Luke

Jan

2023

Resolution

A brief study at the start of a new year

Prepare to read. Original public domain image from Wikimedia Commons

Several years ago, I was asked to work with writers and edit a series of Bible studies for youth ministry. The following brief study came from that project. It seems appropriate to share at New Year’s time, on the subject of making resolutions.

This is formatted as a leader’s guide for a group study. If you are reading this on your own, feel free to use it for your own meditation on the selected Scriptures. I’d welcome comments from any readers who come across this post. As a change from the blog’s usual devotional format, do you find a study outline format like this useful?

Resolution

Preliminary questions to consider

How many of you have ever made a New Year’s Resolution? So many New Year’s resolutions fail. Why do you think that is?

We may set goals that are so lofty it is all but impossible to keep them. Sometimes we just aren’t all that determined to keep them. Our resolve is weak. Other times we fail because our sinful nature is the problem. We try to overcome our sinful nature on our own.

This study isn’t only about New Year’s resolutions. Let’s think about our resolve in general—our determination to do what we know we should do. What specific goals have you made for yourself?

Answers will vary. Think of some goals you have set in your life, not just New Year’s resolutions.

Consider the goals, resolutions, or promises you have made. Why is it worth putting a lot of effort into them?

Answers will vary. Hopefully, our goals are beneficial ones that will result in better health, helping others, and better stewardship of God’s blessings. One good goal always is to devote ourselves to contact with God’s Word and sacraments so that faith will be strengthened.

Sometimes the motivation behind our goals and promises is faulty. What possible faulty motivation could be behind the goals and promises we make?

We may be trying to feed our egos. We may be trying to make ourselves look better than others. We may have selfish goals.

Getting into the Word

Verse #1
1 Corinthians 2:2 … “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

The apostle Paul’s resolve was focused on Christ crucified. Look at the context of this verse (verses 1-5). What might the people have thought was the motivation behind Paul’s preaching?

They might have thought he was trying to make a name for himself by his oratorical skills. Or at least that he was trusting in his own wisdom and eloquence to convert others.

Why was Paul resolved to focus only on Christ?

He understood that faith was the working of God’s power through the message about Jesus’ death and resurrection. Finally, the most important thing was for people to believe in Christ as their Savior.

What do these words tell us about the focus of our resolutions, goals, and promises?

Our most important goals are those that will have eternal benefits. That’s not to say that we can’t have other goals, and we can make promises related to our day-to-day lives. But it is important to remember spiritual priorities.

In what way can keeping promises to others, as well as faithfully pursuing “non-spiritual” goals, reflect on the cross or have spiritual implications?

By our diligence and faithfulness, we are honoring Christ, whose name we bear. As others witness our faithfulness, they may be inclined to listen to the hope we have in Christ.

Verse #2
Luke 9:51 … “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”

What was the context of this statement? Why are these words from Scripture so comforting?

As the time came for Jesus to accomplish his work and return to heaven, he set out, determined to go to Jerusalem and suffer the consequences of our sins. He was resolute in carrying out his mission to redeem us.

Evaluate this statement: Jesus kept his eyes focused not just on Jerusalem, but on the necessity of his death.

Jesus knew the cross that awaited him. But he knew that our eternal well-being depended upon him. So he was determined to take the cross upon himself.

How did we benefit as a result of Jesus’ resolve?

The result of Jesus’ resolve is our eternal welfare. We have life now and forever because of his resolve on our behalf.

How does Jesus’ work influence our goals and promises?

Nothing is more important than the hope and peace that is ours through Christ.

Closing Prayer

Dear Jesus, our Savior, please help us to keep our resolutions, especially those that have spiritual implications. We live gratefully in you, for you carried out your resolution for us by dying on the cross. You did not shrink back from the most difficult task of all, because you were determined to bring benefit to us all. Instead of running away from our own good goals, help us to trust in you and overcome our fears of failure. In your name, our resurrected Lord, we pray. Amen.

