insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2832','1','42','14','6','6','<p>14:6 <i>And they could not answer these things</i>- Rom. 8:31 may allude here; what shall <i>we </i>say to these things? Psychologically, being intellectually silenced is a shameful experience- unless one surrenders completely to the new argument. The response of the Jews for the most part was to get angry and to hate the Lord yet more. But the Lord wasn\'t out to just win an argument; He wanted to convert them. And He knew that by silencing them, He was leading them to a point where they would either convert totally, or hate Him unto death. </p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2833','1','42','14','7','7','<p>14:7 <i>And when he noted how they chose out the chief seats, he told a parable to those that were invited, saying to them</i>- The Lord was a guest, but He took the stage. Having silenced His hosts, He goes further, attacking the mindset of His fellow guests as well as His hosts. This was not because He was an aggressive, victory-oriented person. He wanted their repentance, and in this case, He saw this might be achieved by going on the offensive, forcing them to a point where they must capitulate to Him, or go away in bitterness, self-condemned, having themselves made the answer. And this is His style to this day.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2834','1','42','14','8','8','<p>14:8 <i>When you are invited by anyone to a marriage feast, do not sit in the chief seat; lest a more honourable man than you be invited by him</i>- Elsewhere, the Lord had presented the invitation to His Kingdom as an invitation to the Messianic banquet. It ought to be obvious that we take the lowest seat in the light of such a gracious invitation. We sit there awed by the grace of being there in the ecclesia; all judgmentalism, superiority and criticism of others is so deeply inappropriate. We are to assume that the others are &quot;more honourable&quot;. This is not a call to naivety, but rather to such a deep impression of our own experience of grace that we see others as better than ourselves. The Lord may mean us to assume that our response to His grace in calling us should instil in us an appropriate humility in secular life; as we take the lowest seat in the community of believers, so we take the lowest place in social life. The experience of grace is such that we are affected by it in every department of our secular and social lives. The chiefest in the Kingdom is the Lord Jesus; He is the &quot;honourable&quot; one, the same word translated &quot;precious&quot; about Him in 1 Pet. 2:4,6. The implication is that if we don\'t take the lowest seat, then we are taking the place which is the Lord\'s place. Any other choice apart from the deepest humility is an awful, Christ-surpassing pride, a taking of His place.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2835','1','42','14','9','9','<p>14:9 <i>And he that invited you shall come and say to you: Give this man your place. Then you shall be shamed into taking the lowest place</i>- The Lord teaches that if we\'re invited to a feast, we should take the lowest place, genuinely assuming the others present are more honourable than us; and we take our place at that table awaiting the coming of the host. Our attitudes to the seating and behaviour on entry to the feast will affect our eternal destiny- for when the Lord comes, He will make the arrogant man suffer &quot;shame&quot;, which is a commonly used descriptor of the rejected at judgment day. The Lord goes on in that same discourse to explain what our attitude should be- He tells the parable of the great supper, to which those who were invited didn\'t pitch, and there was a desperate, last minute compelling of smelly street people to come in and eat the grand meal.</p><p>The shamed person who took the highest place is not thrown out of the feast; instead, he takes the lowest place. This could suggest that the judgment process is for our education. Those who were conceited and superior shall be eternally educated then. There may be a similar teaching in the way that the labourers who worked longest and hardest \'learn\' when the payment is given at the end of the day; but they retain their penny, their salvation. See on Mt. 20:11. There is therefore the possible implication that some who will be accepted by the Lord who even at the judgment have wrong attitudes towards their brethren. Before the Lord of the harvest, those who thought they had worked hardest complained that those they thought had done less, were still getting a penny. They were rebuked, but they still had their penny (cp. salvation; Mt. 20:11). The subsequent comment that the first shall be last might imply that they will be in the Kingdom, but in the least place. Likewise the brother who takes the highest place in the ecclesia will be made with shame to take the lower place- yet still within the family of God.</p><p>The public nature of the judgment experience is hinted at throughout the Lord\'s parables. The other guests at the Lord\'s table will see the man who took the highest place in the ecclesia taking now the lowest place- he has &quot;shame&quot; before their eyes, and likewise the believer who took the lowest place in this life will have praise for that humility from the other guests, as the Lord exalts him or her higher (Lk. 14:9,10). In this context the Lord proceeded to warn His followers not to be like the man who sets out to build a tower, but can\'t complete it- and therefore he has shame from those who behold it (Lk. 14:29). This is just another way of saying the same thing. There will be believers who grandly showed themselves to their brethren to be building something which actually they couldn\'t complete; and they will have shame before their brethren when the day of judgment reveals who they really are. All this, of course, has massive practical implications. If all will be ultimately revealed before our brethren in the last day, why try to act before them as someone we\'re not?</p><p>Yet on the other hand, the idea of the Lord Jesus returning and one of His guests having &ldquo;shame&quot; must surely refer, in line with other Biblical passages, to the shame of condemnation. &lsquo;And so therefore&rsquo;, the Lord continues, &lsquo;take that lowest place at the feast right now&rsquo;. When the Lord spoke of how we must come down from our good seats at the feast and take the lowest seat, He\'s actually referring to condemned King Zedekiah, who likewise had to come down from his throne and take a lowly seat (Jer. 13:18). If the &ldquo;lowest room&quot; is seen as the place of the shame filled condemned&hellip; then surely He&rsquo;s saying that we should consider ourselves as &ldquo;condemned&quot; now as we sit at the feast. And what feast does the Lord have in mind? Is He perhaps referring on some level to the breaking of bread, which is the Lord&rsquo;s supper / feast where we now each take our place? Should we not, therefore, be sitting there feeling although this is only part of the story condemned, and the lowest of all? Is that not <i>one</i> and only one, be it noted of the emotions elicited in us by the cross? The &ldquo;feast&quot; of the breaking of bread is clearly meant to be understood by us as a foretaste of the Messianic &ldquo;feast&quot; of the future Kingdom. And if we genuinely feel we should have the least place there, we will reflect that in our taking the lowest place at the memorial meeting. In our hearts, we will sit there knowing we ought to be condemned.</p><p>The man lying helpless on the Jerusalem - Jericho road was surely modelled on Zedekiah being overtaken there by his enemies (Jer. 39:5). When the Lord spoke of how we must come down from our good seats at the feast and take the lowest seat, He\'s actually again referring to Zedekiah, who likewise had to come down from his throne and take a lowly seat (Jer. 13:18). That weak, vacillating man basically loved God\'s word, he wanted to be obedient, but just couldn\'t bring himself to do it. And so he was, quite justly, condemned. It\'s as if the Lord saw in that wretched, pathetic man a type of all those He came to save. And even in this wretched position, the Lord will pick us up and carry us home. This gives a fine, fine insight into His sensitivity to us. Indeed, several times the Spirit in the NT uses OT pictures of unworthy believers as the basis of a description of the faithful. See on Lk. 10:33,34.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2836','1','42','14','10','10','<p>14:10 <i>But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place; that when he that has invited you comes, he may say to you: Friend, go up higher. Then shall you have glory in the presence of all that sit to eat with you</i>- The Lord clearly taught the continuity between the breaking of bread and the future marriage supper by observing that He would not again drink the cup until He drinks it anew with us at the marriage supper (Mt. 26:29). The parables of how the Gospel invites people as it were to a meal are suggesting that we should see the Kingdom as a meal, a supper, of which our memorial service is but a foretaste. We are commanded to enter the supper and take the lowest seat, strongly aware that others are present more honourable than ourselves. Those with this spirit are simply never going to dream of telling another guest \'Leave Don\'t partake of the meal\'. But this is the spirit of those who are exclusive and who use the Lord\'s table as a weapon in their hands to wage their petty church wars. The very early church didn\'t behave like this, but instead sought to incarnate and continue the pattern of the meals of the Lord Jesus during His ministry. And this is one major reason why their unity drew such attention, and they grew. To exclude someone from the Lord&rsquo;s table is to judge them as excluded from the Kingdom banquet. And those who make such judgment will themselves be rejected from it.</p><p>We are come to &quot;God the judge of all&quot;- even now (Heb. 12:23). He is right now enthroned as judge of our lives (Mt. 5:34; Ps. 93:2). We are <i>now </i>in God\'s presence, and can\'t escape from it (Ps. 139:2); and the presence of God is judgment language (Acts 3:19; 2 Thess. 1:9; 2:19; Jude 24; Rev. 14:10). &quot;God is the judge: he puts down one, and sets up another&quot; in His mind (Ps. 75:7)- although the final putting down and setting up will be at the judgment seat (the basis for the parable of the man being asked to go up higher). This same parable is also rooted in Prov. 25:7: &quot;Put not forth yourself in <i>the presence </i>of the king, for better it is that it be said unto you, Come up hither: than that you should be put lower in <i>the presence</i> of the prince&quot;. We are in the King\'s presence both in this life- when we chose where to sit- just as much as when He returns and re-arranges the seating. The day of the Lord is coming, but it is even now (Mic. 7:4 Heb.). Before His presence, we shall feel &quot;the lowest&quot; of all. And that is how we are to feel in this life. This outlaws any sense of superiority towards our fellow guests, our brethren, in this life.</p><p>The parable about taking the lowest seat sounds obvious to us. If a poor nobody is invited to the King&rsquo;s feast, he would naturally take the lowest place, with feelings of wonderment, awe, embarrassment, joy, quiet honour, excitement that he&rsquo;d been invited, that he was somewhere too good for him, by grace. The element of unreality in the story is that the man arrogantly takes a high place, and has to be demoted at the coming of the King. There&rsquo;s something unreal about this. But there&rsquo;s the rub. This is exactly how we are behaving when we jockey for status and &lsquo;power&rsquo; in the ecclesia in whatever form, when we fail to consider each man better than ourselves to be. This is how absurd we&rsquo;re being. The way the Lord applies this to His church implies that we should consider each of the other invited guests as &ldquo;great men&rdquo; of nobility. This is the level of respect which He intends there to be amongst us for our fellow brethren. The parables of judgment truly touch the very core of our spiritual being.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2837','1','42','14','11','11','<p>14:11<i> For everyone that exalts himself shall be humbled, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted</i>- See on Acts 5:31; 2 Cor. 11:7. So how, then, can we &lsquo;humble ourselves&rsquo;? As noted on :9 and :10, we are to live now as if we are in the Lord\'s judgment presence, and all we seek is the lowest place in His Kingdom. When Israel was a child... she was humble, as we should be after our spiritual rebirth at baptism. It is evidently not something natural; for it is a fruit of the spirit we must develop. It isn&rsquo;t a natural timidity or nervousness or shyness. By realising our own sinfulness, we will realise our condemnation, and thereby be &lsquo;brought down&rsquo;. For we are condemned for our behaviour, but saved out of that condemnation. The exact, vast debt is reckoned up- before we are forgiven (Mt. 18). We have been invited through the Gospel to sit down in the Kingdom. Humbling ourselves is therefore sitting down in the <i>lowest</i> place- not just a low place. Strictly, the Greek means &lsquo;the farthest&rsquo; away from the Lord Jesus, who sits at the head of the table. Like Paul we must somehow get that deep and genuine apprehension that we are &ldquo;chief of sinners&rdquo;- and sit in the <i>lowest, farthest</i> place. This would mean that we &lsquo;each esteemed our brother better than ourselves to be&rsquo;, not in any na&iuml;ve, meaningless way; not seeing strengths where they simply don&rsquo;t exist; but seeing him or her that way simply in comparison to our own lowness. Seeing others as higher than ourselves is a sure remedy for every case of ecclesial friction and division. So often pride develops from a worry about what others will think of us, a desire to be seen as acceptable and not unusual. It leads to a hyper-sensitivity regarding what others may be implying about us. The humbled mind will not see things in these terms. <i>If only we would each, personally, learn this lesson, or at least grasp the truth and beauty and power of it</i>. The publican was so worried about his own position before God that he paid no attention, so we sense, to the hypocritical brother next to him: &ldquo;The publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner&hellip; this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for &hellip; he that humbles himself shall be exalted&rdquo; (Luke 18:13-14). That sin-conscious man is an essay in self-humbling. This is why David sometimes parallels &ldquo;the meek&rdquo; and the repentant sinner (e.g. Ps. 25:8,9). See on Mt. 18:4.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2838','1','42','14','12','12','<p>14:12 <i>And he also said to him that had invited him: When you make a dinner or a supper, call not your friends, nor your brothers and sisters, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbours, unless they also invite you and repay you</i>- The Lord gave His parable about how <i>He</i> has invited us, through the call of the Gospel, to a great supper. Quite simply, the very experience and wonder of having been invited to the Kingdom should lead us to likewise invite others. But further. If we have truly understood the implications of the Lord&rsquo;s gracious calling, if we have truly perceived our desperation, we will take <i>the</i> lowest place, considering ourselves the <i>lowest</i> and least worthy. And we will therefore go out and invite others of the same class to which we perceive ourselves to belong- the poor, the maimed and blind.