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FROM THE PASTOR'S STUDY

Topic: Luke's Perspective of Jesus: Ch. 5 Message Outlines (Include Audio)

Luke 5:33-39 (2)

by Darrel Cline
(darrelcline biblical-thinking.org)

Chapter # 5 Paragraph # 5 Study # 2
July 29, 2007
Lincolnton, N.C.
(Download Audio)

(362)

Thesis:   Status seeking blinds so that nothing is perceived correctly.

Introduction:   We have been studying Luke's record of the "official" reaction to Jesus. This reaction was sponsored by Jesus' healing of a leper and that leper's presentation of himself to the priests. In our studies we have seen that there was a potent predisposition in the "officials" to find fault with Jesus. Rather than deal honestly with the evidence, they simply made "snap judgments" that tended to preserve their status quo and to make Jesus appear to be a deceiver.

This is an enormously critical issue because the "officials" were the ones who set the tone of the nation's future. God gave the nation a thirty-seven-year "window" of opportunity to embrace His gracious provision of a Kinsman Redeemer by the presence of that Redeemer in their midst. He then gave that same nation a thirty-seven-year "window" of opportunity to reverse itself from the foolish decision it had made by the preaching of the Gospel of the Resurrected Redeemer. And then He destroyed that nation and scattered it over the face of the earth for almost 2,000 years.

While "official" Israel was scrambling to preserve its extremely temporary place in the sun, some of the ordinary people of the nation were being drawn one by one into the everlasting Kingdom of that Resurrected King. How was it that ordinary people could see what the "officials" could not see? The answer to that question rests, at least partially, upon facts so plain that only those who have the bit in their teeth cannot see them.

This morning we are going to look into the danger of refusing to deal with the facts just because those facts expose the profound evil of the life that is being lived apart from them.


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