Category Archive: Bible – NT – Luke
The Catholicity of Jesus
Was there ever anyone with more integrity, and who made greater demands, than Jesus Christ? Yet look at the catholicity of His practice: He ate with publicans, harlots, and sinners, and He took nursing infants into His arms and thus to Himself. Who complained about all this? The Pharisees.
How could Jesus, the spotless Son of God, associate with such evil people? Simple: They were (a) members of the visible church, even though that church was borderline apostate (run by Sadducees and Pharisees). They were (b) not excommunicate from that visible church. They were (c) willing to listen to what He had to say.
Now, of course, after they listened for a while, most of them departed, not willing to persevere. They excommunicated themselves. But initially, they were welcomed according to the catholic principle we have outlined.
Notice that Jesus ate and drank with them. It requires a clever bit of nominalism to miss the sacramental implications of this. Pharisees, beware! — James B. Jordan, The Sociology of the Church, 15.
Transfiguration and the Lord’s Day Service
The story of the Mount of Transfiguration tracks, to some degree, with what happens in the Lord’s Day service.
Jesus ascends a high mountain, which in the Bible is often associated with drawing near to meet with God (Mount Eden, Mount Sinai, Mount Zion, Mount Moriah). In every offering, the animal dies and then ascends the mountain and goes up to God in smoke. Hebrews 13 tells us that we have come to the heavenly Mount Zion.
That’s what’s happening in worship. We gather with the church all over the world on the heavenly Mount Zion. We ascend together into heaven. And on the mountain, we read the Law and the Prophets, the whole of the Scriptures, and they all point us to Jesus.
Here, we see Jesus in all His glory. Here, we hear the heavenly voice declaring: “This is my beloved Son. Hear Him!” Here, our ears are trained and opened to listen to Jesus. And here we are transfigured, from glory to glory, as we eat the bread which is Jesus’ body *together with one another* and become more and more one body with Him.
But we can’t stay. Moses has to go down the mountain to Israel, his face shining with God’s glory. Jesus and the disciples have to go down the mountain to a demon-possessed boy who needs help. We have to go down the mountain, out to the world, like the rivers from Eden, like the waters flowing from the temple, like the disciples after the transfiguration, flowing out to transform the world, not with programs and theories but with the gospel, with the proclamation of Jesus alone whom we have learned to hear.
“Hear Him”
Peter has the spiritual insight, apparently, to recognize Moses and Elijah when they appear at Jesus’ transfiguration. And yet he blurts out the wrong thing. And when the Glory Cloud surrounds them and the Voice of God is heard, it says to Peter and to all: “Hear Him.” That is, hear Jesus.
And you, religious enthusiasts, are you listening? Mystical souls, impetuous natures, naive children, are you? You, worshippers of spontaneity, gropers-about in your own nebulosity, do you hear the voice from the clouds? Hear Him! That extra-sensuous insight, the immediacy of knowledge by which Peter at once recognized heaven-sent guests — perhaps you have often wanted that. But you must hasten to the Word. The Word is more than Peter’s intuition. You are jealous of his impromptu utterance, are you? You thought that mood of transporting fear and astonishment the best possible for receptivity to heaven’s verities? Hear the voice from the cloud. You must go back to the Word (Klaas Schilder, Christ in His Suffering).
Simon the Zealous
I’ve sometimes heard that one of Jesus’ disciples was a Zealot, presumably a former Zealot who, now that he was follow Jesus, had given up his desire to commit violence. Even N. T. Wright says, in one passage, that the name of “Simon the Zealot” (Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13) “probably indicates known revolutionary tendencies” (NTPG, 174n33).
But it turns out that that’s not true (or at least, it’s highly unlikely). Yes, he’s called “Simon the Zealot.” But that title doesn’t mean he was part of a party called “Zealots.” To the best of our historical knowledge, that party didn’t exist or bear that name until after Jesus’ time.
Most likely, then, Simon wasn’t a member of some party in Israel that was inclined toward violence toward Romans or compromising Jews. What Simon was, it seems, was zealous, and that’s not a description of his life before following Jesus; that’s how he was as a follower of Jesus. He was zealous, and that was a good thing.