_____________________

Oct

2020

When you realize everything you were was wrong

Becoming aware that mercy triumphs over judgment

by David Sellnow

The evangelist Luke, chronicler of the Acts of the Apostles, was a writer who sought to give “an orderly account” of events (cf. Luke 1:3). Luke’s reporting concerning the conversion of Saul (also known as Paul) sticks to the facts of what happened. Saul had been “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). He sought permission from the highest religious authorities to go to Syria to round up followers of “the Way” — believers in Jesus as the Christ. Saul wanted to take them into custody and bring them back to Jerusalem as religious criminals. The Lord had other plans. He blinded Saul with light from heaven and said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Those traveling with Saul “led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank” (Acts 9:8-9). In Damascus, Saul was brought into the Christian community and baptized, and “began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God’” (Acts 9:20).

Today, we’re used to journalists asking, “How did you feel?” when they interview persons after some life-changing experience. Luke didn’t pause to provide insights into Saul’s emotional state. We can well imagine the shock of it, though — suddenly becoming aware that everything he thought and everything he’d done had been aimed in the wrong direction. He had felt he was serving God by the rigid religious principles he pursued. But his insistence on his own rightness had prevented him from seeing what a merciful God really had in mind. In the encounter on the Damascus road, Jesus had said to Saul, “It hurts you to kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14). Like a work animal kicking back against a master prodding it forward, Saul was resisting the message of grace that God was calling him and all people to believe. Rather than striving to squelch and suppress those who had come to see Jesus as Christ, the Messiah, Saul should have been joining “the Way” and working with them. And by God’s grace, that’s exactly what he then did. As the Apostle Paul, he later expressed his amazement that even though he had been “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence,” yet he received mercy because he “had acted ignorantly in unbelief.” He was awed by the grace of God that overflowed to him “with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:13).

The Epistle lesson for this Sunday (the 18th Sunday after Pentecost) provides another window into how Paul felt about his conversion from self-righteous Pharisee to someone trusting in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith (Philippians 3:4b-9).

In the church today, the tendency easily resurfaces to become adamant against “sinners” and “heretics,” the way Paul was prior to his face-to-face encounter with Jesus. Being convinced of one’s rightness and propriety can lead to overzealous efforts to keep the church “pure,” purged of those who aren’t the “right sort” of persons. When that thinking sets in, the fact that no one is the “right sort” of person has been forgotten. The truth is that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and all are to be extended the mercy in Jesus’ name without distinctions or prejudices. The purpose of the church is not to police people’s opinions and condemn those who don’t comply with existing traditions. In fact, the Lord is unhappy with those who try to impose their own expectations and restrictions on others. “For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13). Love and mercy and welcome are to be shown to “a poor person in dirty clothes” who comes into a church assembly no differently than if a rich person “with gold rings and fine clothes” walked through the door (James 2:2). God is defined by love and mercy toward all persons more so than by laws and policies and dress codes and rules.

If you catch yourself thinking that your religious convictions are elevated above others, or that there are certain types of persons you don’t want in your church with you, be careful. You may be kicking against the Lord, insisting on maintaining a form of spiritual inertia rather than moving forward in mercy where the Lord calls you to go. What you have thought may need to be discarded as rubbish, compared to “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord” (Philippians 3:8), and the compelling mission of extending mercy to all others in his name.

—-

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Dec

2019

Jesus is Resurrection; Jesus is Life

Originally published on the Electric Gospel on April 20, 2014.

This post was originally shared on an Easter Sunday.

Jesus is Resurrection; Jesus is Life

by David Sellnow

There was a time when people laughed at Jesus. In fact, they were crying and screaming in sadness, but what Jesus said sounded so strange that they burst out laughing in the middle of a funeral. A young person had just died. A young girl, twelve years old, had been deathly ill, and death had followed. While she was dying, the girl’s father, a man named Jairus, had come to Jesus asking for help …but even before Jesus could come to Jairus’ house, someone was sent from there to bring the sad news. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher any more.”

