Ep 31 The Necessity of Lowliness (Luke 18)

Hello and welcome to episode 31. Today we’ll be hearing stories from Luke chapter 18.

But before we hear those, what happened in Luke chapter 17?

The stories in Luke 17 happen as Jesus continues his journey towards Jerusalem. Recall from  episodes 22 and 23 that Jesus has told his disciples that he must suffer many things, be rejected by the leaders of the Jewish nation, and killed. The centre of Jewish leadership is the city of Jerusalem. With every step he takes towards it, Jesus is deliberately choosing to die. He is neither running to hide in some foreign country far far away, nor is he amassing an army of zealous followers to fight for him against his enemies. Jesus knows life will never be won for his people if he strives for power and justice. He is completely depending on God his Father to raise him from death and give him glory and vindication.

And Jesus has told his followers that if they want to find life, then they too must follow him in choosing to die. He has warned them that if they try and save their own lives by striving for power and security according to natural human thinking, then they will end up losing their lives forever. What is the point, he’s taught them, of gaining the entire world for a brief flicker of time, only to lose everything for eternity.

This is the granite mindset Jesus is operating from. Knowing the certainty of his Father’s love and power to give him life, he can embrace suffering, rejection and death. His disciples, however, don’t yet share his mindset. They are still struggling with the shifting sands of human wisdom. Their natural desires for safety and power in this world, cause their thoughts to run along conflicting and confusing tracks.

So as Jesus travels towards his death, he teaches his disciples wisdom from heaven. His words, if taken to heart, will help them to stop living for the fleeting emptiness of this world, and instead live for the eternal Kingdom of God.

The first thing Jesus teaches about in Luke chapter 17 is the priority of forgiveness. He says that ‘stumbling blocks are sure to come’. A stumbling block is something that could trip up a disciple in their desire to walk the path of wisdom towards eternal life.

The stumbling that Jesus is concerned to warn his disciples about is unforgiveness.

It is a certain thing that his followers will experience severe temptation to hold grudges against one another. But Jesus commands them to forgive. The danger of getting tripped up by a bitter, unforgiving heart can’t be overstated. Because God is full of mercy towards those who do not deserve it, the sign of someone who is a true child of God, is that they will extend the same kindness towards others that God has shown to them. Someone who is conscious of their own desperate need of God’s forgiveness, expresses the sincerity of their desire by showing the same forgiving mercy towards others that they want to receive from God.

And Jesus reassures his followers that where real hurt has been done to them, they can safely leave their vindication to God. They can let go of their anger, because of His anger. It would be better to have a big rock tied to ones neck and be thrown into the sea than to be punished by God for harming his children. So rather than feeling angry at their enemies, God’s children should pity them and pray for their repentance. This is not easy, in fact, genuine forgiveness feels like death. It’s death to the right to be seen as right, it’s death to the desire to pay someone back for the pain they have inflicted, it’s death to those thoughts of self-righteous hurt that natural pride clamours to feed upon. When someone owes us big time because of what they’ve taken from us, it costs a lot to give that debt up.

Jesus disciples recognise how humanly impossible unlimited forgiveness of others is when they say to him, “Increase our faith!”. The disciples rightly perceive that faith is the fuel of forgiveness. Faith is taking God at his word, believing that God will do as he has promised. Jesus had great faith in God - he was absolutely certain of God’s love for him, and he was sure of God’s power to do everything he had promised. The disciples on the other hand, felt their lack of certainty, they felt crowded by doubts. But Jesus comforts them with the truth that it does not matter how small their faith is, even if it is as tiny as a mustard seed, it will be able to accomplish the impossible. If we feel it is impossible to forgive someone, God will make it possible, if we simply trust that he has the power to change our hearts.

Now what if a follower of Jesus does the hard thing and forgives someone, in obedience to these words. Well, there is something to be watchful for, and Jesus alerts his disciples to it with a ridiculous picture. Imagine a man has a servant, the servant works in the field, then comes into the house expecting to be applauded for his hard work. This is silly. No servant expects to be thanked for simply doing what was his job. With this example, Jesus prepares his followers against the danger of religious self-congratulation. He knows the human tendency towards pride - that is, he knows how prone we are to search inside ourselves to find reasons to be happy. He knows we naturally base our worth on what we do. If we do good things, we think we are worth something, if we do bad things, we think we are worthless. But Jesus teaches his disciples to find their worth not in what they do, but in who God is. He teaches them to look for satisfaction not inwards, but upwards. They can feel safe and happy, not because they have worked hard and earned merit, but because they have a heavenly Father who loves them no matter what. And so when they obey the commands of their heavenly father they do it simply because it is their job. They know that showing forgiveness, no matter how costly it is, is simply the duty of those who have been forgiven.