</p><p>Our attitude to others will be reflective of our perception of God\'s grace in calling us- as we were invited by such grace, so we will invite others to <i>our</i> table who likewise cannot recompense us. If we are the blind and maimed invited to the Lord\'s table, we will invite the blind and maimed to our table. The extent of God\'s grace to us really needs to sink in. When was the last time <i>you</i> did an act of pure grace to others like this...?</p><p>The Lord Jesus described those who responded to the Kingdom Gospel as entering into a marriage supper (Mk. 2:18,19; Lk. 14:12-24), which was a well-known figure for the future Messianic Kingdom (Is. 25:6-9). By eating / fellowshipping with Him in faith, His followers were in prospect enjoying the Kingdom life. To exclude people from His table is to seek to exclude people from His Kingdom.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2839','1','42','14','13','13','<p>14:13 <i>But when you make a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind</i>- There is a connection between Lk. 14:13 and 21. This is exactly what the parable of :21 teaches that God does: &ldquo;Bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind&rdquo;. The basis of God&rsquo;s calling of us must be the basis upon which we relate to others. We cannot recompense Him, yet He shows us His gracious invitation. So we too must share ourselves with those who cannot give us anything. In this sense, we like our Father, serve for nothing in the sense of no personal, concrete gain. We must <i>be</i> gracious by nature, and just <i>be</i> as He <i>is</i>.</p><p>The lame, blind etc. were not allowed to serve God under the law (Lev. 21:18), nor be offered as sacrifices (Dt. 15:21), nor come within the holy city (2 Sam. 5:6-8). The Lord purposefully healed multitudes of lame and blind (Mt. 15:30), and allowed them to come to Him in the temple (Mt. 21:14). His acted out message was clearly that those who were despised as unfit for God&rsquo;s service were now being welcomed by Him into that service. The lame and blind were despised because they couldn&rsquo;t work. They had to rely on the grace of others. Here again is a crucial teaching: those called are those who can&rsquo;t do the works, but depend upon grace. We need to appreciate too that in Palestine, to refuse an invitation to a feast was a major insult to the person who gave it. That the majority of people refused it would&rsquo;ve been so hurtful to the host. And in this we see a picture of the pain of God, that the majority refuse His invitation. Therefore He is so happy when anyone <i>does</i> respond, even if they&rsquo;re down and out. And we should hold in our heart the tragedy of God, the pain of God, that so many have refused Him; and therefore never judge anyone as unsuitable who may respond to the invitation. We&rsquo;re making the invitations for <i>His</i> sake, not our own. And on this basis we &lsquo;bring in&rsquo; those desperate types to the Lord&rsquo;s feast (:21). The same word is used about Barnabas &lsquo;bringing&rsquo; the unlikely convert Paul to the apostles (Acts 9:27), and later &lsquo;bringing&rsquo; or introducing him to the Antioch ecclesia (Acts 11:26), the &ldquo;other sheep&rdquo; being &lsquo;brought&rsquo; into the fold (Jn. 10:16), the blind man whom people thought was no good for Jesus being &lsquo;brought&rsquo; unto Him (Lk. 18:40), the Samaritan &lsquo;bringing&rsquo; the good-as-dead wounded man to the inn / the ecclesia (Lk. 10:34), all reflecting how the goodness of God leads / brings s.w. desperate sinners to repentance (Rom. 2:4). In our &lsquo;bringing in&rsquo; of desperate people to the Lord&rsquo;s feast, we are vehicles for that grace of God which &lsquo;brings in&rsquo; men and women to Him. Notice in passing that we invite people to the Kingdom feast without seeking a recompense from them- i.e. we should not expect anything from them, be it personal loyalty, money, respect etc. And if we don&rsquo;t get it from them, only then will we be rewarded / recompensed for our preaching at the last day. So it should&nbsp;be no surprise to us if as with Paul our converts turn against us and in no form &lsquo;recompense&rsquo; us for calling them. Actually we should take comfort from this, as it is an encouragement that we will have our recompense at the last day.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2840','1','42','14','14','14','<p>14:14 <i>And you shall be blessed; because they do not have anything to repay you with. For you shall be recompensed in the resurrection of the just</i>- The \'blessing\' is defined as recompense at the resurrection, and not necessarily in this life. This inevitably is to be connected with how the Lord went on to say that <i>we</i> are the poor, blind, lame etc. who have been invited to the feast (:21). The point being, that if we perceive our own desperation and inappropriacy to be called to the Kingdom feast, then we will likewise invite others who are perceived <i>by us</i> as the lowest of the low, and otherwise unsuitable for a king&rsquo;s banquet table. So we are to reflect God&rsquo;s calling of us, the desperate, the down and outs, in our calling of others. A person who feels they are somehow a nice guy and worthy of invitation will be the one who tends to consider others as unworthy of invitation to the Kingdom. He or she who perceives their own desperation will eagerly invite even those they consider to be in the very pits of human society.</p><p>The recompense will be in the form of the nature of our eternity. How we shall eternally be is a reflection of what we have done for others, especially in terms of how far we have accepted them.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2841','1','42','14','15','15','<p>14:15 <i>And when one of his dinner guests heard these things, he said to him: Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God</i>- We mustn\'t just like <i>the idea</i> of being in the Kingdom. We must seek it above all. The Lord told a parable about people invited to the Kingdom who all came up with different excuses as to why they couldn\'t come. This was in response to somebody remarking: &quot;Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God&quot; - \'how great it would be to be in the Kingdom\'. And the Lord is replying \'Many of those given the real opportunity to be there actually don\'t want it that much at all. Don\'t just like the idea of being in my Kingdom, but make it the driving passion in your daily life, for which you\'ll sacrifice all\'.</p><p>The Lord continues to turn the questions / comments back on themselves. A man comments how blessed will be the person to eat bread in the Kingdom of God; and Jesus responds by telling the parable about how in fact the majority of those who receive invitations to eat break in the Kingdom actually turn it down because of worldly distractions. Again the message is clear. \'Take your focus off the blessedness of <i>others</i> in the future Messianic Kingdom; but concern yourself with the very real possibility that you <i>yes you yourself</i> may actually turn down the invitation to be there because you\'re too caught up with the things of this world\'. See on Lk. 14:25.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2842','1','42','14','16','16','<p>14:16 <i>But he said to him: A certain man made a great supper and he invited many</i>- &quot;When you are invited by anyone to a marriage feast&quot; (:13) is clearly meant to connect with &quot;A certain man made a great supper, and he invited (s.w.) many&quot;. Evidently the idea of eating with the Lord at His table connects with the breaking of bread. Our attitude at that memorial supper is in essence our attitude at the greater supper of the last day. We sit there with our Lord and with our brethren. We will sit there at the last day with the deep feeling, like the handicapped beggars had in the parable: &quot;I should not be here. Who am <i>I</i>, me, me with all my weakness, doing <i>here</i>?&quot;. If we sit likewise at the breaking of bread with that spirit, we will not even consider grabbing the best seat for ourselves; nor would it cross our mind to say to someone else sitting there &quot;Hey you, what are <i>you</i> doing here? If <i>you\'re</i> here, I\'m gone Don\'t you dare take that bread and wine, you\'re not in fellowship&quot;. Yet this is precisely the attitude of those who exclude their brethren from participation at the Lord\'s table; for the breaking of bread is a foretaste of the feast to come, and the Lord is teaching that our attitude to our brethren at it is in fact going to be reflected in how He deals with us at the latter day marriage supper. It seems so many of our exclusivist brethren are voting themselves out of their place at the Kingdom; although I believe God\'s grace is such that He has a place even for them.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2843','1','42','14','17','17','<p>14:17 <i>And he sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were invited: Come. For everything is now ready</i>- See on Mt. 24:48. In the parable of the great supper, which is similar but not necessarily the same as that of the marriage feast, the servants going forth &quot;at supper time&quot; fits more naturally into the context of a preaching appeal just prior to the second coming than to the first century. The &quot;supper&quot;, i.e. the Kingdom (Lk. 14:15; Mt. 22:2), is prepared, and at &quot;supper time&quot; - \'Kingdom time\' - the appeal is made.&nbsp;&quot;All things are now ready&quot; (Lk. 14:17) explains the unmistakable sense of urgency in the commissions given to the servants to preach.&nbsp;&nbsp; This again indicates reference to an eleventh hour preaching campaign just prior to the second coming.&nbsp;&nbsp; The \'decorum of the symbol\' suggests that the animals being killed for the meal would necessitate a brief period of invitation immediately prior to the feast, rather than them being on the table for 2,000 years. See on Mt. 24:14.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2844','1','42','14','18','18','<p>14:18<i> And they all began to make similar excuses. The first said to him: I have bought a field and I need to go out and see it; I pray you excuse me</i>- See on Lk. 14:33.<br />There was a harder side to Christ. He was a demanding Lord. He told His disciples to forsake what they had and follow Him. They did. And apparently with no prefatory praise or introduction, He called them &quot;you of little faith... fools... slow of heart to believe&quot;. Of course, He may have prefaced these criticisms with something softer (cp. His letters to the churches); but the Spirit has preferred not to record it. Often His parables warn that those who think He will understand their weakness, those who are too familiar with His softer side.</p><p>The parable of the great supper records men explaining to Christ why they can\'t <i>immediately</i> respond to Him, although they want to when it\'s more convenient: &quot;I have bought a piece of ground, <i>and must needs</i> go and see it... I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them... I have married a wife, therefore <i>I</i> cannot come&quot; (Lk. 14:18-20). The implication is that they assumed that the servant calling them to the wedding (i.e. Christ) would understand that their excuses were quite reasonable; the man who pleaded marriage as his excuse would have been alluding to the Law\'s provision to have time off from the Lord\'s duties on account of marriage (Dt. 24:5). All these reasons were assumed to be quite reasonable, and the men sound as if they were confident that <i>of course</i> Christ would understand. The parable of the King\'s son records excuses which are more evidently unreasonable; some said they were going to work on their farm, when actually the banquet was going to be held in the evening (Mt. 22:5). There is a&nbsp;connection with the parable of Lk. 14, where the excuses seem more reasonable. But the similarity shows that as far as the Lord is concerned, <i>any</i> excuse, evidently irrelevant or apparently reasonable, is just not acceptable to Him.&nbsp;But the point of the parables is that as far as Christ is concerned, these were all just empty excuses, even the excuse that appeared to be based on a past concession to weakness. He\'s saying that the invitation to His Kingdom, to His very own wedding, must take priority over all the everyday things of human experience which we assume are so justified, and which we assume He will quite understand if we put in front of Him and His call. <i>Every reader</i> ought to feel uncomfortable on considering this. It\'s this category of Christian who will be so surprised when they are rejected: &quot;Lord, Lord, open to us... When did we see you hungry...?&quot; (Mt. 25:11,44). They thought they knew Him, but He has never known them (Mt. 7:23). This idea of surprise at rejection is to be connected with that of brethren thinking (mistakenly) that of course the Lord understands their putting His call into second place. He is a Lord they hardly know in this life, despite what they think, and He will be the same at judgment day. There\'s a point to be made from the way they are so confident they know Christ, but He says He has never known them. They didn\'t live up to the demanding Lord they served. The idea of a two-way relationship with Him was evidently foreign to them. They thought their theoretical knowledge and outward works meant that Christ knew them. The worrying thing is, how many of us feel we have a two-way relationship with the Lord?&nbsp;</p><p>That <i>all</i> the girls should fall asleep whilst awaiting the bridegroom (Mt. 25:5) is unusual- they must have been a pretty lazy, switched off bunch. And yet immediately we are led by the Lord to pass judgment upon ourselves- which is quite a feature of the parables, e.g. Mt. 21:31; Lk. 7:43 as it is elsewhere- consider 2 Sam. 12:5; 14:8; 1 Kings 20:40). Note how there is surely an element of unreality in the Lord&rsquo;s description of <i>all</i> those invited to the dinner refusing the invitation (Lk. 14:18,24). Would really <i>nobody</i> respond to such a gracious invitation? This was the obvious question that He begged in the minds of His hearers. The intention being that each hearer would reflect: &ldquo;Is it I&hellip;?&rdquo;&hellip; maybe at least <i>I</i> could respond to the call of the Gospel&hellip; The parable of the wedding feast has an inappropriacy in that for \'merely\' rejecting the invitation to the feast and beating the messengers, the King dispatches an army to attack them- whilst the meal is as it were hot on the table ready to be eaten (Mt. 22:3-7). The point is that every rejection of the invitation, every mockery of the preacher, elicits an amazing anger in God.</p><p>Christ\'s low expectations of us are clearly demonstrated when He told the parables of the wedding feasts. When you put them together, you get this picture: God made the wedding between Christ and us. The invited guests didn\'t bother coming, for very trivial, mundane reasons that they put in front of the honour of being invited to His wedding. Only tramps and beggars come to it, motivated selfishly by the thought of a free meal (cp. a penny for the day). But we, the bride, aren\'t ready (although Christ graciously doesn\'t mention that in the parable), and so He delays to come to the wedding. Back home, His most trusted household servants realize that He\'s delaying His return, and start to get drunk and beat each other. The excited young bridesmaids lose their enthusiasm and go to sleep. Eventually, the wedding happens, but some of the guests don\'t bother to turn up in a wedding garment, just in their filthy rags. The impression is clearly this: <i>the whole thing\'s a mess</i> Yet this is the marriage of the Son of God to His dearly purchased bride, for whom He died, and lived a life of total self-control. Yet He <i>knew</i> the whole thing would be such a mess. See on Mt. 13:25.