Tertullian in the Archives
While wrestling with the mysterious reference to the census under Quirinius in Luke 2, Jakob van Bruggen points out something that Tertullian says that suggests that he may have done some research in the Imperial Archives in Rome:
In 202, he visited Rome himself, and from his writings it appears that as a jurist he was familiar with the districts of the city where the Aerarium and the Tabelarium are found, in which the archives were kept…. In the fourth volume of his book against Marcion, written after this visit to Rome, he says in passing that “the Roman archives preserve the census of Augustus as a very reliable testimony to the birth of the Lord” (Adv. Marcionem IV.7.7). It is very striking that later on in his book he returns to this point and provides more details: “But it is also certain that under Augustus censuses were held in Judea by Sentius Saturninus: in these censuses one could verify his humanity” (IV.19.10). Even if one … is of the opinion that the plural censuses here makes us think of a number of censuses in which one could verify not so much the year of His birth as the true humanity of the (registered) Jesus, it is still remarkable with how much confidence Tertillian speaks about the presence of reports about censuses (Lukas, 72-73; my translation).
Note, too, that Tertullian talks about censuses “held in Judea by Sentius Saturninus” (who may have been the legate in charge of the censuses, so that Tertillian’s use of his name doesn’t conflict with Luke’s reference to Quirinius). Where did he come up with that name? Is it possible that he found it, digging in the Roman census archives, where he found not just Augustus’s census but also others — and maybe even some with Jesus bar Joseph from Nazareth registered? No, we can’t be sure. But it makes one wonder….
Sons of Thunder
Everything I wrote about the characterization of Peter goes double for the characterization of James and John, who seem to be taken as a couple of hotheads on the basis of one — count it: one — incident in which they asked Jesus if he wanted them to call down fire on an inhospitable Samaritan village (Luke 9:54).
Oh, yes. There’s also the name Jesus gives them: “Boanerges, that is, sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17). Some people immediately link that name up with the later event in Luke 9:54 and say, “See? That’s why Jesus gave them that name. They were rash and impetuous and hotheaded.” And since Luke 9 happened after Mark 3, they have to add either the claim that Jesus foresaw that they would say what they did in Luke 9 and named them on the basis of that foresight or the claim that the behavior exhibited in Luke 9 was characteristic so that they were already displaying that sort of hotheadedness at the time Jesus named them.
But there’s no reason at all to see Luke 9 as the basis of the name “Sons of Thunder.” In fact, there is no reason to take “Sons of Thunder” negatively at all, let alone to understand it as a reference to rashness or hotheadedness. Going further, there is no reason to take that name as referring to anything in James and John’s character at the time that Jesus named them.
Jesus gives new names to only three of his disciples and he does so at the same time. Simon he names Peter, not because Simon was already such a solid rock but because Jesus intended to make him into a rock who would be a foundation stone for the church. Just as by changing Abram’s name to Abraham and changing Sarai’s name to Sarah, Yahweh was making them into new people, the parents of the child of the promise, so by naming Simon “Rock” Jesus was making him into a rock, revealing in the name the plan he had for Simon.
But if that’s true of Simon’s new name, then the parallel suggests that it’s also true with James and John’s new name. “Sons of Thunder” is not a description of who they already were, nor is it a description of some foolishness or wickedness in their character that Jesus would have to change. Rather, it’s a description of who Jesus was going to make them to be.
What the name exactly means is disputed by commentators, but many associate it with God’s thunderous voice and with his judgment (Ex 9:23, 28, 29, 33, 34; 19:16; 20:18; 1 Sam 2:10; 7:10; 12:17, 18; 22:14; Job 26:14; 36:29, 33; 37:2, 4, 5; 40:9; Ps 18:13; 29:3; 77:18; 81:7; 104:7; Isa 29:6; Ezek 3:12, 13; John 12:29; Rev 4:5; 10: 3, 4 [this Angel is Jesus]; 11:19; 14:2). So it seems possible that Jesus is identifying James and John as two witnesses whose speech will be thunderous like God’s speech and will administer God’s judgment, for salvation for his people but destruction for his enemies.
