Tag Archives: Luke

How Great a Debtor

Jesus was invited to dine with a Pharisee. Perhaps surprisingly, he accepted. He who said that he came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10) would presumably have plenty to seek and save over supper. But as the party proceeded, it was unexpectedly crashed, by a woman known not by name but by sin. Luke records neither.

The Veil of Unbelief

It is not your heritage, your family, your works, or your best intentions that will make you right with God. We are saved only by God’s grace alone through faith alone. According to his sovereign election, he first brings us to life by the power of his Holy Spirit. Then leads us to repentance and gives us the faith to believe. And it is by faith alone that we become children of God, adopted heirs of the kingdom, to the glory of God alone.

A Time for Every Matter

Reminding us that Luke’s orderly account to Theophilus was originally written as one, long narrative, our passage begins today with the words, “After this,” tying the passage to the previous. Before, Jesus was teaching, and the crowds grew larger and larger. Jesus witnessed the heroic efforts of a paralyzed man’s friends. Jesus witnessed faith and forgave sins. Jesus confronted the unbelief of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus healed the paralyzed man, commanding him, “rise, pick up your bed and go home,” and “amazement seized [the crowd] and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today’” (Luke 5:17-26). All of this was before, but after this, Jesus went and found a tax collector named Levi and said, “Follow me.” And he did.

The Authority of the Word

Just as Jesus defeated the devil’s temptations in the desert with the Word of God, so we endure the devil’s rage and stand against his schemes, which don’t typically come at us in the form of demons in the middle of a Jewish synagogue but through the ways of the world, the lies of our sinful flesh, and the devil’s distortion of truth.

Gloria in Excelsis Deo

Luke tells us that it was neither leaders of church nor rulers of state who received the angelic announcement but shepherds in a field near Bethlehem, “keeping watch over their flock by night” (2:8). Who are these shepherds? What are their names? We do not know. They are remembered not for who they are but of whom they hear and who they will worship. Their identity is revealed only in the revelation of God to them of the incarnation of the Son of God.

The Magnificat

After the angel Gabriel appeared to the virgin Mary, telling her of God’s favor that she would conceive, bear a son, and name him Jesus, she traveled to visit her elderly relatives, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who Mary learned was also with child. Upon Mary’s arrival, Elizabeth’s son, John, six months in her womb jumped for joy, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, blessing the mother of her Lord. And in that moment, following Elizabeth’s exhortation and her son’s jubilation, Mary breaks out in song, a Spirit-filled, Scripture-saturated song of praise. Traditionally called the Magnificat,…

The Perfect Purpose of God

Proverbs says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Prov. 16:33). And so, Zechariah’s lot is chosen by chance by God, sending him in sacred service into the sanctuary. Inside he burns incense; outside the people pray. And into this ordinary picture of Old Covenant worship, the extraordinary is introduced.