Man's Law and the Father's Heart

Luke 6:9, And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy?

*See Luke 6:6-11 for the full story about Christ's healing of the man with the withered hand.*

From Luke 5:33-39 through the first eleven verses of chapter six, Jesus seemed to make it a point to show observers that man’s law meant nothing when it contradicted the good that God desired to come from His law. This story of the man with the withered hand is a case in point.

The Pharisees had become so consumed with their own stipulations they neglected to do the good to others God demands from His people. Instead, they actually schemed for the death of Jesus who had done nothing but work kindness and righteousness––so far had they slipped from conformity to the will of God.

I love that in verse eleven Luke mentions how furious the religious leaders were with Christ’s act of compassion that broke their religious mandates while Mark 3:5 records Christ’s grief and anger at the Pharisees hardheartedness and despising of the mercy God required of men. Such different standards each set for the other, yet both were angry, one group over a breach in the dictates of man and the other over a violation of the desires of the Father’s heart!

On Being Sick...

You know how when you're sick, your mind sometimes drifts to the strangest topics? A couple of nights ago as I lay in bed with a 103 degree fever, the particularly American mantra of self-trust kept playing around in my brain: "You can't count on anyone but yourself." It struck me, given my current situation at the time, just how ridiculous this statement is. I couldn't even trust my body to function properly or to keep me from death left to itself! I had counted on my body successfully getting me through finals week at my college, yet like a vindictive motorized vehicle, it chose to break down on me when I needed it most. If I can't count on anyone and I can't count on myself, what is left? Honestly, I don't know how the individualist atheist would respond. I know I have God, the only One I dare count on.

My doctor is a wonderful man who has worked as a missionary physician overseas but has returned to practice in the United States. He prayed for me over the phone. And as he prayed, this man of science, intimate with the human "machine" we call our bodies, reminded me how our fragile lives rest so completely in God's hands. Our blood itself is so perfectly designed to flow or clot when it should. And this is merely one aspect of many systems in our bodies that must simultaneously function without variance or failure. We live our every moment walking the tightrope of life and don't even think of how cavernously the mouth of death yawns below us and how, if God should loose His hand from ours, we would plunge into its hungry maw.

I'm thankful I have an all-powerful God to count on, One who governs the astral and the atomic, the celestial and the cellular. Knowing the depths of my heart, the last person I would trust is myself. However, knowing simply the surface of Jesus' heart, I trust Him with what He already owned before I gave it––my life.

Even Christ Needed Devotional Time

Luke 5:15-16, But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

With so many making heavy demands of Him, Jesus regularly withdrew to isolated places to pray. We must not forget this, especially those in ministerial positions! You may have more work to do for those who depend on you than you can find time for, but even Jesus Himself considered nothing more valuable than His time with the Father. Yes, there are countless hurting souls and many ills to alleviate but time spent alone with God (in word and quiet fellowship) supersedes them all even as God Himself is more important than all.

If Christ Himself, the One capable of healing and feeding multitudes in hours, the exemplar of effectual service to the needy, as a man had to recharge His spiritual batteries, we must imagine ourselves ultra-divine humans when we refuse to make time in a busy day to seek our Father's face. If God Himself needed God's fellowship to get through a day on earth, how much more do we humans, created to depend upon and seek the Lord, need to allocate time to commune with our Creator, lest we become completely overwhelmed. Sonseekers, pray!

He Is Willing and Able

Luke 5:12-13, While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him.

How like our Savior, so willing to cleanse those who come to Him with rotting flesh! He does not turn away any who understand their dependence on Him and humbly admit it is only His good pleasure that can render them whole. He does not turn His back on us in revulsion when we come to Him full of fetid sin-sores that so readily offend even our best of human friends. Rather Purity Himself reaches out to us and drives away our uncleanness by His touch. Such is the power of Christ's virtue that though He touch the foul, He does not come away defiled (as happens with every other human) but rather the putrid comes away pure!

Thank You, Savior, that You not only have the power to restore (as the leper understood: “You can make me clean”), You are more than willing to cleanse the foul and heal the broken. How horrific would be our state had we either a God with the power to heal us but no will to or a God who longed to restore us yet lacked the ability. But no, restoration is such a part of Your nature, my dear saving God. You have proven Yourself throughout history as an omnipotent God who delights in binding the broken, redeeming the captive, and reclaiming the lost. And for this, we, the objects of Your willing power at work, praise You!

