedly generous and compassionate and intimately and intentionally involved in our care and provision.

This God is utterly sovereign, ruling over the universe in wide-scope as well as the details. And he is good and giving and providing. He is simultaneously Awesome and Kind, Transcendent and Immanent, High and Exalted as well as Near and Involved, Almighty and Infinitely Kind.

Is this the God you know and love and trust and worship and obey from the heart? It is the only God that Jesus calls us to believe in and follow.

A Deeper and Higher Role and Purpose Than the Animals

We are like the animals in that we have physical needs that God provides for through the workings of his creation. But we, being made in God’s image, are also cared for at a deeper level than the animals as we have deeper set of needs and a deeper and higher purpose in God’s world than the animals.

If he takes care of birds, we may be certain he will take care of us.

25-26

Next Jesus gives us a humorously humbling thought.

Worry Literally Can’t Add Anything to Life

‘Worry is wasted energy, an emotional investment that yields nothing. Worry actually reflects the tension we have when we feel that life is out of our control; it is the product of feeling isolated in the creation. Disciples, however, should know that God cares for them. Biblically, the opposite of worry is trust’ (Bock, 228).

Our lifespan itself is under God’s wise and good control. We can’t change that. Why would we uselessly worry over all the details that fill up that lifespan? They too are in God’s providential care. We may safely and sanely trust God with all the minutiae of our days, years, decades, and generations.

27-28

Again we are to look at nature through Jesus’ eyes and see God’s lavish and lovely provision at work for the good and beauty of very temporary and non-sentient forms of life.

God Made Your Skin and Cares About It Enough to Clothe It

From this observation we are to take courage that God will certainly care for the bodily needs of we whom he made in his image all the more than the mere ‘grass’.

Like the uncleanness of ravens, the fact that Jesus points to ‘grass’—one of the Bible’s main pictures of the transitory—helps us see how much more enduringly valuable we are than this lesser thing that he ‘clothes’ so royally.

As we thought about with the leper and Leviticus (Luke 5:12-14), so here we again see that God cares about your skin—he made it, loves it, and will clothe it amply.

God Cares For Our Aesthetic Needs

Indeed, this seems to suggest that God even cares about our aesthetic needs as his image-bearers: God is a God of beauty and shares that quality with us.

‘One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after… to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord’ (Psalm 27:4).

‘Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness’ (Psalm 29:2).

Even in creation, he made us to be nurtured not only by the goodness of food, but also by the aesthetic goodness of visual beauty: ‘And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food’ (Genesis 2:9).

Just Inspirational Thoughts?

[‘Consider the g__ d___ lilies of the valley!’ -O Brother Where Art Thou?]

[George Clooney’s character is a sceptic (though his scepticism is challenged by the end of the film) and he uses Jesus’ words kind of like a ‘look on the bright side’ pick-me-up. But again, Jesus’ whole instruction here is deeply implicit with theistic realism. This is not just platitudinous advice or ‘wise sayings’. It depends wholly on the presence of the good, sovereign, loving God Jesus calls Father and upon whom he stakes everything he is, says, and does.]

‘Reflecting on the birds and the flowers isn’t meant to encourage a kind of romantic nature-mysticism, but to stimulate serious understanding: God, the creator, loves to give good gifts, loves to give you the kingdom – loves, that is, to bring his sovereign care and rescue right to your own door’ (Wright, 153).

29-31

Do Not Seek…

Do not seek… [‘Do not seek the treasure…’ -O Brother Where Art Thou?]

One more negative before Jesus finally gives us the positive! Jesus outright prohibits us from wasting our spiritual and physical energy on what our generous Heavenly Father is going to provide for us anyway.

Are you and I seeking what to eat and drink and worrying? Are you hearing Jesus authoritatively and lovingly telling you to cease and desist? Am I? ‘Stop it!’ he says. May we have grace to listen and obey.

Anxious Pursuit of Bodily Needs Is Just Old-fashioned Paganism

To live our lives for food and clothing, anxiously trying to obtain these things as the central goal of existence, is inherently pagan, Jesus says. This is the perfect way to live if you don’t believe in a loving, providing Heavenly Father.

Anxiously pursuing your bodily needs is just old-fashioned paganism. It can only spring out of a worldview that does not include at its centre and circumference the generous, living God who graciously sustains the world by the word of his power and who is the Heavenly Father that specifically looks after the needs of his children.

‘If the gods you worship are distant and removed, or are simply nature-gods without personhood of their own, then of course you will be worried. If your God is the father who calls you his child, what is to stop you trusting him?’ (Wright, 153)

Your Father knows your needs. Imagine if the one who loves you most and happens to be filthy rich was totally aware of all your needs. Wouldn’t you calm down a bit and go through life with less anxiety and more trust and hope and peace and joy?

Are we hearing Jesus’ words and allowing them to shape our hearts and minds and lives?

An Implicit Critique of Wrong-headed, Wrong-hearted Messianic Expectations

This would really hit home and sting to his Israelite audience. It is an implicit critique of Israel seeking the national and ethnic power and prosperity that pagan peoples seek rather than the peace and salvation of the whole world that God’s people should seek.

Remember that all this is coming out of that one man demanding that Jesus arbitrate his lawsuit about inheritance. What Jesus shows us is that the man was seeing God’s kingdom in a certain way: about possessing ‘the Land’. (I wonder if today we might say our ethnic or national heritage and tradition, or our ‘Christian heritage’, or our theological tradition, be it Reformed or Baptist or Pentecostal or Charismatic or Emergent, etc.).

‘Jesus was coming with the message that God was changing all that. He wasn’t tightening up Israel’s defence of the Land; he was longing to shower grace and new life on people of every race and place’ (Wright, 152).

Little Flock

Let’s face it: it is actually very scary to let go of our deep-seated, gut-reaction, default mode of ‘seeking first’ our material needs and instead giving our whole life priority to seeking God’s kingdom.

Jesus is so gentle and reassuring to our weak and fearful hearts. If we have heard everything else from him, do we also hear this?

‘Fear not.’ Fear is a major enemy to faith and Jesus helps us to defy it’s evil sinister grip on our lives.

‘Little flock’ ‘suggests imagery of tender, easily frightened sheep who need the care of a shepherd. Jesus is deliberate in comparing believers to these fragile creatures rather than to lions or bears. The Father is the shepherd (Ps 23), and he promises to give everything associated with the kingdom to his sheep. We may be fragile, but God promises to care for us and make us strong’ (Bock, 229).

Your Father’s Good Pleasure

What does the almighty, awesome, holy, Creator God delight to do? What gives him pleasure? What has he already decided he is gladly willing and planning to do?

God delights to give his kingdom to his children.

We Can Afford to Share Our Lives and Goods with Those In Need

In light of Jesus’ theistically realistic worldview, it won’t seem crazy out all to sell our possessions and give to the needy.

It seems we have to look at the possession-owning early church in Acts to know this isn’t an all out call to all disciples to own nothing. Certainly, in Acts, in terms of those Christians who own property ‘there is no suggestion that they are second-class or rebellious members of God’s people. Jesus is returning to the sharing of inheritance with which the passage began, and is advocating the opposite attitude to the grasping and greed which he saw there’ (Wright, 153).

I.e. imagine if the rich man of the parable had, instead of building bigger barns, sold off all his extra harvest and used the money earned from that to meet the needs of the impoverished as well as supporting the Lord’s work (like the wealthy women who supported Jesus and the disciples out of their own incomes/funds).

In God’s kingdom, what he materially provides for us is not strictly for ourselves, particularly if we have abundance of goods.

If Jesus’ words here can sink into our souls and shape our hearts and minds, then we can live out this truth with our bodies: in the providential care of a good, gentle, gracious, generous, wise, knowledgeable God we can afford to give our lives away in generosity to others in need.

We are richly supplied with the peace of mind, hope, and joy it takes to live not for ourselves and our amassing of personal wealth, but for God’s kingdom—his loving, sovereign rule and reign over all creation, bringing all who are willing into his family and kingdom forever as he renews all creation.

Again, Jesus is calling us to a deeper, wider, higher, broader view of life. We can prize something so much more meaningful than mere food and clothing for ourselves.

Where You Spend Your Treasure Is Where You Spend Your Heart

‘There are two kinds of treasure: that which grows old and rots and that which lasts. Trust in God frees us to treasure the relationships that are at the center of life. To serve for the sake of God is to live. Do we value others, so that we serve them in giving and through service? Or do we value self and things, so resources are hoarded? Jesus says, Look at your treasure and what you do with it. That will show where your heart is. Since the Father gives, so should the disciple’ (Bock, 229).

Treasure ‘in heaven’ means for here as well as hereafter: ‘“Heaven” is God’s sphere of created reality, which, as the Lord’s Prayer suggests, will one day colonize “earth”, our sphere, completely. What matters is that the kingdom of God is bringing the values and priorities of God himself to bear on the greed and anxiety of the world. Those who welcome Jesus and his kingdom-message must learn to abandon the latter and live by the former’ (Wright, 153-54).

‘Jesus is talking about our basic approach to life. Are we anxious and lacking trust in God, constantly trying to gain control of things that often are beyond our control? Or do we trust God to provide and concentrate on honouring relationships by pursuing righteousness and serving others with our resources? Two things tell us the answers to these questions: our heart and our pocketbook. Our heart can tell us if we are anxious, and our pocketbook can tell us if we are generous. Both tell us if we are trusting God’ (Bock, 229-30).

This is sobering stuff. Where is my treasure, and thus my heart?

Again, can we take Jesus utterly seriously and literally here and allow his words to shape our lives? Can we throw worry to the wind and live instead to seek after his kingdom?

Luke 12:13-21 - One's life does not consist in his abundance of possessions but in being rich toward God

2011-08-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

Luke 12:13-21

Before we open the Bible: think of the portrait of Jesus that Luke has given us so far; recall the portrait of discipleship to Jesus Luke paints. Where is your heart at in relation to the call of Jesus to follow him with everything you’ve got, in abandoned worship, love, trust, and obedience?

Think to yourself for a moment: If you could ask Jesus one question at this point, get one thing clarified, or receive one thing from him as Lord and Messiah, what would that be?

Many people have approached Jesus in Luke so far with this ‘one question/one request’ moment: ‘What do you think of this?’ or ‘Give me this…’ And we see one more in today’s passage.

v. 13

What is the burning desire of this man’s heart? He sees Jesus as a genuine Rabbi, a genuine Teacher of Israel, and what does he request (if not demand!) of him?

v. 14

Jesus responds, as so often, with a question. Jesus’ response brings out the crucial question of who makes Jesus what he is? Who decides the true nature, identity, mission, and purpose of the Messiah? It would seem by biblical definition that the Messiah is the One anointed for God’s plan and purpose (not ours): which is to redeem the world by his justice and love through the means that he ordains—namely, the cross and resurrection and outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the birth and mission of the worldwide church until Jesus comes again.

As so often in Luke’s Gospel, we are confronted with whether we are going to try to mould Jesus into the shape we desire him to be, to get what we think best out of him or whether we, on the contrary, will be moulded and shaped by his good and wise Mastery. Will we demand Jesus on our terms and definitions or trust him wholly on his own terms, surrender all to his Lordship as he defines it?

Here Jesus makes it pretty clear that his Messianic role has little or nothing to do with helping us get the ‘stuff’ we want, what we feel we are owed, what is our ‘right’. His role is decidedly not to arbitrate our legal disputes. We do not come to Jesus to get him to authorise our legal demands: ‘make them give me what they should!’

v. 15

After asking this punchy, revealing question, Jesus teaches us with a direct warning and a definitional disavowal.

‘Covetousness’ is, significantly, the ‘sin of Achan’ in Joshua 7 as the Israelites are first entering the Promised Land, and also the sin of Ananias and Sapphira in the young church (though, in the latter case, not directly named as such). In both those cases it was dealt with swiftly and severely as a fearful example for the first people of New Movements of God. The message of both those scenarios was clearly that covetousness is a killer (as the choking thorns of Jesus’ earlier parable also indicated).

Covetousness is the greedy desire for more and more possessions, the craving for owning stuff.

Jesus here warns us to ‘take care’ or ‘watch out’ for covetousness. It is something you have to actively ‘be on your guard’ against. It’s a hugely easy sin to be tempted by and fall into for everyone everywhere from ancient times to today.

Jesus informs us in a memorable phrase as to exactly why covetousness is a killer we must watchfully guard against: ‘one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’

Human life, as biblically defined, for persons made in the image of the Creator God, for followers of Jesus Christ in his kingdom, ‘consists in’ (is ‘made up of’) certain qualities: e.g. love, creativity, community, fellowship, justice, meaningful work, cooperation, worship, wisdom, discovery, stewardship, adventure, drama, comedy, pageantry, play, pleasure, knowledge, skill, craft, meditation, sexuality, bodily exercise, economic harmony, ecological balance, etc.

Personally owning an abundance of material possessions just doesn’t even make the list. Life in God’s kingdom is just too rich for such paltry ideals as that, so Jesus warns us off such small-minded and short-sighted goals and sets our sights higher and wider and deeper.

Let’s let Jesus be crystal clear with us here: the life of being a Christian does not look like one dedicated to acquiring an abundance of possessions for personal and social meaning and significance and satisfaction.

Indeed, the implication of Jesus’ definitional disavowal here is that a life lived for the goal of obtaining a mountain of stuff will be dehumanised, will not be real life at all.

Do we take Jesus deadly seriously and literally here? Are we listening and internalising and obeying his words so that we are building our lives on rock and not sand (cf. Luke 6:47-49)?

v. 16-21

Jesus takes this opportunity to instruct us further, appealing to our imaginations, emotions, wills, and intellects with the imagery and drama and dark tragi-comedy of this parable.

This man’s thoughts are isolated, full of himself, without thought toward God. He doesn’t even start from a place of humility and awe and thankfulness before his Creator and Provider for making him one of the few who could even contemplate such a situation. (Contrast the likes of rich men such as Abraham and Job.)

He definitely thinks his life consists in the abundance of his possessions. By that standard he has succeeded massively. He’s ‘living the dream’.

But it is just that—a dream… from which he is rudely awakened by the God he ignored.

God’s assessment of this man and his values is that they are foolish. This kind of thinking and value is utterly unrealistic and stupid and doomed when compared with the truth.