But upon hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed” (Luke 8:49-50). Healed from death? Who ever heard of such a thing?

When Jesus arrived at the house, it was full of people wailing and moaning and mourning. In true Jewish custom, they made quite a scene: tears streaming down their cheeks, hair disheveled, falling on the floor, groaning and bellowing, not a dry eye in the house. It was then–when Jesus entered that house–that the mourners went from hysterical crying to uproarious laughter in an instant. What the great and wise rabbi Jesus said struck them as hilarious. Jesus said to them, “Stop your wailing. She is not dead but asleep.” They laughed at him, knowing that she was, in fact, dead (Luke 8:52,53).

But within moments, Jesus proved that they were dead wrong. He took the girl’s hand, said to her, “Get up” …and she did! “Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up” (Luke 8:55). Her parents were astonished. Everyone was amazed. For Jesus, bringing to life a dead person was no more difficult than waking someone up from sleep.

Jesus has an entirely different perspective on death than we normally do. Jesus’ whole definition of life and death differs from what we normally think. The words on which I’d like you to focus especially today come from the story of another resurrection miracle that Jesus performed. In talking to his dear friend Martha, just after her beloved brother Lazarus had died, Jesus spoke these powerful words: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25,26).

You see, according to Jesus, Lazarus had died but he had not died. Lazarus had died but he also would live again. Let me explain how Jesus explains life and death.

Life, according to Jesus, is when we are enjoying the blessings of God. When we enjoy the blessings of God in our bodies, we are physically alive. Our lungs breathe, our hearts beat, our hands and feet move. Only by God’s blessing and his sustaining do we have physical life. When God decides it is time for us to pass from this life, those blessings are suspended, and physically we die.

But there is more to life than the body. God also created each of us with a soul. When we enjoy the blessings of God in our souls, we have faith in him, we have a relationship with him, we have life through him. Our spirits never die. The blessings of God upon our spirits began the day we were baptized and haven’t ceased since. We are blessed in faith throughout life and blessing awaits us beyond this present life. We will live on with the Lord. That is why Jesus could say, “Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Our loved ones who have died have not really died–not their spirits. They are alive still, living with the Lord, standing side by side with Jesus right now. We see only the physical aspect of life and death, but there is a spiritual and eternal reality that we don’t yet see, which nevertheless is absolutely true. Those who have died in faith are yet alive, living and reigning with Jesus (cf. Revelation 20:4), who lives and reigns with the Father and with the Spirit, the one true and loving God, forever and ever.

But that’s not all. Jesus also said, “Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies.” The physical body dies, but Jesus pledges, with his word of power, that he will bring the body back to life. The daughter of Jairus and the man named Lazarus were two examples, demonstrations Jesus gave of just what he can do. By his miracles of resurrection, he was promising that he will do the same in the end for all of his people.

By his own resurrection, after he was crucified, Jesus proved that he has absolute power over death and the grave. A giant stone and armed guards of soldiers could not keep Jesus’ resurrection from happening. Likewise, there is nothing that can keep Jesus from providing the same resurrection for us, his people, when his final time arrives. On that day, “we will all be changed–in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52). We will be changed from dead to alive, from being troubled by all the ailments of our frail bodies to being freed from all ills in eternally glorified bodies.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus said. That’s exactly who he is. In him and because of him, we have life now and will have it always. In him and because of him, we will experience one day the resurrection of our bodies into life and joy unending, that now we can barely even imagine. In that day of resurrection, we won’t have any back pains or body aches or cysts or cancers or any other disease or pains or wounds. All will be healed completely by the Lord and made perfect in every way.

Jesus, keep our hearts strong as we wait for that day!

A brief study at the start of a new year

Resolution

Becoming aware that mercy triumphs over judgment

Jesus is Resurrection; Jesus is Life

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