Luke 9:60 ” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”

   What Jesus is telling this man is that the importance of the gospel trumps everything else. He is not asking this man to be unfeeling or unkind towards his parent. He is not telling the man to snub his family or treat them poorly. He is teaching him that the service of God take precedence over everything else.

   By saying the dead should bury the dead he means that the spiritually dead will continue with the normal functions of life. But, his followers are called to more than just the mundane activities of day to day life. They must act in accordance with the urgency attached to the message.

Heavenly Father, thank You for the encouragement we find in Your Word. You help us understand so much better what is truly most valuable. I will praise You for Your wisdom and steadfast love. You are faithful always and You never change. We can know that You are always right, and that You always do what is best. But, Your ways are different from ours, and we must seek to understand and know You. In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.

Luke 9:59 “Then He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”

   Most likely this individual’s father was not dead yet. If his father had been dead, he wouldn’t have been in a position to hear Christ’s teaching. Instead, this man is asking permission to stay near home until his father passed. After that, he would commit to following Christ.

Heavenly Father, You are holy beyond all we can imagine! Your goodness is wonderful! You have thoughts we will never understand. And yet, You have allowed us a glimpse into Your thinking. Thank You for allowing us to know You. Just to have a relationship with You is a blessing minute to minute. We want to please You, and we love You very much. Thank You for life! In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.

Luke 9:58 “And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

   Jesus had here before Him and man who was willing to follow Him any where He went. But Jesus pushes this man to go a step further. Like God and Abram of old, Jesus means to say ‘and what if I don’t tell you where we are going?’ The disciples Jesus already had knew the truth of this. They were often surprised by what came next in the ministry of Christ.

   More than that, the financial situation of Jesus was much different than what most of these would-be followers would have imagined. Save the miracle of the temple tax in the fish’s mouth, we do not know of Jesus miraculously doing anything financially related. And, that miracle alone illustrates that He didn’t have much money on hand. We do know that Judas stole from Him regularly, and He may have been supported in large part by the women who followed Him, though we can’t be certain of that.

   This is not to say that nobody who follows Christ is allowed to have money. That’s not true at all. But, the followers of Christ are to have a certain attitude towards material things and provisions. Jesus was focused on ministry to people, not His next meal, or the next place where He would stay.

Heavenly Father, thank You for taking care of us! We tend to think that we have provided for ourselves, but we know You have provided everything we have. No matter where we go or when, we will look to You for our provisions. While being wise stewards, we will be faithful, and faith-filled. You alone can provide for the journey ahead! In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.

Luke 9:57 “Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.”

   When we look at the next verse we may get the idea that Jesus had a problem with what this man said. Quite to the contrary, this man was on the right track. As we will see, all Jesus is doing in the next verse is pulling this man into the next level, pushing him to go even farther.

   ‘I will follow You’ is the response that Jesus is looking for. That is the starting point. He will work on you. He will stretch your faith. But, to get off of square one with Jesus Christ we must be at this stage. Jesus will not waste your time, nor His. If you are not of a mind to follow Him, He will not get involved with you. Jesus is looking for those who have cast the die, struck the mark, and forged the mold. They have no intention of doing anything less that what they have said. They have seen Christ and have said, as Joshua of old, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

   The Bible does not use the example of a soldier to explain the Christian life because Jesus wants us to kill people. Not at all. But the illustration stands because the soldier is willing to lose his life, or spend it all, in service to the Commander. The Bible does not liken the Christian to an athlete because believers are playing a game. Not at all. But this example also stands because the athlete is fully committed, and in it to win. Jesus is after those who will chose Him because they love Him.

Heavenly Father, thank You for choosing to use humanity! You could have given us a one-time worldwide ultimatum. You could have just forced us to chose and wrapped everything up already. But, you have chosen Your way. And Your way is always the best way. Thank You! I love You! In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.

Luke 9:56 “For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” And they went to another village.”

   So if Christ did not go to that village, and moved on to the next, was that not the same as destroying those lives? Would not the lack of light from God above be just as bad as death? No, because there was not a lack. You see not only were people expected to accept Christ by virtue of His ministers; but also, people are expected to accept the truth of God without this direct contact. Thus, the people in the village still had a chance for life, though they would never again have a chance to be physically visited by the Lord of life.