Whether we have thought for God or not, Jesus teaches us in this parable that we are accountable to him. He ‘requires’ our souls of us in the end. He made us for his ends and purposes (to willingly enjoy and glorify him forever in loving and truthful community) and will hold us to account as to whether we submit to his will or not. If we do not live God’s way, live for what he made us for, our earthly lives will look absurdly silly and pointless in the final assessment.

Jesus directly instructs us that this picture of a foolish, greedy man that he has painted could be any one of us if we amass wealth and possessions for ourselves rather than offering up all we are and have to the good, loving, holy, sovereign, majestic God who made us and redeems us with his love in Jesus.

Notice the theistic realism of Jesus’ instruction here. This is not merely a neutral or general ideal of not being greedy and not amassing personal wealth without care for others. This is all based on the reality and presence and involvement of the Creator God ‘with whom we have to do’. Really, there’s no other justifiable ground by which to live this way. Without God, this might seem like a good idea to some for certain ‘biologically advantageous’ reasons, but there is no final moral authority by which anyone has to adopt this ideal. If one wishes to legally amass personal wealth and possessions on the belief that their meaning in life does indeed consist in such, then, without God, they are justified in doing so. Without a God who reveals himself to us in creation and word and incarnation, there is no authority to set the definition of what human life ‘consists in’ and each person must decide this for themselves.

Jesus challenges us to think otherwise, to wholeheartedly, full-mindedly adopt a decidedly biblical theistic worldview.

Again, as disciples, do we take Jesus seriously here? Will we let him set the definitions and goals and context for us?

May he grant us grace to be ‘rich toward God’.

Jesus immediately follows up this grave warning with encouragement and assurance, showing us what not to do and what to do, what God is fundamentally like and what we should centrally focus on in life. To that we turn next time…

Luke 9:21-62

2011-08-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

Luke 9:21-22

Messiah, Yes, But What Kind of Messiah?

Only if, like the disciples in Luke’s story so far, you’ve come to fully accept Jesus’ power, authority, compassion, and Lordship and have come to the conclusion that he is ‘the Christ of God’ (v. 20), are you ready to hear of Jesus’ true mission.

As Peter has confessed, Jesus is the Messiah, yes—the Christ, God’s Chosen and Anointed King of Israel, Lord of the nations. True. But Jesus the Christ has a very central action to perform in his kingdom mission that most of his contemporaries, including his own disciples, just were not expecting and couldn’t really even accept until after it was accomplished.

That is why he keeps it hushed up, so as not to bring the opposition down on his head too soon.

The Messiah’s Fourfold Path: Suffering, Rejection, Execution, Resurrection

Jesus was born to die. He was sent into this world to die for the world. That's why the Messiah's God-ordained path takes this shape:

God’s Anointed must suffer.

God’s Anointed must be rejected.

God’s Anointed must be killed.

And God’s Anointed must be raised.

So picture this:

See Jesus as the most innocent, righteous, beautiful, holy, wise, good, compassionate, just, merciful man in history.

Now see Jesus walking this fourfold path of suffering, rejection, execution, and resurrection.

And therein see God’s way to save the world.

This is God’s way to deal decisively with sin and fallenness and evil and pain and sorrow. This is the divine judgment and mercy mysteriously at work to redeem creation.

There is no other Jesus, no other Messiah, no other messianic role and mission, no other salvation for the world. The authentic Messiah is the one who embraces the world’s suffering and rejection and death, and who is raised to life again three days after his brutal, shameful execution as a criminal against the state and the state religion.

23-27

There Is Only One Discipleship: Following In the Cruciform Way of Jesus

And once you have grasped who Jesus truly is and what he has really come to do, then, if you have forsaken all to follow him as his disciple, you now know what your own identity and mission will look like.

There is no other way to follow Jesus but to let your life be shaped by his life, which is the shape of the cross and resurrection. This ‘cruciform’ way is what Jesus now clearly calls his disciples to.

Saying No Every Day to ‘Self-Creation’ and ‘Self-Realisation’

You and I are not the first priority, our wishes and desires and plans. The only way to follow Jesus is to declare a very distinct and decisive ‘No’ to our own self-will, our own ‘self-creation’ (to borrow Kierkegaard's term).

This is a daily decision and action, a daily taking up of the cross to go the Calvary road of self-crucifixion for the love of God and others. It is a work of God’s grace in our hearts, not a morbid, legalistic beating up of one’s self. But is a work of grace we are to look for and expect. We must always cooperate with God’s ‘means of grace’.

The Shipwreck of Trying to Save Our Own Lives

Jesus warns us in no uncertain terms that anything less than self-denial will only result in the loss of our lives anyway. Our self-will and ‘self-creation’ and self-salvation will be dashed and shattered on the rocks of reality.

We can easily see people shipwrecked on this fruitless self-centred path all around us and throughout history. We ourselves may be headed for or recovering from just such self-made disasters. We simply cannot ‘create’ ourselves. We cannot achieve ‘self-realisation’. This is a foolishly self-sufficient, self-centred dead end for people made in the image of God. I'm sure most of us could 'testify' to the un-success of trying to live this way - for and by ourselves. (And this self-creation can manifest itself as much in 'charitable' work or what have you as any more obvious grabs for power or wealth.)

Losing Our Lives to Jesus and Gaining Real Freedom and Creativity

But at the same time, Jesus also assures us in no uncertain terms that sacrificing our sinful project of ‘self-creation’ to Jesus and his gospel is the sure way to finally be a whole and true and real person in the image of God. Only in centring our lives on God in Christ do we find meaning and fulfilment and joy and peace and power.

It is only in losing our lives to Jesus and his gospel that we find real and lasting freedom and creativity and fruitfulness and wisdom and fullness of life. Only by the way of the cross in the steps of Jesus will we finally and truly ‘be ourselves’ as God has made us to be, beginning in this life and fully in the next.

One Way or the Other

Life/Self:

If we try to save it, we’ll lose it.

If we lose it to Jesus, we’ll save it.

Jesus makes the equation clear and calls us to the good loss and the good gain.

He urges us that nothing we could gain from this whole world, all it has to offer, including its approval if we side with it against Jesus, is worth losing our very selves, our very lives in the image of God.

Will we stand with Jesus as he is in his uncomfortable authenticity and radical integrity? Or will we play it safe and enjoy instead the praise and admiration of those who reject Jesus?

Jesus warns us that there is no middle ground. In the end his awesome majesty and glory and divinity will be crystal clear and we will have already made our decision. He is calling us to search our hearts now and see where our allegiances really lie. There are no half measures in the kingdom of God.

28-36

The ‘mountain top experience’

We have been told of Jesus’ mission of suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection. We have been told of his glory to be revealed in fullness in the end. Now we are given just a tiny glimpse of that glory.

Following Jesus in the Spiritual Disciplines of Prayer and Solitude

Note that, as in v. 18 the messianic confession follows from a time of prayer and solitude, so here a divine declaration of Jesus’ divinity and messianic status comes on the heels of a time of prayer and solitude. These are hugely powerful spiritual disciplines through which God decisively moves and acts. As disciples of Jesus we must follow him in his prayer life too and thereby place ourselves in the stream of God’s powerful redemptive activity in the world.

The Law and Prophets Point to the Messiah’s ‘New Exodus’

Moses and Elijah represent the Old Testament Law and Prophets respectively—i.e. the whole of the O.T. Scriptures. The Law and Prophets have always been pointing to this coming messianic ‘departure’—in the Greek this word is ‘exodus’ and it helps us picture what Jesus will accomplish on the cross: ‘In the new Exodus, Jesus will lead all God’s people out of the slavery of sin and death, and home to their promised inheritance – the new creation in which the whole world will be redeemed’ (Wright, 115).

Keep Hearing the Voice from the Cloud

Through all the mystery, wonder, mystification, and trouble (when they come down from the mountain) we must keep clearly hearing the Voice from out of the cloud, saying: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!’

Fixing our eyes and ears onto Jesus is the central and key thing in the Christian life.

37-45

Coming back down out of the clouds into the needs of a sinful world

But this Jesus who has been for a moment revealed in a glimpse of his glory is the same Jesus who will suffer and die for us in all our sinfulness and evil.

He and we do not permanently ‘camp out’ on the mountain, but must come down out of the cloud of glory back into the noise and terror of the screaming demons, the sorrow and pain of oppression, the faithless and twisted of this world.

In the midst of this mess is where Jesus’ healing and liberation are needed, where people need to see Jesus at work and thereby be ‘astonished at the majesty of God.’

Get This Through Your Thick Skulls: I’m Headed to My Execution

But right in the midst of this marvelling, Jesus emphatically reiterates and re-clarifies the nature of the mission that he has already stated to them: ‘Get this through your thick skulls! The Son of Man is going to be at the mercy of merciless humans. It’s not going to be pretty, but it’s the only way.’

As with the parables for the rest of the people, the disciples just weren’t going to understand Jesus here unless they asked him further about it. And they didn’t have the guts.

46-56

‘I Surrender All’?

And so begins a fresh and punchy series of lessons about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, what it looks like to follow him. Jesus has twice emphasised the huge cost of being the Messiah, the price he has come to pay, and that following him will also take the shape of the cross, of loss before life, sacrifice before salvation, death before resurrection.

From here to the end of the chapter he now re-emphasises that following in his footsteps is similarly costly – as costly as it can get for a human being. He has to keep pounding away at us with this message in order to get through to us.

To follow Jesus is truly and quite literally to ‘surrender all’. Jesus will challenge us again and again as to whether we’ve truly abandoned all our earthly priorities and plans to wholeheartedly follow him. (Cf. Philippians 3.)

‘Greatness’ in the Kingdom of God

At the best of times it can be hugely exciting to follow Jesus and it feels very much like all our heart’s deepest dreams and desires coming true. So it’s easy to get it mixed up with our sinful default mode of selfish ambition and self-promotion.

Jesus here vividly puts all such self-aggrandising scheming to shame and to rest by focusing our attention on a child. Jesus tells us to leave off all our ‘adult’ rapaciousness and get ‘little’ again.

This child (and receiving this child) is the true picture of ‘greatness’ in the kingdom of God. If we are ambitious for God and his kingdom, we have a clear goal set before us, a clear prize to aim for: becoming ‘the least’.

And Jesus shows us that God's will and redemptive mission are just not all going to happen through us or those we know about, our group, our circle. He has people working in all areas and sometimes we just need to let them be.

Following Jesus on the Road to Jerusalem

In v. 51 Luke begins a long ‘travelling to Jerusalem’ section in his Gospel, much of it famously unique to his account.

Jesus ‘set his face’ and there was no changing his mind, no stopping him. Luke wants to show us Jesus on the move, determined to reach his goal and accomplish his mission.

This is the Christ we are called to follow: the one unswervingly on the road to Jerusalem to lay down his life for the world. We may say we’re happy enough to follow in his steps, but have we really counted the cost? Have we really taken a good look at who we’re following and to what destination we accompany him? Are we also determined in his purpose and grace to genuinely go this road of crucifixion?

That is really a central challenge of this whole long segment that reaches to chapter 19: ‘Travelling in obedience to God’s call is one of Luke’s central pictures for what it means to be a Christian. Following Jesus is what it’s all about’ (Wright, 117). That is why the literary genre of ‘adventure story’ is recognised by scholars to be one of the main genres employed in Acts in particular! (It also mixes in the genres of ‘history’, ‘apologetic’, and so on.)

We are called to the perilous and peculiar and promising adventure and quest of journeying with Jesus to and through shameful death to resurrection glory.

Calling Down a Different Fire

We have seen that Jesus can certainly be fiery when he wants to be. And fiery John the Baptist told us plainly that Jesus would baptise us with fire and the Holy Spirit. But it is this cleansing, life-renewing fire of the Spirit that we are operating in and through and for.

This is a saving fire, not a destroying fire. The Bible tells us that it is only those who ‘blaspheme against the Holy Spirit’, those who consistently, firmly, and finally reject all of God’s gracious advances and aids in this life—only these people are the ones that stubbornly bring themselves to a place of no other option but to ‘perish’ by the holy flame of God’s presence rather than join him in the eternal, divine inferno of joy and love. And that is ultimately between each person and their Maker. We must not foolishly interpose ourselves in presumptuous and premature judgment that is not ours to make.

The church of Jesus Christ, the family of his disciples worldwide, is not here to call down judgment on those who reject Jesus. Jesus makes that plain here. We are not triumphantly sweeping all opposition aside in sweeping condemnation, but humbly and graciously and compassionately inviting all rebels to lay down arms and fall in with our rag-tag company in following after the true King, to participate in the true freedom of God’s kingdom (cf. 4:18-21). If they resist and reject, we simply ‘move on’ for the time being.

If you or I think we are here to call down judgment on an unbelieving world, then Jesus rebukes us! Do you hear Jesus’ rebuke on your judgmental attitude (cf. 6:37)? That is not the mission of the church in God’s world. That is not what discipleship to Jesus looks like.

No. Our function is quite the reverse. We are spreading the good news of the kingdom of God through creative preaching and compassionate healing and laying down our lives for the good of those we are trying to reach: just like Jesus, our Lord.

There is no other Messiah. There is no other discipleship.

57-62

So You Think You Want to Follow Jesus?

Are there conditions attached to your profession to follow Jesus?

Or have you sincerely released your grip on absolutely everything you still want to call your own: your possessions and plans and relationships?

This is the message of Jesus to all of us who claim to be his followers, his disciples: Absolutely everything is secondary to Jesus’ Lordship and mission. Do you hear this? There is nothing that takes priority over Jesus’ call on your life.

Of course, this again is part of Luke’s way of building up his portrait of Jesus. Who in the world can demand this kind of absolute priority in our lives?

Jesus’ call is total and all encompassing. Is your heart 'tilled up' as the 'good soil' of honesty and patience so that you receive the call of God’s word fruitfully? Or are you drying up God’s word in your heart with the rocks of blithe shallowness or choking the word with the thorns of worldly cares and desires (8:9-15)?

Jesus’ encounters with these people here provoke us to consider: what if following Jesus really is truly and literally costly?

What if I lose property and possessions and status?

What if I have to live a much simpler and humbler lifestyle in the journey he takes me on?

