Read Luke 10:25-37. As he drew near Jerusalem, He was asked a question by a lawyer. This man was not a lawyer as we think of one today, but someone who was an expert in Old Testament Law. This man was comparable to a seminary professor today.
1. Why did this man ask Jesus a question?
He asked in order to test Him, to try to prove Him wrong.
2. What was the question this man asked?
What shall I do to inherit eternal life?
3. How did Jesus answer this man?
Since this man was an expert in the Law, Jesus asked him what the Law said.
4. How did this man answer Jesus’ question?
He said that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves.
5. When Jesus told this man to go obey that law, and He would live, is Jesus saying we can earn eternal life by keeping the Law? Explain.
Yes and No. If that man or anyone could keep this law, which sums up all the Law God gave to humanity, he would be good enough for heaven. But the fact is, and Jesus wanted the man to know this, it is impossible to keep these two commands. Therefore, we can never earn eternal life. And if he did indeed love God with everything that was himself, he would have recognized and accepted Jesus as the Messiah, sent from God.
6. Why did this person ask Jesus who was his neighbor?
He wanted to justify himself (He did not love everyone as himself, and he knew this!)
7. What is the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan?
God’s standard of righteousness, goodness, love and kindness goes far beyond that to which we would hold ourselves. Even the people we dislike the most, who hate and despise us, are our neighbors, and we must love them as we love ourselves.
8. What connection do you think there might be between this parable and what had just happened to our Lord and His disciples in a Samaritan village (See Luke 9:52-56.)?
The disciples were probably not very happy with Samaritans right now. Still, if the Samaritan did that for a Jew in the story our Lord told, they were to do the same for the Samaritans.
Read Luke 10:38-42. Sometime during the earlier ministry of our Lord, two sisters, Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus had come to believe. Jesus was very close to this family and often stayed at their home in Bethany on His trips to Jerusalem since Bethany was just a few miles from Jerusalem. He stays at their home on this trip to Jerusalem for the celebration of Hanukkah. There was without a doubt a lot of work to do to get ready for this celebration.
9. What was Martha’s complaint to Jesus?
She complained that Mary had left her to do all the work.
10. How did Jesus answer her complaint?
Jesus told Martha that she worried about a lot of the details but that there were only a few things in life that were really important. Mary had chosen this, and it would not be taken from her.
Read Luke 11:1-13. Much of what is found in this passage is also found in the Sermon on the Mount and other passages. It may be that Luke includes this here out of chronological order because it suits his purpose, but it is also likely that our Lord taught many of His lessons on many different occasions. Matthews’s account of the Sermon on the Mount is probably a collection of our Lord’s teachings that He set forth on many other occasions. During His stay at Mary and Martha’s home, our Lord probably found time to spend time in prayer. As His disciples watched Him pray, they decided they needed to learn to pray more effectively, and they asked Him to help them learn how to do this. In giving us this prayer, usually called the Lord’s Prayer, our Lord is not telling us to repeat these literal words; He is giving us a pattern to follow as we pray.
11. List at least six things that we are told to pray for.
a. We are to pray that God’s name be hallowed (made holy).
b. We are to pray that the Kingdom be established.
c. We are to pray that God’s will be carried out here on earth.
d. We are to pray for our daily needs.
e. We are to ask forgiveness for our sin.
f. We are to pray for deliverance from temptation.
12. What is the point of our Lord’s parable in Luke 11:5-8?
If human acquaintances give you what you need just to get you out of their hair, how much more will God, your Father, give you what you need when you ask Him.
13. What is the point of our Lord’s parable about prayer in Luke 11:11-13?
If human fathers give what is good and needed to their children, how much more will God the Father give what is good and necessary to His children.
The Applications:
What are the applications of these passages to our lives today? Identify as many as you are able.
1. Luke 10:40 states of Martha that she was distracted by all her preparations. Now before we take too harsh a view of Martha, let us take a closer look at Martha and ourselves. Consider for a moment Martha’s likely motivation. Our Lord was coming to visit to celebrate Hanukkah with her, her sister and her brother. She was convinced He was Messiah. Without a doubt, she wanted to present the very best she had to honor and please Him. With not only Him coming but some of His disciples, she was looking at quite a bit of work. She wanted it to be just right. Ask yourself, if the Lord was coming to dinner at your house next week, what kind of preparations would you feel you must make? Most of us would have followed Martha’s actions rather than Mary’s, I expect.
But her desire for wanting things to be as good as possible distracted her from seeing the most important issues. The details got in the way and drew her attention away from what was really important or valuable. To be sure, there were a few things that needed to be done, but these needed not have taken up too much of her time. If this family had servants, which seemed likely, they could have handled most things. She had an opportunity few in history have ever had, namely to sit at the feet of the Messiah and learn from Him. This is what her sister Mary chose to do. Martha could have elected to do the same. But the details distracted her. Things that were not all that important got in the way and obscured her from seeing the more important things.
