Reflective Bible Study Gospel Adventure

The Lie Surrounding Service: Luke 22:21-30

Published November 28, 2023 in Written Journal Entries

Focus Passage: Luke 22:21-30 (NCV)

²¹“But one of you will turn against me, and his hand is with mine on the table. ²²What God has planned for the Son of Man will happen, but how terrible it will be for that one who turns against the Son of Man.”

²³Then the apostles asked each other which one of them would do that.

²⁴The apostles also began to argue about which one of them was the most important. ²⁵But Jesus said to them, “The kings of the non-Jewish people rule over them, and those who have authority over others like to be called ‘friends of the people.’ ²⁶But you must not be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the leader should be like the servant. ²⁷Who is more important: the one sitting at the table or the one serving? You think the one at the table is more important, but I am like a servant among you.

²⁸“You have stayed with me through my struggles. ²⁹Just as my Father has given me a kingdom, I also give you a kingdom ³⁰so you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom. And you will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Read Luke 22:21-30 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!

While reading Luke’s gospel account of Jesus’ last supper before His crucifixion, Luke includes a verse telling us that an argument breaks out among the disciples and he also includes Jesus’ response to this argument. Perhaps this argument was prompted by Jesus sharing that one of them would betray Him, but perhaps, this was just another flare-up of an argument that Jesus’ follower had debated many times before.

But here at the last supper, Jesus has a powerful response. After quieting the disciples and getting their attention, Luke tells us that Jesus said, “The kings of the non-Jewish people rule over them, and those who have authority over others like to be called ‘friends of the people.’ But you must not be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the leader should be like the servant. Who is more important: the one sitting at the table or the one serving? You think the one at the table is more important, but I am like a servant among you.” (v. 25-27)

Jesus draws our attention to something that we think today. This belief is as widespread today as it was in the first century. Jesus points us to this key idea when He asks, “Who is more important: the one sitting at the table or the one serving?” (v. 27a)

If we were to ask ten random people this question, almost all of them would say the person sitting at the table is more important. Those in the board room at the table must be more important than the factory-line worker. This is the widespread belief – and it is one that Jesus challenged with His life.

In Jesus’ follow-up statement, He shares the truth people think, and He contrasts it with how He has lived. “You think the one at the table is more important,” Jesus says, “but I am like a servant among you.” (v. 27b)

Jesus came and lived the life of a servant to illustrate how God sees greatness. While those at the table are important in God’s eyes, those serving are equally important. Without people serving, there would be no table for others to sit at. Because of this truth, the case could be made that service is more important than meetings. Jesus called each of us to be like Him, and this means that we are to take the servant role whenever possible.

Jesus focused on finding ways He could step down and serve. As His disciples, stepping down and serving whenever possible should be a priority for us as well.

This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!

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Flashback Episode — The Sabbath Rest: Matthew 27:57-66

Published November 27, 2023 in Audio Journal Entries

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As we near the end of Matthew’s gospel, I debated whether to include Matthew’s passage focusing on Jesus’ crucifixion or not. As I looked at what Matthew’s gospel includes in this event, and what I want to cover for the rest of the episodes this year, I decided it makes sense to jump over the point of Jesus’ death, and look at what Matthew’ gospel tells us happened right after Jesus’ death. In the entire crucifixion record, only Matthew includes a key set of verses that sets the stage for what happens on Resurrection morning, and it makes a lot of sense in my mind to focus on these verses leading up to the resurrection.

Leading into this set of verses, Matthew draws our attention onto a previously unknown disciple, and we discover that this disciple steps into the spotlight at just the right moment in history.

Our passage for this episode is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 27, and we will read it from the Contemporary English Version. Starting in verse 57, Matthew tells us:

⁵⁷That evening a rich disciple named Joseph from the town of Arimathea ⁵⁸went and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate gave orders for it to be given to Joseph, ⁵⁹who took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth. ⁶⁰Then Joseph put the body in his own tomb that had been cut into solid rock and had never been used. He rolled a big stone against the entrance to the tomb and went away.

⁶¹All this time Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting across from the tomb.