That said, what James and John suggest in Luke 9 — fire from heaven, like lightning associated with thunder — could be seen as a perversion of their name. Just as Simon is supposed to be a rock, but is anything but when he rebukes Jesus, so James and John are supposed to be sons of thunder but are in danger of abusing their calling. Luke 9 is not the time and place for that sort of judgment to come from the sons of thunder, and James and John need to learn from Jesus the right way of responding — and the right time and to call down God’s fire from heaven.
Lampstand
Something interesting from Peter Leithart:
In Luke 8:16-18, Jesus says that a lamp is made to be set on a lampstand. In context, He is talking about the Word that He preaches, and the fact that it both illuminates and exposes. A light on the lampstand means that “nothing is hidden that shall not become evident, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light†(v. 17). I suspect that there is some allusion here to the most famous lampstand in Scripture, the tabernacle menorah (Exodus 25). The lamp was set up to shed light in the holy place, but in a real sense the lamp was covered over in a container and put under a basket (the tabernacle). It was hidden. But nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed, and the light of the menorah is going to shine out once Jesus has torn the temple veil. There’s a link here with Jesus’ claim that He brings judgment on earth: Jesus came to expose things to the light, so that nothing can hide in dark corners anymore.
Who Calls the Tune?
An exhortation from Peter Leithart in connection with a sermon on Luke 7:
The word of God always divides. It always evokes hostility as well as faith. That is what Jesus says about John’s preaching and ministry in our sermon text this morning, and it was also true of Jesus’ preaching. Both John and Jesus divided Israel by their words, by the sharp sword of their mouths. We can see it right here in the text: When Jesus commends John’s ministry, part of the crowd, the people and tax-gatherers, justify God; the other part of the crowd, the Pharisees and lawyers, the churchmen, show that they rejected the will of God for them.
One of the reasons the word of God evokes hostility and opposition is that true prophets and true believers do not respond to the tempo or tune of the times. Jesus tells a little parable about the Pharisees and lawyers who did not accept John’s baptism. The men of this generation, He said, are like children playing in the streets, who call out different tunes to one another. And they accuse John and Jesus of not keeping in step with their music. They called for dance music when John appeared, but he would only talk about repentance and judgment. Now they are in the mood for a funeral dirge, and Jesus does nothing but eat and drink with tax gatherers and sinners. Neither of these prophets was willing to follow the lead of the “men of this generation,†and so, eventually, the men of this generation killed them.
There are always people outside the church who want to dictate what the church says and determine how Christians should live. And there are false or misguided teachers in the church who want to dictate the tune. These tunes are played on every possible media outlet — in popular music, in TV sitcoms, in magazines and books. These tunes are institutionalized in Supreme Court decisions and local toleration ordinances. And these tunes are called out by those who are closer to you — friends and sometimes members of your own family.
Wherever these tunes come from, stop your ears. The word of God should call our tune. There is a time to dance and a time to mourn, but we determine which to do by listening to Jesus. That means we will encounter the opposition and hatred of the world, but that is the only way to be a disciple.
Jesus in the Manger
I know that some people seem to read through every blog in their blogroll daily or even weekly, checking for new entries and reading each one in full. I don’t. When I do check a blog in my list and see that there’s a new entry, I often do little more than glance at it. I simply haven’t had the time to read each one carefully.
But some blogs repay more study than others, and so I’m now making a point to go back and read each entry in them. Eventually, I may catch up so that I can read each new entry as it gets posted, but right now, I’m a few years behind. What that means is that I’ll occasionally point you to some entry from a few years back. Maybe you read it already way back then or maybe you didn’t, but I didn’t, and so the thought in it is new to me.
In my opinion, the blog with the highest level of important content out there is Peter Leithart‘s, and so that’s where I’ll start. In writing on Luke 2, Leithart asks:
In the light of Isaiah 1:3, why is it important that Jesus is laid in a manger? “Bethlehem” means “house of bread.” Does this shed further light on the sign that the angels give? See 1:53.
I’ve preached on this passage several times before, noting that Jesus is in an animal’s feedtrough, but I’ve never put things together the way Leithart is suggesting here. The manger is the place where the animals get their food. Is Luke suggesting, then, that Jesus Himself is to be the food for the animals, which, in turn, represent Israel?
