Family Worship
Andy Beard
Luke 5:1-11 Family Worship Ideas

Bible Study notes on Luke 10:38-42

I really do wish I had the proverbial fiver for every time I’ve preached this passage only to have someone come up afterwards to say that it’s all well and good, but the Church needs Marthas too!  The implication is that there another way of being a disciple that is equally valid: that of action, of active serving.  Sometimes I’ve even wondered if what I’m being told is that it’s OK not to be like Mary.  We are so programmed to think of effectiveness in terms of what is being done, what is being achieved, that we can’t let go of the idea, even when Jesus explicitly rebukes us for it!

Well, yes, but someone still had to prepare the meal!  Did they?

We live hurried and harried lives.  We see busy-ness as a virtue.  It legitimizes our existence.  How are you?  Busy.  I know how busy you are...  our schedules are loaded and over-loaded.  We often joke in a knowing way about how busy even Church life is.  I seem to remember everyone saying after lockdown, that we really shouldn’t get back to being as busy as we were pre-Covid.

And yet here we are.  Overstretched to the point of having to shut down outreach because we can’t staff them in the midst of busy lives.  At present we can’t even sustain an evening service. 

And yet the issue isn’t that there is an irreconcilable divide between contemplative and active Christianity.  Still less that one is better than the other.  The point is that in a healthy discipleship there is both in their proper place.  A key word in the narrative is ‘distracted’.  Martha’s mistake is in being distracted.  Mary was listening, Martha was distracted.  She is worried, and upset.  She has allowed a false sense of what must be done to get in the road of the amazing opportunity to sit and hear Jesus in her own home. 

There is, as a wise man once said, a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.  There is a time to prepare a meal. There is a time to sit and listen to Jesus, and wisdom knows the difference.

When we divide ourselves into Marthas and Marys, and seek to legitimize our version of Christianity over against the other, we are dangerously missing the point.  Jesus has no problem with us preparing a meal… unless of course it a time when we should be listening to Him.   Then it is a problem. 

Questions

What does it mean to ‘open our homes’?  Is that something you do? 

How often have you been invited to a meal in someone’s home from MIE?  How many people from MIE have you had in your home for a meal?

How can we cultivate this kind of hospitality as part of our discipleship?  …and how can we stop becoming distracted when we do?

Someone once said: Entertaining is about the host, but hospitality is about the guest.  What do you make of that?  What difference would it make to your thinking if you could grasp this distinction?

Why is hospitality such a key aspect of Church life?  What do we lose when it isn’t a feature of our life together at MIE? 

What other passages speak positively about hospitality in the Bible?  How do you let those passages shape your vision of what it means to be a Christian?

What do you think Martha expected Jesus to say after v.40? 

Do you ever feel exasperated when others don’t seem to pull their weight in Church or home life?  What does that say about us?

When do you find ‘busy-ness’ distracting you from the opportunity to hear Jesus?  Are you ever too busy, too distracted by the things that worry and upset us’ to hear from Jesus?

How can we hear from Jesus today?

When should we be more Mary-like..?  And when more Martha-like?

Bible Study notes on Luke 10:25-37

It’s one of Jesus’ most popular parables, to such an extent that being a ‘good samaritan’ has entered common parlance and can often be used to describe anyone – Christian or not – who does a kind act or a good turn from someone else. That in itself should be enough to warn us how careful we need to be as we approach this well-known story.

The conversation begins with an expert in the Law wanting to know from Jesus how they can inherit eternal life. It’s perhaps a strange question for an ‘expert in the Law’ to ask. And it isn’t insignificant that, rather than giving a straight answer, or simply pronouncing the forgiveness of sins, as He does elsewhere, Jesus turns the question back on the ‘expert’. It’s an entirely valid question to ask an ‘expert’. ‘What is written in the Laws … How do you read it?’. The answer betrays the expert’s assumption. In spite of his rhetoric, he believes eternal life is something he can merit through his own performance. The tell-tale verse in v.29: ‘But he wanted to justify himself…’ not in terms of wanting it to look like he was asking an appropriate question, but in terms of being justified before God (see also Luke 18:14). It has always been the case that ‘a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law’ (Rom.3:28). Jesus deftly exposes his faulty assumptions.

But locked in those faulty assumptions, the expert latches on to the issue of loving neighbor. Who is my neighbour? Where do the limits of love lie?

Strangely the Parable of the Good Samaritan is often used – usually outside the Church, but I’ve heart it get pretty close inside the Church too – for exactly the opposite purpose for which Jesus designed it. ‘Go and do likewise’ (v.37) does sound like Jesus is telling us to be good people, to follow the moral example of the ‘good Samaritan’.

Except of course, a Samaritan was not a good person, and was certainly not an example to be followed. The parable would have turned the expert’s world upside down. Here was one of the most religious of religious leaders being told he had to be like a Samaritan – the very person he would have rejected. Eternal life isn’t about heritage, or religiosity. It isn’t about obeying the Law.