Let’s pause reading here for a brief moment because I want to emphasize something that we might not immediately see from a simple reading. When Joseph from Arimathea steps onto the scene asking for Jesus’ body and placing Jesus’ body in his own tomb, we discover that this benefits everyone. This benefits Jesus’ disciples, the women who followed Jesus, and even the religious leaders. If no one had claimed Jesus’ body, it would have been thrown into the trash hole with all the other bodies to be buried or burned.

Joseph, while described as a disciple in this passage, steps into history at just the right moment as a neutral party with just what everyone in this event needs. Everyone needs a place for Jesus’ body to lay and a place that is clearly defined.

Most of the gospels include this detail, but what Matthew tells us next is fascinating and unique to his gospel. Continuing in verse 62, Matthew tells us:

⁶²On the next day, which was a Sabbath, the chief priests and the Pharisees went together to Pilate. ⁶³They said, “Sir, we remember what that liar said while he was still alive. He claimed that in three days he would come back from death. ⁶⁴So please order the tomb to be carefully guarded for three days. If you don’t, his disciples may come and steal his body. They will tell the people that he has been raised to life, and this last lie will be worse than the first one.”

⁶⁵Pilate said to them, “All right, take some of your soldiers and guard the tomb as well as you know how.” ⁶⁶So they sealed it tight and placed soldiers there to guard it.

On this Sabbath day, when the Pharisees and chief priests should have been resting, they were clearly worried about Jesus. It is amazing to think that while these leaders call Jesus a liar, they actually took His words about being raised seriously and are scared of the consequences if something should happen to His body.

It is almost funny to think that those most concerned about the protection of Jesus’ body in this entire event are the people who called Jesus a liar and the ones who put Him to death. While some of the disciples and the women who followed Jesus wanted access to His body to prepare it for burial, only the religious leaders were worried about the body disappearing.

In their attempts to keep Jesus’ body secure, the religious leaders actually place the most valid witnesses present at the tomb for the greatest event in history. While these soldiers appeared to be bribable, they were witnesses everyone could believe – that is except for the story the religious leaders try to bribe them to tell. The lie we will learn about in the next episode is less believable than the truth.

The last section of this passage is also fascinating in my mind. Pilate agrees to the religious leaders’ request. He tells the religious leaders to take their own guards and seal the tomb as well as they know how. The way Pilate frames this request is interesting in my mind. While traditional thought would believe Pilate loaned some of his own soldiers to the religious leaders, the way this translation of Matthew’s gospel frames this event, it is possible that Pilate told the religious leaders to use their own guards and to do the best they could.

It is interesting that Matthew frames Pilate’s message in this way because when we look a little later, it seems that these guards are both under the religious leaders command but also answerable to Pilate the governor. It is likely that with how Pilate frames this message that many of these guards at the tomb were among the mob that arrested Jesus and were present throughout His trial, beating, abuse, and crucifixion.

If the mob that came to arrest Jesus in the night scattered Jesus’ disciples, they were the perfect people to use to keep Jesus’ disciples away from the tomb.

The way Pilate frames his last statement is also interesting because it leaves open the subtle belief that the religious leaders were powerless to stop Jesus from doing what Jesus was going to do. While the religious leaders call Jesus a liar, they openly tell Pilate that Jesus predicted His own resurrection, and I think Pilate likely believed Jesus’ prediction over the Pharisee’s description.

All the plotting, worrying, and conspiring to keep Jesus’ body secure is actually a side story on this Sabbath Jesus was resting in the tomb. The bigger, amazing, massive, and also ignored significance of this Sabbath is that it marks the finished work of salvation. This Sabbath mirrors the Sabbath that was blessed and sanctified at the conclusion of creation week, and this Sabbath is forever significant as the point in History Jesus rested from His work of Salvation.

While Jesus has more to do for all of God’s people, Jesus gets a day of rest following the biggest event in the history of the universe, and the most significant event in our salvation story!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first and choose to accept Jesus as your Savior and accept the gift He gives to each of us that was purchased with His life. Don’t discount what Jesus did for each of us on the cross as something that was insignificant as I have seen some people do. Instead, take this event and study it to discover just how much God loves you and me!