What if I have to break or ignore time-honoured, ‘sacred’ customs and be misunderstood and frowned on?

What if the details of following Jesus for my life will mean the curtailing of even the good and blessed relationships of family and friends?

WHAT IF IT REALLY IS A SACRIFICE TO FOLLOW JESUS?

Have you seen in him the greatest and priceless treasure of your heart that you will follow him NO MATTER THE COST because in the end it is really a ‘bargain’?

Do you utterly TRUST his good mastery that he is calling you to what it right and holy and good and beautiful and will reward you in the end and make all the world new and righteous and full of glory and shalom?

In following Jesus, we can’t look back. In the kingdom of God, just as in ploughing a straight furrow, we can’t look behind us or we will make crooked the way before us.

‘The question comes home to us with renewed force. Where is Jesus asking us to travel, not yesterday but tomorrow? Are we ready to follow him wherever he goes?’ (Wright, 119)

This all requires deep thought and feeling and a lifetime of renewed contemplation and renewed action based on that fresh counting of the cost. What will this mean for us in our lives as we follow our Lord? May he empower us to perceive and embrace the naked truth. May he give us the grace and joy and peace and strength to follow him with every ounce of our being, holding nothing, not one thing, back.

The End of the War - a Missionary Newsletter (of Sorts)

2011-06-23T06:09:00.001-07:00

The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,

I'm getting used to it now…

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,

this ain't no fooling around

No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,

I ain't got time for that now

– The Talking Heads, ‘Life During Wartime’

War Without End?

‘Afghanistan: War Without End?’ is the name of a BBC television program out right now that obviously intends to ask searching questions about the conflict (both in terms of its seeming interminability as well as its seeming pointlessness—playing on the multiple meanings of the word ‘end’).

Let’s be honest, there are moments when we as Christians are tempted to feel that way about even the spiritual conflict of this life, when we are knee deep in the thick of the work our Lord has given us to do: proclaiming, in word and deed, the good news of the kingdom of God (Luke 8:1, 9:1-2). Or perhaps we unconsciously switch to ‘autopilot’ and behave as if there is no ‘end’ in sight, whether or not we consciously realise we feel or think this way. It’s kind of like the stories soldiers have told of having no memory of waking up and getting out of bed on a given day, but suddenly finding themselves wide awake, in full gear, marching in their troop.

Nine Years of Brandishing the Sword

All this comes to mind because I was reflecting recently on the fact that I personally have been continuously wielding ‘the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ (Ephesians 6:17; cf. Hebrews 4:12) for nine years straight in what we somewhat misleadingly call ‘full-time Christian ministry’.

In early June we marked the ninth year of our family living in Scotland as ‘missionaries’ and for some strange reason I was freshly struck with a simple and obvious fact, as if it was news, as if it was a revelation or epiphany: I have opened up the Bible, God’s Word written, and attempted with the help of the Spirit to proclaim Jesus from the Scriptures to a public gathering of people, large or small, in the home or out of it, every single week (at least once a week, often more) for nine long years. We (me and my family along with various groups of students and graduates, fellow church members, non-believers, etc.) have been through whole books of the Bible—Mark, 1 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 John, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, Habakkuk—as well as numerous ‘topical’ studies on creation, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, humanity, God’s ‘attributes’, evangelism, apologetics, sex and relationships, arts and culture, heaven and hell, sin, salvation, worldview, and so on. What a ride! It’s been exhilarating and exhausting, sometimes by turns, sometimes simultaneously.

Reeling Adventures in Haphazard Hacking and Hewing

It can also be discouraging and bewildering as you (too often!) haphazardly hack and hew, not always even seeing the ‘target’, not always remembering the point, so often not knowing the outcome, whether you’ve hit your mark or missed. Sometimes the blood and sweat and pelting rain are running so freely into your eyes you only experience a stinging, blurred vision of what’s before you. But you just keep swinging your sword blade anyway, chopping away at enemy lines, hoping to cleave sinners from the severed claws of devils, from the lopped-off tentacles of sin and evil, hoping your wild slashing might at least chip a fang on hell’s gaping maw, just trying to faithfully keep at it until you hear the command to retreat and regroup, or perhaps a cry of victory at last. Your hand is stuck to the hilt like that son of Dodo, son of Ahohi (2 Samuel 23:10) and you inwardly long for the time when weapons will be beaten into farming tools in the age of peace when all wars cease (Isaiah 2:4). But you keep wielding the sword of the Word in your shaky grip, clumsily at times, swiftly and incisively at others. You take all the enemy blows on your armour and shield, feeling every dent, bruised and cut and sore and bleeding. But it’s battle time and there’s no getting round it. Your fellow soldiers call out hoarsely from time to time on either side of you in the dusk or the dawn or the noon glare, words of cheer and strength, words of lament or laughter, cries for help or hope, holding the line with you as best they can.

And this is not just about me as an individual but about our whole family. Just as the church participates in the warring and victory of her Head, Jesus Christ, so too have Andrea and the kids been crucially embroiled in my gospel battles as the spiritual ‘head of the household’. They hear and feel the lethal missiles everywhere flying, hot bullets zipping by, the canons roaring, the bombs thundering—they’re eyes and noses water in the burning pungent smoke—they too are muddied and bloodied and sore and weary and glad and warmed and sewn up and sent out again—they too thrill to the banner of Christ lifted up and glorified—they too hope against hope in Cross and Resurrection—they too rest and recuperate in the Christmas glow of Incarnation.

Sending Us Your Prayers Raining Down As Fire from the Skies

I know this is all very ‘poetic’, but I hope the imagery conveys something very real and gritty and earthy to you. If you can imaginatively feel what I’m talking about here, then you know how to pray with and for us. For we do need your prayers. It has been said again and again that the prayers of God’s people are the heavy firepower from the air that clears a path for gospel preaching and healing on the ground. Folks, it’s true.

Please pray for Lydia as she is being sponsored to enter a new school where she has better academic opportunities for her final two years of high school and that they will be formative years of faith-building also in preparing her for the challenges of highly secularised university life after.

Please pray for Otto as he enters a high school engineering course in an area of study he is passionate about and that he too will be maturing in his faith.

Please pray for Jack-Lewis as he enters his first year of high school, a whole new atmosphere, and of course that he too will grow deep roots in Christ as he more and more develops into a burgeoning young artist (making music, song-writing, poetry, and story writing) with all the challenges of an ‘old soul’ depth and sensitivity this inevitably entails.

Please pray for Hugo, also a very sensitive wee chap, as he learns how to continue to be the empathetic good friend he is to his mates at school yet knowing how to not just ‘follow the crowd’ and ‘blend in’, chameleon-like—that his five-year-old’s faith also will deepen and blossom.

Please pray for the ‘baby’ (now a one and a half year old walker and pseudo-talker!), Olive Ann, as she continues most of her time with parents in the home, developing good habits of obedience and courtesy and enjoying love and play and learning.

Please pray for Andrea and Daniel as we both have recently felt God’s deep and unequivocal call on our lives to develop our skills in the arts (crafting, making, photographing, and other visual arts as well as some writing for Andrea; writing both non-fiction and fiction for Dan), indeed, to be artists as a divinely issued vocation in Christ’s kingdom. Please pray this calling will be prioritised and woven into our already busy schedules with God’s grace and power and as a deepening part of our spiritual maturity and progress, for God’s glory, the joy of people made in his image, and the peace of the world he made and loves.

Despite the lyrics quoted at the beginning of this letter, we do have room for a bit of ‘dancing’ in the Lord’s joy and pleasure as a family and we look forward to doing so with family and friends, in fellowship and worship and play and rest as we visit the States for July and a bit of August.

Finally, I leave you with a small meditation on this theme of spiritual warfare. You need not read it to have familiarised yourself with where the Petersen family is at. It may encourage you in your own battles. Thank you so, so very much for perusing this ‘update’. It is truly a blessing to be a part of the caring family of God in Christ. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all your actions and words of palpable love.

In Christ’s love and truth, fighting beside you,

Dan, Andrea, Lydia, Otto, Jack-Lewis, Hugo, and Olive Ann Petersen

Of Iron Fortresses, Bubble Domes, and Endgames

Does this spiritual war really terminate at some point? Does it really have a goal that it’s moving toward, to be fulfilled in God’s good and wise timing? If we don’t know God’s revealed ‘endgame’ in our bones, we may be fighting for the wrong reasons and suffering casualties we need not. As for me, I need and desire to know ‘The End’ and believe it in my deepest marrow, depend upon it in the super-stringy depths of my DNA.

‘Hey, I know, let’s build a tent and camp out on the mountain top, Lord,’ we might rather absently suggest – and someone will later wryly comment: he didn’t really know what he was saying (Luke 9:33). Let’s build an invincible iron fortress of ‘sound theology’ and ‘holiness’ and lock ourselves away from the defiling world—they can always knock if they want in; let’s build a pleasure palace complete with weather-controlled sunny atmosphere under a spacious, protective dome—oh, and make the dome transparent so the world can see our party and become jealous of missing out on the fun and want to come inside and join us (and it’s gonna have to be a heck of a party to get noticed—they throw some mighty inviting-looking ones out there outside the dome); it’s all about our individual hearts and going to heaven when we die—let the rest burn (more or less); no, it’s all about world peace and ending poverty in the here and now—look no further (more or less).

I’m as guilty as anyone. But all these are signs that we may have forgotten the ‘End’ of the War: that is, that it has both a goal as well as a termination point. May the Lord of the Eschaton bless your meditation on the following passages from Scripture and ‘give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe’ (Ephesians 1:17-19).

‘The God of peace will soon crush Satan beneath your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.’ (Romans 16:20)

‘Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death… When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.’ (1 Corinthians 15:24-28)

‘But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.’ (2 Peter 3:13)

‘Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.’ (1 John 3:2-3)

‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… And I saw the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear form their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”… The one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son.’ (Revelation 21:1-7)

‘No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads… They will need no light… for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever.’ (Revelation 22:3-5)

‘“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end”… The Spirit and the Bride say “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price… He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all. Amen.’ (Revelation 22:20)

‘Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast immovable always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.’ (1 Corinthians 15:58)

‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.’ (2 Timothy 4:7-8)

Luke 9:1-20 - The Disciples Are Empowered to Share in Jesus' Kingdom Mission

2011-06-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

Luke 9:1-6

The narrative definitely begins to take a turn at this point: this passage harks back to 6:12, where Jesus first prayerfully chose his twelve Apostles from among the crowd of his disciples. We have seen him instruct them all at length in

the disciple’s life of radical holy love and spiritual transformation (6:20-49) and
the spiritual ministry of the life-giving word of God (8:4-21).

In between and after these two teaching segments we have seen parallel portraits of

the character of Jesus’ identity and mission and
the diverse and creative saving faith people from all walks of life place in him.

Jesus is characterised by gracious restoration of the outcasts, misfits, untouchables, and lost causes of society and his disciples are implicitly called to imitate this defining characteristic.

This drama has shown us too that

people can accept or reject ‘the purpose of God for themselves’ (7:29-30),
Jesus stays tightly and immovably focused on ‘proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God’ (8:1),
and his true spiritual family is comprised of ‘those who hear the word of God and do it’ (8:21; cf. 6:46-49).

With this established background of Jesus and discipleship to him in his redemptive mission, Jesus now sends his thus-far-trained Apostles out in his unique power and authority (and in material simplicity) to imitate his ministry: proclaiming and bringing the kingdom of God.

Jesus calls us to share in his work, doing what he does, in his name and power.

Luke 9:7-9

Now Luke, with consummate artistry, continues to bring things to a head: both in terms of the identity and mission of Jesus as well as what this will then mean for those who follow him as his disciples. He bounces back and forth between these themes, heightening and sharpening on each bounce:

9:1-6 – the identity and mission of disciples
9:7-9 – the identity and mission of Jesus
9:10-17 – the identity and mission of disciples
9:18-22 – the identity and mission of Jesus
9:23-27 – the identity and mission of disciples
9:28-45 – the identity and mission of Jesus
9:46-10:12, 17-20 – the identity and mission of disciples
10:13-16, 21-24 – the identity and mission of Jesus

Here in this passage Luke performs this lovely little scene shift: ‘meanwhile, back at Herod’s palace…’

This little incident showcases perplexity about Jesus’ true identity. He just doesn’t easily fit any preconceived categories and people seem to be stopping short of calling him Messiah. These three possibilities for Jesus’ identity (John the Baptist 'risen', an appearance of Elijah, or an ancient prophet 'risen') set up their reference again in the account of Peter’s confession later in this chapter.

Luke 9:10-17

Much-needed missionary R&R for the Apostles (in which they ‘debriefed’ with Jesus—cf. Acts 14:27-28) is inconvenienced by the insistent crowds! But here again we have a lesson for discipleship: to depend on Jesus’ miraculous creational power to abundantly provide.

As he invites us into partnership in his mission, we must take what little we have and ask him to bless and multiply it that we might distribute it to meet the large and pressing needs around us. They had already been relying on God’s provision as they toured the region preaching without bringing or receiving money. Jesus here just sharply heightens that reality in this unique moment:

‘Invoking the power of the God through whom the whole physical world is created and sustained in life, he calmly thanks God for what he has provided, blesses the food, breaks it and gives it – again involving the astonished disciples, this time in distributing the food to the equally amazed crowd.’ (Wright, 108)

And, of course, this incident heightens the portrait of Jesus Luke is constructing – who is this who can multiply bread and fish at will to feed thousands? Sometimes people (with rather more narrowly confined worldviews) find this particular miracle just too unbelievable and suggest that perhaps Jesus’ generosity here simply got people to share what little they already really had (or some other explanation may be substituted). But Tom Wright wisely remarks:

‘No: at this point today’s reader is invited, like the disciples at the start of the chapter, to go out into the unknown, into a world where things aren’t normally like that, and to trust God completely. In terms of our knowledge of how the world normally works, this is like asking us to set off without stick or bag, food or money. We aren’t even allowed the frequent fall-back position which sounds good but avoids the issue (‘the real miracle was in people’s hearts’). Christians who intend to make the gospel story their own are living a venture of faith from first to last.

