Torment

Luke 16:16-31

Today, because it is the last Sunday of the month, we will have a shorter teaching followed by a time of communion and then a sharing time, where we all gather in a circle (or some shape that roughly approximates a circle) and share what the Lord has been teaching us in His word and what He has been doing in our lives.

I want to pose a question to you. Do you think God sees you as too permissive or too legalistic? Speaking for myself, I am pretty sure the answer is both. In some things I am probably too permissive, and in others too legalistic. I think most of us are like this. I was in an email forum this week that included a discussion of some Christian materials designed to teach character. One of the character qualities they cover is punctuality. I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me about this, apart from the part that their scriptural support was pretty sketchy, until someone pointed out two things: first, that in most cultures of the world, punctuality is not a priority at all – in many places, you are not really late until you are 3 or more hours late. The second problem with this is that they give equal time to other character qualities including love. In our culture, generally speaking, punctuality is very important, but our expectations for love, especially for sacrificial love, are minimal. (Punctuality may sometimes be an expression of love, but demanding punctuality can be an expression of selfishness.) Putting love and punctuality on the same platform is simultaneously being too permissive and too legalistic.

Two Masters

Luke 16:1-15

Most of our passage today relates, one way or another, to money. Money is a surprisingly major theme of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. Jesus talked a lot about money. In today’s passage, we will see some surprising statements about how to use and how not to use money. Let’s get right into the passage.

Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.' The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg— I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.' – Luke 16:1-4

Lost and Found

Luke 15:1-32

We’ll pick up today in the book of Luke in chapter 15.  We’re going to go through the whole chapter, all 32 verses.  So, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.  This passage in Luke includes one of Jesus’ most famous parables, The Prodigal Son.  On the next slide is a painting of the prodigal son returning home.

This may be Jesus’ most famous parable.  The unconditional love and acceptance of the father warms our hearts and gives us hope.  The hardness of the older brother stands out as a stark reminder of what happens to us when we don’t stay close to the father.  Even though we know it well, it is good to read it and meditate on it again.

The Mystery

Luke 14:28-35

As promised, today is Mystery Sunday! So just what is Mystery Sunday? You shall soon find out. In preparation for the answer, I want to look at the end of Luke 14 as well as a few other verses that explain what this is all about. In our passage last week, the first part of Luke 14, we ended with the following verses:

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them He said: "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple. – Luke 14:25-27

We talked about last week how dying to self is really a non-optional part of the Christian life. But carrying your cross is about more than dying – it is also about living, as the next several verses show.

The Banquet

Luke 14:1-27

Have you ever been to a banquet so fancy that you feel awkward? You aren’t sure when to eat, which fork to use, and so on? Or if you are a parent with children, you and your family are invited to someone’s nice home and you worry not only about your behavior, but even more about those of your children? We had an experience like this during our recent trip to Florida. We were eating with strangers, and of all things, they served spaghetti with sauce made from scratch – the messiest meal known to man. I had known in advance they were serving spaghetti, but there was a formality to this occasion – their kids were so well behaved – and I hadn’t thought through the implications of a spaghetti meal – that as we sat down to dinner, well, let’s just say it was a stressful experience. When it comes to a stressful eating experience, though, it is hard to imagine something more intense than the meal described in Luke 14.

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, He was being carefully watched. There in front of Him was a man suffering from dropsy. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?" But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, He healed him and sent him away. – Luke 14:1-4