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to grow a personal relationship with God. Choose to spend time praying and studying to grow personally closer to God and to fall in love with Him like He has fallen in love with you. Discover in the pages of the Bible, a God who gives us Himself because He wants to be with you, me, and everyone in history who is willing to accept His gift for eternity!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or discount and abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Flashback Episode: Year in Matthew – Episode 48: After Jesus had been crucified, discover what Matthew tells us about the Sabbath Jesus rested in the tomb, and how this event sets the stage for Jesus’ resurrection the following morning.

Helping Without Hypocrisy: Matthew 7:1-6

Published November 24, 2023 in Written Journal Entries

Focus Passage: Matthew 7:1-6 (NIV)

¹“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

³“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

⁶“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Read Matthew 7:1-6 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!

In what may be one of Jesus’ most ridiculous comparisons, in the illustration of the plank and the piece of sawdust we find a clear description of the term hypocrite. In this comparison, part of me wonders if some of those in the crowd actually laughed at the mental picture Jesus painted for them.

While preaching the famous “Sermon on the Mount”, Jesus draws our focus onto a big truth using this illustration. Matthew tells us that He challenged the crowd by asking, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” (v. 3-4)

Then Jesus hits on the big point for this section of His message. He continues by saying, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (v. 5)

Here we have Jesus clarifying what it means to be a hypocrite. Jesus defines the person who pays more attention to other peoples’ faults than their own as a hypocrite. According to Jesus’ definition, to not be a hypocrite, one must focus more on personal growth than on helping others grow.

But we must be careful to not make the passage say what it doesn’t say. Jesus ends off by saying, “then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (v. 5b)

Helping others grow is important, but more important is that the one doing the teaching has also lived the message they are sharing. A hypocrite is someone who gives advice that they are not following themselves. A hypocrite rationalizes their situation as not needing the advice, but they don’t make any exceptions for others.

To break free from hypocrisy, we must be intentional about sharing our failures and our successes. We must be honest about where we struggle, and what we are doing to overcome these challenges. We must speak from our experience more than from our intelligence. This is one definition for the idea of “sharing our testimony”.

Most of us know what we should be doing, and to really break free from hypocrisy, we must start doing these things. Helping others without being a hypocrite means that we have lived our advice and found it to be beneficial. Only after living our advice can we then help others without being known as a hypocrite.

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Spiritual Bias: Luke 22:66-71

Published November 23, 2023 in Audio Journal Entries

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Moving from the night of Jesus’ arrest and to the morning Jesus was ultimately crucified, we arrive at Jesus’ trial before the religious leaders. In order to condemn Jesus to death, the religious leaders needed to find something Jesus was guilty of.

While many of the gospels share different details about what happened during the twelve hours between the garden and the cross, the way Luke’s gospel frames Jesus’ trial is fascinating. Let’s read what happened.

Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 22, and we will read from the New Living Translation. Starting in verse 66, Luke tells us:

⁶⁶At daybreak all the elders of the people assembled, including the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. Jesus was led before this high council, ⁶⁷and they said, “Tell us, are you the Messiah?”

But he replied, “If I tell you, you won’t believe me. ⁶⁸And if I ask you a question, you won’t answer. ⁶⁹But from now on the Son of Man will be seated in the place of power at God’s right hand.”

⁷⁰They all shouted, “So, are you claiming to be the Son of God?”

And he replied, “You say that I am.”

⁷¹“Why do we need other witnesses?” they said. “We ourselves heard him say it.”

In Luke’s version of Jesus’ trial, I am amazed at what the religious leaders actually latch on to as a condemnation of Jesus. While other gospel writers share this event differently, if we were to take and focus on Luke’s gospel alone, nothing in Jesus’ response sounds worthy of death in my mind.

Oddly enough, according to what we just read in Luke’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t really even claim to be the Son of God.

In case this didn’t stand out for you, let me read this passage again and pay close attention. Reading again from verse 66:

⁷⁰They all shouted, “So, are you claiming to be the Son of God?”

And he replied, “You say that I am.”

⁷¹“Why do we need other witnesses?” they said. “We ourselves heard him say it.”