‘Not, however, blind faith. We aren’t called to believe that Jesus can, as it were, do tricks to order. He wasn’t a magician. What he did on this rare occasion was to allow God’s creative power to flow through him in a special way, as with his healings only more so. And, as the gospel-writers describe this incident with words so familiar in the later church from celebrations of the Lord’s Supper (he “took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it”), we Christians are invited to invoke the same healing, creative power in all that we do, in everything that flows from our life of worship.’ (Wright, 109, bold emphasis added)

Note: This is for all of life: everything we do, and especially our main areas of roles and work (in the home and outside it), is ‘service’ to God and to people in the name and power of Christ. All of life is ministry. All of life is gospel mission. Our particular disciplines and careers and so on are our ‘calling’ from God. These are the places he has stationed us to be outposts of his kingdom. It is specifically into these contexts that we live and proclaim the good news of his kingdom: arts, humanities, sciences, business, family, community, and on and on and on—into every single area or ‘sphere’ of human life and activity. As a whole, the body of Christ fulfilling this will permeate society and culture with the palpable good news of the presence of Jesus to powerfully heal and save.

Luke 9:18-20

And here we reach a crucial, climactic point in the story. None of the popular options for Jesus’ identity really capture who he actually is. His real identity is confessed by Peter and then immediately and surprisingly hushed up.

What does it really mean for Jesus to be ‘the Christ of God’? This is what we will look at next time. Jesus is going to totally explode his Apostles’ notions of Messiahship and consequently their notions of discipleship to the Messiah.

Luke 8:22-56 - Who Is Jesus? Where Is Your Faith?

2011-06-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Luke 8:22-25

This is a scene of genuine terror and life-threatening peril.

Jesus ‘rebuked’ the ‘raging’ waves. (Was it a demonically-influenced storm?)

Here Jesus shows a new level of miraculous power—control of the elements, command of the very weather, which at his word was instantaneously shifted from a raging storm on a tossing sea into a clear and dead calm.

‘Where is your faith?’ he asks his disciples and we are surprised. Jesus, as always, shocks us freshly awake with his unexpected, unpredictable ways and words (he ‘is not a tame lion’). What does he expect them to see in his person, in their faith in him, and discipleship to him?

Presumably they should know in their bones that his is an unstoppable mission running on his Father’s timing, so they are guaranteed to reach the farther shore if he has more to fulfil in his unfolding ministry—both in his own person as well as through them as his newly constituted people.

Evidently, participating in Jesus’ mission with him guarantees our safe conduct through the dangers of life until his exact timing for us to ‘go’.

In the thick of the raging, terrifying storms that menacingly oppose the church’s gospel mission to the world in all we are and do, where is our faith? The storms make naked and plain what we’ve really been trusting in.

So, where is your faith—in God’s goodness, God’s purpose, and God’s power through the person and work of Jesus Christ?

This miracle and its implications are truly awe-inspiring. ‘Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?’ This is truly Creator-like power that any average Israelite would have recognised right off—all their nation’s poetry and history had shown them thoroughly that only almighty God calms storms and flattens waves at will. (Cf. Psalm 107:23-31.)

See how even his disciples and chosen Apostles are still coming to terms with his true identity and all its implications? We must expect nothing less amongst ourselves over a lifetime of discipleship.

It is worth pausing once again to notice that the unspeakably mighty power of Jesus is consistently used to conquer evil and deliver humanity. Jesus possessed truly awesome power and authority like no other person has—and he always exercised it judiciously and used it for absolutely nothing but truly incredible good.

Luke 8:26-39

Both the previous scene and this one are menacing, malevolent, paranormal, spooky, eerie scenes – like from a supernatural thriller or horror film. And this second scene is full of tragedy and pathos too—you can sense the long-term sadness and despair in a community that has no idea what else to do with its most estranged and deranged member.

This scenario illustrates in real-life, gritty circumstances what the mention of the devil-birds in Jesus’ parable of the soils taught: we have a very real, spiritual enemy to our humanity in the image of God.

This event is a memorable picture of how Jesus digs into the deepest hole and pit of our tragic fallenness and demonic oppression and possession. Right into that dark place of the effects of sin he brings his heroic, furious, gracious, unstoppable salvation. He comes in and sheds his healing light and love on our humanity at its most inhuman and lost.

(And really, like the untouchable leper, the immobile paralytic, the despised tax collector, and the disreputable woman, this is a vivid and convicting picture of our own terminally sick and hopelessly indebted state as sinful humans before a holy God—not merely the story of one rare and pitiable person. Each one of us is this tragically lost, only redeemable by amazing grace that will get its hands dirty in rescuing us.)

This was largely Gentile territory, hence the pig herding.

What’s more terrifying than a man full of demons roaming the countryside? The man who casts out that entire legion of demons on the mere word of his command and who restores sanity to the demon-possessed man—that’s what! (Both this miracle and the previous one set up what we normally identify as terrifying or horrific and then show Jesus to be far more scary in his superhuman power and authority—for good!)

Notice how completely the man is restored to himself—Jesus’ incredible power has erased the ravaging mental effects of evil in his life. Like bodily healings, this is a preview of the full effects of the resurrection of the world that Jesus accomplishes through his own death and resurrection and return.

The reaction of the people shows us vividly that it is not comfortable for unrepentant sinners to be in the vicinity of the Lion of Judah when even a mere glimpse of his naked omnipotence has been momentarily unsheathed, so near those terrible teeth and terrible claws, the penetrating gaze of the holy hunter, the all-consuming maw—the true Enemy of all that is evil, the true Author of all that is good; the true Saviour of all, the true Lord of all.

This account again sets before us two paths: it shows us two powerful forces, one for evil and destruction, one for good and salvation. Which will we align ourselves with? Both are ‘scary’ and neither are ‘safe’. Will we ride the dangerous adventure of goodness in the freedom Christ brings, or remain under the dominion of devilish evil?

Jesus tells the healed man to ‘declare how much God has done for you’ and the narrator says the man declared ‘how much Jesus had done for him’ – a sly affirmation of Jesus’ deity.

‘Luke is not offering us, or not yet, any formula, or carefully worked-out doctrine, of how “God was in Christ”. At the moment it is simply something people discover in their experience: what Jesus does, God does. Or, to put it the other way round, if you want to tell people what God has done, tell them what Jesus has done. The best brains in two thousand years of Christianity have struggled to find adequate words to explain how this can be; but it is a truth known to many, at a level too deep for mere theory, from the moment they discover God’s saving power in the person and work of Jesus.’ (Wright, 102)

And notice that proclamation of what God in Jesus has done for us is a natural outcome of being on the receiving end of his outrageously incredible restoring grace. As I once heard the English evangelist and scholar Michael Green teach: evangelism is overflow.

8:40-56

Here is narrated the unique scenario of a miracle account within a miracle account:

The religious ‘ruler’ falls at Jesus’ feet, imploring him. This too is another vivid way to call Jesus ‘Lord’ strictly by actions (cf. 7:38).

This woman, like the leper and paralytic and demon-possessed man, will have been excluded from the community’s worship because of her condition. She too is an ‘outcast’.

Also, like many others, her faith, even if trying to be secretive, is proactive and creative—again, like the centurion, ‘inventing’ new ways to be healed!

Healing power ‘goes out’ from Jesus—and in this moment we are given another portrait of absolute faith in him and its restoring effect. Jesus pronounces a very similar benediction on this woman as that pronounced to the ‘sinful woman’ (cf. 7:50)—to be ‘saved’ and ‘made well’ are equivalent, two ways to describe God’s redemptive ‘peace’ in our lives through Jesus.

These ‘interrupting’ circumstances cause the need of the ruler to become more acute, calling for a more acute miracle from Jesus.

Jesus uses this turn of events to call for perhaps more total faith than the synagogue ruler had at the beginning of this scenario. Note that ‘fear’ is an obstacle to ‘belief’ here.

‘Taking her by the hand’ meant Jesus was making himself doubly polluted (after having been touched by the woman with a ‘flow of blood’). This continues Luke’s portrait of a Jesus who breaks through taboos and gets his hands dirty in ministry to the desperate needs of desperate sinners.

Jesus commanding ‘Child, arise’ (from the sleep of death!) is again a picture of the gospel—Jesus coming to us in our helplessness and graciously calling us out of our state of spiritual death.

And, of course, this too anticipates Jesus’ full and final victory over death in his own glorious resurrection (nevermore to die, unlike a ‘resuscitation’ such as this one). It anticipates how we, through faith in him, will share in his resurrection glory in The End (The Goal, The Eschaton, Eternal Life, New Heavens and a New Earth in which Righteousness Dwells).

By the time Luke gets us to Jesus’ trial and execution, we’ll see that ‘his main theme is of how Jesus, innocent of anything that would condemn him to crucifixion, takes the place of the guilty, those who had courted that fate all along. Already in these incidents we see the same pattern emerging. Jesus shares the pollution of sickness and death, but the power of his own love – and it is love, above all, that shines through these stories – turns that pollution into wholeness and hope.

‘This is the message that Luke would repeat to us today, in whatever problem or suffering we face. The presence of Jesus, getting his hands dirty with the problems of the world, is what we need, and what in the gospel we are promised. As we live inside Luke’s developing story, we find Jesus quietly coming alongside us in our own muddle and fear. He welcomes our trembling touch, and responds with that central biblical command: “Don’t be afraid.”’ (Wright, 105)

CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY:

Who is Jesus? Who is this utterly unique man of history whose mere word and whim authoritatively commands weather, demons, illness, and death to release their malevolent grip on helpless sinners—and is instantly and completely obeyed?
Where is your faith? Do you trust him without qualification that he is with you to safely conduct you through the terrifying storms of life, to decisively shatter any stronghold the devil has on your life, to touch you with his healing power (either in this life or in the one to come), to raise you even from the final sleep of death?

These two questions are really the central point of each of the four Gospels (e.g. John 20:31) and are really only answered over a lifetime of discipleship (e.g. Philippians 3:12-4:1).

Faith ‘without qualification’ is what Jesus is provoking us to here, but he is a gentle, patient Master who will draw us toward this total surrender step by step over a lifetime of walking with him.

Luke is continuing to build his uniquely shaded portrait of Jesus from the ground up in order to freshly incite, reassure, renew, and deepen our faith in Jesus, as per Luke’s mission statement (Luke 1:1-4).

The Sower, the Seed, and the Soil - Luke 8:1-21

2011-06-08T05:55:00.000-07:00

8:1-3

Proclaiming and Practising the Kingdom of God

Luke gives us a quick and consistent snapshot of the highly focused ministry of Jesus as he stuck to the task and mission his Father ordained for him. He was ‘proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God’: both announcing it and demonstrating its immediate and palpable presence. God’s glorious, wise, loving, just, and beautiful reign was coming near in a fresh way through Jesus and he was travelling round Judea to verbally and vividly make it known, through both doctrine and drama, in the mighty power of both miraculous speech and miraculous acts.

Women disciples of Jesus working together with the men for the gospel

Luke takes the opportunity of this little summary to continue his theme of women and Jesus. Luke consistently highlights the progressive liberation of women in and due to the ministry of Jesus all throughout the Gospel and Acts. It is another favourite topic within his theme of ‘universal salvation’ that outgoingly and solicitously includes the misfits and marginalized.

He has just pointed out one female convert who was extremely vulnerable and disreputable and full of publicly expressive emotion. But the Bible does not at all stereotype women as all being of one personality-type anymore than it does men. The Bible certainly celebrates both femininity and masculinity, but it’s not a ‘one size fits all’ sort of picture. There is a definite distinction between the genders and their respective roles and yet there is a real diversity under the heading of those distinctions and roles. Not all men of the Bible are ‘alpha male’ macho warrior types – some are more bookish and shy. And many other shades and combinations are portrayed (e.g. King David was both tough and sensitive!). So it is with the women also.

Some (or all?) of these women disciples of Jesus were indeed oppressed and marginalized by either demonic possession or ‘infirmities’. But some were also wealthy, powerful, and influential – married to men with high-up political responsibilities, for example. And many, evidently, had charge of their own considerable disposable income that they used to financially underwrite the itinerant preaching and healing ministry of Jesus and the twelve apostles. And Jesus and the apostles clearly quite happily welcomed this arrangement!

From before Jesus’ birth to the time of his birth and rearing, and from the time of his ministry and beyond, men and women have been harmoniously (if awkwardly at times!) working together to follow in the steps of Jesus and bring his good news to the world with a diversity of personalities and giftings and callings. This is how it should be and is in the kingdom of God.

8:4-8

Here again the narrative action largely halts for a long-ish segment of Jesus’ arresting and pictorial teaching. Let’s really hear this with our imaginations and see the images and action placed before us by Jesus’ storytelling mode of teaching.

Sower, Seed, Soil

Path – trampled, birds

Rock – withered, dry

Thorns – choked

Good soil – grew, hundredfold yield

The seed is always sown, but its fate is then various: it is either trampled or withered or choked or multiplied. Notice that it never simply remains the same—it exists and is given strictly for the purpose of producing a yield and it will invariably do so unless it is forcibly STOPPED by some antithetical means. So ‘good soil’ simply means soil without any of these growth-inhibiting properties.

Have Ears Been Dug For You?

‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear’—cf. Psalm 40:6: 'Sacrifice and offering you did not desire - but my ears you have opened' (the Hebrew is literally, 'ears you have dug for me').

I.e. has the preparatory work that we’ve seen implicit in the stories of the centurion and the ‘sinful woman’ been done in your heart to make way for faith in Jesus? Have you heard of him and learned about him and drawn certain conclusions so that you can act on your convictions about him? Can you seek him out and hear what he has to say to you and ponder and seek the truth?

8:9-15

Why Does Jesus Teach the Kingdom's Secrets in Parables?

Notice that the disciples had to ask Jesus for the meaning of this parable. That is what makes them disciples: when they don’t understand, they seek the truth in him.

Disciples of Jesus have been‘given to know’ – spiritual knowledge is a divine gift to those who follow Jesus by faith.

Disciples are entrusted with ‘secrets of the kingdom’. A ‘mystery’ in the N.T. = ‘a secret now revealed’ (e.g. Romans 16:25-26).