</p><p>&quot;They all with one consent (s.w. \'agreement\') began to make excuse&quot; (s.w. \'reject\') sounds like a conscious, national rejection of the message. The Jews will be judged by the word at the second coming (Jn. 12:48); but they were \'accused\' (judgment seat language) by their rejection of God\'s word in the Old Testament during their lifetime (Jn. 5:45). The Jews in the parable &quot;began to make excuse (saying)... I pray thee have me excused&quot; (Lk. 14:18). The Greek word for &quot;excuse&quot; here is also translated &quot;reject&quot;- by excusing themselves from the requirements of God\'s word in this life, they were effectively rejecting themselves, as they will be at judgment. So as we read the word, we show our judgment. It could be that the reluctance of some to get down to reading the word is not simply because they lack time, but more subtly because they realize they are faced with God\'s judgments in it.</p><p>Israel had consented to be &ldquo;bidden&rdquo; to the feast; and according to Oriental practice, to accept an initial invitation to a feast was to commit oneself to respond to the final notice of it. But &ldquo;they would not come&rdquo;, and yet despite this insult, their divine host had sent forth yet more servants to beg them to come. The Lord puts behind Him the insult of our rejections, and graciously pleads with us- even God pleading with men. The whole history of Israel is eloquent proof of this grace of God.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2845','1','42','14','19','19','<p>14:19 <i>And another said: I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to test them. I pray you, have me excused</i>- The invitation had been given ahead of time, and they had agreed to attend. Feasts were held in the evening, and oxen weren\'t tested in the evening; and they were tested <i>before</i> being bought and not afterwards. The excuses are presented as pathetic and not sincere.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2846','1','42','14','20','20','<p>14:20 <i>And another said: I have married a wife, and therefore, I cannot come</i>- Marriage gave freedom from conscription to the army, but not to turning down a call to attend a wedding feast which they had already agreed to attend. As noted on :19, all excuses for not responding to the Lord\'s call are here presented as pathetic and quite obviously fabricated.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2847','1','42','14','21','21','<p>14:21 <i>And the servant came and told his master these things. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant: Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and maimed and blind and lame</i>-&nbsp; The tragedy of the fact that the Jews by and large rejected the invitation of God meant that the servants are asked to &ldquo;Go out quickly into the streets and lanes&hellip; and bring in any who will respond&rdquo;. The &lsquo;quickness&rsquo; of the preachers is matched by the &lsquo;quickness&rsquo; of the response of those who heard them in the first century. Now what this means is that if we as preachers have an urgency about our approach and our presentation of the message, then people will respond quickly. If we present the urgent good news as a set of academic propositions to be studied at length in the comfort of an untroubled conscience, then those who respond if they do at all will do so with the same laid back, cool, calculating attitude. Peter preached on Pentecost with a fire and passion which came from realizing the urgency of human need and Christ&rsquo;s salvation. And this is why, it seems to me, the people responded so quickly. They were baptized in a matter of hours after hearing the Gospel preached from his lips.</p><p>We in these last days are &quot;the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind&quot; who lay in the city streets (Lk. 14:21). Yet we are invited and led (the blind) or dragged / carried (the lame) into the great supper. For those who deeply meditated, the lame at the great man\'s table would have taken them back to lame Mephibosheth at David\'s table. His response to the invitation was to <i>bow</i>; think of a lame man bowing. How awkward it must have been, and how awkward he must have felt. &quot;I\'m a dead dog, from a family who cruelly hated you; why, why me?&quot; was his response. And this ought to be ours. The awkward bow of that lame man, however embarrassing it was to watch for David in his glory, is a superb type of our attempts to respond to the inexplicable grace we have received from the Lord. He knows our weakness. Even though He taught plainly that \'the majority\' (Gk; AV &quot;many&quot;) of those He called would not be chosen, His parables often use percentages which imply that two thirds (parable of the pounds) or half (parable of the virgins) <i>will</i> respond. This shows the love that hopes, in the face of the finest knowledge and foreknowledge of human nature which any man has ever had.&nbsp;</p><p>The usual excuse for not reading Scripture daily, or remembering the Lord Jesus in the breaking of bread as He asked, or meeting with brethren and sisters etc. normally goes along these lines: \'I\'ve nothing against these things. But after all, we\'re only human beings, Christ understands that, He knows we have to get on with the things of this life\'. To which so many passages in the Gospels reply: \'Yes, the Lord does know exactly what everyday human life is all about; and He expects you, in these daily things, to make decisions which <i>consciously</i> sacrifice what you could get for yourselves in life\'. And to which Paul replies: &quot;The love of Christ constrains us&quot;. The servant goes out and invites people to the supper. They each make excuses which on a human level seem perfectly reasonable. One man was on his way to inspect some land he had just bought; another man was on his way (Gk.) to prove his new oxen; if they were no good, he had the right to get his money back. It seems, humanly, a bit unreasonable to go up to a person right in the middle of doing something important in daily life, and say&nbsp;&rsquo;Now stop that, come to a supper\'. The third man assumed the Lord would understand why <i>he</i> couldn\'t respond: &quot;I have married a wife, and therefore (of course, as you\'ll appreciate) I cannot come&quot;. After all, even the Law said that a man was free from military obligations after his marriage. But &quot;the master&quot; was &quot;angry&quot; with those men. What Moses\' law conceded to men, the Lord Jesus wasn\'t necessarily ready to concede (and His attitude to divorce was similar).</p><p>In the invitation to the Kingdom, &quot;the poor, and the maimed, and the halt and the blind&quot; are invited; with the implication that Christ will be &quot;recompensed at the resurrection of the just&quot;. We don\'t recompense Him now by our works; we are lost sheep causing Him needless work and worry, wasting His goods and needing to get ourselves out of the problem (Lk. 16:1), needing His frank forgiveness for our huge debts (Mt. 18:24). As Job recognized, if we are righteous, we give nothing to God (Job 35:7). Our <i>un</i>righteousness commends God\'s righteousness (Rom. 3:5). All things come <i>out of</i> God: &quot;Who hath first given to him?... for of him, and through him, and to him, are all things&quot; (Rom. 11:35,36); it\'s give, give, give with God. We are the poor beggars sitting down at the great supper, unable to recompense. Of course, it depends&nbsp;where we put the emphasis. The parable which relates how Christ desires fruit from us is followed by that of the marriage supper, where it seems we are just asked to accept an invitation with humility (Mt. 21:34; 22:3). The point surely is that we are invited, for no reason, to the Kingdom, and we must accept with the humility that will accompany a recognition of such grace (Lk. 14:9). But our experience of this grace will inevitably bring forth some spiritual fruit.&nbsp;Again, it seems we are intended to follow the story through, and visualize the inappropriate, uncultured conduct of these beggars at the table, causing so much unspoken embarrassment and pain to the generous rich man. The link with Is. 55:1-3 would suggest that we can interpret the call to the supper as the call of the Gospel, and the hungry people sitting down to a fine meal as our ecclesial experience now (although this isn\'t to say that we can\'t read it as concerning the future Kingdom too). The preceding Lk. 14:8-11 describe us as sitting down at the feast in this life, until the host walks in and starts re-arranging the seating order (cp. the coming of Christ in judgment on His household). We are left to imagine the grabbing for food, the greedy, selfish eyeing up of the plates, the grasping, the lack of social skills, the lack of good conversation between each other, the occasional cursing under the breath, perhaps even throwing of food, the eager desire for wine, the lack of restraint. All in the company of the Master (God) and His servants (Christ and the Angels). And this, it seems to me, was the Lord\'s imagination of His immature ecclesia, feasting on the good things He has prepared for us. Can we not begin to enter just a little into the pain and acute embarrassment and sadness we cause to our gracious Host by the self-centredness of our natures, manifest as it is in spiritual terms so often? It\'s quite possible to become so spiritually selfish, so bent on our own salvation, that the whole spirit of the supper is lost. After all, the idea of a large supper is to inculcate a social spirit rather than just to provide individual feeding to each of the guests. How many times has it been reasoned in these last days: \'Sorry, I have to work out my own salvation, I just can\'t spare time and can\'t risk association with my weaker brethren...\'. And the Lord Jesus, in His perfect way, saw this coming as in sunny Galilee He formulated His parables of grace. &nbsp;</p><p>Time and again His parables sought to justify His association with outcasts (Lk. 14:15-24; 15:1-32; Mt. 18:23-25; 20:1-15; 21:28-32). When the nobleman came to ask Jesus to cure his son, Jesus agreed; and the man went home. But it was only on the way home that he really believed. He came to faith spontaneously, and not because Jesus insisted on it. Or remember the woman who had had five men in her life, and presumably a number of children to go with each of them. Her face and body would have reflected the story of her life. She was living with someone not her husband. Jesus didn\'t tell her to break up with the guy. He knew full well that if a woman left her man, she had nowhere to go. Here was a woman who had been \'married\' five times. Who would want her? There were children involved. Probably even her family had rejected her. Jesus accepted the real life situation, and human failure to rise up to higher standards. One wonders whether the very lack of specific demand from Jesus maybe motivated her to somehow normalize her life. The gentle way Jesus treated these cases shows not so much approval, but an understanding of the frailty of human nature. And this is what enabled Jesus to be so unwaveringly committed to His own perfect standards, and yet be so natural and at ease with the lowest of the low.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2848','1','42','14','22','22','<p>14:22<i> And the servant said: Master, what you did command is done, and still there is room</i>- See on Lk. 14:12. The servant seems surprised that after the crippled and blind beggars have been drafted in to the opulence of the feast, &quot;still there is room&quot;. Quite simply, there are more places in the feast of the Kingdom than there are people willing to fill them How encouraging is that thought The same Greek word for &quot;place&quot; recurs in Jn. 14:2,3, where the Lord Jesus taught that He was going to die on the cross in order to prepare a place for us in His Father\'s palatial mansion. The effort made in preparing the feast therefore speaks of Christ\'s life, death and resurrection for us. And it\'s <i>so</i> tragic that most people don\'t want to know. So in a sense, &quot;all you gotta do is say yes&quot;. Just accept the invitation; take the messengers for real. Although perhaps we are left to read in the detail to the story, that many a desperate beggar just couldn\'t grasp that the messenger was for real, and preferred to stay put. Maybe only the <i>truly</i> desperate thought \'Maybe there\'s some truth in it... I\'ve nothing to lose&quot;. The many places in God\'s Kingdom... are only for those who desperately want them. Those who make meaningless excuses about how busy they are, those who can\'t believe that really God could be true to His word and really give us beggars a place in His wonderful Kingdom... will by their own decision not be there.</p><p>Let\'s not under-estimate the struggle which there is to believe the simple fact that there are more places in the Kingdom than people willing to fill them; that really God is begging us to come in to the place prepared for us through the death of His Son. When we read of the Master telling the servant to &quot;<i>compel</i>&quot; the beggars to come in to the feast, it\'s the same Greek word as we find used in one of the excuses given for not going in to the feast: &quot;I <i>must needs go</i> and see&quot; (the field the man had supposedly bought that evening without ever seeing it) (Lk. 14:18,23). Just as our loving God, with all the power of His most earnest desire, can seek to <i>compel</i> us to accept His offer, so the power of our own flesh <i>compels</i> us the other way. The petty human issues had become so large in the minds of the people concerned that they ended up telling obvious untruths or giving very poor excuses to get out of attending; life had gotten on top of them and that was it. The story seems so bizarre; the refusal of such a wonderful invitation would\'ve been the element of unreality which struck the first hearers. The point is that petty human issues, coupled with our lack of appreciation that we are down and out beggars, really will lead people to lose out on eternity. The other such element of unreality would\'ve been the persistence of the host to fill the places with anyone, literally <i>anyone</i>, willing to come on in. It\'s not so much a question of \'Will we be there?\' but rather \'Do we really want to be there?\'. Because if we do, we shall be.</p><p>The servant reports to the master that the invited guests wouldn&rsquo;t come to the supper cp. God&rsquo;s Kingdom. The master tells the slave to go out into the streets and invite the poor. And then we&rsquo;re hit with an incredible unreality, especially to first century ears: The servant has already done what the Lord had commanded him. No slave would take it upon himself to draw up the invitation list, or take the initiative to invite poor beggars into his master&rsquo;s supper. But <i>this</i> servant <i>did</i> He not only had the unusual relationship with his master that allowed this huge exercise of his own initiative- but he somehow knew his master <i>so</i> well that he guessed in advance what the master would say, and he went and did it without being asked. In all this we have a wonderful insight into the relationship possible between us and our Lord, especially in the area of preaching / inviting people to His supper. The initiative is in our hands, and as we come to know Him better, we come to know His mind, and to sense how He would react. We have His aims and desires as ours, and we are in harmony with Him without having to be told things in so many words. And of course for a master to serve his servants was unheard of (Lk. 12:35-38). But this of course was the wonder of what the Lord did for us, &quot;as one who serves&quot; (Lk. 22:27), defining for us our attitude to each other at the memorial table and in all aspects of our lives and relationships. See on Lk. 13:7.