Luke 6:31-36

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31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. ~ Luke 6:31-36

The Lord Jesus has now separated the twelve disciples from the rest and He is now teaching them about His love, the kind of love that loves enemies. In Luke 6 we have the Sermon on the Mount. It is a sermon about discipleship. Therein, we learn that the distinguishing mark of the disciple of the Lord Jesus is His love for His enemies.

In v.31, we know it as the golden rule, “And just as you want people to treat you, treat them in the same way.”  Just as you want people to treat you, treat them in the same way.

The Golden Rule is singularly a Christian concept. Every other religion in the world teaches a form of the Golden Rule, but it is exclusively Christian.

In v.32-34, the Lord Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.”

Notice the word “sinners.” This is a technical term for an unbeliever. It’s a word referring to those who are outside the family of God and are therefore wicked. When Paul says, “I am the chief of sinners,” he’s using the term to define all sinners. It can also be used to speak of people who are particularly sinful because they have no connection with God. The term "sinners" is used both in the Old Testament and the New Testament to define people who do not belong to God.

Sinners have a certain kind of love, and here it’s laid out.  Sinners, v.32, love those who love them. Sinners, v.33, do good to those who do good to them. Sinners, v.34, lend to sinners in order to receive back the same. Sinners have reciprocal love. Their love is conditioned by how they are treated.

But God's kind of love is very different than that. In fact, “if you love,” v.32 says, “those who love you, what credit is that to you?”  That’s the way sinners love.  And “if you do good only to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? And if you lend to those who from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you?”  The word used for "credit" here is the Greek word "charis." 

What grace do you demonstrate when you love like sinners love? It is the grace of God that sets Him and His followers apart. 

God is kind and merciful, kind in v.35, merciful in v.36. Kind is positive and merciful is negative. Kind means “I give you what you don’t deserve.” Merciful means “I withhold what you do.” The active love of God is kind. He makes the sun rise on the just and the unjust. He makes the rain fall on them.  That’s kindness. He’s kind toward all of us with His compassion, goodness, patience, forbearance, and invitations. And there’s a passive kind of kindness. He’s passive in the sense of His mercy. He withholds judgment. He withholds condemnation. He withholds damnation.

In v.35 the Lord Jesus repeats again this command, “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.”  The very three things He mentions in v.32-34, the Lord Jesus picks back up in v.35. And, if we love His enemies, according to v.35, “Then our reward will be great.”  

Back in v.23, the Lord Jesus brought attention to the fact that there will be a reward. When we love sinners the way sinners are not used to being loved, asking no love in return, we are showing them a love that is God's love, and our reward will be great.

That reward is discovered in v.35, “and you will be children of the Most High.” This means those being loved are going to conclude you’re a child of God. He’s not talking about what God is going to give us. He’s talking about what men are going to think about us. They’re going to say, “He or she is godlike."

The words “Most High,” in v.35, is the New Testament equivalent to the Hebrew El Elyon, or God Most High which means “You’re the sovereign ruler.” Interestingly, the Lord Jesus is called the “Son of the Most High” in Luke 1:32,76.

Further, in v.36 the Lord Jesus added, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  When we love like God, we adorn the gospel of God. We demonstrate that the life of God is in us, and His supernatural ability to love is shown through us.  

So when we are kind, and being good toward our enemies, and being merciful, and withholding judgment from our enemies, we are being like God. As a result, we are identified by them as the children of the Most High God. 

Finally, those who taste God’s grace but refuse to share it are tortured by anger, bitterness and revenge.  But for the one who tastes God’s mercy and gives it to others, the reward is a blessed liberation. The prison door is thrown open and the prisoner is set free. We find the face of God who forgave us in the face of our enemy. Then, our enemy and ourselves are set free.

Luke 6:29-30

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29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. ~ Luke 6:29-30

In today's text, the Lord Jesus makes His love the major distinctive that sets His followers apart from everybody else.  
We discovered four commands in v.27-28. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you. These are things that we initiate with those who treat us unkindly.

Never in the Old Testament did God sanction the idea that people outside the religion of Judaism should be hated. This idea came out of the heretical teachings of the Jewish religious leaders. It didn’t come from God’s Word.

According to Luke 6:29, “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.” This is how the Lord Jesus leads us to demonstrate His love. In fact, if we have not experienced His love for ourselves, we will be unable to fulfill this calling. If we have not gone through the process described in the Beatitudes mentioned in Luke 6:23-26, we will have no proclivity toward this type of behavior. 