At Your Word

Luke 5:5, And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”

This is what made the all difference: Christ's word! The men had garnered nothing for all their effort in the night. But now the Lord had commanded, and His is the word that does not return empty without accomplishing what He desires (Isaiah 55:10-11). When the Lord declares something it happens–and happens in fulness (see vv. 6-7, where the nets were near to breaking and the boats to sinking!). Do we truly believe this, as Peter did? How much we miss when we do not take God up at His word.

The Greatest Catch in the World

Luke 5:11, And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.

See Luke 5:1-11 for the full story.

Why this miracle? Especially if Simon and his brethren were just going to let the fish rot in the boats as they left everything behind to follow Christ? This miracle shows the superior worth of Christ to everything else in the world. The fishermen when left to themselves spent a long and lonely night on the barren waters. But Peter’s act of faith, heading to sea when a carpenter-turned-rabbi told him to, marked the end of such barrenness. (Note, Christ took the initiative to find Peter’s boat and give him directives.) It was worth messing up the nets again for Christ’s sake; the inconvenience Jesus cost them was more than bountifully repaid when they took Him at His word and obeyed without thought of how this was messing up their plans (and nets) for the day.

After making perhaps the greatest catch in their entire career as fishermen, the men knew they had found something far more precious than everything they had spent their lives working for up to that point. They left everything to follow this wonderful Man named Jesus, and they did so without remorse because in Him they had found all the treasures in the heavenly places. Who needed fish anymore when they had just discovered the greatest catch in the world?

Every Tongue Shall Confess

Luke 4:33-34, And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice,“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”

This is the first miracle recorded by Luke. Thus far we have had a heavenly messenger announcing the birth of Immanuel (1:32-33), a priest foretelling the greatness of a coming Newborn (1:78-79), the angels testifying of arrival of the God-man (2:11), the shepherds witnessing to the message they’d heard regarding the most unlikely of Messiah-candidates–a Babe in a trough (2:17), an old man of God filled with the Spirit and excited to see an eight-day old Child (2:29-32), a godly widow proclaiming the arrival of God’s salvation (2:38), a powerful desert preacher announcing that the Kingdom had come and it’s Prince was Jesus (3:16-17), and a Voice from heaven claiming a soaking Man in the river as His Son (3:22).

And now to this chorus of witnesses that spans the spectrums of human and heavenly, priestly and peasantry, aged and agile, respected and reviled, Luke adds yet another voice: demonic (4:34, 41). All the powers of heaven, hell, and the earth in between have in the presence of human witnesses acknowledged Jesus as Messiah and God!

The Perfect Israel

Luke 4:1-2, And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.

In this temptation Jesus was perfectly fulfilling everything Israel failed to do correctly during their forty years in the desert. Unlike Israel demanding bread and longing for the meat of Egypt, Jesus understood that man did not live solely on food but instead delighted Himself in the presence of God. Where Israel failed the Lord by worshiping golden calves and joining itself to Baal of Peor, Jesus held fast to the LORD and wasn’t tempted to use the devil’s means to get the rewards God had promised to give in His own time. And finally, where Israel, God's son, had constantly put the LORD to the test in the desert, Jesus refused to engage in such activities. Jesus is the perfect Israel, everything Israel was called to be but failed in miserably. Whereas Israel failed in constant faithlessness as the son of God, Jesus proved Himself the faithful and true Son and therefore the legitimate heir of God's promises. And it is through being grafted into the Perfect Israel that we too become inheritors of the blessings He won through His faithfulness! Praise the Lord for a perfect Savior, the true and faultless Son.

Temptation as God's Tool for Sanctification

A break from the reading in Luke. This was something we talked about at Youth Group on Wednesday.

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Matthew 6:13, And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

First thing to note: God is the One who leads the believer to temptation, not the devil as we so often claim. It was the Holy Spirit who led Christ into the wilderness to be tempted for forty days. God Himself never tempts us for He is removed from evil (James 1:13). However, He does allow the devil to afflict us in ways that could make us stumble (Job 1:8-12), and our own passions too often send us tumbling into sin. Still, we know that God uses temptation as a way of teaching us to cling desperately to Him.

Why then would Christ tell us to pray that God not lead us into temptation if, as one might accuse me of saying, "temptation is a good thing?" Because the man who prays earnestly for protection from the seduction of sin has already learned reliance upon God and distrust of himself.

Our faithful God introduces temptation into our lives to expose us to our weaknesses, weaknesses we are often blind to, and to create in us a reliance upon God. He who clings to God in fear of his own great sinfulness need not enter into temptation for he already knows the flesh is weak, and to such a one the Lord will give His strength (Isaiah 40:31 and Matthew 26:41). As John Bunyan put it, “He that is down need fear no fall.” That we might learn such self-doubt and absolute, desperate dependence on Christ alone!