</p><p>We can also understand the servant as the Lord Jesus, reporting to the master = God that the invited guests wouldn&rsquo;t come to the supper cp. God&rsquo;s Kingdom. This servant not only had the unusual relationship with His master that allowed this huge exercise of his own initiative- but He somehow knew His master so well that He guessed in advance what the master would say, and he went and did it without being asked. In all this we have a wonderful insight into the relationship between the Father and Son, especially in the area of inviting people to His supper cp. salvation. The point of all this is to demonstrate how the Lord Jesus has His influence upon the Father, and can at times change His stated purpose e.g. with regard to the rejection of Israel- just as Moses did. And this is the same Father and Son with whom we have to do, and whose matchless relationship is the basis and reason of our salvation.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2849','1','42','14','23','23','<p>14:23<i> And the master said to the servant: Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come, that my house may be filled</i>- See on 1 Cor. 9:13. This shows the blessing which will go behind the efforts to spread the Gospel to all the world in the last days. There is a fervent, <i>urgent</i> desire of the Lord for this, and so His blessing will surely be with all who catch the same spirit of urgency. According to the parable, the quality of converts is sacrificed (by the Lord, not us) for the sake of numbers- which connects with the idea that the coming of Christ is to some degree dependent upon the full number of the Gentiles being converted (Rom. 11:25). Likewise the drag net was brought to land once it was full of fish (Mt. 13:48). The Lord speaks of how &ldquo;few&quot; (the Greek implies physically weak, cp. the unwanted labourers in the market place) the labourers are (Mt. 9:37), and therefore more (numerically) are needed. Any lamentation about the weakness of the latter-day ecclesia must be seen in this context; the Lord is desperate for the places at the supper to be filled, although woe to those who come in without a wedding garment (Mt. 22:12). &nbsp;</p><p>The parable of the great supper chronicles the preaching of the Gospel over time. There were three stages of appeal: &quot;To them that were bidden&quot; (the Jews in Israel), to those in the streets and lanes of the city (the Jewish Diaspora), and finally, in a spirit of urgency, the preachers are commanded: &quot;Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled&quot; (Lk. 14:16-23; the same spirit of urgency in witness is to be found in the Lord&rsquo;s command to His preachers to cut the courtesy of prolonged greetings). Once the required number are in God\'s spiritual house, the feast will begin- and that feast represents eating bread in the Kingdom, at the second coming.</p><p>The language of \'going out\' should be connected to the command to \'<i>go </i>and teach all nations\'. The parable concerns the master of the house (God) commanding His servant (Christ); yet the connection with the preaching commission indicates that the commission given to Christ He fulfils through us, as demonstrated earlier in this study. The ever-increasing sense of urgency in the appeal to \'come in\' ought to be reflected in our preaching in these last days.</p><p>Noah\'s ark is a well-known type of the salvation which humanity can find in Christ; and yet close analysis of the Genesis record reveals that there were some animals whom Noah had to bring into the ark and take them with him (Gen. 6:19; 7:2); and others who came to Noah and entered into the ark of their own volition (Gen. 6:20; 7:9,15,16). The same Hebrew is found in Gen. 8:9, about how the dove came to Noah of its own volition, and Noah welcomed her and took her into the ark. Putting all this together, we are to compel men to come in; and yet we are also to be there to welcome in the seekers who seek of their own volition. It\'s easier to do the latter; to put up a website, waiting there for some eager seeker to come and find. But we are also to compel people in, and to also bear in mind that there are some who will be attracted to the Gospel from selfish reasons, as the man who buys the field thinking that he can exploit it for his own benefit. These too we are to take on board and not turn away. Whilst people, with all their wonderful uniqueness, should never be pigeon-holed nor over-categorized... all the same, we need to consider the type of person we\'re dealing with as we plan out our approach. For if we seek them, we will consider who they are, and how appropriately we can engage them.</p><p>&quot;Compel&quot; is the same word used in :18, where the man excuses his lack of response to the Gospel by saying that he &quot;must&quot; or is compelled to go and check out his new land. We are to help people see that the \'necessity\' of secular things is to be replaced by the ultimate \'necessity\' of responding to the call of the Kingdom.</p><p>The eagerness of the Lord to accept us, to find in us spiritual fruit, is perhaps reflected in the way that He begins inviting people of \'His\' level to the feast of the Kingdom, but ends up lowering the bar as time goes on, to try by all means to get at least somebody in there. This theme of lowering the bar is perhaps continued in this same passage by the way the Lord says that His disciples must forsake / \'bid goodbye to\' all that they had (Lk. 14:33). This is the same word found earlier in Lk. 9:61, where some time before, a potential disciple who first wished to go and &quot;bid goodbye to&quot; his family was judged as not suitably committed to the urgency of the task. But now, the Lord says that this is acceptable in His definition of discipleship. This Lord is our Lord.</p><p>&ldquo;How shall they hear without a preacher?&rdquo;&nbsp; It&rsquo;s impossible to hear without a preacher. Of course, God could beam the message into men some other way. But normally He chooses to work through human preachers. The preachers in the parable of the great supper are bidden &quot;Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled&quot;. The house of God\'s Kingdom is filled with people as a result of enthusiastic preaching.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2850','1','42','14','24','24','<p>14:24 <i>For I say to you, that none of those men that were invited shall taste my supper</i>- There may be the implication that the three people said &quot;I cannot come&quot; with the implication \'I can\'t come <i>right now</i>, but later\'; and the Greek could bear such an interpretation. The master\'s comment at the end suggests that he knew these people would later turn up at the supper, but he would refuse them entry. There are often connections within the Lord\'s parables; in this case, the men who were so busy with daily life that they turned up at the wedding later would connect with the story of the other wedding guests who didn\'t have enough oil, and who <i>later</i> turned up at the wedding feast- again, only to be barred entry.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2851','1','42','14','25','25','<p>14:25<i> Now there went with him great crowds; and he turned and said to them</i>- See on Lk. 7:9. The people eagerly following Jesus, and then He turns and tells them that actually God is coming after them with 20,000 men and they have only 10,000, and they on a personal level <i>urgently</i> therefore need to make peace with Him- because every minute now counts. Time and again, the Lord is urging people to look at themselves and their own position, not follow Him because they\'re part of a crowd who does, not hesitate from personal commitment because of never-never questions about cosmic ethics and Divine justice which are well beyond us... He forces the spotlight back on us, me myself and I, time and again. And His audience squirmed, just as they do today.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2852','1','42','14','26','26','<p>14:26 <i>If anyone comes to me, and hates not his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple</i>- The Lord himself spoke of how He expected this of us; and He put it in language which He surely <i>knew</i> would arrest attention. He\'s a demanding Lord- and reflection on His life and death for us shows that He has every right to be so. Notice how the Lord Jesus uses the figure of polysyndeton- i.e. repeating the word &quot;and&quot; when there\'s no grammatical need to, in order to build up the impression of how many different people we must be prepared to break with. His message is plain: the Lord Jesus must come in front of every human relationship, or else we are not His disciples. And it isn\'t just human relationships that must be sacrificed; it\'s &quot;houses... lands&quot; (careers, cars, we might say) as well (Mt. 19:29). It has to be seriously asked whether our community, especially the younger generation, are prepared to be the Lord\'s disciples; whether they have given up these kind of things for His sake. He must be the <i>Lord</i> of our lives, the master passion and controller. Christ\'s love <i>constrains </i>us.<i> These</i> sorts of demanding words are so common in the Gospels that they almost slip our notice. There can be no serious doubt what He\'s saying: He has no room for passengers or part-timers. As far as He is concerned, it can\'t be a hobby.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2853','1','42','14','27','27','<p>14:27 <i>Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple</i>- The Lord taught that unless a man was willing to carry his cross and forsake all that he had, he couldn&rsquo;t be His disciple. And He called them His disciples, even though they clearly didn&rsquo;t perceive the real nature of the cross, nor did they actually leave all that they had but retained some things. The disciples were told to sell what they had (Lk. 12:22,32,33); but it seems they kept their fishing business. After having asked them this, the Lord again had to speak to them about forsaking all that they had (:33). Their claim to have left literally all (Lk. 18:28) appears somewhat exaggerated. Indeed, the parable of the unjust steward being specifically directed at the disciples (Lk. 15:1 cp. 16:1,9), it could appear that they had a special problem with lower-middle-class petty materialism (Lk. 16:9). Likewise Lk. 6 is spoken specially to the disciples, and it has much to say about materialism.<strong>&nbsp;</strong>The Lord was and is very generous to our weak efforts to rise up to His high standards.</p><p>Reflect on a Gospel parallel to see the huge importance of being a disciple of Jesus. In Mt. 10:38 the Lord says that whoever doesn&rsquo;t take up his cross and follow after Him, &ldquo;is not worthy of me&rdquo;. In Lk. 14:27 we have the same words, but concluded with &ldquo;&hellip; the same cannot be my disciple&rdquo;. To be a disciple of the Lord is to be worthy of Him. To seek to walk as He walked, to follow behind Him, is to be worthy of Him. The important thing is to follow, for all our stumblings, but at least to be in the way behind Him.</p><p>Of course we cannot literally take up the Lord\'s cross. Taking up the cross must therefore refer to an attitude of mind; it is paralleled with forsaking all that we have (Lk. 14:27,33), which is surely a command to be obeyed in our attitudes.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2854','1','42','14','28','28','<p>14:28<i> For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he have enough to complete it?</i>-Virtually nobody in the audience had ever planned to build a tower (Gk. \'castle\'). So the Lord means \'If you were mega wealthy and had money to build a tower, wouldn\'t you even then be careful to understand the total cost in advance, lest even your wealth is all taken away by it?\'. They were asked to imagine they were wealthy. The Lord was seeking to elevate their minds upwards to consider the great potential which they had. But all the same, they must count the cost; and realize that to build a castle / tower was beyond them. This is the implication of :31 and :33. Capitulation is required. Or it could be that the Lord is asking them as poor people to seriously calculate how much it would cost to build a tower / castle, and realize it was beyond them. Recognizing our spiritual bankruptcy, our inability to pay, and throwing ourselves upon the Lord- this is the same as forsaking all we have (:33).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2855','1','42','14','29','29','<p>14:29<i> Unless, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish it, all that watch begin to mock him, saying</i>- See on Rev. 16:15. The only true foundation laid is the Lord Jesus (1 Cor. 3:11). The potential builder must resign all plans for self-salvation, all efforts to lay his own foundation; and accept that of the Lord Jesus. Luke likes to use the Greek word for &quot;finish&quot; in relation to how all things were finished in the work of the Lord Jesus (12:50; 18:31; 22:37).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2856','1','42','14','30','30','<p>14:30 <i>This man began to build, and was not able to finish</i>- Earlier, the Lord had spoken of the shame of rejection at judgment day (:9). It would be witnessed publicly; the shame of the unworthy will be before the eyes of all their brethren (Rev. 16:15). If the tower / castle had to be built, then the man would have to urgently and desperately find a mega wealthy person who could enable him to do the job. And that person was the Father offering the wealth of grace in His Son.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2857','1','42','14','31','31','<p>14:31 <i>Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel, whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand?</i>- All the parables contain elements of unreality in order to make a point. This one speaks of a King coming in judgment upon another King who only has half the army which he has. The more powerful King is of course God. But we are likened to a &ldquo;king&rdquo; also, on His level in that sense, who has only half His strength. This is altogether such an under estimate of the Father&rsquo;s physical and moral superiority to us&nbsp;The smaller army can of course defeat the bigger army- but only with God\'s help, as various Old Testament examples make clear. The king must resign all attempts to win the battle in his own strength. &quot;By good advice make war (Heb. \'a battle\')&quot; (Prov. 20:18); and the advice is to not even attempt it. The weaker king has it seems already embarked on journeying to the encounter; he has to display great humility in avoiding it by recognizing that he really hasn\'t got the strength to succeed.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2858','1','42','14','32','32','<p>14:32<i> Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an ambassador and asks conditions of peace</i>- See on Rom. 14:19. Does the man with 10,000 men faced with the oncoming army of God with 20,000 men just recklessly go ahead, or does he seek reconciliation? There was surely an intended connection within the Lord\'s teaching concerning how the loving Father saw the prodigal son &quot;afar off&quot; in his sin and separation; and how the King God coming against man with 20,000 men in battle needs to be reconciled with whilst He is still &quot;afar off&quot; (Lk. 14:32; 15:20). God is both coming towards us in judgment; and yet also sees us \'from afar\' in untold grace and desire to save. It is this wondrous paradox which makes the ultimate meeting of God and man so intense and wonderful. The \'harder side of God\', the King coming in overpowering judgment against sinful man, is what gives power and poignancy to His final meeting with man as the Father meets the prodigal. See on Lk. 10:34.