In v.29, we read, “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.” In their culture, one was dishonored by being slapped across the face. This was a symbolic humiliation done in front of the synagogue congregation. One of the officials would slap the person across the face as a symbolic action causing humiliation. 

“To turn the other cheek” simply means when you have been humiliated, you must look at it as an opportunity to grow in humility which is highly looked upon by God. When we have been treated with shame, when we have been despised, ridiculed and rejected, this is a great opportunity to be reminded of God's love which broke through our hostility. And, when we are being treated this way, we draw on the Lord's ability to keep on loving those who treat us badly. The M.O. is to not retaliate in like manner, for when we do, we are being defined by the lesser instead of the Lord Himself.  

It was 1982 and I was working in a Jewish owned Pawn Shop in Savannah, Georgia. I had spent the better part of the year making friends with my Jewish coworkers and sharing my faith in the Lord Jesus with them. One man in particular who had worked there for forty years approached me. He did not like the fact that I enjoyed listening to a famous Christian teacher on one of the radios in the pawn shop. When he approached me he slapped me in the face. I must admit, it infuriated me. I was so mad. In my heart I did not react well. I wanted to punch him in his healthy gut but I turned away.

Once we have experienced the love of the Lord Jesus, we will want to be the conduits of His love. We will want to allow the Lord to show His love to our enemies because He cares about the their souls. His love makes us vulnerable, and by its constant availability, His love maintains a constant vulnerability. 

The other cheek simply means we’re going to be humiliated again and again, and we will continue to keep loving our enemies in this way. No matter how many times they hit, we will keep loving them because it’s His love that on display. His love demonstrated in this way speaks of His work being accomplished in our hearts.

Once experienced, His love begins to frame up life for us. We discover a reality that others know nothing of, especially those who know not Him. It is His love that frames up reality in such a way that we increasingly see that the ways of this world are not substantive and real.

By the way, the elderly Jewish man who slapped me came back to me about thirty minutes later and apologized. That was huge for him to do for he was a very proud man. I only hope my actions that day, to resist reacting to his hatred, drove home the message of Christ that I was known to share with him up to that point. He has since passed away. I only hope to see him in heaven.

In the remainder of v.29 we read, “If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them." Many in that day were not wealthy. It was common that people had one outer coat to keep themselves warm and even to use as a blanket at night. 

These early believers were persecuted when their enemies would take their cloak so that they were left without something to warn themselves. The Lord Jesus is saying, "when this happens, do not withhold your shirt from them." It was not their enemies who needed their coat or the shirt. No, they were just trying the reality of the believers beliefs. Often this is why the world treats us wrongly, trying to poke holes in that which we call reality.

We will be able to do these types of things when we remember that they were never really are our enemies. In fact, they are always our mission field. And, like us before we came to the Lord Jesus, they must be loved into His kingdom. Once His love speaks truth into their lives, the type of truth that frees them from themselves and this world, hopefully they will open up to Him.

In v.30 we read, “Give to everyone who asks you." As with all of the previous instructions in the Sermon on the Mount, this is another example of self-denial. Someone approaches you who apparently has a real need, but they’re going to take advantage of your generosity. The Lord Jesus is not describing a professional beggar which we have seen on the dramatic rise in this country over the past few years. The Lord Jesus says, “Give to everyone who asks you."

And then He closes v.30 with, “and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” The world doesn’t know anything about this kind of love. Worldly love says, “I’m going to love you as long as you love me or you don’t harm me. I will love you, but, the day you abuse me, you’re done.” 

His is an astonishing kind of love which is not possible for those person not walking with Him. When we come to the place where we embrace Him through our brokenness, love like this, becomes possible. And, when we experience it, there is no explanation except for the Lord Jesus.

I close with a quote from Tim Keller, "Religion says earn your life. Secular society says create your life. Jesus says, 'My life for your life." 

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Luke 6:27-28

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27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  ~ Luke 6:27-28

Today, we continue our study of the Lord Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Luke’s record of what Jesus said that day near the Sea of Galilee is the same as recorded in Matthew 5-7 which is a much longer treatment of the sermon.

In Luke 6:27 we read, "But to you who are listening I say." Here, the Lord Jesus is addressing those with the ability to hear the voice of God and respond and are subsequently defined by Him. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us ears to hear God, however we can quench His influence.