‘Thus the term speaks of new truth emerging alongside old promise. Discontinuity in God’s plan emerges within continuity. Jesus is revealing further detail and fresh twists in God’s plan, but those details fit together with the program that God has already promised. The twists and turns in the promised and progressing kingdom program are being revealed to the disciples in these parables.’ (Bock, 148)

Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9-10 about God's judgment on dullness (hardening of the heart that comes from refusal to listen, culpable ignorance) and God's prophetic provocation to seek grace and renewal.

‘But the parables do not only reveal secrets to the disciples; they also conceal truth from outsiders, those Jesus calls others… The danger of exposure to revelation is that if we do not respond in faith, eventually hardness sets in and God acts to judge. Here is a warning about the ultimate perils of rejection: God may sovereignly involve himself in cementing the process. These words are harsh, yet they serve as a warning of the extreme danger of rejecting Jesus’ message.’ (Bock, 149)

(Note: ‘Luke emphasizes the judgment result of the preaching parable, while Matthew stresses that it is used because of the hearers’ previous hardness’ [Bock, 148].)

Jesus’ Imagination Makes the Common Reveal the Divine

I love Jesus’ imagination! Through his teaching all kinds of items from human life open out into the supernatural and momentous: coins, corn, candles, kids, farming, fishing, friendship, bread, brides, brigands and so much more. Jesus, through this homely parable, this very everyday and familiar agrarian imagery, pulls back the curtain of the mystery of divine-human interaction to reveal a glimpse of spiritual workings of his ministry.

Seed = word of God

Path = hearers who are hard-heartedly unresponsive, blinded by the devil

Rock = hearers who are shallow and uncommitted

Thorns = hearers who are sidetracked by worldly worries and wants

Good soil = hearers who are persevering, genuine, and fruitful

The seed, the ‘word of God’, is here specifically the good news of the kingdom of God (8:1). The word of God is the glad tidings that God’s rule and reign are further unfolding in the person and work of Jesus Christ and all are being graciously, generously invited in to the Feast of the Father’s Love through faith in Christ. This is the seed that is being sown into the soil of our hearts as we hear the word proclaimed.

There Is a Supernatural Enemy to Faith

As to the devil-birds on the path, note that the biblical worldview is so big and supernatural and cosmically dramatic! We are not alone! There are intelligent, spiritual agents and forces of evil out to oppose God’s glory and humanity’s salvation. We have a very real spiritual enemy that we must combat and over whom we can only hope for victory in the victory that Christ has won over them.

‘When God seeks to speak to humanity, a cosmic battle breaks out’ (Bock, 149).

We can see here that the main activity of the devil in opposing God is that of stealing the word away from people’s hearts so that they never really give it a hearing at all. It almost seems to bounce off their hard hearts. The devil gives God’s word no time to sink in or gestate but snatches it away as soon as it is sown. This is a very effective diabolic strategy that we see the tragic success of all around us. It may direct us to spend as much time praying the seed of God’s word will get past the devil’s thieving deception as we do in preaching the word itself.

An Organic Hearing of the Gospel Seen Over a Period of Time

Yet again we are confronted with a picture of humanity that is decidedly organic rather than mechanistic. As with Jesus’ saying about fruit trees in 6:43-45, this implies not a one-off judgment about somebody’s instantaneous reception or rejection of the gospel, but a process over time. Always remember that the organic imagery of the Bible implies this long-term view of divine-human interaction (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:6-15). In the preaching and hearing of the gospel we are not going to see the spiritual results Jesus here describes right away, but only over an extended period of time.

The Drama of Evangelism

When Jesus proclaims and brings the good news of the kingdom of God (8:1), he scatters the seed of the gospel into the soil of people’s hearts. His word is meant to be heard by us in such a way that it grows and is fruitful in us. But this sowing and growing process is highly dramatic and dynamic – it is not at all automatic or pat or mechanical. The interaction between our hearts and the word of God that Jesus seeks to plant there is a saga of high stakes, a very interpersonal and relational affair that engages our whole humanity: heart, mind, soul, and strength—we are being called by God to the kingdom in the areas of our will, intellect, affections, and spirit. Jesus is calling to our creative centre—our hearts from which the actions of our souls and bodies flow—to respond to him with creative action.

8:16-18

The Parable of the Lamp

Following on from the previous exposition of human hearts as they encounter the word of God, we are urged to be very careful about ‘how we hear’ the living voice of the living God.

See with your imagination again: a lamp, its light, its purpose, and perversely or stupidly thwarting that purpose. (There’s black comedy and farce again here.)

Light shows us both where to go as well as what things really look like.

‘The word shows the way and brings to light the secret things in people’s hearts. Whether we realize it or not, the word shines and exposes’ (Bock, 151).

What is hidden and secret will be manifest and come to light. We will find out where are hearts are truly at in the end and what we really have or haven’t had all along.

‘So Jesus urges his audience to be careful how they listen. The stakes are high. The one who has listened by responding to the word will receive more. But as for those who think they have something but do not have anything (because they do not receive the word), even what they thought they had will be taken away. To refuse to hear God’s word is to be left desolate and naked before God’ (Bock, 151).

This is very sobering and convicting.

8:19-21

This section closes with a return to narrative action: an incident that allows Jesus to drive his point home about how to hear the word of God: by doing it (cf. 6:46-49; James 1:22-25). It is this that determines your real relationship to Jesus, whether you are truly a member of his family or not. Faithful fruitfulness is the key. (Faithful means both honesty and persistent dependability—cf. 8:15.)

So, How Are You Hearing?

Are you being sincere and honest and open in your heart as God speaks his word to you in Christ? Are you holding on to God’s word with everything you’ve got, patiently enduring the testings and trials and temptations and distractions that would tear it from your grip? Are you letting his word go deep in your heart and really take root there? Are you deeply rooted in God through trust in his word?

Or are you being robbed by the devil? Are you just letting God’s word bounce off the unyielding surface of your hard heart and going on your way in spiritual blindness?

Or are you being shallow in your response? Is your ‘joyful’ reception of his word really not much more than a blithe ‘fair weather’ acceptance that will crumple at the first encounter with real opposition?

Or are you thinking you can ‘slot’ God’s word into all your other pursuits and concerns in life as an ‘ingredient’? Are the cares, riches, and pleasures of life choking the word planted in your heart, holding you back from spiritual maturity?

Wake up and let the light of the word in! Let it shine in and then shine out through the actions of faith you step out and do because you hear and obey the word of God preached to you by Jesus!

A Spectacle of Lavish, Embarrassing Devotion & A Picture of the Gospel (Luke 7:36-50, Sunday 29 May))

2011-05-31T09:46:00.000-07:00

Having just told us, as narrator, that the Pharisees had ‘rejected the purpose of God for themselves’, but that ‘the people’, even the lowest of ‘sinners’ like tax collectors, had ‘declared God just’, it seems Luke now to a certain degree wants to illustrate this divide in the next scene.

7:36-38 – the woman of the city and Jesus

More of Jesus’ Table Talk

Here again, we have an episode of Jesus’ ‘table talk’, one of his many and varied forms of discourse. This scene is full, however, not only of talk, but also of vivid action, drama, and emotion. (Indeed, one central character ‘says’ so much without uttering a single word!)

A Close Encounter With Jesus Always Reveals Our Hearts

This Pharisee has not yet out and out rejected Jesus. He is apparently open to Jesus’ claims and message for Jesus has ‘his place at the table’ in this man’s home. But a close encounter with Jesus, in all his radical person and work, will inevitably reveal our hearts as it does with this Pharisee.

‘a woman of the city, who was a sinner’

Luke gives us yet another kind of character not yet encountered in the Gospel. (His variety is amazing!) She is another ‘outcast’ on the margins of society, both female and a ‘sinner’, essentially an ‘untouchable’ like the leper.

The text is not explicit as to the exact nature of her well-known sinfulness, just that her reputation precedes her and defines her.

Faith = Hearing, Learning, Concluding, Seeking, Venturing, Trusting, Acting

Like the story of the centurion, this woman has already heard of Jesus – God has been preparing her heart. She obviously has, like the centurion, drawn huge conclusions about the person and work of Jesus and is acting according to her conviction.

Hers too is a hearing, learning, considering, concluding, seeking, venturing, wholly trusting faith that is out to find Jesus and stake everything on him. Like the centurion, her faith is total and unqualified. She sees one with the full and final authority to forgive her sins and welcome her into the fold of God with love and security and acceptance.

Notice how outward-looking and self-forgetful faith is. It’s not about us but about the Object of our belief and trust. This is countercultural to how ‘faith’ is understood popularly today—it is usually thought of as some ‘property’ that we possess that defines us, it is a quality of the person rather than a statement about Whom or What they trust and depend on. Biblical faith is centred on God, on Jesus.

Costly Devotion

Apparently, it was common that a dinner held in honour of a teacher would be open to the public. (Plus, homes just would have been more ‘open’ with less of what we call ‘privacy’ today in the West.) It’s not the fact that she is here at all that is scandalous, but her intrusion into the scene as a player rather than a mere spectator, and that Jesus receives her as such rather than shooing her away in disgust.

The ‘alabaster flask of ointment’ would probably have been very costly (possibly even the price of a year’s wages!). So she has really thought this through and planned on a wildly lavish display of joyful love and gratitude. She sees the worth of the gesture regardless of how much ‘sense’ it makes financially or socially or otherwise.

The Dirty Deed

Normally the head is anointed by oil, but she comes to Jesus in a posture of utter humility and respect and reverence. Without saying one word in this whole episode, she says so much, so eloquently! Here she expresses in striking deeds what others expressed in words, that Jesus is ‘Lord’.

As she bows to his feet she is freshly overcome with massive emotion, out and out weeping, tears of (probably complex) joy and gratitude copiously pouring from her eyes so that she is soaking the dirty, travel-worn feet of Jesus.

Piling Improprieties!

Apparently, undoing her hair would have caused a freshly shocked intake of breath as another inappropriate gesture (on top of approaching Jesus at all in any manner). Then commencing to kiss the feet she is soaking with her own tears and drying with her own hair would have topped this scandalous, inappropriate display of indecent intimacy. This scene is painfully uncomfortable and embarrassing for their culture (as it probably would be for ours)!

Abandoned Worship, Extravagant Pageantry and Passion

Yet this woman has utterly abandoned herself to grateful, glad worship of Jesus. She sees no one in the room but Jesus. She is consumed with the reality of this man who is like no other. He takes priority and precedent over any cultural niceties or social mores. God’s grace in Jesus Christ has made her a person who simply must express herself and express her heart to the full with extravagant pageantry and passion.

As with so many scenes in Luke’s Gospel, this is full of surprise, shock, scandal, and black comedy. (This woman somewhat reminds me of Ruth venturing upon the compassion of Boaz.)

‘Everything about her action is offensive, except for the attitude that fed it, an attitude Jesus exposes in his parable’ (Bock, 141).

Who is this man, then, that he receives such exquisite, beautiful, all-consuming, wholehearted devotion? That is one of the main points of this passage and it is brought sharply into focus by the questioning of the Pharisee that follows.

7:39-47 – the Pharisee and Jesus

Worse and Worse

Remember that the people are saying ‘a great prophet has arisen among us’ (7:16), led to this conclusion by the evidence of Jesus’ prophetic (and yet incomparable) miracle-working. But here the Pharisee sees evidence to the contrary, according to his system of thought. Jesus, if he were indeed a prophet like the people say, should both know and shun this woman as a sinner. Not welcome her extravagant and inappropriate spectacle of devotion.

Indeed, Jesus’ reception of the woman must be exceedingly shocking because it immediately and totally eclipses her wildly improper display! The Pharisee has practically forgotten her cultural offence in light of Jesus’ apparently much worse spiritual offence!

‘There is a theological assumption in this evaluation: pious figures like prophets have nothing to do with sinners. Separationism is the name of the game. If spiritual people are to maintain purity and testimony, association with sinners is prohibited… Jesus has a decidedly different view’ (Bock, 142).

Jesus (prophetically) discerns the Pharisee’s inner thought, as so often, and addresses it with this micro-parable.

Un-payable Debt, Cancellation, and Love – The Gospel

Jesus’ storytelling and questioning, as so often, gets the Pharisee to think for himself, draw a conclusion, and discover that he already knows in his heart the right way to look at this situation.

Jesus appeals to a strong emotion most anyone can readily imagine in a fallen world of economic stress. It’s amazing how this image pertinently applies across the ages and cultures. Most of us at some time have had or will have the intimidating weight of a menacing financial debt hanging over us and can easily imagine the joyous release and relief it would be to have it lifted from us in one swift stroke of unexpected, underserved kindness.

Imagine further if paying the debt off was actually inconceivable: there is no way we could and we have no hope of ever doing so. We’re utterly stuck and in no position to bargain. This debt will grind us into the ground. We’re completely at the mercy of the one to whom we are indebted. (Rich people perhaps never experience this and that is perhaps one of the reasons Jesus says it’s humanly impossible for them to enter the kingdom of God without divine intervention—but note that in the parable both debtors simply cannot pay up, regardless of a smaller or larger sum.)

But in our imagined scenario, as it turns out, the one to whom we’re indebted is merciful beyond expectation, hope, or almost conception. Our un-payable debt is cancelled. Just like that. At the sheer good pleasure of the one we owe more than we could ever hope to pay. How would we feel at this news? I can tell you, we would party like we never partied before—guaranteed. And guess who would be the guest of honour? Out of what obviously little resources we had we would try to throw as lavish a party in praise and gratitude to this person as we could. We know it would be nothing compared to their obvious wealth. But we’re not thinking straight. We’re just rejoicing. The neighbours may stare, but we just don’t care. It’s all about expressing our thanks and joy to the one who set us free from such a crushing debt. Whether this person liked it or not, he’d have new best friends for life! The poor folks who just can’t leave him alone!

Of course, the situation here takes this a step further and it’s more like these poor liberated debtors crashing a more appropriate party to the lender’s wealth, seeking to give the lender some small gift out of their little store, perhaps a family heirloom they could have made a little chunk of money from by selling on Ebay.

In this parable we are directed to understand the love a sinner has for the One who forgives all their sin as being like the joy a debtor has when their debt is cancelled by the one to whom it is owed, and the grateful love and loyalty the debtor feels toward the one who cancels it.

This is the gospel! Debts we are unable to pay cancelled by the wealthy grace and lavish love of God! Our joyous response of wholehearted love and gratitude!