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2859','1','42','14','33','33','<p>14:33<i> So therefore whoever of you does not renounce all that he has, cannot be my disciple</i>- See on Lk. 12:22; 14:23; 21:3. The weak king who sends ambassadors asking for conditions of peace is understood by the Lord as the man who forsakes all he has in order for peace with God. This is the importance of forsaking wealth&nbsp;(Lk. 14:33), as the merchant did (Mt. 13:44-46), as the blind man left his garment (Mk. 10:50), as the widow threw in her two mites, rejecting the temptation to be \'prudent\' and keep one for herself to use as capital for the future&nbsp;(Lk. 21:2), as Matthew &quot;left all, rose up and followed&quot; (Lk. 5:28), and as the disciples in that beauteous childlike innocence could say &quot; Lo, we have left all...?&quot; (Mk. 10:28). What this surely means is that in our <i>attitudes</i> we must be as if we possessed nothing, as if we have in our heart of hearts resigned everything, even the very concept of personal \'possession\'. See on 2 Cor. 6:10.</p><p>When the Lord speaks of leaving all and following after Him, He surely had in mind the well-known story of Mattathias, who began the Maccabean revolt by saying: &ldquo;Let every one who is zealous for the Law and supports the covenant <i>follow after me</i>&hellip; and they <i>left their possessions behind</i> in the town&rdquo; (1 Macc. 2:27). And again the Lord seems to have had this in mind when He says that when He comes, His true people are to flee Jerusalem and not worry that their &lsquo;stuff is in the house&rsquo; (Lk. 17:31). For an itinerant teacher like Jesus of Nazareth to offer his ideas and his interpretation of the Old Testament, and then have men following Him, was not out of place in first century Palestine. But the Lord twists the whole figure of &lsquo;follow me&rsquo;. Unlike the other teachers, his teaching didn&rsquo;t lead to taking arms and fighting Rome. His men are to follow Him in wilfully taking up and carrying a cross, imitating His supreme human bravery in both His life and above all in His death, a bravery which He showed in facing sin in the eye and conquering every temptation, whatever the cost, whatever the human implication. &nbsp;</p><p>The Lord followed right on from the supper parable with the demand to hate one\'s own life, pick up their cross and follow Him, without which we cannot be His disciple. He also told the parable of God coming with a huge army to meet us who are far weaker- and our need to make peace with Him and forsake all that we have in order to follow Christ (Lk. 14:25-33). These radical demands of Jesus are in fact a development of His parable about the supper. For amongst some Middle Eastern peoples to this day, refusing the invitation to enter the banquet for such a meal- especially after having signalled your earlier acceptance of the invitation- was &quot;equivalent to a declaration of war&quot;. And so the parable of <i>us</i> as the man going out to war against a far superior army suddenly falls into place in this context. &quot;So likewise, whosoever he be of you that doesn\'t renounce all that he has, he cannot be my disciple&quot; (Lk. 14:33). The renouncing or forsaking of all we have refers to the man with 10,000 soldiers renouncing what human strength he had in the face of realizing he was advancing against a force of 20,000. The picking up of the cross, the \'hating\' of our own lives, the renouncing all we have... obviously refers to doing something very hard for us. But the context is the parable of the supper, where the \'hard\' thing to understand is why people refused the invitation, why they just couldn\'t believe it was real and for them; or why they just let petty human issues become so large in their minds that they just couldn\'t be bothered with it. Simply believing that we will be there, that in all sober reality we have been invited to a place in the Kingdom, that God is compelling / persuading / pressurizing us to be there... this is the hard thing. This is the hating of our lives, picking up our cross, forsaking our human strength and surrendering to God.</p><p>&ldquo;Whoever of you does not <i>renounce</i> all that he has cannot be my disciple&rdquo;. Renouncing is something we do in our hearts and deepest feelings and attitudes. Have we truly <i>renounced </i>it all? Even if there are still bank balances and pension plans and property deeds and cars and treasured possessions&hellip; made out in our name. Have we in our hearts <i>renounced</i> them? That they aren&rsquo;t <i>really</i> mine. I have no personal long term security from them, because they&rsquo;re <i>not mine</i>. I&rsquo;m just holding in stewardship what God gave me. And the Lord Himself drives the point home- if we have any <i>other</i> attitude to these wretched things, these <i>almost</i>-nooses around our necks, then we are <i>not</i> His disciples. It&rsquo;s one of the scariest thoughts for Christianity. The fearless, gripped-by-Jesus approach to life which we see in the early church is the very opposite of the passivity of our post-modern world. We are called to a passionate, emotional life; a life where we each have someone to save, someone to die for, to live for, to sacrifice our self for. And this approach to life will naturally take care of how we use &lsquo;our&rsquo; money. It is the passion-less life which results in a mean, careful approach to the spending of &lsquo;our&rsquo; resources for others. See on Acts 4:32.</p><p>The Lord appears to make discipleship dependent upon giving up our possessions and forsaking all we have. But it&rsquo;s quite apparent that His disciples didn&rsquo;t literally do that. Zacchaeus only gave away half of his possessions (Lk. 19:8); and other disciples of Jesus clearly retained their homes and some possessions. The Lord must therefore mean that He expects us to <i>in our minds</i> resign all personal ownership of absolutely everything which we have- even if those things remain, to human appearance, &lsquo;ours&rsquo;. This is really a challenging thing, in this world of savings and acquisition.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2860','1','42','14','34','34','<p>14:34 <i>Salt therefore is good, but if the salt has lost its taste, with what shall it be seasoned?</i>- The Greek for &quot;lost its taste&quot; is literally \'to become foolish\', and is so translated in Rom. 1:22. Salt is good unless it is not salty, when it is then useless; this means that salt has a very specific usage, and beyond that it cannot be used for anything. It can only be cast away as are the condemned (:35). The idea is that unless we achieve our Divinely intended role as the salt of the earth, then we are useless and will be condemned; we have no other possible usage in this world apart from that intended by God. The &quot;therefore&quot; connects with :33 about being a disciple, which involves leaving all as the disciples did and following the Lord (:33,27). The disciples followed the Lord in the sense of supporting and performing His missionary work. They were the &quot;salt of the earth / land&quot;. Without them, &quot;it&quot;, the land, would not be salted, as so much depended upon them; or the idea may be that if the disciples lost their saltiness, they could not be re-salted. If they turned away from their ministry, this would be a serious sin and they could not then be re-appointed to it (Heb. 6:5,6). If we are no influence upon the earth around us, then we have failed in our calling to be the salt of the earth, and will be condemned. We cannot be secret believers.</p><p>&quot;Good&quot; has the idea is of being able, to have possibility. If we will not use our potential for good, then we will be rejected, because we have no possibilities for use. It\'s only when we wilfully lose our potential for good that we really are of no use. If salt loses savour, what then can be used for seasoning &quot;wherewith shall it be salted&quot;? The idea is surely that if salt cannot be used for making salty- then it can be used for nothing, it has no practical use. This is a major statement about the ultimate vanity of all secular achievement and careers, compared to being the salt of the earth.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2861','1','42','14','35','35','<p>14:35 <i>It is useful neither for the soil nor for the manure heap, it is thrown away. He that has ears to hear, let him hear</i>- The fact there is no middle road is the most powerful imperative to total devotion. The Lord foresaw that it would be possible for His men to be as salt which had lost it&rsquo;s savour; to appear as His, but for this to have no practical effect at all; and such salt is to be &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; in the end. We <i>must</i> have influence upon others, or we aren&rsquo;t salt. Salt could be used for nothing apart from savouring things. We must fulfil our ministry, for otherwise we are of no practical use and will be &quot;thrown away&quot; in condemnation (Mt. 3:10; 5:30; 13:48; Jn. 15:6 etc.).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2862','1','42','15','1','1','<p>15:1<i> Now all the tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to him to hear him teach</i>- Unlike many preachers of high spiritual standards, the Lord was attractive to sinners. They flocked to hear Him, He ate with them and appeared to actually quite like their company. \'Drawing near\' is a Hebraism for coming to a holy place for worship. The Lord in His very person was the holy place, and not the Jerusalem temple cult. The double mention of &quot;him&quot; indicating the spiritual charisma which the Lord holds over those desperately seeking righteousness</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2863','1','42','15','2','2','<p>15:2<i> And both the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying: This man receives sinners and eats with them</i>-The Lord was criticized for &ldquo;receiving sinners&rdquo; and eating with them. Instead of the usual and expected Greek word <i>dechomai</i>, we find here the Greek <i>prosdechomai</i>- He welcomed them <i>into fellowship</i>, symbolizing this by eating with them. This was an act which had religious overtones in first century Palestine. Notice that <i>prosdechomai</i>&nbsp;is used by Paul to describe welcoming a brother / sister in spiritual fellowship (Rom. 16:2; Phil. 2:29). The Lord fellowshipped people in the belief that this would lead them to repentance, following His Father&rsquo;s pattern of using grace in order to lead people to repentance (Rom. 2:4). He didn&rsquo;t wait for people to get everything right and repented of and <i>only then</i> fellowship them, as a sign that they were up to His standards. &nbsp; <br />The theme of eating continues after Luke 14- for Luke 15 contains parables told by the Lord in answer to the criticism that He ate with sinners (Lk. 15:2). He explained that He had come to seek and save the lost, and that was why He ate with them (Lk. 15:4 cp. Lk. 19:10, where He justifies eating with Zacchaeus for the same reason). Note how in the case of Zacchaeus, the man only stated his repentance after he had \'received\' Jesus into his house and eaten with Him. This exemplifies how the Lord turned upside down the table practice of the Jews- He didn\'t eat with people <i>once they had</i> repented, but <i>so that</i> His gracious fellowship of them might <i>lead them to</i> repentance. The parables of Lk. 15 speak about eating in order to express joy that a person had repented and been saved- the eating was to celebrate finding the lost sheep, coin and son. But the Lord was saying that this justified His eating with not yet repentant sinners. Thinking this through, we find an insight into the hopefulness of Jesus for human repentance- He fellowshipped with them and treated them <i>as if</i> He were celebrating their repentance; for He saw eating with them in this life as a foretaste of His eating with them in His future Kingdom. He invited them to a foretaste of the future banquet. His fellowship policy was therefore to encourage repentance; and seeing He wished all to be saved, He didn\'t exclude any from His table.<br />The Lord was criticized for &ldquo;receiving sinners&rdquo; and eating with them (Lk. 15:2). Instead of the usual and expected Greek word <i>dechomai</i>, we find here the Greek <i>prosdechoma</i>i &ndash; He welcomed them into fellowship, symbolizing this by eating with them. This was an act which had religious overtones in 1st century Palestine. Notice that <i>prosdechomai</i> is used by Paul to describe welcoming a brother / sister in spiritual fellowship (Rom. 16:2; Phil. 2:29). The Lord fellowshipped people in the belief that this would lead them to repentance, following His Father&rsquo;s pattern of using grace in order to lead people to repentance (Rom. 2:4). He didn&rsquo;t wait for people to get everything right and repented of and only then fellowship them, as a sign that they were up to His standards.</p><p>The parables of the lost coin and lost sheep invite the hearer to identify with the heart of the God who seeks His lost. But the final climax of this triad of parables is that of the lost sons. Here the audience has to place themselves in one of two camps- the self-righteous son who ends up not eating with the Father, or the prodigal who sins so awfully and then eats with the Father in the hushed humility which experience of His grace along can bring. The Jews were worried about whom they might eat / fellowship with, just as many in the body of Christ are today. But the Lord turned it all around- <i>you</i> are a serious sinner, you need to make that long walk home to the Father in your day by day repentance, and eat with Him by His grace. He is seeking <i>you</i> to eat with Him; the question of whom <i>you</i> eat with is utterly secondary to that.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2864','1','42','15','3','3','<p>15:3 <i>And he spoke to them this parable, saying</i>- This rubric is not used to introduce the parables of the lost coin and lost son which follow. It could be that the Lord intended us to consider the three parables as one.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2865','1','42','15','4','4','<p>15:4 <i>What man of you- </i>Although the parables have the appearance of simple stories, their essential meaning is only granted to the reflective and spiritually minded reader. Close analysis of the parables reveal that they often contain something in them that is arrestingly unreal; and in this is very often the crux of the message. Surface level reading and listening give the impression that they are simple, homely stories, obvious in their meaning. But they are not; otherwise all men would have understood them, and the Lord would not have spoken them <i>so that</i> Israel would hear but not perceive. The true meaning depends upon perceiving that there is an element of startling unreality within the story line, that flags attention to the real message. The parables therefore challenge our stereotypes and force us to re-examine cherished suppositions. Perhaps the most obvious signpost to this feature of elements of unreality in the parables is in that of the lost sheep: &ldquo;What man of you&hellip;&rdquo; would leave ninety and nine sheep in the wilderness and go searching for the one lost one? Answer: none of you would do that. And perhaps likewise, &ldquo;What woman&hellip;&rdquo; having lost just one piece of silver would be so obsessive about finding it, and so ecstatic with joy upon finding it (Lk. 15:4,8)? Perhaps the answer is also meant to be: &ldquo;Not one of you&rdquo;. Yet this is the Father&rsquo;s passion for saving the lost, and rejoicing over them</p><p><i>Having a hundred sheep and having lost one of them, does not leave the other ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost, until he finds it?