In Luke 6:27, The Lord Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” People outside the influence of God don’t love their enemies. They hate their enemies. The Jews hated the Romans because the Romans were ungodly. The Romans hated the Jews because they were largely arrogant. The Romans were ungodly because they violated the law and the traditions of Judaism. The Jews were arrogant because they had no personal relationship with God.

The Lord Jesus uses this opportunity to challenge the misinterpretation of the law as it was taught by the Jewish religious leaders. In Matthew 6:44, he said: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor' (found in Leviticus 19:18 among many other OT passages) and hate your enemies'" (found no where in the OT). The Jewish religious leaders took the OT verses out of context to argue that they could join God in his hatred of sinners.

There are Christians today who think their responsibility is to hate abortionists, or to hate Muslims, or to hate homosexuals or anyone who perverts any definition of God. Like the Jews of the Lord Jesus' day, hate today has become a virtue for many who think they are doing the will of God by hating sinners.

Studies have shown that anger causes our blood pressure to rise, and our breathing rate to increase. As a result, this causes a strain on our heart making us more susceptible to a heart attack or to a stroke. It can also trigger headaches and lead to abusive behavior. It can break down our immune system and cause us to be more susceptible to various diseases. Hate destroys us.

Nelson Mandela said it well when he said, "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies."

But here, in v.27, the Lord Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” He is saying, "Do not be defined by the evil people do. Do not be defined by your evil responses to the evil of your enemies. Do not allow them to pull you down to their level and allow sin to win."

This kind of love can only be demonstrated when we declare our spiritual bankruptcy and trust the Lord to love our enemies through us. The way to love an enemy is not to rely on ourselves, but acknowledge that we cannot do it. No, having come to an end of ourselves, we ask Him to love our enemies through us.

Agape love can only be produced by God as He expresses it in our hearts. It is not a matter of feeling, but a matter of the will. This kind of love is based more on actions than words.

Agape was developed almost exclusively in Christian literature to refer to the kind of love that doesn't serve itself, but extends itself for the sake of another. Agape love is really a different category of love that the world has not seen in action until the Lord Jesus came along and infected His followers with it.

The difference between agape and all the other types of loves is agape must be willed. We decide to love. Agape is a non-self-serving love. It’s willing to love someone not deserving or asking for it. It’s a non-emotional love. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because it feels good.

In v.27, the Lord Jesus said our enemies are “those who hate you.” It’s not those we hate. It is those who hate us. We are not to hate anyone.

Then in v.27, the Lord Jesus says, "do good to those who hate you." The language here means to continue to do good or to have a lifestyle of doing good to others. It is easier to do this when we act and live as if we are going to die. And, if we die, everything will be better.

In the beginning of v.28 we read, “Bless those who curse you.” To bless is to speak goodness into their lives, even though the system they had grown up in told them to hate those who hated them.

In the second half of v.28 we read, "pray for those who mistreat you." When we pray for anyone who has hurt us in some way, we discover it is hard to stay angry at them. Prayer leaves the consequences, revenge, and complete justice to God. It’s a transference of our will into God’s hands. By praying for our enemies, God’s Spirit can supernaturally show love and kindness through us that may ultimately change them. That process can also eradicate our fear of our enemies because perfect love casts out fear.

Finally, one of my all time favorite authors, Watchman Nee, tells a story about a Christian who owned a rice paddy next to that of a Communist. The Christian irrigated his rice paddy by pumping water out of a canal. Every day, after the Christian had pumped enough water to fill his paddy, the Communist would come out, remove the boards that kept the water in his neighbor’s paddy, and allow the water to drain into his paddy so he wouldn’t have to pump the water. This continued for some time, until the Christian could not take it any more. He prayed, “Lord, if this keeps up I’m going to lose all my rice, maybe even my field. What can I do?” The Lord began by putting this thought in his mind. The next morning the Christian got up early and started pumping water into his neighbor’s paddy first. Then he replaced the boards and pumped water into his own rice paddy. The result was that both rice paddies became productive and the Communist was softened by his neighbor’s generosity. The two men became friends and eventually the Communist became a believer in Jesus.

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Luke 6:24-26

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23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. 25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. ~ Luke 6:23-26

When rebellion entered mankind's existence, all of mankind became sinners separated from God, alienated from God. We, by nature, have been placed outside of what is really real. We deal with this unreality, this fallen default mode by either resorting to being religious or to continue in our rebellion. In both cases, we are self dependent, and this is at the root of our problem.

