Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.
It’s so easy for us to misplace our priorities, isn’t it? We want to do well at work, in business, in school, in our families. We want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Then again, maybe we’re ready to settle for healthy and wealthy. In Luke 6:17-26 many people have come to hear Jesus and be healed (v. 18). Folks are being healed right and left. The power of God is there.
Make no mistake about it. This is definitely a good thing! Jesus doesn’t like you to have diseases any more than you like it. Trouble with unclean spirits troubles Jesus too, so much that, at least in this passage, when he is confronted with the spirits he casts them out. God does delight in bringing healing and life to his people.
How about that little element of wisdom? Let’s take a look at the content of the teaching here. There’s a significant content parallel in Matthew 5, though the discourses seem to take place at a different time and place. This is in a level place and is accompanied by healing beforehand. The passage in Matthew 5 is on a mountain and doesn’t have healing beforehand. But it shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus frequently talks about the same kind of issues in different places and at different times.
When Jesus teaches here, he tells about how his followers are blessed whether they are poor, hungry, sorrowful, or hated. Those who are confident in themselves will face troubles, but those who are looking to him will receive blessings. Do you notice how much Jesus talks about healing? About wealth? His only mention of wealth here has to do with the implication of not depending on it. He doesn’t mention healing physical maladies at all.
Jesus attracts people to him by doing things which are for their genuine momentary good. He then gives them words which they can live by forever. There’s the priority. May the Lord give us right priorities, that we can enjoy his blessings now and forever.
If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.