</i>- The Lord\'s parable of the good shepherd (Lk. 15:1-7) brings together Ps. 23 and also the restoration passages of Jer. 23:1-8 and Ez. 34:1-31, which speak of the flock of Israel going astray due to bad shepherds, being saved by the good shepherd, being delivered / gathered, and then returning to the land. The sheep is found, and accepts being found- there is no actual mention of repentance. Thus the \'return\' of Judah to their land was intended as a work of God- He would make them return, He would give them repentance note how Acts 11:18 speaks of God granting men repentance. This is all such wonderful grace. The even more incredible thing, though, is that Judah refused to accept this grace; they didn\'t \'return\' to the land because they saw no need to \'return\' to God. They willingly forgot that they were only in Babylon because of their sins; to \'return\' to the land was a \'return\' to God, which He had enabled. But they were like the lost sheep refusing to sit on the shepherd\'s shoulders, preferring to sit in a hole and die... and this is the warning to us. For truly, absolutely all things have been prepared for us to enter the Kingdom. It\'s only those who don\'t want to be there who won\'t be.</p><p>The good shepherd searches for the sheep until He finds it. John 10 is full of reference to Ezekiel 34, which describes God&rsquo;s people as perishing on the mountains, eaten by wolves. But the Lord Jesus set Himself to do that which was impossible- to search <i>until He found</i>, even though He knew that some were already lost. Our attitude to those lost from the ecclesia and to those yet out in the world must be similar. The Lord knew there would not be repentance by Israel. But He went to the fig tree seeking fruit, even though it wasn&rsquo;t the time for fruit (Mk. 11:13). He saw the crowds who wanted only loaves and fishes as a great harvest (Mt. 9:37).<br />More than anything, preaching has taught me the immense value of the human person as an individual. The Lord&rsquo;s parable of the strange shepherd who leaves the 99 and gives his all for the one- the foolish one, the lost one, the antisocial one- is programmatic for me. The need is the call. If one person needs fellowship, forgiveness, love, the teaching of the Gospel, baptism, encouragement, re-fellowship, support, money, whatever&hellip; the value of them as an individual must be paramount. No matter what it costs us, how far we have to travel in whatever sense, how much &lsquo;trouble&rsquo; we get into, how foolish we look, how out on a limb we put ourselves. The value and meaning of the individual person was paramount in the Lord&rsquo;s teaching and example, and it must be in our worldviews too.</p><p>David leaving the sheep and going to fight Goliath recalls the parable of the Lord as the good shepherd leaving the flock and going to save the lost sheep. The shepherd goes alone at night up into the hills (cp. Isaac going to be sacrificed in the hills), and carries the lamb on his shoulder- as the Lord carried the cross of our sins on his shoulder to redeem the lost sheep of mankind (Is. 53:6). This lost sheep parable is also picked up in 1 Peter 2:25: &quot;For you were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls&quot; (i.e. Christ the shepherd). But this in turn is quoting Is. 53:5,6: &quot;All we like sheep have gone astray... but he was wounded (on the cross) for our transgressions&quot;, which is thus the parallel to the saving of the lost sheep. This interpretation of the lost sheep parable- i.e. that the shepherd going to save the sheep represents the Lord going to die on the cross- was first prompted by David leaving the sheep with the keeper to go and fight Goliath, representing Christ\'s saving us from sin on the cross. The leaving of the sheep with the keeper perhaps looks forward to the Lord\'s entrusting the disciples to the Father\'s care in those agonizing days while death parted him from them, as David\'s encounter with Goliath did. David\'s subsequent leaving of them altogether to go and live in the King\'s court clearly looks forward to our Lord\'s ascension to Heaven after His victory over the real Goliath.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2866','1','42','15','5','5','<p>15:5<i> And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing</i>-At the time of Jesus, it was taught (<i>Mishnah Qidd</i> 4.14) that &ldquo;A man should not teach his son to be a herdsman&hellip;for their craft is the craft of robbers&rdquo;. Shepherds weren&rsquo;t seen as kindly old men. They were seen as crafty and thieves. But the Lord chose that figure to represent Himself and the Father- even though the Old Testament likens God to the shepherd of Israel. The startling, unsettling figure for the first century Jewish mind was to demonstrate how it is the Lord&rsquo;s humanity that makes Him our saviour. Likewise, the likening of the Gospel to yeast would have been shocking; or to a mustard bush, which is a member of the cabbage family rather, e.g., than to a fruitful vine or upright palm tree. It is signalled to us that there is to be a strangeness to this new Kingdom about which Jesus spoke, a humanity and yet unusualness about it. It was hard for the Lord to explain to us the level of love for us which He would reach in the cross. So He told a story of a shepherd who so madly loves his sheep, whose life is so taken up by his job, that he would die to save one of them, and comes back triumphantly rejoicing when he has found the lost sheep. The average shepherd would have surely accepted that some sheep are lost, it\'s the luck of the game. But this shepherd who dropped all and ran off after one lost sheep was no usual shepherd. And the element of unreality in the story brings out the Lord\'s grace towards us. Note in passing how the man : sheep relationship portrays that between us and the Lord. As the sheep understood pathetically little about the shepherd\'s sacrifice to save it, so we too fail to appreciate the height of the fact that Christ died for us, as the shepherd for the sheep. We can be sure that the frightened sheep didn&rsquo;t bob along on the shepherd&rsquo;s shoulders, grinning all the way home. With his underside covered in faeces and mud, it would have struggled with the Saviour shepherd, fanatic almost in his passion to save the sheep. As he stumbled along the rocky paths, shoulders bowed down, hands against his chest clutching the animal&rsquo;s paws, the shepherd would be the living imitation of the posture of the Lord as He carried the cross of our sins to Calvary. All this is a pattern of the almost fanatic effort we should expend to win back the lost.</p><p>The man who owned 100 sheep was rich. Shepherds were the lowest of the low. If you owned 100 sheep, you employed a shepherd to look after them and take responsibility for chasing the lost. But there&rsquo;s something unreal- the owner of the sheep is the one who is the shepherd. This actually is the point of the Ezekiel 34 passage upon which the Lord built the parable- having fired the unworthy shepherds of Israel, &ldquo;Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, <i>I myself, even I</i>, will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered abroad, so will I seek out my sheep; and I will deliver them &hellip; I will bring them &hellip; I will feed them &hellip; I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep&rdquo; (Ez. 34:11-15). The remarkable thing is that the owner of the sheep decides to become the personal shepherd, feeding, seeking, delivering, bringing the sheep <i>himself personally</i>. A Palestinian wealthy enough to own a whole flock of sheep simply wouldn&rsquo;t do this. He <i>always</i> hired someone else to do this- because being a shepherd was so despised. Behold the humility of God. But see too His personal passion for us. Hence the Lord&rsquo;s question: Which one of <i>you</i> would act like this? The Father and His Son take such passionate personal responsibility for us, that God was willing in Christ to shame and humiliate Himself in order to get us back into the fold. &nbsp;<br /><b>Personal Responsibility</b> <br />There&rsquo;s also something odd about the way the Lord speaks of the shepherd: &ldquo;<i>He</i> has lost one of them&rdquo;. Translations of the Bible into Semitic languages, especially Arabic, tend to read: &ldquo;If one of them is lost&rdquo; (passive). In the language and concepts of the Middle East, a speaker never blames himself. As in Spanish, they would not say &ldquo;I lost my book&rdquo;- rather, &ldquo;the book went from me&rdquo;. Likewise &ldquo;I missed the train&rdquo; is expressed as &ldquo;the train left me&rdquo;. And I would even speculate that preaching Christ in Arabic and even Hispanic cultures comes up against the problem of people strongly disliking taking ultimate responsibility, or to own up to the personal guilt of sin; the shifting of blame away from oneself is reflected even in their languages. And so when the Lord puts words in the shepherd&rsquo;s mouth whereby he takes direct responsibility for the loss of the sheep, this would&rsquo;ve sounded strange even grammatically. Apparently to this day, it&rsquo;s hard to translate that actual phrase into Arabic. Likewise with the idea of the woman saying that she had found the coin which she had lost. The Lord is labouring how God, and God in Christ, feel an extraordinary personal responsibility for the lost. &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2867','1','42','15','6','6','<p>15:6<i>&nbsp;And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbours, saying to them: Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost</i>- The shepherd-owner calls his &ldquo;friends&rdquo; together. This surely refers to the clubs the Pharisees formed in villages, called the <i>Khaburim</i> &lsquo;friends&rsquo;. They ought to have rejoiced to be eating with sinners, as the Lord was- but they wouldn&rsquo;t. The whole context of the three parables is the Lord justifying why he ate at home with sinners, thereby showing that He considered them as somehow &lsquo;in fellowship&rsquo; with Him. The Pharisees wouldn&rsquo;t do this unless those people repented and learnt Torah in great depth. But the Lord is surely saying that He sees those men who ate with Him as the sheep which has already been brought home. He reflected the gracious outlook with which He saw people; and His hopefulness that by treating a person as if they had &lsquo;come home&rsquo;, then they would indeed do so. Probing this line further, the Lord Jesus speaks of the found sheep as being symbolic of the repentant. But the sheep did nothing- it was simply acceptant of having been found. To accept being found is, therefore, seen by the Lord as what He calls &lsquo;repentance&rsquo;. Now surely that&rsquo;s grace- salvation without works. &nbsp;</p><p>The element of unreality is seen in the way the shepherd takes the sheep <i>home</i> and not back to the fold, inviting neighbours around to rejoice that his sheep had been found. The quite unusual joy and humanly inappropriate love of the shepherd for that sheep is of course there to signpost to us the &quot;love beyond all reason&quot; of the true shepherd for us. The way the lost sheep is brought home rather than returned to the fold was also perhaps some sort of allusion to the teaching of Dt. 22:1 that the lost sheep of your brother\'s must be returned to <i>him</i>. This would mean that our pastoral care should not simply be for our \'own\' sheep, those for whom we have responsibility; but for the lost sheep of other \'pastors\' who\'ve not done their job. See on Jn. 10:12.</p><p>There is an element of unreality in the story of the lost sheep. And that unreality reflects the sensitivity of Jesus. The shepherd doesn&rsquo;t return the sheep to the fold, but takes it home and calls his friends around to see the dumb animal and rejoice (Lk. 15:4-6). The Lord knew we would frown a bit at this. He foresaw how hard it would be for us to rejoice in the return of a difficult sheep to fellowship.</p><p>This parable was told by the Lord to justify His eating with sinners. He justifies it by saying that He is holding a party over the finding of one lost person; and those sinners are His friends and neighbours. Truly He is the sinner\'s friend.</p><p>To carry a sheep on your shoulders, fighting and struggling with you, as you climb down a mountainside in the dark&hellip; isn&rsquo;t something which is usually done <i>rejoicing</i>. But this is the unusual, humanly inexplicable, <i>joy</i> which there is in the Father and Son when day by day they \'find&rsquo; us and bring us back. And where would a shepherd usually take such a lost animal? Back to the flock, whom he&rsquo;s left in the wilderness. But then comes another unreal element. The shepherd takes the sheep <i>home to his very own house</i>. This sheep had such extraordinary value to this wealthy man. He came back dirty and exhausted- he humiliated himself and made himself a fool in the eyes of the world, all because of this humanly senseless love and joy which he had over this lost sheep. And we have to fill in the details, answering the unasked but implied questions- what about the 99 left out in the wilderness? The story ends with them out of the house- paving the way for how the elder son is left standing outside of the house. Note how Lk. 15:3 speaks of the three parables as one, in the singular, &ldquo;parable&quot;.</p><p>In respect of God\'s relationship with the Angels, it is interesting to note that there seems to be a theme in Scripture of all of the Angels being involved in each action one of them performs, due to the perfect unity that exists between them and God (see on Lk. 11:7,8; 1 Kings 22:19-23; Ex. 12:41). Thus when one of the Angels acts in our lives, all the others are conscious of it too. Consider how Luke 15 describes the joy in Heaven when one sinner repents; the man who found the lost sheep &quot;calls together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me... when she (the woman) has found it (the lost coin) she calls her friends and neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me... likewise I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the Angels of God over one sinner that repents&quot;. The man and the woman must therefore represent God manifested through our guardian Angel. The Angel physically leaves the presence of God in Heaven and then goes off to arrange circumstances to encourage the sinner to return. He then calls all the others together to rejoice &quot;when He comes home&quot; (into Heaven, into the multitude around the throne of God from which Angels go and return in obeying God\'s Word). The whole Heavenly household then rejoice together. Thus we read in Hebrews 1:14 that <i>all </i>the Angels are &quot;ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of&nbsp;salvation&quot;. <i>All </i>the Angels are involved together in this work. All things in Heaven (the Angels) and on earth (the things they arrange on earth) are for our sakes</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2868','1','42','15','7','7','<p>15:7 <i>I say to you, that even so there shall be more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents, than over ninety nine righteous persons, who need no repentance</i>- There can be no doubt that the Lord Jesus spoke the words of God, and therefore His sayings can be interpreted at the deepest possible level; and yet at the same time, they were so easy to understand by simple, sincere hearts. The sayings of Jesus have been translated back into Aramaic, the language of His day, by C.F. Burney. He was struck by the degree to which they had a rhythmic shape, like many of the prophetic sayings of the Old Testament. Thus a passage like Lk. 7:22 has six two-beat lines followed at the end by a three-beat line; the commission to the disciples in Mt. 10:8 rhymes, both in Aramaic and in Greek. The Lord&rsquo;s prayer is expressed in two-beat lines. The crunch point of the Lord&rsquo;s forgiveness parable in Lk. 15:7, that there is joy in Heaven over one sinner that repents, uses the device of alliteration, i.e. similarly sounding words. He uses three words which feature the guttural &lsquo;h&rsquo;: joy = <i>hedwa</i>; one = <i>hada</i>; sinner = <i>hateya</i>. In passing, I find this kind of thing evidence that we do have in the Gospel records the actual words of Jesus, and not a rough summary of them interpreted by many others, as modern theologians wrongly suppose. Our view of inspiration enables us to return as it were to the actual, living voice of Jesus in confidence. If the record of His words is sure and true, then we can go on to guess in what tone of voice He would have spoken, and seek to define in our own minds ever more features of the Son of Man. This thought alone I find so immensely inspiring- for we hear the real Christ speaking to us down the centuries. The Lord&rsquo;s teaching style thus reflected His recognition that He was speaking to the illiterate, and that many of those who followed Him would need to commit His words to memory; and so He spoke His words in a form which was memorable by them, as well as profitably dissectible by computer-aided intellectuals of our age. In this alone is a marvellous insight into both His genius and also His sensitivity to His audiences, from which we can take a lesson. But&nbsp;on a practical level, it is apparent that He had carefully prepared His sayings in advance, perhaps during His years up to age 30. I don&rsquo;t see His sayings as off the cuff bursts of wisdom, neither words merely flashed into His mouth by the Father. They were God&rsquo;s words, but carefully prepared by Him. He sets a matchless example to any would-be teacher in His church. Jesus spoke to the hearts of the people. He didn&rsquo;t use words like &lsquo;sin&rsquo; very often. He uses <i>hamartia</i> &lsquo;sin&rsquo; in the Synoptics only 8 times, compared to 64 times in Paul&rsquo;s writings. Jesus wasn&rsquo;t talking theology, He didn&rsquo;t speak in abstract terms. Rather did He speak of evil fruit, lost sheep, lost coins, no good sons&hellip; because He was framing His message for the illiterate, who thought in images rather than abstractions.