Stories from the Bible - Ep 24 Judging Jesus (Luke 11)

Episode Date: November 26, 2022

We re-cap Luke chapter 10, and hear the stories from Luke chapter 11. In this chapter Jesus is judged by people who say he gets his power from the devil, and he's also judged by the religious leaders for not following their washing traditions. With penetrating insight Jesus demolishes every argument and totally discredits his opponents. The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® http://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved

Beauty, perfection, desire, deception, rebellion, judgment, hope. You're listening to Stories from the Bible. Bible stories told in order, using the words of the Bible, with introductions to give a recap and provide context. At the end of each story, you might want to pause and take a moment to reflect on what you noticed in the story. Things you liked or didn't like. Something the story showed you about God or about people. Don't worry if not everything makes sense. Keep listening to each episode and sit with the journey. I'm stoked to have you on the ride. Hello and welcome to episode 24.

Before we hear what happens in Luke chapter 11, let's recap some of what happened in Luke chapter 10. Recall that by chapter 10 in Luke's story, Jesus has started to give some pretty clear statements about what must happen to him and also what it means to be his follower. In a nutshell, Jesus has told his disciples that he must be rejected by the Jewish leaders, then killed, then raised from the dead. And if someone wants to be his true follower, they must also give up their life

and basically make listening to and following him their number one priority in life. In some ways, what Jesus is teaching in these chapters is an elaboration of the upside-down view of reality he introduced back in chapter 6. Check out episode 19 and 20 if you missed it. That is, those who suffer in this life because of Jesus will ultimately have the most joy, both now and forever. Those who seek to save their own lives by focusing on the accumulation of wealth, success, and popularity in the present world will ultimately lose everything. But to come back to what we heard in chapter 10.

In those stories, we got to see a few different examples of people missing the point, some in more serious ways than others. First, there were the 72 workers Jesus told to go out in pairs to all the places he was about to go. Their job seems very similar to what Jesus has been doing, proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come and healing the sick and casting out demons to back up the claim. How people in the towns respond to these workers equals how they respond to Jesus. If the workers are rejected, it is Jesus they are rejecting. There is an urgency to this. It looks like Jesus wants all Israel to have the opportunity to accept or reject him.

And so the workers go out. When they return, their hearts are rejoicing because of the power they were able to exercise over evil. But Jesus shows they've missed the point. His followers are not to derive satisfaction from power and authority, but rather that they have their names written in heaven. And in a more serious case of missing the point, Jesus laments over local Galilean towns that have rejected him and his messengers. These towns have had every opportunity to listen, yet they have hardened their hearts. They have missed who

Jesus is, and they prefer to stick to their old comfortable ways. This is very serious, and in fact, Jesus says those Galilean towns will actually face a more severe judgment from God at the end of all time than some other more famously wicked towns who had far less opportunity of responding to the truth. And on the topic of the kinds of people who do listen to Jesus and accept him, we then hear how Jesus has a happy moment praising his Father in heaven for the way that God chooses to reveal truth. Instead of revealing himself to the intelligent and wise, God chooses little children, the lowliest members of society, to understand the truth. Then, lo and behold, along comes a wise and intelligent person.

This man is a lawyer, an expert in religious law. Presumably, he has studied for many years and has an excellent resume proving his expertise in matters of religion. In Jesus, he would see an improperly qualified teacher surrounded by a bunch of uneducated fishermen. Naturally, the lawyer assumes he knows better than Jesus. He stands up to test Jesus with a question. He asks, What must I do to inherit eternal life?

But Jesus comes back with another question for him. What is written in the law? How do you understand it? And the expert gives an excellent answer, showing off his wisdom and understanding. He summarises the law as, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength,

and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself. It is technically a very correct answer, and Jesus responds with, you've answered correctly, do this and you will have eternal life. However, although the lawyer has an intellectual grasp of what the law requires, he has sadly missed the point of what it means to love God. If he had truly loved God with all his heart, he would have understood God's absolute beauty and perfection and the total impossibility of meeting God's standards through his own rule-keeping efforts. His heart towards God would have been low and broken and humble, not proud and self-reliant.

Because of his small view of God, he believes in his own ability to attain worthiness and stand right before God. His natural, deep desire is to justify himself, to prove that he is okay and that he deserves eternal life. Ironically, he has made God's law all about himself, thus missing the whole point. That lawful obedience is all about love for God and others, not about putting oneself at the centre. And his reply to Jesus, which is a request for a definition of who his neighbour is, demonstrates the desire in his heart to put

a limitation on God's command in order that he might more readily justify himself. In other words, he wants to be able to tick a specific box so that he can feel good about being on his way to earning God's approval. So does Jesus give the lawyer a definition of who qualifies as a neighbour? Does Jesus put a limitation on God's command to love others? No. Jesus has come to proclaim the kingdom of God, to show people God's true character, to undo small views of God and God's commands. And so Jesus tells the story of the

Good Samaritan. In that story, a couple of religious men display total unconcern towards the needs of a stranger. A priest and a Levite walked past a man on the side of the road who was obviously in bad shape after being robbed and beaten. And logically, from the point of view of human wisdom, why wouldn't they? We assume the man in need was not personally known to them. They were busy on important errands. And maybe the man had a disease or was already dead for all they knew. And to touch a dead or diseased person in that culture would have hindered their religious duties. So it makes sense that they avoided him.