Knowing we can not remedy our condition, the Lord Jesus agreed to come to earth to buy mankind back into a personal relationship with God through His death on the cross. When the Lord Jesus came and squared off with death at His cross, He devastated the illusion that we have to perform to gain a personal relationship with God. Through His sacrifice, those who enter into a relationship with God are the people who are overwhelmed with their sinfulness and who cry out to Him for help and believe on the Lord Jesus' sacrifice for God's forgiveness. Those who eventuate in heaven are those who are broken by the reality of their fallen condition, and inability to remedy our spiritual problem.

We learned in Luke 6:20-23 that poverty, hunger, sorrow, and rejection all are blessings in disguise because they all potentially lead us to the blessing of a personal relationship with God. 

In today's text, we learn that one's trust in riches, religion and popularity all lead to a cursed disposition that leads one further and further away from God. Need is not something we would naturally prescribe for ourselves, yet it is our need that causes us to entertain the real questions of our existence.

In Luke 6:20-26, the Lord Jesus provides a paradox, a paradox between blessing and cursing. In v.23, we read, “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.” For those who embrace their brokenness and the gospel of Jesus Christ, there is reason to leap for joy because we will be on the winning side in the end, despite the fact that for some time we will be hated by the world.

The four blessings in v.20-23 are contrasted with the four woes in v.24-26. If our lives are filled with just hoarding wealth and going from one entertainment thing to another entertainment thing, and it's all about pleasure and entertainment, these woes will be our experience.

On the other hand, in v.24-26, for those who resist the gospel of Jesus Christ, for those who reject the free gift of God of forgiveness, for those being defined by the blessings of this world, there awaits a series of woes.

In v.24 we read, "But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort." The religious leaders who hounded the Lord Jesus were all rich and their sole ambition was to attain status, fame and riches. They received what they went after and were now experiencing its comfort in full. Unfortunately, their comfort produced an emptiness of soul and spirit, with no hope of hope. 

In v.25 we read, "Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry." The gluttons of the day will be so filled that all desire for food will be lost. They will spend eternity hungering for satisfaction and meaning, but will remain in a state of spiritual starvation.

In v.26 we read, "Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets." The assumption in this verse is speaking what the crowds want to hear in contrast to the truth. We should be forewarned that the crowds need to hear the truth and sometimes they will not like us for that message. 

In Luke 6:20-26 we are given a contrast between self dependence and God dependence. The rich have a tendency to trust in their money and its influence to solve their problems. They also can "enjoy" the worldly pleasures at their leisure, and often do. God is not usually in their thinking. When this is the case, they have been dumped by a false narrative which does not deliver in the end.

The poor have no such options, thus they are more likely to seek out God and His provision. Of course, there is no guarantee here. Money comes and goes but God's love and His provision is there at all times, and in all places! Depending on Him to provide in this world is a means to an end, and the end is realizing a personal relationship with the God of all creation. In fact, the only life worth living is found in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

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Luke 6:20-23

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20 Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. ~ Luke 6:20-23


Luke 6:20-49 records the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew's gospel account, we are given more words of the Lord Jesus than what we have here from Luke. Now, Luke provides a more shorter version of the sermon, though it follows exactly the same pattern. In today's text, we are given a shortened version of the beatitudes. In it is provided a description of the process of a changed heart.

In v.20 we read, “Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” The world and all its thinking is exactly opposite the truth. The word “blessed” used here by the Lord Jesus means “most favored.”

Matthew puts it this way, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Poverty in itself is not a blessing. He’s not talking about material poverty.  He’s not talking about economics. God doesn’t bless people just because they’re poor. He’s talking about spiritual poverty. 

We are all broken! But, do we own that brokenness. These poor in spirit understand their bankrupt condition before God. The most wonderful thing about our sinfulness is that it makes us so desperate that all we want is real. We understand that we have absolutely no resources with which to buy God’s favor. We understand that salvation is not by works, good deeds, righteous acts, ceremonies, rituals, religious thoughts, feelings.

The remainder of v.20 reads, “For yours is the Kingdom of God.” We become heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ, possessors of everything in His Kingdom, including eternal life, forgiveness, grace, mercy, joy, hope, security, comfort, peace, love, righteousness, all that is ours. 

In the future millennial reign of Christ, we will reign in the earthy Kingdom of Christ for a thousand years. And beyond that, we will enjoy all of the riches of the eternal Kingdom in the new heaven and the new earth. The millennial and eternity are yet to come, but the Kingdom is ours now.