More Debt Forgiven, More Love Given

Jesus is also getting us to see that different circumstances create different levels of understanding about the depth of our debt because of sin and therefore different levels of understanding about what ought to be the depth of our gratitude in the face of lavishly gracious forgiveness.

Little forgiven = little love

Much forgiven = much love

Jesus is really bringing us round again to his saying in 5:32 with the same subtlety and irony: ‘I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’ Essentially, Jesus is saying to the Pharisee: ‘Hey, if you think you’ve been forgiven just a small debt, then yeah, I guess you’re not exactly going to fall down at my feet in thankfulness. Just a respectful dinner in my honour will do the trick for you, no doubt. Just a thank-you card to acknowledge a wee favour done for you, eh?’ Ha!

An Overflowing Response to Grace vs. A Legalistic Obligation

Thanks to Jesus’ parable, now we know why the woman’s devotion was so embarrassingly lavish and profuse! She’s only reflecting back a fraction of the hugely, outlandishly, embarrassingly lavish grace she has received!

Cf. Ephesians 1:7-8 – Jesus here sees the one who has received this gift of forgiveness as attempting in their frail and finite way to express something of their gratitude back to the Giver of lavish grace. This beautiful act of a forgiven sinner is done NOT from obligation but the reverse! This moving devotion is given FREELY as the natural overflow of response from someone who is a recipient of God’s free grace.

Can you see the difference between a life gladly and beautifully devoted to God in response to his love for you and a life of legalistic, ‘conscientious’, dutiful (even begrudging or prideful) ‘devotion’ to God because you think he demands this of you to be ‘good enough’ for his family circle? (Jesus will flesh out this thought powerfully in his parable of the ‘prodigal son’ in Luke 15.)

A Devastating Comparison

Jesus, after being indirect in the parable, now gets extremely uncomfortably direct with the Pharisee and uses the actions of the woman the Pharisee despises as a vivid counterpoint to his own behaviour. And it’s crystal clear which one Jesus thinks has done the good and beautiful thing.

7:48-50 – Jesus and the woman of the city (and the other guests and Jesus)

‘Who is this, who even forgives sins?’

It was scandalous enough for Jesus to accept this woman’s devotion and not turn her away. Now he goes beyond all expectation and conceivability and, as with the paralytic, directly forgives her sins in an unqualified way on his own authority, judging her clearly expressed love for him to be ample evidence of her repentance and faith from the heart. (Indeed, her love is evidence of more than just repentance and faith: it is evidence that she has already received the lavish grace of God. She could not act this way if she hadn’t.)

Speaking with superhuman authority is clearly how the other guests understand Jesus to be speaking. Again, the question: WHO IS THIS? Who indeed? The category of ‘prophet’ that the people are giving him is here vindicated, but does this one category alone capture the totality of who Jesus is? Or is he a prophet and yet something far more than a prophet, demonstrating authority to forgive sins like no prophet in history ever displayed?

‘The question is crucial. If Jesus has the authority to forgive sin, then he has the right to reveal how salvation occurs… Jesus is more than an example of one who is open to sinners; he wields the gavel. He can discern the presence of faith, and he can pronounce forgiveness of sins’ (Bock, 143).

Another Model of Faith

Luke uses Jesus’ concluding words in this episode to direct our attention again specifically to the issue of faith in Jesus, which is his theme for this section of his Gospel.

When we look at this woman, just as when we look at the centurion, we are seeing a shining portrait and model of faith. This is what faith looks like. And this is the peace of God it brings.

‘For Luke, true faith is what happens when someone looks at Jesus and discovers God’s forgiveness; and the sign and proof of this faith is love’ (Wright, 92).

Luke means us to ask ourselves whether we are coming to Jesus with this kind of glad and lavish devotion in joyful, loving response to his own lavish, loving grace toward us. Are we being ‘saved’ by faith through grace? Have we received the peace Jesus freely gives?

Have you ever, even for a moment, loved Jesus? That is a sign of your faith.

Questions Luke leaves us with from this episode:

Who is this Jesus who forgives sinners of their sins?

Are we responding to him in similar faith?

If so, as his disciples, is our embrace as wide as Jesus’ embrace?

What Is God Like: Sanctimonious or Solicitous?

Remember: Jesus shows us God. Has your imagination been made to feel as though God is ‘above’ receiving dirty sinners (that they are ‘beneath his contempt’)? Do you picture God as a snobbish, sanctimonious, austere character who would never have anything to do with people who have a well-known reputation as sinners? The kind of character who cares more about being ‘proper’ and ‘upstanding’ than showing mercy, forgiveness, joy, and beauty? The kind of character who has no sense of humour and no flexibility, who can’t see to the heart of a person’s actions and welcome good motives regardless of their imperfect expression, who is petty and severe and unapproachable? [see satirical rapture illustration]

We must allow Jesus to forever blow the lid off this blasphemous misconception and see God as he really is: holy, yes, but a holy God who in his costly, lavish grace is able, willing, and elated to lovingly welcome sinners because he satisfies his own justice on their behalf by the unmerited, free gift of his own atoning sacrifice. He is not a God who is overly concerned about what is socially and culturally ‘appropriate’ but a God who delights in hearts abandoned to him in extravagantly beautiful and costly devotion. His holiness is a consuming fire, yes, but it is a fire of Triune holy burning joy and love that solicits sinners to enter in and be cleansed by the divine flames rather than blasting them away.

Any picture of God not in keeping with what Jesus shows us here is just tragic idolatry.

What Is the Name of the Game: Separationism or Inclusionism?

As Jesus’ disciples, learners in his school, students of this unique Rabbi, do we welcome ‘sinners’ or do we consider them beneath the touch of Jesus? Recall again Darrell Bock’s words: for the Pharisees, ‘Separationism is the name of the game. If spiritual people are to maintain purity and testimony, association with sinners is prohibited… Jesus has a decidedly different view’.

Have we been taught, to one degree or another, that Christianity is ‘separationism’, that the only way we can be pure and holy with a ‘good testimony’ in this world is to simply more or less avoid those who aren’t submitting to God and pursuing holiness with us? Does Jesus indeed have a decidedly different view than this? If so, then a Christianity that embraces separationism is a misguided travesty and caricature of the Lord who came, died, and rose to found the church and save the world!

It seems we must conclude from this episode (and many others in the Gospels) that, for Christians, the ‘name of the game’ is most decidedly not separationism. What is the name of the game, then? It appears to be the exact reverse of separationism! It is to actively go out of our way to associate with sinners so that we may welcome them into the justifying, sanctifying, glorious love of Jesus!

‘Jesus pursues sinners and welcomes association with them because of the possibility that they may realize God’s gracious forgiveness. To keep separate from them would be to ignore a potentially rich harvest field… Jesus represents the messenger of God who ministers God’s love. As a result, he is open to and conscious of the opportunity that exists when sinners are loved. He does not ignore sin, but he recognizes that sin can be reversed when God’s love is received. The Pharisees’ separatist attitude stands rebuked as an inappropriate model of holiness. The heavenly Father is ready to forgive debts when we turn humbly to him’ (Bock, 143, 144).

Do we believe this? Will we follow Jesus in this and, by his powerful grace through the Holy Spirit, live this out?

Works Cited:

Luke - Darrell Bock

Luke for Everyone - N. T. Wright

There’s plenty of room for mistakes and realignment in the spacious, gracious will of God

2011-05-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

‘Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.’

-Proverbs 19:21

This is one of those verses Christians often bandy about for comfort and perspective. My wife and I have referred to it many times over the years when we are scheming about how we’d like to live our lives or how to plan our future. But, unfortunately, some of the most memorable passages of the Bible, in their punchy and pungent immediacy, can also become the most clichéd. We stop really thinking about what they mean and how they shape our thinking, feeling, and living. We quote them on the basis of a long-held (and maybe even long-forgotten!) understanding, rather than hearing them afresh, with the Holy Spirit’s conviction and authority, as a living word from the living God.

I don’t know for sure, but I feel that in God’s kind, surprising, renewing grace he spoke this verse to me afresh last week. It ‘made sense’ in a very fresh way to me. Indeed, what was utterly obvious about it finally broke through my thick skull and penetrated to my understanding – or at least began to.

This verse gently rebukes and humbles our accidental autonomy as Christians, our tendency to carelessly slip into dreaming and scheming almost wholly apart from the Lordship of Christ in our hearts and over the world he made. Sometimes what we tend to ‘put first’ in life is the ‘all these things’ of the world and then think that the kingdom of God ‘will be added’ onto these wonderful human plans of ours (thus reversing Matthew 6:33).

It rebukes us, but it also comforts us. Even the most enticing of human planning in the mind turns into an overwhelming scheme that we quickly realise we are just not up to managing and bringing to fruition successfully. There are just too many factors and variables for us to compute, much less navigate. This verse reassuringly reminds us that God is the one ultimately in control and who has the ultimate plan for our lives and his world. In his awesome omniscience, omni-sapience (perfect wisdom), and omnipotence, he can both compute the best path amid the infinite possibilities as well as navigate it. Indeed, in his omni-benevolence God will also bring it all to a good and right and beautiful conclusion. We need not fret and feel it depends on us to ‘get it right’. We can put a huge and holy proviso on our plans: ‘the purpose of the LORD will stand’ (see also James 4:15).

This, so far, I think is the received way we interpret and apply this verse to our lives and it strikes me as rather obviously true and good and powerful. But just what is this ‘purpose of the LORD’ that is going to ‘prevail’ or ‘stand’ despite all our human planning and scheming and dreaming? Is it that he has a specific plan for which way we walk to work today or which breakfast cereal we eat or who we spend time with that will ‘stand’ no matter what? And how does all that fit with the seeming experience I have of choosing these things with my own free will? Will it take place according to God’s detailed plan regardless of what I think, feel, decide, or do? Do I just seem to decide on these things, but really I’m a puppet on the hand of God?

Well, maybe for all I know God does indeed have that detailed of a daily schedule for each and every one of us that he faultlessly brings to pass and can divinely square it all with our genuine, God-given free will so that we’re not just his puppets but rather his authentically image-bearing free agents as the Bible describes us – but that is a divine mystery that a human intellect couldn’t begin to hope to penetrate. And, despite our tendency to get locked into speculating about these things, I don’t think God wants us to even try to penetrate or contemplate such a mystery! Honestly, the Bible nowhere that I can see really encourages us to investigate God’s sovereignty on that kind of minute level. God’s word certainly assures us that he ‘sustains’ the movement of every molecule as it were, by his will and by the word of his power. But not in a way that gets our focus off our God-given responsibility to choose his path of life and be busy living for him with creativity and intelligence and exertion on every level.

Well, why does he give us verses like these then? What struck me freshly this week was that this ‘purpose of the LORD’ that will ‘stand’ no matter what we plan in our finite minds is none other than the totality and summary of God’s revelation to us in the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, the biblical revelation centred in the person and work of Jesus Christ. What is that totality and summary? What is the whole Bible all about?

Well, the Bible itself uses a number of succinct phrases to crystallise and encapsulate its total message: ‘eternal life’, ‘the kingdom of God’, ‘glory’, ‘shalom’, ‘the cross’ and ‘resurrection’, ‘new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells’, ‘salvation’, ‘redemption’ and so on… all consistently, crucially, and uncompromisingly centred in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate, Crucified, Risen, Ascended, Reigning, and Returning Son of God, Lord and Saviour of the cosmos.

What difference does it make for us to realise ‘ok, I’ve got all these dreams and schemes in my heart but the purpose of the LORD will totally win out and hold sway when all is said and done’ when that ‘purpose of the LORD’ is understood as described above? The difference is that instead of, out of a good and right desire to live our lives by the truth this verse expresses, fretting about which way to walk to work or even worrying about admittedly much bigger things like which job to take or what university to study at, and whether they fit into God’s plan for us and the world, we will instead be reassured that God’s holy and wonderful salvation of the world in Jesus Christ will be the one, guaranteed thing that is definitely planned and purposed and definitely going to take place in his divine time and his divine way. We will seek to submit ourselves and our finite plans to this overarching, beautiful, inspiring plan and purpose of God, not just to making the ‘correct’ short-term decision about this or that to do today, this week, or this year. We will praise God for his promise of redeeming the world that he made and for how he has already made the decisive move in that redemption through Christ and for how he is daily, yearly bringing it to pass through his people. And we will pray that God will sweep up all our little goals and desires into his worldwide, eternal, glorious purpose and plan to save the world for our joy and his glory.

I find this so liberating! So exciting and refreshing! To think and believe that ‘the purpose of the LORD will stand’ means this makes me positively want to submit all my plans to his rule and reign, to his purpose and plan. I love his salvation in Christ whenever I stop and truly contemplate it. Why wouldn’t it be my heart’s desire and the greatest privilege of my life to see him rule and sometimes overrule and guide and shape the plans of my mind for my life into his grand design?

This larger way of understanding this verse continues to rebuke my autonomy and pride and God-forgetfulness and humble me in the face of his good and sovereign purpose. It continues to encourage and comfort me that he’s not depending ultimately on me and my little brain and bright ideas to bring about his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. But it does so in a much bigger way that frees me and galvanises me to live my life, not in fear I’m taking the wrong step, making the wrong move, but in hope and joy that the details and even the whole ‘thematic arc’ (to borrow a term from literary criticism) of my one lifetime can be caught up and woven into God’s great and glorious purpose and plan for the world in Christ. There’s plenty of room for mistakes and false starts and learning and realignment in this spacious, gracious will of God.

With this in mind, try reading Proverbs 16:1-9 where this theme of man’s plans and God’s purposes first comes up and see if it doesn’t fill you with a certain hope and delight to commit your human work to God’s divine design this week.

Doubting Jesus, Growing Deeper In Faith - Luke 7:11-35 (Sunday 15th May 2011)

2011-05-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

11-17

A Meeting of Two Very Different Crowds

Here Luke provides an interesting scenario. The crowd surrounding Jesus is full of excitement and wonder and bustling and the crowd surrounding the widow and the corpse of her son is quite the reverse: subdued, mournful, respectful.

