Today's Reading: Luke 14: 1-11
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Please click this link to read Luke 14: 1-11
Bible Study
This passage is again talking about the Pharisees. About how those Pharisees liked to show off they were more knowledgeable than the others and how they wanted to get the best seat in a banquet. N.T. Wright says:
The real meaning is to be found in the warning against pushing oneself forward in the sight of God. In Jesus' day it was all too easy for the well-off and the legally trained to imagine that they were superior in God's sight to the poor, to those without the opportunity to study, let alone practise, the law.
At the same time, in the world for which Luke was writing, there would be an obvious wider meaning. Within Luke's lifetime thousands of non-Jews had become Christians - had entered, that is, into the dinner party prepared by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Many Jewish Christians, as we know from Acts, had found this difficult, if not impossible, to understand or approve. They were so eager to maintain their own places at the top table that they could not grasp God's great design to stand the world on its head. Pride, notoriously, is the great cloud which blots out the sun of God's generosity: if I reckon that I deserve to be favoured by God, not only do I declare that I don't need his grace, mercy and love, but I imply that those who don't deserve it shouldn't have it.
Jesus spent his whole life breaking through that cloud and bringing the fresh, healing sunshine of God's love to those in its shadow.
So, do you like to show to other people you know more? Do you like to keep on challenging and bugging other people? Do you want to be important and feel bad when you are not being invited to be on the honorable seat of a table? Well, if your answer is YES to these questions then you have caught the Pharisees' virus! You need Jesus to cleanse your virus!
The real meaning is to be found in the warning against pushing oneself forward in the sight of God. In Jesus' day it was all too easy for the well-off and the legally trained to imagine that they were superior in God's sight to the poor, to those without the opportunity to study, let alone practise, the law.
At the same time, in the world for which Luke was writing, there would be an obvious wider meaning. Within Luke's lifetime thousands of non-Jews had become Christians - had entered, that is, into the dinner party prepared by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Many Jewish Christians, as we know from Acts, had found this difficult, if not impossible, to understand or approve. They were so eager to maintain their own places at the top table that they could not grasp God's great design to stand the world on its head. Pride, notoriously, is the great cloud which blots out the sun of God's generosity: if I reckon that I deserve to be favoured by God, not only do I declare that I don't need his grace, mercy and love, but I imply that those who don't deserve it shouldn't have it.
Jesus spent his whole life breaking through that cloud and bringing the fresh, healing sunshine of God's love to those in its shadow.
So, do you like to show to other people you know more? Do you like to keep on challenging and bugging other people? Do you want to be important and feel bad when you are not being invited to be on the honorable seat of a table? Well, if your answer is YES to these questions then you have caught the Pharisees' virus! You need Jesus to cleanse your virus!
Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: The Pharisees' virus!
For so many years I had been a Pharisee! I liked to look down upon people thinking that I was better than others. I liked others to do exactly what I said and I wanted my way to be the only way. I liked to criticize other people especially my superiors...Oh! I caught the Pharisees' virus so bad and for so long! It costs me a lot! Thanks to Jesus for his process of transformation of my whole being! I still have some virus in my blood but with the abiding love of Jesus each day I am more and more not like a Pharisee but a disciple of Christ.
Have you caught the Pharisees' virus? If you have, how are you going to do about that? If you don't, are you sure?
Have you caught the Pharisees' virus? If you have, how are you going to do about that? If you don't, are you sure?
Dear Lord Jesus,
Lead us not to get caught with the Pharisees' virus and be willing to follow you as your true disciples. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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