Then a Samaritan comes along, someone who is a total outsider to the proper religious culture of the day. Jews tried to have nothing to do with them. But this is the one who sees the hurt man, most likely his natural enemy, and goes ridiculously out of his way to help him. Finishing his parable, Jesus asks the lawyer, Which of the three do you think became a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? And the expert in religious law has to answer that it was the Samaritan. Then Jesus tells the expert, Go and do the same.

In other words, to fulfil God's law of loving his neighbor, the lawyer ought to go out of his way to sacrificially help even his enemies. What God's law requires of him is an expansive, unlimited obedience that seems totally unnecessary and even unwise by human standards. And if the lawyer has ever failed to love others in this way, well, he, just like the religious men in the story, cannot hope to inherit eternal life by relying on their fulfillment of the command. Jesus shows the lawyer that his wise, human understanding of God's law hopelessly misses the point. And if the lawyer has ears to hear, the truth in this parable will correct his small view of God, and he will realise the right

attitude towards God's law is not a desire to put limits on the commands in order to gain self-justification, but rather the right attitude is a humble, broken admission that one needs God's mercy for falling so far short of what he requires. And finally in the chapter, Jesus visits the house of Mary and Martha. Martha is stressed and busy with all the jobs that need doing, while her sister Mary appears to do nothing. She just sits at Jesus' feet, listening to him. Martha becomes upset and comes to Jesus with her trouble. Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me all alone to do the work? Tell her to help me.

And Jesus answers her gently, with compassion and understanding, yet at the same time corrects her thinking and shows her how she's missed the point. He affirms that Mary's action to sit and listen to him is actually the better choice. Jesus sees Martha's anxiety about her multiple tasks, but her heart is more important to Jesus than the good things she is trying to do for him. Martha needs to reorient the many priorities of her life around the single best thing, listening to Jesus. The story starts here. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place.

When he stopped, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples. So he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, may your name be honoured. May your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins. For we also forgive everyone who sins against us, and do not lead us into temptation. And he said to them, Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him,

Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine has stopped here while on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. Then he will reply from inside, I tell you, even though the man inside will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of the first man's sheer persistence, he will get up and give him whatever he needs. So I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds.

And to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Now he was casting out a demon that was mute. When the demon had gone out, the man who had been mute began to speak, and the crowds were amazed.

But some of them said, By the power of Beelzebul, the ruler of demons, he casts out demons. Others, to test him, began asking for a sign from heaven. But Jesus, realising their thoughts, said to them, Every kingdom divided against itself is destroyed, and a divided household falls. So if Satan too is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? I ask you this because you claim that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. Now if I cast out demons by Beelzebul. Now, if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out?

Therefore they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has already overtaken you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his possessions are safe. But when a stronger man attacks and conquers him, he takes away the first man's armour on which the man relied and divides up his plunder. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. When an unclean spirit goes out of a person, it passes through waterless places, looking for rest but not finding any. Then it says, I will return to the home I left. When it returns, it finds the house swept clean and put

in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there. So the last state of that person is worse than the first. As he said these things, a woman in the crowd spoke out to him, Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed. But he replied, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it. As the crowds were increasing, Jesus began to say, This generation is a wicked generation. It looks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh,

so the Son of Man will be a sign to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and now something greater than Solomon is here. The people of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented when Jonah preached to them, and now something greater than Jonah is here. No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it in a hidden place or under a basket, but on a lampstand, so that those who come in can see the light. Your eye is the lamp

of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when it is diseased, your body is full of darkness. Therefore see to it that the light in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, with no part in the dark, it will be as full of light as when the light of a lamp shines on you. As he spoke, a Pharisee invited Jesus to have a meal with him. So he went in and took his place at the table. The Pharisee was astonished when he saw that Jesus did not first wash his hands before the meal. But the Lord said to him, Now, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and the plate,

but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Didn't the one who make the outside make the inside as well? But give from your heart to those in need, and then everything will be clean for you. But woe to you Pharisees! You give a tenth of your mint, rue, and every herb, yet you neglect justice and love for God. But you should have done these things without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees!

You love the best seats in the synagogues and elaborate greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you! You are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without realising it. One of the experts in religious law answered him, Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too. But Jesus replied, Woe to you experts in religious law as well! You load people down with burdens difficult to bear.

Yet you yourselves refuse to touch the burdens with even one of your fingers. Woe to you! You build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. So you testify that you approve of the deeds of your ancestors because they killed the prophets and you build their tombs. For this reason also the wisdom of God said, When he went out from there, knowledge, you did not go in yourselves and you hindered those who were going in. When he went out from there, the experts in the law and the Pharisees began to oppose him bitterly, to ask him hostile questions about many things, plotting against him to catch him in something he might say. The story ends here. Thanks for joining us for today's story. You might like to take a moment to pause and think about what you noticed. Things you liked,

things you didn't like, something the story showed you about Jesus. To read it for yourself, it's in the book of Luke chapter 11. If you can find someone willing to read it and talk about it with you, even better. You've been listening to Stories from the Bible. I'm Jen, and I look forward to sharing more stories with you.