28 October

Bible in 365 Days

Luke 10-11

Luke 10

The mission of the seventy is recorded only by Luke. They went forth, sent by Jesus. They returned glad in the victories they had wrought in His name. He received them, and declared to them the whole truth concerning the kingdom of evil, in the words, "I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven," and then warned them not to rejoice in their apparent success, but rather in their relationship to that kingdom from which Satan had fallen.

A lawyer asked Him, 'Who is my neighbour?" and the story of the good Samaritan is our Lord's reply to that inquiry. We are arrested by the fact that He completely shifted the ground of the question, and by this reply said, in effect, that the question as to who is a neighbor was not so important as the question to whom was he a neighbor.

The account at the close of this chapter of the visit to the house of Martha and Mary is very full of beauty. In His declaration to Martha, "One thing is needful," He was revealing the supreme thing in life. If we would be strong for service in the strength that prevents distraction and unrest, we must how what it is to find time amid all the duties of life to sit at His feet as disciples.

Luke 11

Watching the Master at prayer, His disciples were inspired with a desire to pray, and requested that they be taught. He responded to them in a fourfold statement. First, He gave them a model. Then He revealed the character of God as He contrasted it with that of the unjust judge. He then gave them the franchise of prayer in the words, "Ask, seek, knock"; and finally revealed the ground of confidence as it existed in the Fatherhood of God.

His casting out of a demon raised criticism by some, to which criticism He replied, "If Satan also is divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand?" adding the tremendous declaration, "He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that is not with Me, scattereth."

This was followed by our Lord's denunciations of the age. He spoke of it as a generation seeking a sign, and thus proving their blindness, of the rulers as punctiliously particular in paltry matters while neglecting judgment and the love of God, of the lawyers as binding ceremonial burdens upon the people that they would - not lift themselves. Thus the blindness of the people is traced back to the blindness and wilfulness of the leaders and teachers. In all the public utterances of our Lord there is much which reveals this same thing, and should cause all those who are called to positions of leadership to realize their great responsibilities.