In the beginning of v.21 we read, “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.” This hunger is a product of our spiritual poverty. It is our desperation that creates in us an intense desire for righteousness. Out of spiritual bankruptcy, we conclude, "I am a beggar and I can not earn my salvation, but I hunger for righteousness or a right relationship with God.” 

So the blessed are those who have a consuming longing for a relationship with God. We want to be right with God. We want fellowship with God. We want eternal life.

The promise of this hunger is that “you will be satisfied.”  Satisfied means to be fulfilled. The idea is to be completely satiated with God, His way of thinking and His way of living.

According to the remainder of v.21, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” Saddened by our condition  of spiritual bankruptcy and the absence of righteousness, we weep. This hopeless condition produces an earnestness in us with reference to God. Humility is the product and this is laughable. This is the laughter of the forgiven. This is the laughter of the unburdened. This is the laughter of the free.  

In v.22 we read, “Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.” People do not like, they even hate what they do not understand. And so, since we reflect the presence of the Lord Jesus through our broken lives, those in the grips of the enemy hate us. 

It is our brokenness that prepares us for a personal relationship with God and others. We naturally think that we will not have a relationship with God until we are better. But this is not true. Our relationship with God begins when we invite Him into our lives. 

In reality, all of us are incomplete, we all need God to function, and it is this admitting that we need help and receiving the free gift from Him that changes everything. This enables us to love ourselves for the broken people we are. And, once we have received God's presence into our lives, we are enabled to love others for the broken and flawed people that they are. 

Accepting our own spiritual brokenness and dependency upon God is essential to participating in this beautiful reciprocal gift that we call life. 

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Luke 6:12-19

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12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13 When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: 14 Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, 15 Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.17 He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, 18 who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, 19 and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all. ~ Luke 6:12-19

Although the religious leaders are increasingly wanting to kill the Lord Jesus, in Luke 6:12, we read, "One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God." The Lord Jesus was feeling the heat of His coming death. It is less than two years away and He will be executed, and after His execution He will rise from the dead. It is very instructive, given the context, the Lord Jesus spent the night in prayer. He did this regularly because He was dependent upon the presence and the power of His Father.

It is no different for you and me. We are at our best when we are most aware that we are utterly dependent upon Him for our lives and ministry. Most believe we are at our best when we seem to be sinning less. That is not reality, give up on that idea. No, we are at our best when we are most aware of Him in our lives. He is the key to it all.

On the heels of spending the whole night in prayer, the Lord Jesus chooses twelve key men who will carry out the ministry of the proclamation of His gospel after He has ascended to the Father. The lesson? When making decisions, we must be ardent in seeking the face of the Lord.

The Lord Jesus chose common men to be His disciples. Four of them were fishermen. One of them was a tax collector.  One of them was money hungry who turned out to be a betrayer.  We don't know the occupations of the rest of them, but they were common folk.

The reality of the moment drove the Lord Jesus into the mountains to pray to God all night. And the Lord obviously directs the Lord Jesus to choose the twelve. E.M. Bounds once said, "Prayer makes a godly man, and puts within him the mind of Christ, the mind of humility, of self-surrender, of service, of pity, and of prayer. If we really pray, we will become more like God, or else we will quit praying."

If you are like me, you struggle with whether your prayers are effective, until we recognize that the success of our prayer life is not in the one praying them but in the one answering them. The prayers of the Lord Jesus were all perfectly consistent with the mind and will of God for He Himself was also God.  And therein do we see again the incredible mystery of His humanity and His deity brought together.

In v.13 we read, "When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles."

In ancient times, both in the Greek culture and the Jewish culture when there was a prominent rabbi or a prominent orator, prominent philosopher, prominent teacher, they would attract people. In those days they would follow him around and typically they were itinerant teachers who went from place to place and taught the way that the Lord Jesus did and they would collect followers.

So, He calls all the disciples together, in v.13 the Lord Jesus chose twelve among many, perhaps as many as five hundred followers.

At the end of the book of Revelation we have a description of heaven and we have a description of the heavenly Jerusalem, the holy city. According to Revelation 21:12-14, this city has around it a high wall, great and high wall, twelve gates and on the top of the gates is written the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. You have the children of Jacob, the twelve sons of Jacob that identify the twelve tribes and all their names are on the tops of the gates.

In v.14, and the wall of the city, apparently at the same point, had twelve foundation stones and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Not only are they going to reign in the Millennial Kingdom, but they're going to be immortalized eternally in the foundation. Their name is going to be emblazoned in the gold foundations of the holy city, the New Jerusalem, forever and ever and ever. 