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2869','1','42','15','8','8','<p>15:8 <i>Or what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she loses one piece, does not light a lamp and sweeps the house and seeks diligently until she finds it?</i>- Luke 15 contains two parables concerning repentance, where the restored sinner is in fact not repentant: the lost sheep and the lost coin. The Lord searches for them <i>until</i> He finds them; neither of them actually repent and seek to come back. Indeed, the coin is inanimate, it can\'t repent. It was actually the woman\'s fault that it got lost in the first place. Now all these are surely examples of hyperbole- a gross exaggeration to make a point. It isn\'t the Lord\'s fault that we stray. But He speaks <i>as if it is</i> in this parable, in order to make the point that He <i>so</i> strenuously seeks our return to Him. Likewise Yahweh likens Himself to a worthless husband who forsook His sweet wife of Israel in her youth (Is. 54:6).</p><p>God\'s need for man- as it were- is brought out in this parable. We are compared to a candle that is lit (cp. our baptism) <i>so that</i> it may give light to others (Lk. 8:16; 11:33); the woman (the Lord Jesus) lights a candle (He uses believers) to find his lost coin (through our efforts) (Lk. 15:8; this must be seen in the context of the other two references in Luke to lighting a candle). If we don\'t give light (God\'s word, Ps. 119:105) to others, we are a candle under a bucket, and therefore we will lose our faith, the flame will go out. So it\'s hard not to conclude that if we don\'t naturally give the light to others, we don\'t believe. The very nature of a lit candle is that it gives light; <i>all</i> candles do this, not just some. The Lord wants to use us as His candle, and He will arrange situations in life to enable this.</p><p>It\'s been suggested that the lost coin was one of the woman\'s dowry coins, and thus the story speaks of how every lost person is a personal and deeply felt loss to God. However, this view has been criticized in that a drachma, which had the same value as a silver denarius, was the wage paid to a worker for one day\'s field work (Mt. 20:1-16). It was far less than the dowry coins. It could be that instead we have here a reference to a desperately poor housewife- who certainly had no dowry money left. The poor were so poor in Palestine at the time of Christ that they were selling their land, and many had become landless labourers. They worked for money, with which they bought food. The husband went far and wide searching for work; the Lord\'s parable pictures labourers waiting around for work. It\'s been calculated that on the basis of one denarius / day as wage, even if the worker worked 300 days / year, and had four children and a wife plus himself to support, this income would only enable them to buy enough bread to provide 1400 calories / family member / day. This isn\'t enough to sustain a person\'s ability to do manual work. Therefore mothers and children faced malnutrition, and the women tried to grow crops on waste land and did anything for money in order to buy bread. The smiling, full cheeked, charming Mediterranean woman with dowry coins around her forehead (beloved of those Sunday School books about Bible background) just wasn\'t the scene that the Lord had grown up in. The woman who\'d lost her coin was searching desperately for it, because that was what she\'d buy the kids food with. No coin, no food, whiny, hungry, sick kids. She needed, desperately needed, that coin; so that she could feed the hungry kids whom she loved and be the <i>de facto </i>domestic head which she was. And this is all a picture of God\'s <i>need</i> for the lost, His <i>need</i> for us, because He knows the feeding which that lost one can uniquely provide to His beloved family. And one wonders of course whether the Lord\'s parable wasn\'t drawn from real life incidents in His own childhood with Mary.</p><p>The lighting of the candle is a symbol of our conversion (Mt. 25:1; Heb. 10:32). Our lamps were lit by the Lord Jesus (Lk. 8:16; Heb. 10:32) for the purpose of giving light to the house. The Lord lights a lamp in order to search for his lost coin, that weak brother or sister that means as much to him on a deep, indescribably personal level as a woman\'s dowry money in the Middle East (cp. a wedding ring; Lk. 15:8). But the lamp he lights is us. This is yet another example of his parables being intended to fit together. We must burn as a candle now, in shedding forth the light, or we will be burnt at the judgment (Mt. 5:15 and Jn. 15:6 use the same words).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2870','1','42','15','9','9','<p>15:9 <i>And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying: Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost</i>- We note the Lord carefully balances the gender issue in these parables; the male shepherd is matched by the woman in the lost coin story. Such was His sensitivity to the value of all persons. As noted on :6, her joyful party reflects how all the Angels are aware of one lost soul being found. And the Lord is justifying His eating with sinners on the basis that they were His friends and neighbours. He was and is the sinner\'s friend. We recall how when the tax collector Matthew was converted, the Lord had a party to celebrate it along with other tax collectors (Mt. 9:9,10). When Cornelius called together His friends and neighbours to hear the Gospel, he was effectively presenting himself as the lost coin which had been found (Acts 10:24 s.w.).</p><p>If we imagine the woman who lost the coin, we sense something of her remorse and desperation as she searches the cracks in the floor for it. It could&rsquo;ve been part of her dowry- all that she owned for herself, all that was her very own. Not even her body was hers- it was her husband&rsquo;s, to do what he wished with. But the dowry coins were hers- her very own. If the allusion were to one of these coins, it would speak of how much we mean to the Lord&hellip; that I, one of 6 billion, actually mean everything to Him, for whom I am His very own. But the allusion may also be to coins which the peasant women would keep bound up in a rag, close to their body. With this money, the woman would&rsquo;ve had to feed the family for the next week or so. But&hellip; she&rsquo;d let the rag come loose, and a coin had slipped out. In either case, we are to imagine the woman searching for it with a sense of remorse, taking responsibility that she was accountable for the loss. And this, we are invited to understand, is how the Lord feels for those who are lost. Notice how the woman searches <i>in the house</i>- presumably, she&rsquo;d not been out of the house since she last had the coin. By filling out this little detail, we perhaps have a picture of how the Lord took responsibility, or felt responsible, for the loss of those &lsquo;within the house&rsquo; of Israel.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2871','1','42','15','10','10','<p>15:10 <i>Even so, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents</i>- The Lord Jesus purposefully inverted the common assumption that the duty of a righteous man was to condemn the sinners. When He said that there is much joy in Heaven over one sinner that repents, the Lord was purposefully inverting the common contemporary Jewish saying that there was much joy in Heaven whenever one sinner is destroyed in judgment. His desire is to seek to save rather than to destroy.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2872','1','42','15','11','11','<p>15:11 <i>And he said: A certain man had two sons</i>- The man is not that wealthy; for he has only two sons and no other children are mentioned. This heightens the generosity of the father to the younger son, and the tragedy of the waste. The two sons may represent Israel and Judah.</p><table border=0 cellspacing=3 cellpadding=0 width=100%>    <tbody>        <tr>            <td>            <p>As with most of the parables, the prodigal has a   primary reference to the nation of Israel. The many Old Testament allusions   bring this home without doubt. In practice, this means that the intensity of   repentance which Israel will eventually manifest should be seen in our contrition   at sin. In this lies a real challenge. The following allusions demonstrate   that our Lord clearly intended us to make a connection between the prodigal   and apostate Israel- and therefore with ourselves:<br />            - The father falling on the prodigal\'s neck and kissing him sends the mind   back to Joseph weeping on Benjamin\'s neck (another younger brother), typical   of Christ\'s receiving home of a repentant Israel in the last days. As Joseph   commanded his servants &quot;Bring these men home, and slay, and make ready&quot;   (Gen. 43:16), so the father did likewise (:23). Both repentances were   celebrated with a meal of fellowship (cp. the breaking of bread). Both the   prodigal and the sons humbled themselves to the position of servants. Like   the prodigal, Israel were often brought back to their spiritual senses by   famine (Ruth 1:1; 1 Kings 8:37; Lk.4:25 etc.). His realization that &quot;I   perish with hunger&quot; (:17) matches the description of Jacob in Canaan as   &quot;A Syrian ready to perish&quot; (Dt. 26:5), dwelling in a land that was   \'perishing through the famine\' (Gen. 41:36). This affliction came upon   natural Israel because of their \'murder\' of Joseph / Jesus. The prodigal\'s   profligacy is therefore to be seen as the crucifying of Christ afresh by the   believer. <br />            - The prodigal Israel went &quot;into a far country&quot; (Lk. 15:13) - a   phrase normally used in the Old Testament concerning the Gentile lands of   Israel\'s dispersion (Dt. 29:22; 1 Kings 8:41,46; 2 Kings 20:14; 2 Chron.   6:32,36). In passing, the &quot;far country&quot; of Lk. 19:12 and 20:9   should also refer to the lands of the Gentiles; <i>this</i> is where Christ   has gone (as well as Heaven), and will return to Israel when they desire him   to. As with so many of the parables, this one is packed with allusions to the   Proverbs. The &quot;far country&quot; recalls Prov. 25:25: &quot;As cold   waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country&quot;. Like many   Proverbs, this is alluding to the Law- concerning how Israel would return   from the &quot;far country&quot; of their dispersion upon their repentance.   The sense of refreshment and exhilaration which this gives God should surely   motivate us to repent, and also to encourage others to do so. Yet we need to   ask whether we feel this same exaltation of spirit as God does &quot;over one   sinner that repents&quot;. It requires selflessness, and a real desire to see   glory given to our Father.<br />            - Our association of the prodigal with Israel in dispersion is strengthened   by the mention that the prodigal &quot;wasted&quot; the Father\'s riches, the   Greek meaning \'to scatter abroad\'- suggesting that as Israel had wastefully   scattered God\'s riches in the Gospel, so they too were scattered. Note how   the prodigal is pictured as ending up with the pigs- well known symbol of the   Gentiles. As the Son\'s return to the Father was matched by His going out to   meet the son, when Israel &quot;return unto the Lord... then the Lord your   God will... return and gather you from all the nations&quot; (Dt. 30:2,3).<br />            - The book of Hosea frequently presents prodigal Israel as the one who went   astray from God, her loving Father and husband, committing adultery with the   surrounding countries, with the result that God cast her off, leaving her to   suffer in those very lands whose idols she had worshipped. Her sense of shame   and knowledge of God\'s constant love then brought her to her senses (Hos. 2;   5:11-15; 6:1; 7:8-10). There can be little doubt that our Lord had his eye on   this symbology when framing the prodigal parable. Hos. 2:7,8 is the clearest   example: &quot;She shall follow after her lovers... he shall seek them, but   shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first   husband; for then was it better with me than now. For she did not know that I   gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold (cp. the   father giving the son his substance), which they prepared for Baal&quot;.   These blessings of corn, wine and oil are referring to the blessings for   obedience promised in Dt. 28. The point is being made that these blessings   were not immediately and totally removed once Israel started to go astray.   This demonstrates how material \'blessings\' are not necessarily an indication   that we have favour with God. Consuming the Father\'s substance &quot;with   harlots&quot; (:30) is therefore parallel to giving it to idols. The   spiritual riches of being in covenant with God, as well as our every material   blessing from Him, were frittered away by Israel. God\'s &quot;hand&quot;   worked upon Israel to make them realize the seriousness of their ways (Hos.   2:10). This fact starts to plumb the depth of God\'s love- that even with   those who have broken His covenant, God\'s hand is still working to lead them   to repentance.