Luke 7:18-35
When we read these Matthew and Luke accounts on consecutive days we see how very similar they are – which makes the differences between them more pronounced. As happened to me two years ago, verses 29 and 30 caught my eye: When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John, but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him. Sadly, the Pharisees (lawyers) rejected the purpose of God for themselves. That is such a sad statement. Still, I constantly am sympathetic to their plight. Both John and Jesus were turning the Pharisees’ “church” on its end, bringing new activities, new testimonies, new converts. What to make of these new upstarts? However, the evidence was there before them – Jesus recounting what He had done for the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dead and the poor. They simply could not ignore Jesus – but they also could not embrace Him!
What struck me further in these two verses is whether or not we are “rejecting the purpose of God for ourselves”. But maybe we put this burden too easily on ourselves. Maybe not… But I’m thinking about the hundreds of people we know who are in fact “rejecting the purpose of God for themselves”. God created each and every one of us to love Him and to serve Him and others. Each one of us, both the lost and the found, have a purpose from God in our having been created. But far too many out there reject His purpose in their lives. They ignore or reject His call on their lives and in the world around them. Carol and I constantly have four of our brothers in mind (two each), almost daily, as they continue to reject Jesus – even though they were raised like us and know of His death, His resurrection, His salvation. We know that part of “our purpose” is reaching out to them, even though their responses can be heated. We pray – and wait.
See also: March 30 / Luke 7:18-35
It could be, as with an imprisoned John, your brothers’ doubt lies in ‘what has He done for me lately?’. Even John, expecting the ‘release of those imprisoned’ had his doubts. You wait because you have faith. Those without your faith move on, disappointed that their interests remain unserved. Again, the Archbishop’s Word this morning tells us that a self-centered life leads to one’s being miserable. Serving God and others gives life meaning.
I kinda dwelt on Luke 7:28 today where at first pass, it seems Jesus was making a harsh assessment of John the Baptist when comparing him to Christians that have come after Jesus. But after letting the verse “soak in” a little bit, I believe Jesus is not contrasting John the Baptist with individual Christians, but life before Christ with life in the fullness of Christ’s kingdom.
I think you are right, Bruce. That is what my Bible study indicated (I cheated).
That makes sense, Bruce. And even though Christians who come after Christ are, like John the Baptist, “born of women”, they are also born of the Spirit.
I think you nailed it, Bruce. The second half of Luke 7:28 cannot just “undo” the first half. The first half indicates that no one on earth is greater than John the Baptist, which goes to say that our “natural” perception of the world order is completely upside down and backwards. Our worldly frame of reference would typically place the Emperor at the top of the heap, and John — imprisoned and about to be beheaded by a second-rate puppet king in the Judean backwater of the Roman Empire — somewhere amongst “the rabble” as a nobody and a failure. Jesus turns that perspective on its head. And then saying that “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” must mean that “life in the fullness of the Christ’s kingdom” (as you put it) supersedes anything here on earth.