In v.13 we read, "...and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles." The Greek verb used here means "to send." These are sent ones. “Apostle” identifyies the twelve as the official representatives of the Lord Jesus.

Mark 3 records this same event and he adds, "And He appointed twelve that they might be with Him." There is a two-step process here before they could be sent out to preach. It was absolutely critical that they be with the Lord Jesus before they were sent out. This was critical to their training.  

It isn't until Luke 9 that the Lord Jesus calls the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. He literally delegated to them His miracle power. The next step, He gives them miracle power, power to cast out demons. And the last step, He will send them out. 

Up to this point, the Lord Jesus was speaking to huge crowds but now that He has identified the twelve, He will teach them more exclusively and they will go out to preach the gospel and then come back. 

Luke mentions the twelve six times in his gospel and about thirty times in the book of Acts because their role is so central not only to the ministry of the gospel, but also to the founding of the church as he records it in the book of Acts.

Speaking of the twelve in Acts 4 the people said about them, they are uneducated and unskilled. But the people also said, in the same passage, it was obvious they had been with Jesus. They had been with the Lord Jesus and they had His message, His presence and His power. 

Courage rules when we are close to God and fear rules when we are distant from God. Spend enough time with the Lord Jesus and His presence will begin to take over our lives to the point that others recognize Him through us.

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Luke 6:6-11

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6 On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there. 9 Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 11 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus. ~ Luke 6:6-11

In Luke 6 the conflict between the teachings of the Lord Jesus and those of the Jewish religious leaders continues. The relentless commitment of the Lord Jesus to the truth continues. The Jewish religious leaders, on the other hand, had made Judaism into a religion where they taught that we can earn God's favor through our good choices. At the heart of this was the observance of the Sabbath.

The Lord Jesus did not observe the Sabbath as the Jewish religious leaders did. He observed the Sabbath in the way He intended it to be observed form the beginning. And, He saw the Sabbath observance of the Jewish religious leaders as unbiblical, and the focal point of their false religion.

The principle of rest behind the fourth command gives us an opportunity to be restored in our bodies, souls and spirits. There really aren't a lot of things we are not supposed to do on the Sabbath but work. God meant the Sabbath as a time for restoration, recreation, worship, and fellowship.

But the Rabbis through the centuries had embellished that simple command of rest with all kinds of rituals, regulations  and laws. In fact, they had made it the worst day of the week. Most, in that day, viewed the Sabbath as the most difficult and most wearying day of the week because the religious leaders had added to it so many prescriptions that had to be observed.

In v.6-11 we see that the Lord Jesus paid absolutely no attention to the rules, rituals, and regulations of the Jewish religious leaders. In John 5:18 John writes, "For this cause the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him because He was not only breaking the Sabbath but was also calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God."

The combination of supposed Sabbath violation and calling Himself Lord and God infuriated the religious leaders and led to His execution. This, of course, played right into the hand of the Lord Jesus because He came to earth to redeem mankind through His cross.

In Luke 6:6 we read, "It came about on another Sabbath." Here, again, Luke is tracing the movements of the Lord Jesus on another Sabbath because this was the primary way He challenged the religion of the Jewish religious leaders.

At this point, the Lord Jesus is probably still in Galilee. As indicated in v.6, He is teaching in the synagogue the gospel, the good news that the poor, the prisoner, the blind, and the oppressed could be forgiven and set free from all their guilt and shame. This freedom yields a meaningful life through a personal relationship with God and the hope of eternal life.

At the end of v.6, we read, "And a man was there whose right hand was shriveled." Luke is the only Gospel writer who identifies the man's right hand. The word "shriveled" describes a hand that had atrophied from paralysis.

In v.7 we read, "The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath." The religious leaders missed the true identity of the Lord Jesus because they were watching Him with no objectivity. They did this because they, at some point, had begun defining themselves and their world for themselves. Had they followed God's definitions, they would have known the Lord Jesus as Messiah from the get go.

In v.8 we read, "But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there." The Lord Jesus always knows what is in the mind of all people because He's God and He has omniscience.

At this point the Lord Jesus stops teaching, having read the minds of the religious leaders, and He said to the man with the withered hand, "Get up and stand in front of everyone." This was a man who wasn't on the brink of death, he could have waited till the next day, Sunday, but the Lord Jesus seized the moment to rattle the cage of the hard hearted on hand. This man was an object lesson to the paralyzed hearts of the religious.