The Lord Saw, The Lord Cared, The Lord Spoke, The Lord Did

In v. 13 Luke the narrator takes up the title people have been giving Jesus, and maybe taking it one step further, referring to him as ‘the Lord’. What does the Lord Jesus do in this scenario? The ‘Lord saw’. He didn’t ignore this tragic scene or merely take it in peripherally or even respectfully consider it someone else’s business and problem. He sees it fully in the line of his vision. Taking it in this way causes him to see a deep human need and to respond with appropriate emotion. For once he really saw the widow and her plight ‘he had compassion on her’. This caring, sympathetic feeling for her led him to comforting speech, ‘Do not weep’, followed by merciful action in v. 14.

Jesus’ Compassion Leads Him to Get His Hands Dirty Once Again

The action he compassionately takes is twofold: first, he touches the plank they’re carrying the corpse on, which is an unnecessary action by which he potentially makes himself ceremonially unclean, but by which he can therefore all the more show his commitment to alleviate the ‘untouchable’ suffering of others (so much like the scenario with the leper). This touch caused the procession to halt and Jesus performed the second part of his merciful action on behalf of the widow: he spoke resurrection into the life of her dead and only son.

Here again, we see Jesus getting his hands dirty just to be close to us, to really enter into our place of suffering and woe, conventions be damned!

Jesus Commands the Impossible and the Impossible Comes to Pass

It seemed impossible enough when Jesus had told a paralytic to rise up and walk, but here we have a body totally paralysed in every possible way, including the sheer absence of mind and soul and spirit. Jesus commands the utterly impossible. And again Gabriel’s words echo in our minds: ‘For nothing will be impossible with God’ (Luke 1:37).

The next verse shows the impossible come to pass. The corpse responds to Jesus, the spirit of the young man returns to the body and he rises up from death and even begins to speak as only living people can do. The gentle compassion of Jesus is completed as he ‘gave him back to his mother’.

Gripped By the Holy Fear of God, Provoked to Glorify God

Just as it does the crowd surrounding Jesus (comprised now of his followers as well as the villagers), holy fear of God should grip us to the core as we witness this astounding miracle of power over death. (And you’ve got to admit, witnessing this would be totally creepy at first!) This miracle should cause us, as it did the crowd, to glorify God and consider how he has visited his people in the prophetically powerful person and ministry of Jesus.

‘A great prophet has arisen among us!’

They see in Jesus at least someone like the great prophets of the Old Testament, specifically Elijah and Elisha (whom, interestingly, Jesus has already mentioned by name in connection with his ministry: Luke 4:25-27) who each raised a boy from the dead, but with considerably more effort (laying on them and extended prayer: see 1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:32-37).

And of course, the difference between these or any of the other prophets of old and Jesus is that Jesus does not pray to God to bring back the spirit of the deceased to the their body, but commands it to be so on his own authority. It really is awe-inspiring.

‘God has visited his people!’

The language of a divine ‘visit’ echoes the Magnificat and Benedictus (1:48, 68, 78) and it shows us again that in the person and work of Jesus we see a God who is not aloof, remote, unmoved, or unconcerned but a God who is keenly aware, moved, concerned, and involved in his creation, with his people, and for the love, joy, and peace of the world (Luke 2:10, 14, 30-32).

And this Hebraic sense of a divine ‘visit’ is hugely momentous—this is the kind of language used of the Exodus and other monumental, paradigm-shifting turning points in Israel’s history.

These people are recognising not simply that God’s popped in for a wee social call, but that he is ‘on the move’, that he is now acting decisively in history again, that new and incredible things are afoot because God is moving forward the next major phase of salvation history.

They would not look at this as simply a one-time event to always look back upon and marvel but as a sort of ‘gateway’ event that casts their gaze forward to whole new vistas of God’s gracious activity in the world. This miracle and the rest of Jesus mighty words and acts created massive expectancy in the people as to what God was up to!

Looking Forward With Expectancy

Can we feel that expectancy too as we observe God at work in Jesus? All this beautiful and mysterious history preserved in the Bible is meant to make us feel just that. God’s word is given, not that we might have our heads and hearts buried in the ancient past, but so that we feel our sense of connectedness to God’s people and God’s acts throughout all time and thereby have our gaze cast forward in expectancy of all he is doing and will do in Christ. We look to Scripture to be prepared for how we will see God acting in wise and loving salvation in our own day and beyond.

And as always, we see the onlookers ‘gossiping the gospel’ as the report of Jesus continues to spread far and wide. Jesus’ own commentary on the meaning of this event and others like it in regard to his identity will be given in the next passage.

Note: Resuscitation to Life in a Fallen World vs. Resurrection to Glory

Note that these are technically ‘resuscitations’, not resurrections to a glorified state. This young man will still grow old and die or die by some other means of disease or accident or violence or what have you. That is what was so unique about Jesus’ resurrection and why the disciples simply couldn’t categorise it and therefore couldn’t even believe it at first, calling him a ‘ghost’ instead.

These resuscitations not only have their precedent in the O.T. but will also occur later in the N.T. in the ministry of the apostles, Peter and Paul (through prayer, like the prophets, rather than on their own authority, like Jesus). Like all the other healing miracles, then and now, they are a foretaste of the full resurrection glory and shalom of the whole world that is yet to come when Jesus returns.

18-23

Even Heroes of the Faith Can Have Times of Doubt About Jesus

Considering that John the Baptist is the prophetic forerunner of Jesus whose baptism of Jesus had such stupendous results, it is a surprising turn of events to see John doubting and questioning whether Jesus is the ‘one who is to come’ (cf. 3:15-18). It shows that this is perhaps a dark time for John personally, imprisoned as he is, suffering for his faith and commitment and God-ordained ministry.

Even the greatest workers of God go through these dark times of doubt and confusion; it’s part of our human frailty in a finite and fallen world. We just wouldn’t be human if we didn’t experience this. And this portion of the Bible’s portrait of John the Baptist is utterly typical in its honesty and frankness about the weakness of the leaders and heroes of God’s people. The Bible, as ever, is grittily realistic; not ‘airy fairy’ and ‘pie in the sky’, but rather brutally down to earth.

What Kind of Messiah Were You Expecting?

John’s misgivings no doubt partly have to do with his fiery expectations of the Messiah, which may look at odds with Jesus’ now proven record of peace and liberty through gospel preaching of forgiveness of sins and merciful healing, rather than overthrow of the pagan overlords and ‘cleaning house’ of the compromisers in Israel.

The Authentic Signature of God’s Handiwork in Jesus

John’s disciples happened to come to Jesus at a time when he was busily in the midst of his healing ministry, a particularly powerful and profuse occasion of God’s power at work through him. Jesus uses the pungent evidence directly at hand as an answer to John’s query by proxy.

Indeed, Jesus’ words here sum up the whole range of his miraculous ministry including his miraculous good news, both to those physically impoverished of their new status and hope in God’s kingdom, as well as to poor sinners of God’s liberating forgiveness. God is clearly at work through Jesus. Note that these miracles are not just works of sheer power, but of power for the good of people. That is a sure signature of God’s handiwork.

The Negative Beatitude: Blessed Are Those Who Aren’t Totally Thrown Off Track By the True Nature of the Person and Work of Jesus

Then Jesus pronounces a sort of negative blessing: oh how happy is the person who doesn’t stumble over the utterly unique and mind-blowing identity of the person and work of Jesus.

Blessed is the person who doesn’t find the Bible’s christology a stumbling block (skandalon) to faith in God, who isn’t scandalised and thereby ‘thrown off’ or ‘tripped up’ by the true and mysterious nature of Jesus, but who actually finds it the very key to knowing God and eternal life.

Blessed is the person who can wisely humble their finite and fallen human mind and heart to accept the biblical Jesus, undiluted, unadulterated, wild, outrageous, uncategorisable, and untameable.

This again echoes Simeon’s prophecy over the baby Jesus that he would cleave the world in two as each person responded to him (Luke 2:34-35; cf. 3:17; 6:43-49; cf. Romans 9:33; 1 Peter 2:6-8).

If we can just accept Jesus for who he himself claims to be, corroborated so amply by his gracious and mighty deeds of divine mercy, then we may participate in this beautiful and glorious blessing.

This saying is huge and applies widely to encountering Jesus through the ages, but, of course, here at this moment in Luke’s narrative the main point is about Jesus’ way of ministry, his unique fulfilment of the role of Messiah, the way God is bringing salvation to Israel and the world through Jesus.

Gracious and Wise Pastoral Counsel from Jesus

Note that at times in the Gospels Jesus can lay into his disciples for their doubt, wavering, and unbelief when he knows such a sharp rebuke will do them good: you know, ‘stop whining and man up!’ sort of stuff. But he knows that John the Baptist here needs something gentler and more reflective in his time of doubt.

Jesus finds it crucial here not to simply affirm to John that he is the One whom John foretold. He does not directly reply: ‘yes, I am the Messiah’—for two reasons.

One is that he is giving answer in front of the crowds and Jesus is always careful about how and when he claims messiah-ship. He cannot afford the mob trying to force him to be the Messiah they want, when they want it. Nor does he want to force the confrontation with officialdom too soon, bringing about his trial and execution before its time. So that’s one reason Jesus replies the way he does.

But Jesus also knows John needs more than a bald affirmation here. John needs to see and conclude that Jesus is the Messiah in his own heart and mind from the objective evidence before him. Otherwise, any ‘belief’ he may for the time gain from a direct affirmation from Jesus might be only temporary and perhaps leave him worse off than he started. Jesus knows that the truth and evidence will stand up under scrutiny and will speak for themselves as to Jesus’ authenticity as the Messiah.

Doubt Is An Opportunity for Deeper Reflection, Which Produces Spiritual Growth

Jesus exercises gracious and wise pastoral care here for John and sends his disciples back with a message that will provoke reflection and that will quietly demonstrate the implicit confidence that Jesus has in his own person and work that may ‘infect’ John with renewed faith.

Jesus may not always meet our expectations we had for him, but that is only an invitation to reflect more deeply about his identity and ministry and allow God to freshly bring about further and deeper spiritual growth in our walk. God will always point us back to the ample evidence of Jesus’ life and urge us to freshly draw our conclusions from this, with a promise of blessing as we do.

Indeed, this is a major emphasis of Luke’s whole project as explicitly stated in his introduction to Theophilus (1:1-4). I can say truthfully from personal experience of doubts that they really have had this fruit of deeper spiritual growth as I wrestled through them with a patient, gracious, and helpful God.

24-30

Jesus here does something rather surprising, for in the moment of being questioned about his own identity, he addresses the crowd and turns it into a public inquiry into the true identity of John the Baptist.

Questions and Imagery that Provoke Reflection

Again we have both the questioning and imagery of Jesus’ teaching style. Jesus positively encourages, even demands, the asking of questions. No truth will be found without questions. Right answers cannot be skipped to without knowing the right questions. Jesus here gets us inquisitively and imaginatively thinking about John’s true nature and purpose.

The Baptist is No Creampuff

Through a short burst of questions and vivid images we quickly and readily draw the conclusion that John the Baptist was no softie or dandy or toff or fashionable man-about-town, etc. He was not of the privileged or powerful establishment and upper crust. He was not out to curry royal favour or obtain a comfortable lifestyle from his message. When we hear the heralding words of John the Baptist we are not hearing from this centralised ‘respectable’ quarter. We are hearing from the wilderness outskirts, from the fringe, the edge of society.

An Uncompromising Prophet

Having rejected these possibilities, Jesus renews the question of just what we see in John the Baptist and offers another interpretation, the one that is readiest on their minds. We see in John a prophetic voice that will tell us the truth regardless of the consequences faced from officialdom, as evidenced in his willingness to face imprisonment rather than compromise his radical call to repentance for all the nation, from top to bottom, a call to ‘bear fruits in keeping with repentance’ and live no more in sinful compromise as Herod was doing.

Just as John is wavering in his understanding and faith in Jesus, Jesus turns round and points the people to John’s integrity as God’s prophet. Here is someone solid whose testimony you may rely on. His prophetic ministry prepares a people for God’s coming salvation (Luke 1:16-17).

And More Than a Prophet

But is John only a prophet (huge as that is)? Jesus points us to John’s further significance as God’s promised forerunner to the Messiah. Thus, John is the greatest one of the Old Testament prophetic tradition because he is the final and proximate one that points directly to the Messiah himself that all the rest of prophecy had been envisioning, anticipating, and foreshadowing.

Living in the Fulfilment is Greater than Living in the Promise

Yet the very least of those who now participate in the fulfilment that he was heralding are even greater than John the Baptist, because they’re actually living in what he was the forerunner of: the age of the Messiah’s salvific reign, begun now, to be completed when Jesus returns—the kingdom of God.

Which is greater: being the recipient of a great promise or being the recipient of the keeping of that great promise? The greatest of all promises is a truly great thing in itself. But sharing in the least fulfilment of that greatest of promises is greater still.

People, we are living in the fulfilment of God’s promise to send the Messiah! Do we have any clue how truly GREAT this is? Do we realise the position of greatness this puts each of us in by faith in Jesus? It is a huge and holy and humbling privilege to be so graciously included in God’s kingdom that has arrived in Jesus and will yet fully arrive at his return.

‘Those who know Jesus are greater than the prophets.’ (Bock, 139) What?!

John the Baptist and Moses and other great prophets and heroes of the Old Testament will one day come wonderingly and reverently before Joe Bloggs average Christian and speak in hoarse and hushed tones: ‘you were a member of the kingdom of God when it arrived in Jesus Christ; you were included in the people of God by faith in Christ alone; you were indwelt and sealed by his Holy Spirit; you were commissioned with his good news for the world… may I shake your hand?’

We must recover the sense of greatness resting on us just because of the era we occupy by God’s grace. We must recover our sense of holy wonder at being partakers of the gospel through the person and work of Jesus.

‘It is not hard to think that it would have been great, maybe even better, to have lived in an era when God was mightily at work, to have crossed the sea with Moses or seen Elijah defeat the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. But Jesus is clear that as great as the former times were, as great as John the Baptist was, nothing before that time matches what Jesus offers. If Moses and the prophets could speak, they would say that they longed for these days. They would gladly have traded places with us. That is how special it is to share in the salvation Jesus brings.’ (Bock, 139)

To Accept or Reject John’s Baptism is to Accept or Reject the One He Points to

In so authenticating John the Baptist and clarifying the import of his ministry, Jesus has creatively and artfully authenticated and clarified his own identity. If you accept the authenticity of John’s ministry and message, then you accept the One his ministry and message point you to. If you have allowed God to prepare your heart with repentance, then you should readily and naturally turn in faith to Jesus as Saviour and Lord, God’s Messiah and God’s Son. (This logic will come up again at Luke 20:1-8.)

