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 Luke 20:9-19: The gospel in a nutshell.(please click here for todays passage)

Not only can people get caught in the headlights of a great question, but also by seeing themselves in a story well-told. Jesus scored a ‘Bulls-eye’ with this one (19).

Someone said that when you throw a stone into a pack of dogs you can tell which one you hit. It’s the one that yelps! Jesus obviously scored a direct hit with His parable. Once again we find religious leaders overly concerned with matters of public opinion. But they did so desperately want to do away with the uncomfortable truth. Have you ever been there?

I marvel at these words of Jesus. His parable is a little jewel of economical story-telling. It beautifully enshrines the gospel message. Throughout the Old Testament era God repeatedly sent prophets to his people and these were regularly rejected.

”Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love…’ ” (13; see 3:22; John 3:16). 

Jesus foreknew and foretold that He would be rejected and thrown out and crucified, But in these terrible acts God would be fulfilling Scripture and working to make His Son the Head of a new humanity. This world system still rejects Jesus and desires His death, but turning Him away we press the ‘self-destruct’ button. It was true then; it is true now.

Luke 19:45-48: Jesus and the church.(please click here for todays passage)

Jesus knows what is going on in the ‘temple’ that is His church, and He has the right to rearrange things so that they are in proper order. He cares about the purity of His church far more then we do, even in our best moments. But because Jesus speaks the truth and acts in accordance with it, the world hates Him and wants Him out of the way. ‘Religious’ people in churches can be most violent in opposing real works of God’s Spirit (47).

The Lord Jesus is particularly concerned that the local church should be governed by what ‘is written’ (46a). There are Biblical ways to be the church just as there are non-Biblical ways. May the Lord keep us true to revealed truth, so that we ‘hang’ on all His words (48).

A Bible-governed church will be a prayerful church. It may be a local church but it will not be parochial in its outlook. The people will live ‘on a world map’. They will have a vision as wide as God who ‘so’ loves the world (John 3:16). Anything that impedes the church from fulfilling its calling as ‘a house of prayer for all nations’ (Mark 11:17) must be driven out. This sacred vision of the true calling of the church can so easily be lost.

Prayer: Lord God, pour upon your church the Spirit of prayer

Luke 19:37-44: Sunshine and rain.(please click here for todays passage)

Recently, the good-natured British have been laughing about the ‘Spring’ weather in the UK. In the space of one week we seemed to experience all the seasons! Similarly, in a Christian’s life the ‘weather’ can be mixed. One day we are in the sunshine; the next we are standing in the pouring rain. In fact, it can all come together on the same day. This particular day in the life of  Jesus was one in which He encountered great joy (37-40), and wept bitter tears (37-40). These two emotions are regularly found in close proximity in a believer’s life.

At the heart of the Old Testament there lies a hymn book – the Psalms. Someone said that ‘whereas all Scripture speaks to us, the psalms speak for us.’ In them we feel a full range of emotions and we discover that we can be honest with God. The life of faith will have times of exuberant joy, but there will also be seasons of lament to navigate. We don’t have to pretend that troubles won’t come, or put on an act to mislead others about how we truly feel. Somebody once told me that for a time, they attended a church where it was one constant victory roll. No-one was expected to say or show that they were down. That, at least, was how they understood the requirements of belonging. There was an unwritten rule that said, ‘Smile all the while.’ Such a scenario is emotionally dishonest, and surely no-one reading the psalms can imagine that God expects anyone to live like that? In genuine Christian fellowship we remove masks; we don’t play a part.

There is ‘a time to mourn and a time to dance…’ Ecclesiastes 3:4.

So Christians know the need to carry a brolly!

Luke 19:28-36 (see also 2 Kings 9:13):Usable for Jesus.(Please click here for todays passage)

The life of discipleship involves suffering and glory. It entails embracing the cross and enjoying resurrection life and power. In it all Jesus goes ‘on ahead…to Jerusalem.’ He has gone before us. Let’s keep our focus on Him. Good leadership asks of others only what it is prepared to give itself. Jesus went to the cross,and calls others to join Him. He speaks with great authority and credibility out of His own example.

Jesus regularly sent His disciples out in twos (29, 30). He sends us out to ‘untie knots.’ When we are unable, it perplexes us (Mark 9:28). We have been given authority to unfasten all kinds of challenging knots.

Have you ever considered the divine power Jesus showed to ride a Colt that was previously unridden  (35,36). This in itself is surely at least hinting at His identity?

Is your ‘Colt’, or its equivalent, available to Jesus should He need it? (31). Have you yielded everything up to Him. Do you acknowledge that the Lord is the rightful and real owner of your possessions?

God’s Word never fails. We will always find things to be exactly how Jesus, in Scripture, says they will be (32-34).

Prayer: Lord Jesus, I sometimes feel like a bit of a donkey, but I offer up to you all I am and have. Please use me, if you will, to carry you into the city and to lift you up.

