Read Luke 6:39-49

Creative writing teachers always tell aspiring writers, “Don’t tell us; show us.” That’s what Luke does here.

Luke does not give us his opinion on Jesus’ wisdom or tell us what He looked like or whether people liked Him. Skilled writer that he was, Luke recounts one parable right after another. He shows you what Jesus taught.

The blind leading the blind, the speck of sawdust in somebody else’s eye and a plank in mine. Aren’t these images all of us can identify with? We know exactly what Jesus is saying—learn before you try to teach, don’t be hypocritical (vv. 41-42).

He changes the image in vv. 43-45, but again it is something that all of us know, whether we lived in Jesus’ day or 2000 years later. Bad trees bear bad fruit; grapes don’t grow on briars. What’s inside will come out. It’s another way of saying sooner or later you will reveal who you really are.

In vv. 46-49 Jesus shifts the picture again. But we still know exactly what He is talking about. Don’t call Me “Lord” and then disobey Me, He says. But if you obey, you are like the person who constructs a strong, sturdy house. You will not be overwhelmed when the rushing floodwaters of life roar over you. He does not say that His people will have no trouble. Only that their lives will not come to pieces under the deluge.

Read Luke 6:27-38

“Do to others as you would have them do to you” (v. 31).

Where have we heard that before? The Golden Rule is a precept most of us were taught in childhood. Our elders may have added their own trimming: “Be nice to others and they’ll be nice to you.”

But is that how the world works? How can I be pleasant and generous to those who see generosity as a mark of weakness and strive to take unfair advantage?

Notice two things Jesus did not say here: that life is easy, and that you could exercise the Golden Rule in your own strength. We are to be merciful “just as your Father is merciful (v. 36).” You can’t do that unaided.

Notice to whom Jesus speaks: those who hear (v. 27). In our own strength we cannot deal generously, or even in fairness, with the ungracious, dishonest wretches who seem to infest our path. But to the person who hears—really hears—Jesus’ call to service done in His name, then the power to love enemies comes not from our own power, but from Jesus’ power springing in our hearts.

Selfless living is not born of any natural love for mankind that we have, but from Jesus’ love. As Jesus pointed out, loving others is the distinguishing characteristic of His followers (John 13:35). It set the Christians apart from those around them like nothing else.

It still does.

Read Luke 6:17-26

Jesus stood “on a level place” to teach (v. 17).

Why did Luke note that? Jesus seems to have descended the mountain to a level place from which to teach and be seen and heard easily.

Do I live my life on a level place? Do I take a position for what I believe that is clear and plain so that those around me cannot misunderstand what I stand for?

Jesus blesses those who are poor, sad, excluded. He pronounces woe to the rich, laughing in comfort. Is Jesus against riches or laughter? Are they wrong? Nowhere is it so recorded. Nor does Jesus condemn them here. What is He teaching?

Keep your priorities straight. Service to Jesus is first. If it means you make little money in a job pleasing to the Lord when you could have been rich in a job out of His will, rejoice, for your reward is in heaven. Have you been blessed with riches? Splendid. Use the money to further God’s work.

Human circumstances change. Put God first in your life and trust Him for the rest. Knowing you are in the center of God’s will brings a life of joy, a peace of mind and heart that no amount of money can buy.

Read Luke 6:12-16

Jesus prayed a lot, but He, like us, had issues from time to time that called for special prayer.

He prayed especially at His baptism, (3:21), as He was launching His public ministry (4:42), for refreshment after hard days of preaching, teaching, and healing (5:16).

Now we find Him praying all night before making a tremendous decision, selection of His disciples.
The disciples seem to have arranged themselves in three groups. First came Peter and Andrew, James and John, two pairs of brothers. Then came Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, and Thomas. Listed last are James (not the Lord’s brother), Simon, Judas (always carefully distinguished from the other Judas), and finally Judas Iscariot, the name of infamy.

Who is in the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples in our day? Some inconspicuous little lady who wears old dresses? A shut-in who spends her days in prayer? A quiet man nobody would think of for an office in the church?

Who are the Judas Iscariots of our day? We do not need to know. Did Judas start out to be a thief and a traitor? Probably not. His life stands as a stark warning. We can be called of God. We can make a show of walking with Him. We can still refuse His message and be lost. Jesus never forces Himself upon anyone. All members of His army are volunteers.

Read Luke 6:1-11

The further Jesus went, the worse it got.

The Pharisees were already ticked off because Jesus claimed to have power to forgive sins (Luke 5:21). Then He went to dinner with a bunch of tax collectors (Luke 5:29). Now his disciples began to pick grain for lunch right out of the field on the Sabbath (Luke 6:1). That was work under Jewish law, not done on the Sabbath.

But Jesus didn’t quit there. On another Sabbath, He encountered this man in the synagogue worship service with a shriveled hand. Jesus’ friendly enemies watched to see if He would do the “work” of healing on the Sabbath.

Jesus asked the man to do two things. To stand alone before the crowd (6:8), and to stretch out the crippled hand in plain view of everyone (6:10).

What do you think would have happened if the man had said, “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that, people will laugh at me”? He would have gone out still crippled. Without two good hands, how could he work? In desperation he obeyed.

“Show your poor withered hand to the world,” said Jesus. “Reveal your weakness.” And he went out healed, with two good hands.

What does this say to us? Jesus wants to meet us as individuals, standing alone. He asks us to display our weakness to Him. Confess our sins, whatever they are. When we come in repentance and honesty, He forgives and heals.

Christianity’s pervasive spirit is joy.

What message can we learn today from Jesus’ images of attempting to patch old clothes with new cloth or the folly of putting new wine in old wineskins?