Leithart also points out the connection between the last episode in that chapter and the end of Luke’s Gospel, a connection I may have guessed at but hadn’t seen spelled out before:
The final episode in this chapter is another of Luke’s stories that foreshadows the whole gospel. Jesus and his parents journey from Galilee to Jerusalem (2:41), as Jesus will later journey from Galilee to Jerusalem with His disciples (9:51). In both cases, Jesus makes the journey for Passover (2:41; 22:1). After Jesus celebrates Passover, he is “lost” (2:43-35; 22:47-23:56), and is “found” three days later (2:46; 24:1-49). People are confused by the whole thing (2:48; 24:19-24), but Jesus explains that it is “necessary” for these things to happen (2:49; 24:50-53).
If Gentile hope for peace and Israel’s hope for salvation are going to be realized, it is “necessary” for Jesus to be “lost” and “found,” to die and rise again, at Jerusalem during the Passover.
The Rich Man’s Return
… the evil man Dives asked to be allowed to return from hell to warn his lost brothers — not because he had a trace of goodness or compassion for the lost, but because if he could get God to admit that His revelation to the brothers was not sufficient to warn them, then God would have no cause to judge any man, including Dives. God, understandably, turned the request down flatly: though one rose from the dead (Jesus Christ), they would not be persuaded (Luke 16:27-31). Men’s problem is not their lack of revelation; it is their willful rebellion against that revelation (Gary North, “Basic Implications of Six-Day Creation,” The Dominion Covenant: Genesis, pp. 434-435).
I don’t think I’d heard this explanation of the rich man’s request before. Thoughts?
Luke 2:15-20 Sermon Notes
ISRAEL REACTS TO THE ANGEL’S ANNOUNCEMENT
Luke 2:15-20
(December 25, 2005, Sermon Notes)
A Saviour has been born in David’s city, and He is the anointed Lord! That was the angel’s message to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth. The glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified but the angel comforted the shepherd. The Lord had heard Israel’s prayers and kept His promises. The king who would deliver His people was lying in a manger in Bethlehem.
The good news of Jesus’ birth demands a response, a response of faith-filled celebration. Luke wants us, like the shepherds, to hear the good news and let it move us to respond in joyful faith. And so he shows us here how Israel reacts to the angel’s announcement of Jesus’ birth.
THE CONFIRMATION OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT (2:15-16)
The glory of the Lord didn’t continue to shine around the shepherd. The angels didn’t stick around to fight on the side of the newborn king. The glory and the angels disappear and Luke focuses on the men (literally, verse 15 reads: “When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the men, the shepherds, said….”).
The angels didn’t praise God because of what the Saviour’s birth means for them. Rather, they rejoice because there is joy for men, for “all the people,” that is, the whole nation of Israel, and peace to men on earth. The focus isn’t on the angels here; it’s on the men.
The shepherds respond to the angel’s announcement the right way. They go to Bethlehem, not to see if anything had really happened but to see what the angel had said had happened. The angel announced a sign and the meaning of the sign and the shepherds want to see it, not to interpret it for themselves but to let it confirm for them what the angel had announced.
They come to see the Christ, the anointed king, the saviour, the Lord who would be a rival to Caesar and all other would-be lords. But what do they find? Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger (v. 16). Mary and Joseph don’t look like a royal family. Joseph works in construction in a hick town in Galilee. And the baby is lying in an animal’s feedbox in a stable behind a house. The house probably belonged to a relative, but with the census, the guest room (a better translation than “inn”) was too full to give Mary the privacy she needed to have the baby and this was the only private place Mary and Joseph could find.
Christmas cards make that stable glow with a warm light so that it looks cosy. But in reality, everything in that scene points to poverty, the poverty of Mary and Joseph, the poverty of the newborn king. But that was no disappointment to the shepherds. Rather, everything they saw was a confirmation of what the angel had said.
There is a contrast between the glory that surrounded the shepherds in the fields and the poverty they see here, but that contrast is not a contradiction. It’s a sign of salvation. Jesus will save His people, not in spite of but by means of His humble birth. He is Israel’s king, Israel’s representative, and He shares here in Israel’s poverty, the poverty that came through sin. He is our representative, and He shares in the poverty of man ever since the Fall.