Dare to be a John

Luke 3:16, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Such is the attitude of the true messenger of the Savior. Though many flocked to John thinking he was the Messiah, the prophet from the wilderness pointed them away from himself and to the true Savior of souls. John wasn’t pretentious and didn’t pretend to be anything other than he was. Though a great prophet and preacher who could gather a crowd and in whom the Spirit of God was mightily at work, John only used his God-given powers and abilities to perform his task of heralding the coming Messiah. He didn’t use the stage given him to become the center of the show and attract men to himself.

Understanding the true preciousness of the Christ, John consequently understood his own unworthiness when compared to the value of Jesus. John’s own mission of baptism, repentance, and Christ-pointing meant little without Jesus’ all-important task of redemption. A great man of God, John grasped that his person and preaching had meaning only as they focused on the One who gives all creatures meaning and proclaimed Him whose work gives us something to publish abroad.

Sin Defined by God, Not Us

Luke 3:12-13, Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.”

Note that John didn’t tell the tax collectors to give up their jobs as employees of the Romans. While most of the Jews thought of such employment as traitorous, John didn’t imply that the work itself was sinful as most Jews thought who saw it as siding with the enemy. Rather he condemned the true sin–abuse of power and using others for one’s own gain. We need to make sure our definitions of sin match up with God’s rather than labeling as sin anything that we personally don’t like (a very human tendency).

Repentance and Its Fruits

Luke 3:8, Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.

The true children of God bear fruit in keeping with the repentance they claim is theirs. Why is this principle overlooked in the contemporary church? We err on either of two sides. On the one hand, we preach liberty in Christ and don’t mention the fruit that must (not might or should) accompany salvation. On the other, we preach legalism and don’t stress the repentance that springs from the heart. Without these two elements, our Christianity is worthless and the preaching we sit under avails us nothing, for it does not drive us to heartfelt, unfeigned conviction of sin nor to a zealous pursuit of holiness as our God is holy (I Peter 1:16).

Collecting God?

Luke 2:51, But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.

We humans are pack rats, each in our own way. There's no question we accumulate; we only differ in what we amass for ourselves. Stamps, collector's figurines, limited edition DVD sets, money, fame, and power... You name it and there is likely a market somewhere out there for it. Just think, we even collect trash! In fact, maybe most of what we collect is trash for none of it will last...

Oh to be like Mary who stored in her heart every wondrous story of her interactions with God. How readily do I forget the sweet times, the marvelous salvations, the hard lessons my Father has taught me as I have walked with Him. Oh give us tender hearts that treasure every interaction with You, Lord, for what better thing is there in this world to collect than nuggets from God?

My Heart Has Stopped...

Another prayer. I'm sure you can relate.

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Father, my heart right now feels as weak as my flesh. The past few days have seen me physically aching and spiritually destitute. Why do we go through such cycles, Lord? Why can we not enjoy unending fellowship with You and ever-growing oneness with our Savior? Why must life be marked by these periods of barrenness when it is all we can do to maintain our tenuous hold on the unshakeable rock? Why does Eternal Significance Himself become a forgotten pastime to us and the honey-dripping Word taste like dust on our tongues?

Father, I pray more to You for relief from apathy than I do about anything else! I would “walk with You” as Enoch did, leaving far behind the trails of Lot’s wife. I would spend my days with David in Your temple contemplating the beauty of the Lord, yet I fear perhaps I know not how to do this. Thank You that this dryness and feeling of abandonment isn’t unique to me, that I can be comforted knowing David, Elijah, and even Christ Himself knew what it felt like to be abandoned and all alone. Thank You that our human eyes lie to us for they cannot see the spiritual reality–that You are always there and have never left Your people. Far from it, You surround them with flaming chariots and legions of mighty seraphim.

But Lord, I don’t want seraphim tonight; I want You. Come please and meet me and be the Breaker of bread to my soul in these moments. Guard my thoughts, for like a distracted child, I pursue every whim of my imagination and dishonor the presence of my Lover by chasing down squirrelly fancies rather than sitting quietly in my adoration of You. Come be the Center and Life-pulse tonight. I need defibrillation.

Celebrating Revelation

Luke 2:20, And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Would that this were our attitude more often. The shepherds delighted in the little they knew and worshipped, no doubt in ways that would put last week's church service to shame. How much has been revealed to us yet how little we praise the Lord for all He has given us to know of Himself and His truth.

Create in me a grateful heart, Father, that delights in Your revelation and wonders when my weak and unworthy human eyes have caught a glimpse of You. Teach me to celebrate revelation, especially the Fulness of Revelation Himself.