The life of freedom and joy in Christ cannot be fully realized within any narrow system of religious ritual. Christianity cannot be limited by any system of forms. It will burst out of such confines. Christianity controls people not by external rules but by the motives of a changed heart.

Jesus came bringing new wine to be stored in a new organization, the church, where individuals and the institution of the church itself make Jesus Christ the center of worship, where His children love Him with all their hearts. The new wine was not cheap. Jesus’ shed blood made possible this new more personal relationship with God.

This does not mean our churches should not have liturgy, an organized order of worship. It does mean we should take heed lest we fall into the same trap the Pharisees struggled with 2,000 years ago where rituals became a substitute for personal knowledge of God.

Jesus’ new wine is still fresh as the sunrise to each new believer. But consider this. If our church’s worship service becomes all form and no substance, no blessing to anyone, do we not risk having God sweep it away?

Read Luke 5:27-32

Jesus never cut Himself off from the world.

We probably would have considered Levi (we know him better by his other name, Matthew) an unlikely candidate for discipleship. He collected taxes for the hated Romans and his fellow Jews heartily despised him for doing so. But that didn’t keep Jesus from calling Levi to follow Him.

Levi not only left a lucrative job when he accepted Jesus’ call, he made no secret of his new allegiance. He threw a huge dinner so his fellow tax collectors and other friends could meet Jesus.

When the religious leaders asked Jesus why He lowered Himself to eat with such trash, Jesus replied with a truism we all can understand: you see a doctor when you are sick, not when you are well. Does the physician love disease? Is that why the doctor sees you when you are sick?

Did Jesus love sin and enjoy being around it? Of course not. Jesus loved the sinner and hated the sin. Jesus neither took part in sinful activities nor compromised His personal ethical standard to be a jolly good fellow. His mission was to point sinners to Himself, call them to repentance, show them a way of redemption and release. Jesus was not afraid to rub shoulders with the world. But He did not let the world rub off on Him.

We should go and do likewise, don’t you think?

If leprosy is symbolic of the uncleanness of sin, paralysis is a representation of sin’s impotence and pain.

We don’t know where Jesus was teaching on this day, but a lot of persons had traveled to hear him because the record says they came from all over the area. Even the self-important Pharisees and teachers of the law thought hearing Jesus in person was critical enough to make the trip all the way from Jerusalem.

Crowd or no crowd, this paralytic and his friends were not to be denied. After all the uproar about the roof, Jesus said something surprising to the paralyzed man: “Your sins are forgiven you.” The man had not asked out loud, but Jesus saw his heart. Perhaps a high-risk lifestyle had resulted in the accident or disease that produced the paralysis. Genuinely repentant, the man longed for spiritual and moral reinstatement as well as physical restoration. Jesus meets him at this point of need.

“Well,” thought Jesus’ intellectual hearers, “that’s easy. Just play God. Declare the man forgiven. Big deal.”  Knowing what they were thinking, Jesus said, “All right. We’ll prove divine power with something even you can see.” To the man he says, “…take your mat and go home” (v. 24). The man, bless him, jumped up and went home, “praising God” (v. 25).

Both forgiving sins and healing physically required divine power. Jesus had what it took.

Read Luke 5:12-16

Leprosy is a symbol for sin in the Bible.

People regarded leprosy as so loathsome that the leper had to cry “unclean” everywhere he went. Nobody would touch him. Imagine never shaking hands, never getting a friendly hug, having to warn your children not to come close to you. The leper was hopeless, reckoned by family and friends as a dead person. If something so corrupting and isolating is God’s emblem for sin, what does this tell us about God’s attitude toward sin?

Why was this man healed? For the same reason Jesus heals us of our sins when we come to Him in repentance. Because he asked. How often do we miss Jesus’ blessing because we do not ask? Notice the pathetic sufferer’s humble trust, his pitiful cry. Yet he comes with total faith. “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean,” he said (v. 12). The loveliest words that poor soul had ever heard must have been Jesus’ statement, “I am willing. Be clean!”

When Jesus touched him, it was probably the first touch from another human he had experienced in years. Jesus’ sympathy and touch, the word of command, the instant cure. Our hearts leap in joy.

Jesus tells the cleansed man to go show himself to the priest. Why? For the same reason we are to witness to others of our salvation? It is testimony to the divine power of Christ.

Read Luke 5:1-11

Matthew and Luke both recount Jesus’ calling of His first four disciples, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and the other two brothers, James and John (Matt. 4:18-22; Luke 5:1-11).

Matthew makes it sound as if Jesus called them out of the blue. Luke recounts what looks more like an evangelism process. All four men probably heard Jesus teaching in the Capernaum synagogue. They saw Him cast the demon out of the man, heal Peter’s sick mother-in-law, and lay gentle healing hands individually on numerous sick persons. Nobody was lost in the crowd with this fellow.

On the strength of this acquaintance, Jesus asks a favor of Peter, the use of his boat (5:3). More teaching followed. When Jesus suggests that the men go fishing again, Peter clearly thinks it a fool’s errand. But the miraculous catch of fish triggers conviction and repentance in Peter (5:8).

In Luke 5:5 when Jesus suggests that they go fishing again after a fruitless night, Peter calls Jesus “Master,” i.e., “rabbi,” or “teacher.” After the miracle of catching so many fish the nets were breaking and the boats sinking under the load, Peter falls to his knees before Jesus and addresses Him as Lord, Adonai, a name for God. He worships in full repentance (5:8).

Then comes Jesus’ call to Peter and the others (5:10), which is evidently the event reported by Matthew in Matt. 4:18-20. They accept.

That was good progress for one day, don’t you think?