Life Project Blog

Luke 8:26-39

Jesus and the disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee to a region inhabited by Gentiles. We can be certain of this by taking note of the fact that they were tending pigs. There was a man there who had been possessed by a legion of demons. He was out of his mind, naked and dangerous. The people there had chained the man, only to see him break the chains with strength beyond that which is normal for a human. We can easily see that these demonic forces had deprived the man not only of his right mind, but of his human dignity as well, living as he did naked, alone and amongst the dead in the tombs.

Jesus comes upon the scene and wants the demons out of the man. The demons, knowing exactly who He was (8:28) begged Jesus not to torture them. Jesus grants their request to be sent into a herd of pigs and they ran the entire herd into the lake and were drowned. I must tell you that if I were the owner of those pigs, I wouldn’t be any too pleased that Jesus had just destroyed my entire livelihood; the text tells us that the tenders of the pigs ran into town and told everyone what had happened.

The people came running to see for themselves, but when they arrived they saw the crazy man dressed and sitting at Jesus’ feet, just as sane as they were; they were afraid. The idea of a Jew coming into their area and having complete authority over demons seems to have scared the you-know-what out of these good folks, and they asked Jesus to move on…

Jesus did so.

The man who had been saved by this begged to go with Him, but Jesus told him to stay and resume his normal life, telling everyone what God had done for him, and this the man did.

There are some very interesting things in this story that we should carefully take note of:

First, the demons know exactly who Jesus is, and they are terrified of Him. By extension, don’t you suppose that they are just as terrified of the Holy Spirit who indwells you?

2. Jesus had complete authority over those demons, and they did exactly what He ordered them to do.

3. When the Gentiles saw the power and authority of Jesus, they too were afraid and begged Him to leave them alone, which He did for the time being. Do you suppose that the terrified demons and the terrified Gentiles had something in common, other than their terror?

4. Jesus told the man to tell everyone what God had done for him, but when He had performed miracles for Jews, He was in the habit of telling them to be quiet about it. Let’s adopt a working theory that Jesus wanted the Gentiles to know about what the “Jewish God” had done for one of them to prepare the ground for another visit, and see where the story leads as we continue our adventure in Like’s narrative…

Now Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him, but they were not able to get near him because of the crowd. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.”

He replied, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.”

Luke 8:19-21

This is a curious little aside… There is Jesus teaching in parables before a very large crowd that apparently had grown as He taught. At some point in this process His mother and brothers had joined the crowd; they wanted to speak with Him, but the crowd was so large they couldn’t get to where He was. A reasonable earthly expectation would be that Jesus would either pause His teaching and go to them, or that he would ask that they be escorted through the crowd; Jesus did neither of these things.

Instead, He took this opportunity to teach the people.

His reply seems at first to be a little cold toward His family members, but I don’t think it was. Jesus is teaching the assembled crowd what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, a citizenship which transcends genetics and earthly relationships. As we saw when we studied the book of Hebrews a few months back, when we become followers of Jesus, we receive a new life within us in the Person of the Holy Spirit, and when this happens, we become co-heirs with Jesus to everything; Jesus is the firstborn, and we are His brothers and sisters in God’s household; this is exactly what Jesus was referring to in Luke 8:21.

Luke didn’t tell us who Jesus spoke to later on that day, but had there been a log kept, I would expect to see the names of His mother and brothers; they simply had to wait until the teaching was over, which is hardly unreasonable, even by earthly standards.

“No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they think they have will be taken from them.”

Luke 8:16-18

Without skipping a beat, Jesus moves from His explanation of the Parable of the Sower into another parable, the Parable of the Lamps. Just so we are all together on the context, here is what came just before today’s text:

“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away.  The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

Luke 8:11-15

Look at the text above; see how after the word “crop” at the end of the sentence (v. 15) the quotes don’t close, and then at the beginning of the new paragraph the quote resumes (v. 16)? This tells us that Jesus did not stop talking between verse 15 and verse 16, thus His discussion in 16-18 is in the context from the Parable of the Sower. With that in mind, let’s go back and read about those lamps once again…

As I’m sure you will recall from the last section, the key verse was 8:8b:

“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Jesus is still talking about hearing the Word of God, and the business about the lamps is now obvious: The Truth of God is going to find out all of the motivations of our hearts and those motivations are going to be exposed. A lot of people will never “get it” when it comes to the Word of God and particularly the Gospel of Christ and that is because the motivations of their hearts are to not know. As we see in these texts, there may be many reasons for this, it could be the influence of the Evil One, it could be the worries of this world, or the pleasures of this world, or something else. Yet in all cases, we control what those motivations are. Thus He says, “be careful how you listen”.

Think carefully: If the motivations of your heart were outside of your control, what would be the point of His having said “consider carefully how you listen”?

That’s exactly right: There would be no point at all.

Luke 8:1-15

As we move into chapter 8, Jesus will be speaking in parables quite a bit. In fact, some of the most familiar and beloved of His parables are found right here in Luke, yet sometimes they aren’t easy for us to understand. It is important for us to recognize that Jesus is doing this on purpose for as hard as it may be for us to understand, not everyone is His intended audience.

Does that surprise you?

Look at our text today which is Luke’s account of the Parable of the Sower, one of those familiar and beloved parables. Skip down to 8:8b… right there at the end…

“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Does that mean that some don’t have ears to hear? In the next paragraph we find the answer to the question:

His disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,

“‘though seeing, they may not see;
though hearing, they may not understand.’ (8:9-10)

So there are people out there who will never “get it”. After this, Jesus explained the parable to the disciples (8:11-15) and guess what the point of the parable is…?