After this, there is a pause in the teaching, and Luke tells us about ten men with a terrible skin disease who stand at a distance and cry out to Jesus for mercy. Jesus responds to them with a command - he tells them simply ‘Go, and show yourselves to the priests’. People with leprosy never went to the priests. Their skin condition made them unclean according to Jewish law, and they were forbidden from entering the temple. Not only were they cut off from the temple, but they were usually cast out from living inside towns and villages. The only time they could go to the temple was if their skin had been healed - it was the job of the priest to examine the person and declare them no longer unclean. But these men with leprosy believe that Jesus has the power to help them. They don’t see any difference in themselves, yet they turn and start walking in the direction of the priests anyway. And their dependence on Jesus pays off. As they go, they find themselves totally healed of their skin condition. Nine of them continue their walk towards the Jewish temple, but one of them turns back to Jesus, praising God with a loud voice and falling at Jesus’ feet to give him thanks. This man is not a native Jew, but a Samaritan foreigner. The other nine men do not return to Jesus. They are no doubt excited to finally participate in their Jewish religion again. The foreigner, on the other hand, has no religious yearnings to blind him to what has just happened. He immediately sees Jesus as the powerful God who cleansed him of his disease. Not only has his outside skin been made well, but his inner heart has also been restored by recognising that Jesus is the one with the power to give him life.

Chapter 17 ends with Jesus being asked by the Pharisees- the Jewish religious experts - about the timing of the future Kingdom of God. The Jews looked back at their history to the time when King David ruled over a united Israel as a picture of what God would do for them in the future. They looked forward to a time when God’s chosen King, a descendent of David, would rule over God’s people forever. There would be an abundance of peace and joy because all enemies would be permanently conquered. The popular expectation among the Jews was that the future Kingdom of God would look similar to what God had done in the past. A leader would come, he would kill the visible enemies of the Jews, and make Israel into a mighty nation again.

God’s plan, however, did not line up with the popular expectation. In the past God gave Israel a physical kingdom but it did not lead to permanent peace and joy. It did not last because of sin. Remember from episode 2 that sin came into the world when Adam and Eve chose to follow their own hearts instead trusting God’s word. Since then, sin turns every single person into an enemy of God. Even the greatest hero of God’s people, King David, succumbed to it when he took another man’s wife and murdered her husband to cover his tracks. King David, who conquered the physical enemies of God’s people, could not conquer the greatest enemy - his own sin.

The Pharisees and other Jews who looked forward to a kingdom built upon the permanent physical destruction of all God’s enemies did not comprehend that they themselves would also have to be destroyed.

God’s plan was much much bigger and better than they could imagine. The eternal kingdom of God would be built upon the destruction of sin itself. By destroying sin, God could save his people from themselves, and bring them into permanent peace and joy.

So Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees question is ‘The Kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be seen. In fact, it’s already here, right under your noses.’ There will be a time when God’s chosen King comes in splendour to permanently establish a very visible Kingdom, however that time is not yet here. Right now, the Kingdom is present inside the hearts of anyone who trusts and obeys the words of Jesus. When people choose to depend on Jesus, rather than themselves, he begins to rule in their hearts, and he gives them permanent peace and joy. He gives them a peace that does not depend on physically observable circumstances. Those who want to live in the Kingdom of God must not believe or live as though their physical situation will bring them ultimate safety. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.

Today’s stories start here.

Then Jesus told them a parable to show them they should always pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected people. There was also a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but later on he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor have regard for people, yet because this widow keeps on bothering me, I will give her justice, or in the end she will wear me out by her unending pleas.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge says! Won’t God give justice to his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay long to help them? I tell you, he will give them justice speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Jesus also told this parable to some who were confident that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else. “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: extortionists, unrighteous people, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of everything I get.’ The tax collector, however, stood far off and would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am!’ I tell you that this man went down to his home justified rather than the Pharisee. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Now people were even bringing their babies to him for him to touch. But when the disciples saw it, they began to scold those who brought them. But Jesus called for the children, saying, “Let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”

Now a certain leader asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’” The man replied, “I have wholeheartedly obeyed all these laws since my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” But when the man heard this he became very sad, for he was extremely wealthy. When Jesus noticed this, he said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard this said, “Then who can be saved?” He replied, “What is impossible for mere humans is possible for God.” And Peter said, “Look, we have left everything we own to follow you! Then Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, there is no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of God’s kingdom who will not receive many times more in this age—and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Then Jesus took the twelve aside and said to them, “Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; he will be mocked, mistreated, and spat on. They will flog him severely and kill him. Yet on the third day he will rise again.” But the twelve understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what Jesus meant.

As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging. When he heard a crowd going by, he asked what was going on. They told him, “Jesus the Nazarene is passing by.” So he called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front scolded him to get him to be quiet, but he shouted even more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” So Jesus stopped and ordered the beggar to be brought to him. When the man came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He replied, “Lord, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” And immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they too gave praise to God.

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 18. 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.