This is what the crowds did. Thanks to Jesus’ confirmation of John, all those who had been baptised by him realised in so doing they had ‘declared God just’ or ‘justified God’ or ‘showed the wisdom of his plan’ (Bock, 139). They accepted God’s testimony and salvation and thereby proved him right after all.

But true to the division of humanity the Bible portrays again and again for us, the Pharisees and lawyers find that in not having been baptised by John, not joining in his movement of repentance from the heart that leads to a change of lifestyle, they have ‘rejected the purpose of God for themselves’. They do not accept John’s testimony, so they do not accept the One John testifies to.

Accepting or Rejecting the Purpose of God for Each One of Us

These are the alternatives. God has a good purpose for each of us and we may accept that on his terms (‘declare God just’) or reject his good plans for us in sinful stubbornness.

God’s will and pleasure and desire are that we not perish in sin, but have life in Jesus’ name. But, due to wisely and graciously making us in his own image and likeness, this can only be true for us if we willingly surrender to him and in no other way.

He made us free, volitional creatures that must exercise that God-given capacity for choosing to receive his unspeakable gift of eternal life in Jesus. If we are not choosing this, the Bible makes it clear to us that that is because we are already freely, wilfully choosing the opposite; we are rejecting God and calling him a liar, choosing to enthrone ourselves instead as arbiters of truth and beauty and goodness and reality.

This last point is true even if we claim to be following God, like the many of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Luke has once again highlighted the unexpected topsy-turvy nature of God’s kingdom: those we would have thought would accept God’s purpose for them—the religious leaders—have rejected it. And the ‘sinners’ that we might not have thought would be open to God’s purpose for them have actually declared him just by repenting to prepare their hearts to receive his salvation.

31-35

The Generation that Puts Jesus On Trial is the Generation that is On Trial Before Jesus

Jesus now gets really creative and turns the table and asks a question about the true nature and identity, not of himself or John the Baptist, but of the very generation who thinks they have God and Jesus on trial! ‘What are you like?’ (as the Scottish saying goes).

The Parable of the Brats

Jesus’ analogical image is arresting, but not flattering. It is a picture we all know all too well in one form or another. Jesus, who loves and delights in children, was not ignorant or naïve about their own manifestations of humanity’s sinfulness: he knew well, perhaps from personal experience as a child, that a gang of children at play on the street can be very demanding and very fickle. You have to dance to their tune and cater to their mob opinion or they’re upset and they reject you outright. (Bock calls this ‘the parable of the brats’! Page 139.)

Jesus is claiming that this generation is highly immature about what God is doing through John the Baptist and himself, perhaps too easily swayed by the reigning public opinion rather than forming a wise and discerning conclusion for themselves with God’s help.

John the Baptist is too ascetic and austere for them and Jesus is too much of a partier, too suspect in his choice of friends and acquaintances. You could perhaps say that John asks too much of them morally and Jesus asks too much of them socially. They attribute evil and sinister motivation to both men.

All Wisdom’s Children Prove Her Right in the End

Jesus dismisses this generation’s shallow assessment by pointing us all to the wisdom of God rather than the folly of man. God’s wisdom will be ‘justified’ (proved right) by those who listen to his prophets and repent, by those who trust in his Messiah. His wisdom will be vindicated by the changed lives of all who trust in the salvation that he provides on his own terms through the gracious person and work of his beloved Son. Those who trust in Jesus are Lady Wisdom’s children (from the imagery in Proverbs). Those who build on Jesus will be seen to be wise builders in the end (cf. 6:46-49).

Do we want God on our own terms or on his? Will we be Wisdom’s children and prove her right in the end?

Luke 7:1-10 - The Faith That Amazed Jesus (Sunday 11th May)

2011-05-11T15:15:00.000-07:00

From Rumour to Call to Faith

From the birth narratives to the beginning of the ministry narratives (baptism, temptation, announcement) to the enacting of that ministry narratives (touching the outcasts) to the challenge of opposition (religious leaders questioning his practices) to the call to discipleship (Peter, James & John, Levi, the Twelve, the crowd of disciples) to the instruction in the radical life of discipleship, we now arrive at a set of narratives (returning to predominantly action after the long teaching section) that freshly present us with just who this Rabbi is and various responses of faith or disbelief in him.

We move from hearing the rumour of him to seeing him in action to hearing him call us to discipleship and the radical life that entails to now being faced with the question of whether we’ll place our unreserved faith in him, trust him wholly as the Lord’s Anointed (Christ) and, indeed, the Lord himself.

Jesus Calls Us to Follow Him, Not Just His Teaching

With this teaching from Luke 6 of a life of radical love in the likeness of God ringing in our ears, we must be careful to see this is not a Guru giving us instructions for life and then just sending us on our way to go live according to those principles. The One who gives us the instruction keeps our eyes riveted on him, centred on his person and work, wholly trusting in and hoping in him to save us from our sins and spiritually enable us to walk in his love and truth. Discipleship is a call to follow Jesus, himself, not to follow Jesus’ teaching merely.

Relationship All the Way Down

There is the oft-repeated story of the woman who denied the (at the time) recently-discovered Newtonian picture of the earth being held on its course by laws of gravity and motion and instead insisted the earth was physically founded upon the back of a truly giant turtle. When asked what the turtle was founded on, she said another turtle. And what was that second turtle founded on? Yet another turtle. Being asked what this third turtle was founded on in turn, she finally remarked: ‘It’s no use: it’s turtles all the way down.’

Biblically, humans are fundamentally relational creatures and that reaches to all levels and is ultimate and final (as in teleological, the goal and purpose all things). Without in the least denying the possibility of continually unfolding scientific models of the physical nature of the universe, the Bible teaches that what is really ultimate and what even all physicality is based on is an interpersonal relationship of eternal love and glory: The holy and self-existing and sovereign Triune God who created all things out of the gracious overflow of that divine relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Three Persons in equal and essential communion as One God.

To put that exalted, mysterious, and somewhat technical theological language into the words of avant-garde rock n roll, we could quote Captain Beefheart at this point:

‘Little girl, don’t you know that the stars up above are running on love?’

From the intergalactic to the sub-molecular, the whole cosmos and every entity and creature in it exists and is sustained by the gracious will of God, by the overflowing creative love of the Trinity.

It’s relationship all the way down.

Think of the ever-out-of-work character, Tobias, in the TV sitcom Arrested Development when he says in response to his brother-in-law’s question of how the ‘job search’ is coming: ‘I’m hoping the universe will provide a path for me’ and, when he later finds job opportunities, ‘Thank you, universe!’ Or take the character Jim from The Office. When his arch-nemesis co-worker, Dwight, quits Dunder-Mifflin paper company and Jim finds the workplace worse off in Dwight’s absence, he admits: ‘I never thought I’d say this, but… I miss Dwight. Congratulations universe, you win.’ In one sense these are essentially non-theistic thoughts from within a worldview that admits of no transcendent Creator, and yet they betray our need to be in relation to what is ultimate and that that ultimate relationship is actually personal, no matter how we try to ‘spin’ it with talk of the ‘universe’ instead of God.

The conflicted human insight these wonderfully humorous TV shows express from time to time is what the Bible brings out with clarity, most especially and fully when we look at the person and work of Jesus and how that draws us in to life with God by faith through grace.

Thus the Bible, and Jesus (the one who is the Point of the Bible), would never merely give us a set of instructions for living, a series of life principles. No, the Bible always instructs us toward the goal of being in a trusting, loving, obedient, joyful relationship with the God who made us in his image. So Luke provides glimpses of Jesus’ wonderful teaching (and indeed, Jesus gave that teaching in the first place) for the purpose of helping us see who Jesus truly is that we might put our faith in him, trust him for salvation by his grace, walk through this life by gazing on his glory and thereby be progressively transformed into his image and likeness.

1-5

Faith = Acting On What You’ve Heard

Back to narration of action. Here we have a new sort of character to add to the list of people Jesus personally encounters and engages (fishermen, leper, paralytic, tax collector, Pharisees, etc.): a centurion, a commander of one hundred soldiers in the Roman army.

There is sickness and the threat of death in someone he ‘highly valued’.

Remember the ‘reports’ of Jesus that have been going about since his birth and the beginning of his ministry – ‘gossiping the gospel’. The centurion brings his grave problem to Jesus on the basis of this hearsay. He has clearly drawn certain strong and astounding conclusions about Jesus that have caused him to take this action.

Faith Grows Through Preparation, Love Develops Through Knowledge

Notice the preparation in the heart of this man that made him open to the reports about Jesus. He was already what they called a Gentile ‘God-fearer’.

He has seen Yahweh, the God of the Jews, as an outsider and found his heart’s desire: the one, true God of holy love.

This God one could hear preached in the local synagogues from the Hebrew Scriptures: the God of Torah, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Moses and the Mosaic Law, of King David the Shepherd-Poet-Warrior, of Solomonic Wisdom, and of the Fiery Prophets; the God that is worshiped by holy sacrifices in the holy temple at Jerusalem; the God of the priests and the high priest and the great Day of Atonement and the Year of Jubilee; the God who promised Messiah to rule Israel and the world in peace and justice. And this God has trumped all gods and theories the centurion may have been taught in his rearing or encountered in his work and travel. This God he has found truly worthy of his love and devotion.

He has not adopted their entire law and ‘become’ an Israelite through circumcision. But he has internalised the heart of that law and out of love and a desire to obey he has done what he felt he could do – given of his own resources to the work of the Lord. He loves this strange, little backwater nation of the Roman Empire (the city Jerusalem was a huge metropolitan place, but not all Gentiles would have considered Israel overall to be such) because he loves the God of this nation.

This background is why he has this good relationship with Jewish elders (leaders in the community) by which he is better able to encounter Jesus, if from a respectful remove. And it is why he would be open to Jesus’ claims and ministry.

An Active, Searching, Approaching, Venturing, Asking Faith

Notice how active and importunate his faith is: it is a hearing, seeking, sending, asking, venturing, daring faith. It is faith that takes time and effort to search out, approach, and request of Jesus. This is not a lazy or casual faith.

6-8

Nothing ventured, nothing gained! The centurion chanced it and it worked! At least, Jesus comes with them for the purpose of this request.

Then follows this strange little episode. It’s so amazing again to see the different reactions and scenarios of the different people Jesus interacts with that Luke captures in these small narratives. As we’ve said before, there are as many different approaches of faith to Jesus as there are people in the world. The centurion is yet another example of this unique, individual picture of a person encountering Jesus in his particular measure of faith.

I love how friendly and communal this centurion guy is. You can just picture the sort of person who has managed to surround himself with friends of whom he can ask favours and they willingly comply to help him out. And I love the almost pageantry of these furtive approaches to Jesus, two steps removed from an actual, personal, physical meeting.

A Faith That Recognises Lordship and Unworthiness

The centurion, as others have, calls Jesus ‘Lord’. To some degree he recognises his Lordship and his faith approaches Jesus as Lord (cf. Rom. 10:9).

He even recognises his Gentile status and respects the Jewish custom of not entering a Gentile’s home. He has presumed to make request of Jesus, but not presumed to approach him in person. Like Peter, he keenly feels his unworthiness in the presence of such a one as Jesus. But this motion in the soul of unworthiness before Jesus is also part of faith, a crucial part! Often it is the beginning stirrings of full faith.

But he believes implicitly and without reserve in Jesus’ mighty power and authority. He knows Jesus need only ‘say the word’ for this desired healing to come about. Think of the faith this centurion has in Jesus! Is our view of Jesus this big, this bold and robust and real? Do we have this kind of absolute confidence in him?

Inventive Faith That Amazes Jesus

The centurion understands that God is an accommodating God who comes to us clothed in analogies that we might in our finite and fallen weakness glimpse something of the truth of his mysterious being. The centurion, like Jesus, knows that God is revealing himself every single day in every single created thing. The centurion has seen a glimpse of God, of Jesus’ authority and power, in his own profession. This analogical understanding has built up and fortified his faith. He has paid attention to God’s revelation in both nature and Scripture and has allowed this to shape and form his imagination, his conception of what is real and possible. On this basis, he asks a greater miracle of Jesus than anyone yet seeking healing has dared or even conceived to ask!

His faith has practically invented new possibilities! May this inspire our own faith to listen to God with spiritual ears wide open and allow his gracious and glorious revelation to build up possibilities of faith in us that we’ve never yet dreamed of.

9-10

And this Gentile made the Son of God marvel! The One who is amazing all Judea has now been amazed by one who is not even from Judea. Whether this marvelling occurs in Jesus’ human nature only or also in his divinity, it is incredible and stirring.

Take Note of Such Rare Faith!

Jesus is so astounded by this man’s faith that he stops to draw the crowd’s attention to it! Don’t miss this, Jesus is saying. Pause and consider!

And as always, that nearly outrageous use of understatement to record a miracle the Bible uses! (Its economy of description almost manages to go right through understatement back out again to hyperbole and ‘giantesque’! Ha!) I love the way it only records these words of Jesus about the centurion’s faith and skips anything he said about the healing of the servant or anything else. We are only (barely!) told of the coming to pass of the event in vanishing retrospect. Luke certainly wants us to be aware that the miracle did indeed occur that we too might know of Jesus’ might authority and power. But the emphasis of the episode is clearly upon the venturing faith of a Gentile God-fearer.

This last point reminds of a central theme Luke delights to highlight: Jesus came for all, regardless of ethnicity or other background. Luke is always hard at work to show how the eventual spread of the gospel to Gentiles in Acts was profusely anticipated in the very life and action of Jesus himself. As his followers our embrace and welcome and search and invitation must be no less wide.

Faith That Sees Jesus for Who He Truly Is

The faith of the centurion that makes Jesus marvel is not merely that he recognises his power to heal even from a distance, but the recognition of why and how this could be so. The centurion has perceived something of who Jesus really is, of his true nature and identity. The centurion sees Jesus as someone with authority like, but wholly unlike, what any normal human has.