So it is with us. Details often get in the way and distract us from the major issues in life. We end up majoring in the minors and minoring in the majors. It is not a bad thing to be a detail-oriented person. It is not a bad thing to have a neat and beautiful house. But there are more important things in life than a neat home, such as our relationship with our Lord, our relationship with our mate and our children, our relationship with other believers. And there is only so much time given to us in this life. We must have a well-defined set of priorities; we must continually work at not being distracted by minor issues from what is really important.
Ultimately knowing our Lord in a close and personal way outweighs all other things in life (Jeremiah 9:23-24). How much time do we spend personally with our Father, with our Lord Jesus Christ, listening to Him as He speaks to us in His Word and speaking back to Him in prayer?
2. It is not unusual for people to be convinced God will accept them as righteous or good enough to be admitted into heaven. The reason many do is that they have used the wrong standard by which they judge themselves. They set or pick their own standards. It is not hard to achieve a passing grade if we get to choose the grading scale!
This lawyer in Luke asked our Lord what he needed to do to gain eternal life. Understand, this was the wrong question to ask, for it presupposes that one can DO SOMETHING to gain eternal life. What our Lord must do now is try to get this man to understand that there is nothing he CAN DO to earn life eternal. He begins by asking this man, since this man was a lawyer or an expert in the Law, what he thought the Law stated about this. The lawyer’s answer that he must love God with all his ability and love his neighbor as himself demonstrates that he indeed knew the Old Testament Scriptures, for this is the summation of the Law.
The question now is this; did this student of the Law meet those requirements? It is apparent from the text that he knew he did not love everybody as himself, for it says he asked Jesus another question wishing to justify himself. If this lawyer could limit the definition of a neighbor to a small specific group of people, then he might be seen as meeting the requirement of this law. This is a favorite tactic of lawyers and for most of us. While we may not be able to alter the wording of a law, we might be able to redefine the words so that they mean something favorable for us. People almost instinctively know that only good and righteous people will be accepted by God and that those who are evil will be judged. So then, how do we define “good” and “righteous”? Usually in ways that include us!
Jesus, using the parable of the good Samaritan, in answer to the lawyer’s question of who my neighbor is, defines a neighbor to be anyone you meet, even by chance, who is in need. Could the lawyer, using this definition, state that he loved his neighbor as himself? Almost certainly not, nor could any of us. This is precisely our Lord’s intention, to get this lawyer and the rest of us to see that by God’s definition of the Law—the only one that really matters—no one at all can keep the Law.
What could this man DO to gain eternal life? Our Lord’s answer is simply to keep God’s Law as God defines it. But since this man did not do this, nor could he do it, there was nothing he could DO to earn eternal life. And so it is with us as well.
As the Scriptures reveal elsewhere, eternal life does not come by doing any feats of righteousness, by keeping any law because we cannot keep it by God’s standards. Eternal life comes solely by placing one’s trust in the completed work of Jesus Christ our Lord upon the cross.
3. The Lord’s Prayer, as found in the New Testament, is not a prayer to be memorized and repeated by rote. No grace is bestowed upon one who simply speaks these words. They do not comprise a magical formula for blessing and success. Instead, our Lord is giving His disciples and us today a template for prayer, a pattern on which to base our own prayer.
Luke lists six things for which they and we are to pray. It is very instructive to note that the first three concern God and the last three concern us. How different this is from how we usually pray. We typically begin by making requests for ourselves and end up with, if we get that far, requests concerning God.
Concerning God, we are to pray for His name to be hallowed, that is, set apart or made holy. How this is needed in our world today, a world that denies His very existence and uses His name as a curse! Are we genuinely concerned about His honor? Do we ask that His name, the representation of His person, be made holy, honored, set apart, lifted up? Most of us do not begin here. In fact, we never get to it at all because we are more concerned about our needs and wants than His honor.
We are to pray that His kingdom might be established. Unfortunately, most have forgotten the coming kingdom. We seldom think about it. When we do think about it, we are not quite sure that we want it to come right now. Thus the unspoken prayer of our heart, though not stated, is Thy kingdom come, but not right now! Time after time, I’ve been told by someone, “I want to see the Lord come, but I’d like Him to wait until I get married, until after I raise a family, or until my family or friends come to accept Him as their savior.” We fail to realize that the only hope for our world is His direct and total intervention in it. There is no joy or pleasure, either physical, material or spiritual, that can compare with our full adoption as children of God. While we want our loved ones and friends to come to know Him before He comes for His bride and thus want Him to delay until they do to escape the great tribulation which shall ensue after the rapture, we fail to realize that every day’s delay means that more pass into death without knowing Him and millions are born who will reject Him. We do not want to face the great tribulation, nor do we want those we love to face it either. But that might be the very thing that will bring them to faith? How often do we earnestly pray for the establishment of His kingdom, for His return for us?
How often do we pray for God’s will upon the earth? More often than not, we are more concerned about our will being done than His. We pray for those things which we wish or will, rather than for those things which He wishes or wills.
We must first be concerned with and seek His honor, His kingdom and His will, and then we are to ask for those things which concern us, our daily needs, forgiveness from sin and deliverance from temptation.