In this passage, all that these religious leaders actually hear is Jesus predicting that God would honor Him, which might not be acceptable in their minds, but it certainly isn’t worthy of death in my mind.

The only other thing Jesus says is that the religious leaders themselves are pressing the specific title onto Him. Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man, while the religious leaders are claiming Jesus’ title is the Son of God.

However, is there something happening behind the scenes in this passage that the religious leaders understand but we might not fully grasp living in a different culture and thousands of years removed from the first century world?

I suspect the answer is a yes.

While the conclusion of this trial was a clear setup according to Luke, because Jesus never really says what they claim to “hear” Him say, perhaps there is something lost in translation, or perhaps this was really the only sliver of an opening these leaders had to condemn Jesus.

The something I suspect that gets lost on us living so far removed from this event is that it appears as though Jesus references back to the unanswerable question He asked the Pharisees just a few days earlier. In Luke, chapter 20, verses 42 and 43, Jesus quotes David from the Old Testament who said: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet.”

While this passage also doesn’t sound that significant, it is believed that David was quoting this conversation as being from God the Father to God the Son. With God the Son being the one to be honored at God’s right hand, we now have a solid context for why these religious leaders were upset with Jesus’ claim.

David has predicted that God’s Son would be the one to sit at God’s right hand, and Jesus has just stepped into claiming that position for Himself from that point forward.

When reading this passage, I am continually amazed at the religious leaders. I am very confident that these leaders understood Jesus’ reference to the position He would be given as equal to Jesus claiming to be God’s Son – even if nothing Jesus directly says claims this title. The religious leaders were smart enough to connect the dots when they wanted to find Jesus guilty of something.

However, the religious leaders were not smart enough to keep connecting the dots to realize that the Messiah God was sending to them would be rejected and killed by them. They didn’t realize that they would ultimately reject the Messiah that they were desperately longing would arrive.

It is the same with us today. Too often, we get so focused on one way of thinking that we stop being able to think there are other options, or other ways of interpreting the facts. Like these religious leaders, we know lots of information, but we have overlaid this information with a thick layer of bias that we cannot begin to see that the same information could really be telling other stories. It is this way when two people with different worldviews look at the same fossil record, or when two different people who are both very opinionated on opposite sides of the political spectrum describe the same political event.

The lenses we have on our eyes called our biases filter our lives through our beliefs. These biases lead to the religious leaders in the first century ultimately killing the Messiah God sent to them because Jesus didn’t fit their biased picture of who the Messiah would be.

Our biases today can just as easily cause us to miss out on signs God is sending or on amazing things He is doing in the world around us. Because our biases and beliefs filter the world around us, we must be extra diligent about what we use to form our biases and our beliefs. If left unchecked, our biases will stop us from truly learning anything new, and these same biases will trap us into missing out on seeing God.

The best way to combat bias in your life is to open up the Bible and read it for yourself. The amazing thing about the Bible is that it challenges every single bias we might have. The Bible challenges every area of science, every angle of politics, every angle of service, every angle of business, and every area of human interaction. The only thing the Bible doesn’t really cover is technology. The only way for you to know whether what I just said is actually true or not is to pick up the Bible and read it for yourself.

With that said, let’s wrap up this podcast with some direct challenges related to this big truth:

As I always begin by challenging you, intentionally seek God first in your life and intentionally place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus. Ask God to help remove any unhealthy biases from your life and ask Him to help you better reflect His love and His character to the world around you!

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself. Everyone has an opinion of the Bible, and it can be easy to simply take someone else’s opinion about what the Bible says and agree with it. However, with eternity on the line, accepting someone else’s opinion about the Bible is the worst thing you could do. It is like having a beautifully wrapped present in front of you and a stranger telling you it is just an empty box. If you believe the stranger and never open the gift, you will never truly know what was inside the box!

It’s the same way with the Bible. Don’t let someone else trick you out of discovering God’s gift to you through the pages of His Word.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or fall away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Year in Luke – Episode 47: When looking at Jesus’ trial before the religious leaders on the morning He is crucified, discover how the religious leaders’ bias causes them to actually condemn an innocent Jesus, or perhaps rightly condemn Someone who claimed much more than they should have.

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