Then the Lord Jesus said to the religious leaders in v.9, "I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?" The Lord Jesus always asks the question that can't be answered. The religious leaders can't answer the question. If they say, "It's lawful to help someone," then they would affirm that the Lord Jesus could heal the man and He wouldn't violate the Sabbath and they've got no accusation because they've just given Him official authorization.

On the other hand, if they say, "Well no, it's lawful to do evil and destroy somebody," they have just revealed their merciless, wicked hearts and they can't do that either. The Lord Jesus pretty much made a career out of asking them questions they could never answer. Either they had to affirm Jesus, or condemn themselves.

In v.10, the Lord Jesus heals the man after asking him to stretch out his hand. And, in v.11 the religious leaders embrace their paralysis even more. Their's was a rules based religion, and the Lord Jesus is trying to get them to see that with God, the relationship is the goal. Not at the expense of the truth, but His goal is always to reach the paralyzed heart of the sinner trapped by the faulty definitions of the evil one.

When we get legalistic about the law, in our zeal to obey God, we sometimes blindly accomplish exactly the opposite of what God intends. When we start focusing on the law, we miss the people that the law was supposed to help. You see, the law was never intended to be an end in itself, the law was only given as a guideline to help show love to God and to one another.

Christianity is not about our our ability to measure up to the law, it's about our intimacy with God and with one another. Once we get that right, we begin to realize that we can live with our imperfections, flaws, and brokenness because God lives with these in us. These are the things that go into the ingredients of spirituality. 
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Luke 6:1-5

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1 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” 3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” ~ Luke 6:1-5


When God gave the Ten Commandments, He needed only five English words to condemn adultery; four to denounce thievery and murder.  But when He came to the topic of rest, HE SAID THIS ...


“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath Day of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work; you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servants, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day…” (Exodus 20:8-11).

Luke 6 gets to the heart of the growing conflict between the Jewish religious leaders and the Lord Jesus. At the heart of it surrounds the Sabbath, because Judaism's anchor was the Sabbath observance.

In our text for today, the Lord Jesus is addressing the self-righteousness of these religious leaders. Their actions were perpetuating the idea that we can earn our salvation by our good works, particularly observance of the regulations of the Sabbath. They taught that if we do all the Sabbath stuff, we will have earned our righteousness.

The religious leaders were wrong about the Sabbath and THE LORD Jesus was concerned about the truth. Through His actions in today's text, He was forcing people to choose between the truth and the spiritual pride and self-righteousness of the religious leaders. 

In v.1 we read, "One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels.” 

The fourth of the Ten Commandments is the observance of the Sabbath. On this day we are told to take a day off, refresh your body, refresh your spirit, refresh your soul. Although God rested from His creation on the seventh day in Genesis, He didn't command man to do that until the law of Moses.  

The Pharisees had added a list of some 39 principle works to the law which were forbidden on the Sabbath, including ordinary household chores and the healing of the sick. You could not carry a bed, even if you had just been healed by Jesus and he asked you to pick up your bed and walk (John 5). Rubbing grain between one's hands was considered work. According to rabbinic tradition, "picking" and "rubbing" were tantamount to reaping, threshing, winnowing and preparing food, and thus a capital offense punishable by stoning. Thus, the Sabbath had become a burden, creating fear in the people's hearts. 

The command to observe the Sabbath was ceremonial, not moral and thus it is not repeated in the New Testament because it wasn't a part of moral law. 

It is wise to take a day off, and recuperate. But along the line, the Jews began to look for ways that they could earn their salvation with God by filling that day with all kinds of rules and regulations. This is the reason there was such conflict between the teachings of the religious and the teachings of God.

God gave the Sabbath to be a day of rest, but the religious leaders made it a day that is a burden. This is why the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-29, "28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

In today's text we learn "the Lord Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels." Harvest was near, the fields were full of grain. The fields were laid out in long narrow strips and between them, between the rows, were paths and that's how people went places.

In v.2, we read, "Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?" The religious leaders were desperate to find the Lord Jesus guilty of sin.

In v.3 the Lord Jesus responded by saying, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?"

In Leviticus 24:5-9 God gave guidelines for the tabernacle. God wanted in the tabernacle a golden table. And on the golden table was the showbread, a reminder of the fact that God is our provider. Every week the old bread that was removed and was eaten only by the priests because it has been consecrated to God.