This manger is the first step on the path to the cross. Jesus came to suffer because He came to save. He takes this poverty and suffering on Himself to deal with sin, the sin that separates you from God, so that the glory the shepherds saw, which once filled the Temple, would shine on all His people.
And what the shepherds see, then, doesn’t put a damper on their joy. It doesn’t need sentimentalizing in order for it to give us joy. This is the sign the angel gave and it confirms that this child, lying here in poverty, is the Saviour, the anointed Lord. And therefore there is joy for you, even in the midst of your suffering, and there is joy to the world.
THE CELEBRATION OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT (2:17-20)
The shepherds see the sign and they become evangelists. The angel preached the good news to them and they now pass it on (v. 17). They report how they stood in God’s glory without being consumed, what the angel told them about a Saviour born in David’s house who would be the anointed king to rescue His people, and how they found the child swaddled in a manger.
But whom do they tell? Mary and Joseph, obviously, but also others (“all those who heard”). They report it all over Bethlehem. After all, this is “good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” The shepherds want all the people, all Israel, to enter into this joy, to rejoice in what God has done in the birth of that baby lying in the manger.
But the people are hesitant. They marvelled at what the shepherds say (v. 18), which in itself is not a bad reaction. All through Luke’s Gospel, people will marvel at Jesus. Amazement is an appropriate response. But it is only the beginning of the right response. As will happen again and again in Jesus’ ministry, Bethlehem marvels but doesn’t move on to praise. The story holds people’s attention for a time and then they move on to think about other things. They don’t even “keep these things in their hearts,” as everyone had done at the birth of John.
Only Mary does. She keeps thinking about what the shepherds had said and what the angel had said. She remembers what Gabriel had told her about how her son would be God’s son, ruling on David’s throne over the house of Jacob. She remembers that Elizabeth called her “mother of my Lord.” She herself had sung about how the Lord would overthrow Israel’s enemies and fulfil His promises. And now that fulfilment is starting. Mary is amazed, but she goes further. She treasures the shepherds’ words in her heart. Her response is a response of faith.
But the shepherds go further still. They return to their flocks, “glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, as it was told them.” Their praise is grounded on the angel’s word (“heard”) and confirmed by the angel’s sign (“seen”). Apart from that word, they wouldn’t have seen anything special — and certainly no cause for joy — in the baby lying in the manger. But the word taught them to interpret that sight correctly.
And though they don’t yet have the full salvation that baby will bring, they start to celebrate it. The victory is certain! The angels celebrated in advance, before the battle was fought, and now the shepherds join in. And that’s the goal toward which God was working all along. In spite of the opposition the world will offer, in spite of the amazement and then indifference with which many hear the story, God’s Word accomplishes its purpose. The angels spoke to move men to sing and these shepherds do.
And we do too. We don’t see our full salvation yet. There’s still opposition and persecution, war instead of peace, suffering and death. But we sing in faith, grounded on what we have heard — not just the announcement of Jesus’ birth but the better news of His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His enthronement as the anointed Lord, who has won the victory and has saved us.
Augustus’s Census
Well, this should have been obvious to me, but I’ve never noticed it before.
In the latest Biblical Horizons (No. 176), Jim Jordan points out that when David numbered the people God’s judgment fell upon Israel. So when Luke tells us that Caesar, who was the God-appointed ruler of the empire, called for a census, something similar is happening. Luke
is letting us know that the time of judgment has arrived. Caesar is now trying to take over God’s world. As a result, God sends His angel to begin the judgment.
The judgment on David resulted in the selection of the site for the new Temple:
Man had usurpsed God’s rule, God’s world, and that world was judged; but out of this judgment came a new world. The Temple and its courtyard was a symbol of heaven and earth. It was also the place where heaven and earth met, and thus the place of worship. The judgment on David’s sin led to a new world and to a new worship.
And so it was with Augustus’s census:
When devout Jews heard that Caesar, the anointed and God-positioned ruler of the Oikumene, had called for a census of the entire realm, they could begin to look up. With their knowledge of history, they would realize that the time was drawing near, and that the new world was shortly to come.