A Word for Today | Luke 18:35-43 The afflicted people in Luke’s miracle accounts are a portrait gallery of sin and its effects. Leprosy shows sin’s corrupting power. The lame man shows the weakness that comes from sin. The dead man shows the sinner’s spiritual inability; the demon-possessed show sin’s destructive bondage. Together, these victims […]
Jesus’ Sovereign Offer
A Word for Today | Luke 18:41 Jesus’ passage through the city of Jericho on His way to the cross supplies us with proof of His compassionate love. When poor blind Bartimaeus cried out for mercy, “Jesus stopped” our Lord gave His full attention to this soul in need (Lk. 18:40). The account continues as […]
Do We Give Thanks?
A Word for Today | Luke 17:15-19 The Protestant Reformers summarized the Christian life with the words guilt, grace, and gratitude. They meant that we begin guilty before God, are saved by a wonderful sovereign grace, and the result in our lives is thanksgiving to God. As Luke concluded his account of Jesus’ healing of […]
Taking Jesus at His Word
A Word for Today | Luke 17:14 Luke 17: 11-13 tells of a group of ten lepers who spied Jesus in the distance and cried out to Him for mercy. In a previous miracle, Jesus had confronted a poor leper who asked for compassion. Jesus had lovingly touched his corrupted flesh and cleansed the man […]
Jesus, Have Mercy
A Word for Today | Luke 17:11-13 The miracle of Luke 17 involves not one leper (as in chapter 5), but ten lepers who Jesus met on the way to Jerusalem. Leprosy was a corrupting disease that depicts the curse of sin. It worked death from within while isolating its victims from fellowship with other […]
A Primer on Christian Ministry
A Word for Today | Luke 9:12-17 When we consider Jesus’ miracles, we notice that our Lord used these experiences as a training ground for his disciples, the future apostles. This instruction in ministry comes through most clearly in the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus probed the disciples with Christians, even though “he already […]