   We must understand that every experience, every fact, every eternal truth and law, are all expected to be sufficient grounds from which to build a faith that brings one to Almighty God. God wants humans to see all that He has done and conclude that He has made all things good, in spite of the fall and the subsequent bad result of it in nature.

Heavenly Father, You alone are God above. We can look around us and come up with any number of ways to explain ourselves, but we also know there must be some particular way to explain it all. Only a knowledge of You can make us complete. Thank You for Your love and goodness in revealing Yourself to us in the Person of Your Son. In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.

Luke 9:55 “But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.”

   Jesus uses wording here that might seem strange to us. But, basically, He is telling His disciples that they are going in the wrong direction with this. This is the beginning of the age of Grace. God would be doing a work of mercy among the nations. James and John thought that the works of Elijah were normative for all time. This is not the case. God does things differently at different times depending on the stage of His plan and program for this world.

Heavenly Father, we so often are off-base with our thinking. Forgive us! You are the One Who brings us mercy, love, truth, help, and grace. We cannot even understand these concepts properly without Christ. We need You to guide us by Your Spirit. Thank You for protecting us from ourselves. In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.

Luke 9:54 “And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?”

Luke 9:53 “But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.”

   This Samaritan city did not accept the person of Christ for a couple of reasons. First, they did not accept this Jewish Messiah. They shared the ethnic bigotry that was pervasive in the relationship of the Jews and Samaritans. The focus of Christ on His target of Jerusalem was offensive to them.

   But, secondly, just as many who encountered Christ, they were skittish. They were unsure of the origin and purposes of this Messiah and likely thought He was just another revolutionary, which were in that time a dime a dozen.

   To fail to accept the person of Christ is a a serious failure indeed. Nothing so dangerous can ever be done. To miss Him, is to miss everything.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your revelation of Your Son. You are truly merciful and gracious and loving to us. You have always understood our needs and made the truth available for acceptance. Your plan is glorious and wonderous! I will praise You for it forever! In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.

Luke 9:52 “and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him.”

   Not every Samaritan was friendly to Christ. Though they did receive Him in spite of how the Jews felt about it, there were those among them that also rejected the truth.

   The disciples had been trained a lot at this point and they knew how to get a town ready for Jesus to come. But this is significant for us to notice. Even during the ministry of Christ, while He was physically on earth, He expected people to accept Him through His followers. In other words, there was no second chance given to those who would reject the human representatives of Christ.

   Oh how many there are in this day who claim Christ and yet will not come to church! They see hypocrisy, or they have been hurt, or they were not treated as they expected, or they were mocked in some way. They expected to come to church and find people so much better than those they rub shoulders with in the world.

   But the church, my friends, is the battleground. It is where the fight is the strongest. It is where the enemy will aim all his guns. And why? If the church falls apart, all is done. And though the church as a whole will remain until God removes it, it may be removed from one locale or another prematurely. You will find many there who need help, and many who are not very good. But, you will also have thrown your lot in with those who are indeed being the hands and feet of Christ. Do not claim to do this, and yet stay out of fellowship with the body of Christ.

Heavenly Father, help Your church! You have given us a task that is beyond all that we can do, and yet You have given us the means to do it. Thank You for making Your truth available in the way You have seen fit to do so. We will always praise You for the means that You have chosen, for You do all things well. Thank You! In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.

Luke 9:51 “Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem,”

   Being a part of the Divine Essence Jesus knew the timing that the Godhead had determined beforehand for everything. Jerusalem was His target. And, thus we see this shift to go there and to begin the process that would lead to His sacrifice.

   This comes fairly early in the gospel of Luke, though also it is prominent in the other gospels as well. So as we study these we should keep in mind that much of what is related is from the end of the ministry of Christ rather than the beginning.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Jesus! We are every day reminded of all that we can be because of Who He is. We are so blessed to live in Your world Father! We find reasons to complain because of the horrible consequences of sin. But, even with all that we see glimpses of the glory that is to come. In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I pray and praise You, Amen.