Some people will never really “get it”.

If I were an “old school” preacher, this is where I’d play the “us” and “them” card: Aren’t we wonderful, aren’t they nasty…

I am not however, and “old school” preacher. It’s just that for a variety of reasons a lot of people don’t want to hear about Jesus. Personally, I think this is a very sad situation, and I wish that everyone would accept His grace, but that isn’t the way of love. As strange as it may sound, God loves us so much, that He allows us to make our own decisions, even when it comes to whether or not we will follow Him. Of course there are always consequences to the decisions we make, and this will result in many not receiving grace at all; think about how much grief that must cause for God!

Even so, love never forces itself on anyone.

Luke 7:36-50

This passage tells the story of Jesus going to the home of a Pharisee named Simon for dinner. As they reclined at table, a very sinful woman enters and is so moved that she cries, her tears falling on Jesus’ feet. She wipes her tears from His feet with her hair, for what else did she have to wipe with? Then, she pours perfume on His feet to anoint them. As this is going on Simon the Pharisee is thinking that if Jesus were a prophet He should know this woman is sinful and thus send her away.

Jesus responds out loud to Simon’s thoughts…

You really need to read the text for this one, because it is a beautiful thing to behold, and there is no way for me to do it justice…

The upshot of the story is that a very sinful person can be forgiven just like a not so sinful person can, and in all probability that very sinful person will love God all the more because they have been forgiven so much. Naturally, those who are very upright and righteous, who have only sinned a little bit, may continue to view the forgiven one who has sinned so much more than we have, with disdain for their past actions, arguably increasing our own “sin-count” in the process.

On the other hand, God sees all forgiven souls as clean.

The lesson that Simon and his friends needed to learn here was that God’s approach to sin, forgiveness and love is not a transactional approach, but a relational one. Every single one of us, whether saint or sinner, was created in the image of God. Every single human was made to be God’s sacred child; God loves all of us, even the sinner who has not yet accepted His grace.

I know that this is a difficult concept for many of us to grab hold of… and no, I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about sin. But our sins and transgressions against God do not cause Him to stop loving us; do you know how I can say that with so much confidence?

Because while we were still in our sin, God sent His one and only Son to die for us, that whosoever might believe in Him, might have eternal life. Therefore, if God didn’t love this sinful woman, and hundreds of millions of others like her, Jesus would not have ever come to this earth.

Interesting isn’t it, that she understood this, and Simon and his associates struggled with it.

Luke 7:18-35

In so many ways, this is a sad story. It begins when some of the disciples of John the Baptist are sent to ask Jesus if He is really the “One”. Understand that John has been sitting in Herod’s jail for quite some time now, and apparently his mental state has declined to the point where he is beginning to wonder if he was wrong about the identity of Jesus. Have you ever had such a moment when your faith lags and you begin to harbor serious doubts? If so, you have some rather prestigious company.

John asks two of his disciples go to Jesus and ask, and in reply Jesus simply tells them to relate to John what they have seen (7:18-23). Notice verse 23: “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me” Having doubts in a difficult time is natural enough, but the greatest blessing is found by the person who does not allow their human doubts to get the better of them.

After this, Jesus begins to address the crowd and in so doing He gives John a ringing endorsement (7:24-28). Everyone in the crowd responded to this endorsement positively, even the tax collectors, for they had gone out to hear John speak and had been baptized by him.

Well, almost everyone.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law in the crowd didn’t respond positively for they had not received John’s baptism (7:29-30). Jesus has this irritating way of knowing what people are thinking, and He knew what was going through the minds of those Pharisees and teachers of the law who believed that they never needed to receive John’s baptism of repentance, after all, they were so incredibly righteous in their own minds that there couldn’t possibly be anything for them to repent of…

Jesus compared them to little children who are never satisfied with anything, but who instead complain about everything:

For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’  The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by all her children.

Luke 7:33-35

I rather doubt that the Pharisees and teachers of the law missed His inference that they were the ones who were seriously lacking in wisdom.

The second aspect of this story that is sad if found in the fact the the best and the brightest of that generation (possibly of any generation) were the ones who completely missed the truth of God when it appeared right in front of them.

Luke 7:11-17

After the incident with the Centurion, Jesus approaches a funeral and encounters a grieving mother whose son has recently died. The fact that she is a widow makes the scene even more poignant, for in those days a woman needed a man for support, and a widow without a son would frequently become destitute in a very short time. This widow has just lost her son, and poverty is knocking at her door. Of course, she is also grieving because her son died as any mother would do: This is a double disaster for the woman.

Upon seeing her situation, Jesus is greatly moved, and He approaches the bier on which the son is laid out and commands him to rise.

Can you picture that scene in your mind?

It would seem from the text that this created something of a sensation, as the news of this latest incident spreads like wildfire across the region…

In chapter 6, through His great Sermon, Jesus told the people what a citizen of the Kingdom would look like. Here in chapter 7, Jesus is showing us what the Kingdom is as He heals people from their sickness, a consequence of sin, and now when He raises this young man to life showing the Kingdom’s power over death itself. Of course death is the ultimate consequence of sin, and Jesus’ Kingdom will be populated by people who, along with Jesus Himself, have victory over death.