I also love this prayer – an extract from a longer prayer of F.B. Meyer:

‘Thou must have a Colt on which none had ever sat. I cannot give thee a heart which has never known another; but I profess to thee that there is no rival now. Thou mayst have all. Thine is the Kingdom…No longer do I seek great things for myself. It is enough for me to be and do anything, if only thou shalt be glorified.’ (‘Great verses through the Bible’, p.392).

Luke 19:1-10: Now Zacchaus was a very ‘wealthy’ man, and a very ‘wealthy’ man was he!

Passing through a place on a journey to somewhere else may seem like one of life’s little incidentals (1,2), but on any ordinary day, among the mundane details, there may be someone ‘Jesus in you’ wants to meet. Watch out today for encounters God will write into your schedule. You didn’t enter them into your diary, but an unseen Hand did.

For all his faults, Zacchaeus was a ‘seeker’ and he put some effort (and creativity) into seeking Jesus (3,4). However, although it seemed as though Zac was seeking the Lord, the truth was the other way round (9, 10; see also chapter 15; Ezekiel 34:16). From our side of things, we think that we choose Christ. There is, of course, a very real sense in which we do. But the deeper truth, which we eventually discover, is that He was seeking us all along. I walked passed two American girls in a corridor of a Bible Institute many years ago. I was at an ‘Operation Mobilisation’ training conference in Leuven, Belgium. Young people from all across the world were being prepared for a month’s mission in the south of France. I heard one of these young women say to the other something like this, ‘Those French girls really excite me because they remind me of what we were like before Christ sought us.’

‘…before Christ sought us.’ What a lovely expression.

What was Zacchaeus like before Christ sought him? Well, ‘he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy’ (2b). Jewish Tax collectors were hated because they were seen as collaborators with Rome. The Romans gave the job to the man who paid the most for it, and most got rich by ripping off their clients. They charged more than was required and kept everything they didn’t have to give to the Romans for themselves. So they were cheats and thieves. Already, maybe,there was evidence of a change of heart towards his possessions in Zacchaeus when he welcomed Jesus into his home? (6). His giving away and making restitution did not save him (8), but it was compelling evidence that salvation had ‘come’ to his house (9). Saved people give evidence of salvation in numerous ways, including in their giving (1 Timothy 6:17-19).

In his outstanding book, ‘The spirit of the disciplines’, Dallas Willard writes, ‘The idealisation of poverty is one of the most dangerous illusions in the contemporary world. Stewardship – which requires possessions and includes giving – is the true spiritual discipline in relation to wealth…Condemnation and guilt over mere possession has no part in Scriptural faith and is, in the end, only a barrier to the right use of the riches of the earth.’ (P.194). So it is not HAVING that is the issue, but USING. From the beginning of his life of discipleship, Zacchaeus recognised the need to now use his wealth responsibly, and make up for his past crimes.

Prayer: Thank you Lord for what you have blessed me with. I need not be ashamed of it, but I do pray you will help me to use it all as a saved person should.

This is a day of opportunity: ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by’ (37). This is as true for us as it was for the blind beggar.

This is a day for urgent prayer (38).

This is a day for persistence (39). When we start to pray seriously about a person, or a particular matter, we often encounter circumstances that ‘rebuke’ us and tell us to ‘be quiet’ (39). Ronald Dunn, in his great book, ‘Don’t just stand there, pray something’, observed that when you start to seriously engage a situation in prayer it regularly ‘drops by worse’ before getting better. Unless you know that God has distinctly told you to stop praying, this is not a time to be put off but to shout ‘all the more’. Dig your heels in and pray through to breakthrough.

This is a day to be specific (41-43). Don’t be woolly or blurred at the edges. Some people find it helpful to keep a prayer diary and write down what they ask. They may also date it. Then they record the answer when it comes in. (I heard David Pawson say  on a recording I listened to earlier this morning,that we Christians tend to talk about answered prayers in surprised tones!!) Be definite about what you are asking, and how encouraged you will be (and others too) when the definite answer arrives on your doorstep.

This is a day to thank our wonderful prayer-answering God (43). Let’s do it!

Prayer: Oh Lord, I thank you so much for your many specific answers to my urgent prayers.

 Luke 18: 31-34: Total control.(please click here for todays passage )

On a number of occasions, prior to His death, Jesus said things like this. He knew in detail what was ahead of Him; was fully aware of all that He would suffer. But in these short, meaningful paragraphs he appears as the Victor and not the victim. He was in total control. This was not about having something unwanted inflicted upon Him. Rather it was about accomplishing the will of God. Before ever wicked people thought to ill-treat the beautiful, innocent Son of God, the good Heavenly Father planned to save the world through the suffering of the Messiah, and foretold these events in the prophets. So although it looked like bad men were winning, the true story is that the good God is triumphant.

When we go through suffering, as we must at some point if we stay true to this Jesus, let us be encouraged and know all the same that we are on the winning team. God knows the beginning from the end, and whenever it is ‘Friday’ we can joyfully assert ‘but Sunday is coming.’ Keep your eye on ‘the third day’ (33).

Mind you, we can be slow to catch on.

Prayer: Thank you Lord that your death was no accident. You died purposefully to save me, and I am so thankful.