If the expert wants to be justified, he’s going to have to let go of everything he thinks is giving him a right to eternal life. In fact, when we read the story carefully, we aren’t meant to be thinking about being the Samaritan at all. Who is the neighbour who needs to be loved? The man who is beaten by the robbers, left for dead. Does the Law (the Priest or the Levite) help those who are left for dead?

No. But the one who is rejected does, and he pays for it all. The expert asks who is the neighbour he must love. Jesus responds by telling him he is the neighbour who needs to be loved. Only when he is healed will he begin to learn to love as he has been loved. Only then will have the eternal life he longs for.

Questions:

Why does the expert in the Law talk about inheriting eternal life? Does the question make sense? Do you have to do anything in order to inherit something? What is the ‘expert’ driving at?

Do you think Jesus really believes that if the expert does fulfil the two great commandments from Deut.6:5, he ‘will live’ (v.28)?

Why does Jesus tell him he has answered correctly when he has in fact given the answer of legalism that is the very opposite of the Gospel, and that leads to a curse (Gal.1:6-9)?

Why is Jesus so willing to let the first commandment drop out of sight, and to allow the expert to focus on the second commandment that is like it?

What does it mean to be ‘justified (before God)’? How were people in the Old Testament ‘justified’?

Can you think of any passages in the Old Testament that actually answer the question of what we must do to inherit eternal life?

How is the Parable of the Samaritan designed to lift the ‘expert’ out of his legalistic mindset?

Based on this parable, who is my neighbour?

What would you say to someone who said they were like the Good Samaritan?

If a denarius is a day’s wage (Matt.20:2), when will the Samaritan return?

Bible Study notes on Luke 10:1-24

Luke 10:1-24

The disciples have learnt a lot (and are still learning) since Jesus sent them out on their first training mission in 9:1-6.  And now it is time to send them out again.  In some ways it is repeat of their first mission, though others are now invited to join them.  Early Christian scholars tell us that many of those mentioned in the early chapters of Acts, such as those appointed deacons and involved in evangelism (including Stephen and Philip) were include in this larger mission team.   Another difference is that the region into which they are sent now includes areas they are less familiar with.  At least some of their exposure now seems to include Samaritan towns and regions.  Their earlier experience and their learning since, has equipped them for a more challenging call. 

But much of Jesus’ initial instruction sounds reminiscent of 9:1-6, and you may find it helpful to revisit the Bible Study we did a few weeks ago on that passage.  There are however, significant and ominous additions.  Whereas their earlier mission was relatively straightforward, characterized by acceptance and ‘success’, this one would be a more mixed experience, bearing the marks of rejection that increasingly reflects Jesus’ own experience as He heads towards Jerusalem.  Now they are being sent out ‘like lambs among wolves’; and lambs getting eaten and torn apart by wolves.  And the eternal significance of their impending rejection is underlined in more graphic terms (vv.13-15).

And yet, in spite of their mixed reception, Satan is thrown down when the disciples proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.  There is a deep connection between our willingness to suffer as lambs amongst wolves in order to be faithful in evangelism, and the cosmic defeat of Satan (see also Rev.12:9-11).  And He roots their joy not in their victory / authority over Satan, so much as in their deliverance from him (v.20).  And having been delivered from Satan, the Church is now commissioned to rescue others from the power of evil.  Their simple, child-like faithfulness in doing so is so profound that it ignites the Son’s worship of the Father through the Holy Spirit (v.21).  I wonder if we have ever understood our evangelism in terms of its impact in the life of the Trinity?  And what might be our impact when we refuse to speak of the Gospel?

 

Questions:

Why do you think Jesus sends His disciples out as ‘lambs among wolves’ (v.3)?   What is this image seeking to convey?  Do you think that is still the experience of Christians today?  Does that resonate with your experience as a Christian?

In 10:12-15 Jesus talks about judgment being more bearable for certain towns than others.  Do you think Ipswich will be judged as a town, as well as people who live in Ipswich being judged as individuals?  Do you think there are different gradations to people’s experience of judgment?  …on what basis?

Read 10:13 again carefully.  If Jesus knows what would have produced repentance in Tyre and Sidon, why didn’t He do that? 

What do you think their being given authority means (v.19)?  What does the exercise of that authority look like and achieve?  Do you think the Church still has this authority?

In light of their own experience in Acts, and indeed that of the persecuted Church throughout the ages, how do we make sense of Jesus’ declaration that nothing will harm them in v.19?

What is it that the Father has hidden (v.21)?  …and why is the Father pleased to hide them?  Can they be revealed again?  How?

How comfortable are you with Jesus’ use of the language of ‘chosen’ in 10:22?  Who does Jesus choose to reveal the Father to?  How does He do that?