According to 1 Samuel 21:1-6 David is being chased by Saul and he is running for his life from a place called Gibeah. He's got a few guys with him. They come down to a place called Nob which is a mile outside Jerusalem where the tabernacle was located. David gets down there and he and his men are hungry. David goes to the tabernacle and asks the priest for the five loaves of bread. And, the priest gave him consecrated bread.

The message of mercy and compassion is far more important than ceremony and ritual. In fact, in Jesus' day, the whole Sabbath system had become oppressive, lacking compassion, grace, and kindness.  

David was allowed to violate a divine law to fulfill the truest law of mercy. Certainly Jesus and His disciples could supersede a human law to fulfill the true law of mercy.  

We read in v.5: "Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." The Lord Jesus is the author and great interpreter of God's law because He is it's fulfillment in every way.

In Mark 2:27 the Lord Jesus tells us, "Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man." We weren't designed to somehow conform to some impossible rules, but rather we are designed for relationship with God. This was the point of the Law. The Sabbath day was made for our benefit, for our blessing, joy, fulfillment, and rest.

The late Mike Yaconelli had some great words on the subject of the rest. He said, “Rest is a decision we make. Rest is choosing to do nothing when we have too much to do, slowing down when we feel pressure to go faster, stopping instead of starting. Rest is listening to our weariness and responding to our tiredness, not to what is making us tired. Rest is what happens when we say one simple word: "No!" Rest is the ultimate humiliation because in order to rest, we must admit we are not necessary, that the world can get along without us, that God's work does not depend on us. Once we understand how unnecessary we are, only then might we find the right reasons to say yes. Only then might we find the right reasons to decide to be with Jesus instead of working for him. Only then might we have the courage to take a nap with Jesus.”

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Luke 5:33-39

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33 They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.” 34 Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.” 36 He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’” ~ Luke 5:33-39

The gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of forgiveness through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, is unique. It is incompatible with any and all other religious belief. It stands alone. Grace is God's idea, the God of the Bible, that is. The idea that the Christian gospel can mix with or blend with any other religious system in any way is absolutely wrong. 

This is clear in our text for today and it explains why there was such an ongoing conflict between the religious leaders of Judaism and the Lord Jesus. The hostility from the religious leaders was based upon the fact that Jesus came with a gospel that totally replaced the religion of Judaism.

The religious leaders were self-righteous. This erroneous posture caused them to disassociate themselves from all people that they deemed unclean. They didn't soil themselves by going into a Gentile house or hanging around with tax collectors, and prostitutes. The Lord Jesus, on the other hand, associated with them all the time. He was known as "the friend of sinners and tax collectors,” “the friend of drunkards," because those were the kind of people He came to redeem.

In v.33 we read, "They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking." 

The religious leaders were questioning the spirituality of the followers of the Lord Jesus. They wrongly equated spirituality with the good that a human can do.

The religious leaders espoused a routine of prayers and fasting which were of their own invention. Only one time in the entire Old Testament does God command fasting. It is found in Leviticus 16:29-31. And, the fasting was a fasting of sorrow over their sin. At some point, the Jews decided that fasting was spiritual, so they invented routine fasts and prayers. These were not commanded by God.

According to v.34, the Lord Jesus said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?" Weddings often lasted seven days. And, fasting was out of place at a wedding. Fasting was linked with sorrowful prayer, and it was to be done on the Day of Atonement, and it was an expression of sorrow over sin. It was out of place.

It would have been completely ridiculous for Jesus' disciples to fast and mourn when the long-awaited Messiah was in their presence. And again He just shows how completely out of touch the religious leaders were with reality. 

Then the Lord Jesus adds in v.35, "But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast." For the disciples of the Lord Jesus, in the very near future the joy was going to end because the bridegroom was to be taken from them. This is the first reference we have in Luke's gospel by the Lord Jesus to His death.

We read in v.36-39, "36 He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’” 

The Lord Jesus came to provide us with a complete break from religion, or man's attempts to earn the favor of God. In order to get His point across, the Lord Jesus uses these illustrations of the patch and the wineskins. Through these illustration found here in v.34-39 He is saying, "The Gospel of Grace is not compatible with what you Jews had made of Judaism. And for those who aren't willing to come out of their false religions to the gospel, there is no hope."

The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the good news that there is hope for even the worst of sinners. This is His guarantee of forgiveness, His guarantee of reconciliation and His guarantee of holiness and wholeness. Let the hungry and the thirsty come. Let anyone who desires the gift of life receive it without a price.

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