<br />            - Jer. 31:18-20 describe how Ephraim moans: &quot;You have chastised me...   turn me, and I shall be turned... after that I was turned, I repented; and   after that I was instructed... I was ashamed... because I did bear the   reproach of my youth. Is Ephraim my dear son?... since I spake against him, I   do earnestly remember him still... I will surely have mercy upon him, says   the Lord&quot;. We must not think from this that God just chose to turn   Israel (the prodigal) back to him at a certain moment. It was because God   &quot;spake against him&quot;, through which the prodigal was   &quot;instructed&quot;, that he turned back. <br />            - There is reason to see the family portrayed in the parable as being a   priestly family- thus representing prodigal Israel, &quot;a Kingdom of   priests&quot;. The son did not ask for his share of the inheritance,   but&nbsp;of &quot;the portion of goods&quot;- remember that Levites did not   own any land. There is surely an echo of the curse on Eli\'s priestly family   in the prodigal parable: &quot;Every one that is left in your house shall   come and crouch... for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread, and shall   say, Put me, I pray you, into one of the priests offices, that I may eat a   piece of bread&quot; (1 Sam. 2:36). The Father had &quot;hired servants&quot;,   which takes us back to the reference in Lev. 22:10 to the priests having   &quot;hired servants&quot; in their household, who would have performed the   mundane work for them (cp. the Gibeonites). The prodigal was therefore asking   to be admitted back into God\'s service, resigning all the spiritual   superiorities he could have enjoyed through being of the priestly line.   Similarly latter day Israel will be willing to be accepted by God as   Gentiles, having resigned their trust in their natural lineage. Our attitude   on repentance ought to be similar- just wanting to quietly, humbly   participate in God\'s family for the joy of being close to Him. Further   indication that the hired servants represent the Gentiles is found in the   fact that they had &quot;bread enough&quot; (Gk. \'an abundance of loaves\'),   connecting with the Gentiles of Mt. 14:20 being &quot;filled&quot; (same word   in Lk. 15:16) with the abundance of loaves created by Christ.<br />            - The parable of the lost son complements that of the lost sheep earlier in   the same chapter. &quot;My people have been lost sheep&quot;, &quot;the lost   sheep of the house of Israel&quot; (Jer. 50:6; Mt. 10:6; 15:24). A comparison   of the parable with Hos.7 :9,10 indicates that most of Israel remain as the   prodigal in the pig country: &quot;Strangers have devoured his strength (cp. &quot;devoured   your substance&quot;), and he knows it not... they do not return to the Lord   their God, nor seek him for all this&quot;. The illogicality of Israel   remaining in their pathetic spiritual position is so apparent to us from   this; yet we of the new Israel can also be crazy enough to go on living out   of real fellowship with God.</p>            <p>            The reason for presenting such a catalogue of evidence is to show that   prodigal Israel\'s latter day repentance will be of a similar intensity of   repentance to ours in this life. They will mourn and weep with a rare   intensity of self-hate and self-knowledge- even as a father for his only son.   Do we shed tears on repentance? Do we realize, as they will, how our sins   brought about the crucifixion? Do we appreciate that our spiritual   indifference and lack of perception means that we, like Israel, &quot;did   esteem him stricken&quot;, seeing no beauty in him (Is. 53:2-5) as we march   through our lives, unthinking as to the power and beauty of the cross?</p>            <p>The younger son is presented as lacking wisdom   and being disobedient to the law, as Judah in dispersion. &quot;Whoso loves   wisdom rejoices his father: but he that keeps company with harlots spends his   substance&quot; (Prov. 29:3) was clearly in the Lord\'s mind when constructing   this parable. He evidently saw this proverb as applying to the same person in   time of sin and repentance. Repenting and loving wisdom are therefore   paralleled, showing again that repentance is not just a twinge of conscience,   but involves coming to really know God. The prodigal wished to return home so   that he could share in the loaves which the servants had &quot;to   spare&quot;, or (better), &quot;had in abundance&quot;. This same word occurs   in Jn. 6:12 concerning the bread which &quot;remained&quot;, i.e. was in   abundance, after the feeding of the five thousand. In that acted parable, the   bread represented the abundance of spiritual food which is in the   spirit-words of Christ. It was this which the truly repentant sinner   earnestly seeks, rather than a mere salving of conscience. &quot;Whoso keeps   the law is a wise son: but he that is a companion of riotous men shames his   father&quot; (Prov. 28:7) shows that such genuine repentance and knowing of   God\'s wisdom is effectively reckoned as keeping the letter of the Law.   &quot;A wise servant shall have rule over a son that causes shame, and shall   have part of the inheritance&quot; (Prov. 17:2) seems to also connect with   our parable; implying that the wise son who was willing to be a servant was   ultimately greater than the son who appeared to be technically obedient to   the letter of the law. Likewise, the son desiring to be fed with the husks of   the pig food may connect with Lazarus desiring to be fed with the crumbs from   the rich man\'s table (Lk. 16:21). Yet Lazarus is representative of the   repentant sinner who is ultimately justified. The degree to which God will so   totally impute righteousness to us is indeed hard to come to terms with. But   it is faith in this which will be our ultimate salvation.</p>            </td>        </tr>    </tbody></table>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2873','1','42','15','12','12','<p>15:12<i> And the younger of them said to his father: Father, give me the inheritance of property that is coming to me. And he divided his property between them</i>- The somewhat sad picture of the loving Father dividing between his sons &ldquo;his living&quot;, for them to go off and make what they will of, to either squander in the world or selfishly and self-righteously hoard to themselves, is a picture of the vast and genuine delegation to us by the Father. The Father has given us huge freewill and an amazing amount of self-determination. Divine delegation is one of His great characteristics as a Father. It would have been highly unusual for any father to agree to liquidate part of the family estate ahead of time, just so as to give in to the will of a wayward son who totally rejected him. And yet the father did this; he liquidated part of the family inheritance to give it to a son who wanted to openly quit the family. This is how much the Father is willing to give us the essential desires of our own hearts, how much He is willing to allow us to go our own way, so that we may serve Him of our own freewill.</p><p>For those Palestinian peasants, politeness and respect to your father was paramount. Even if you didn&rsquo;t obey your father, you had to be polite to him. Rudeness to your father or public disobedience to him was the worst thing you could do, and you shamed yourself. The Lord turned that understanding on its head in His parable of the two sons in Mt. 21:28-32. He taught that the <i>better</i> son was the one who rudely refused to do what his father asked, but later relented and did it. The Lord saw this son as better than the one who politely agreed, and yet never fulfilled his promise. Perhaps that parable needs reflection upon today, where &lsquo;nicespeak&rsquo; has become paramount- so long as you say something nicely, what you actually are saying and what you <i>do</i> isn&rsquo;t so important. <i>How</i> we speak <i>is</i> of course important; but it can be exalted to the point where words rather than real action become paramount. But that aside, the point is that both the sons were <i>extremely</i> rude to their Father. And he was the most loving, self-sacrificial dad that two kids ever could&rsquo;ve had. We feel hurt for the lovely old boy. One element of unreality is that he only had two sons- a small family for those days. How tragic that both his sons went so wrong and rebelled against him. And we sense something of his hurt, our heart starts to bleed for him, and we think of <i>our</i> Heavenly Father&rsquo;s hurt. And then the penny drops- those two boys are us. &nbsp;</p><p>The younger son was more than rude in demanding his actual share of the inheritance immediately. He was effectively wishing that his father was dead. He had the neck to treat his lovely father as if he were already dead. There arose in Europe after the second world war the &lsquo;Death of God&rsquo; philosophy and theology. We may distance ourselves from it in disgust, finding even the words grating and inappropriate, but let&rsquo;s remember that the younger son ends up the son who is found in the end abiding in the Father&rsquo;s house and joyful fellowship. This is how <i>we</i> have treated our wonderful Father. We know from the examples of Abraham (Gen. 25:5-8) and Jacob (Gen. 48-49) that the actual division of the inheritance was made <i>by the father</i> as his death approached. For the son to take the initiative was disgusting. Although the sons could have some legal right to what their father gave them before his death, they were strictly denied the right of actually having it in possession i.e. the right of disposition. This awful son was therefore each of us. And the father responds with an unreal grace. He agrees. He did what he surely knew was not really for the spiritual good of the son. And according to Dt. 21:7, the younger son&rsquo;s share was one third. But the father gives him <i>half</i>. The younger son turns it all into cash within a few days the Greek for &ldquo;gathered all&rdquo; definitely means &lsquo;to turn into cash&rsquo;. This would&rsquo;ve meant selling the fields and property quickly- and the father would&rsquo;ve had to give agreement for this and have been involved in the contracts. Buying and selling takes a long time in peasant culture- selling quickly would&rsquo;ve meant selling very cheaply. It would&rsquo;ve been the laughing stock of the whole area. The way the son sells the inheritance would\'ve been a more awful and unreal thing in the ears of the Lord\'s first hearers than it is to us. Naboth would rather have died than sell his inheritance- even to the King (1 Kings 21:3). The lifetime&rsquo;s hard work of the father and family was wasted. And the father went along with it all. This was more than unusual; it would&rsquo;ve been outrageous in the ears of the Lord&rsquo;s hearers. But this is the outrageous nature of God&rsquo;s grace. He must be so torn by our prayers- as a loving Father, wanting to give us what we ask for materially, whilst knowing it&rsquo;s not for our good&hellip; and sometimes doing so. The father made himself look a fool because of his enormous love for this obnoxious son who wished him dead, this young man who clearly thought solely in terms of &lsquo;Gimme the money and I&rsquo;m outta here for good&rsquo;. And he thought this with no thought to the huge damage he was bringing upon the rest of the family. For they would&rsquo;ve lost so much through losing half the property. We sense the pain of the father, of the family, and the selfishness of the son. And time and again we are breathless at the love and grace of the father. &nbsp;</p><p>Significantly, the son asked for his share of the property- not his inheritance. To receive inheritance carried with it responsibility, of building the house of your father, upholding the family name etc. But this son didn&rsquo;t want that. And the father could quite rightly have said &lsquo;No, you get the inheritance when you take the responsibilities that come with it&rsquo;. But no, this son wants to quit with his lovely father and the whole family name. In that culture, to cut your ties with your home family, your inheritance, your land&hellip; was almost unheard of. It was almost impossible to do. But that&rsquo;s what this angry young man wanted. The incredible thing is, the father allowed him to do this That element of unreality signposts the extent to which God allows us freewill, genuine freedom of determination- and how much it costs Him emotionally and as a person to do so. This is the frightening thing about freewill- how much it hurts and costs God to give it to us. This insight alone should lead to a far more careful and responsible use of our freewill. William Temple said somewhere, something to the effect that God gives us freedom even to reject His love. It&rsquo;s no good reflecting on the younger son and thinking &lsquo;But I&rsquo;m not that kinda guy&rsquo;. The whole point of the parable is that yes, we are. That&rsquo;s us. We&rsquo;re either like that son, or the self-righteous son who is left standing outside of the father&rsquo;s fellowship. Clearly enough, the God whom Jesus was revealing was <i>not</i> based upon some village patriarch. Freud rightly observed that many people&rsquo;s image of God is based upon their experience of human father figures. For the true believer however, the Lord Jesus is revealing a Father-figure radically different to anything they&rsquo;ve ever met.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2874','1','42','15','13','13','<p>15:13 <i>Not many days later, the younger son gathered into money all he had, and took a journey into a far country; and there he squandered his inheritance in reckless living</i>- The same Greek word occurs in 1 Pet. 4:4 concerning Gentiles (and also the latter-day apostasy within the ecclesia?) living in &quot;excess of riot&quot;. The corrective to the elder brothers\' attitude is provided by the following parable of the unjust steward which comes straight afterwards in Lk. 16. The steward was accused of \'wasting\' his master\'s goods (Lk. 16:1), using the same Greek word translated &quot;substance&quot; in Lk. 15:13, concerning how the son wasted his father\'s substance. The steward forgave others, and therefore ultimately found a way of escape from his dilemma. The implication is that it was on account of the prodigal being willing to do this, not daring to point the finger at others in the Father\'s household because of his awareness of his own sins, that he was eventually saved. We can also infer that the elder brother walked out of the Father\'s fellowship because of his refusal to do this. Again we see how God works through our sins. Because of the prodigal\'s experience of sin and forgiveness, he was better able to show that vital love and tolerance towards others, without which we cannot receive God\'s ultimate acceptance. In a sense, it was much <i>more</i> difficult for the elder brother.<br />&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2875','1','42','15','14','14','<p>15:14 <i>And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that country, and he began to be in want</i>- The prodigal &quot;spent all&quot;, just as the diseased woman had &quot;spent all&quot; her living (Mk. 5:26), and now came to take hold of Christ\'s mantle of righteousness. This we do at baptism. Other similarities between the prodigal and that widow are to be found in <i>Studies In The Gospels</i> by H.A. Whittaker. It\'s bankruptcy, or bankruptcy. Paul spoke of spending and being spent in the Lord\'s service (2 Cor. 12:15), alluding to how the prodigal spent himself in dissipation. That sense of losing all must come- either in sin\'s service, or in that of the Lord. See on Mt. 3:11.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2876','1','42','15','15','15','<p>15:15 <i>And he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed pigs</i>- The son was attached to a &quot;citizen of that country&quot;, perhaps a personification of the Biblical devil to which we are joined before conversion. He was made free from him the moment he started his journey back. He &quot;was dead, and is alive again&quot; is also baptism language (cp. Rom. 6:3-5; Col. 2:13). &quot;He arose&quot; from the pigs (Lk. 15:20) certainly implies new life and resurrection.</p><p>We don&rsquo;t like to think of ourselves as that thankless young man; but even more do we revolt at the idea that we were and are at times out there feeding pigs. Anyone who&rsquo;s travelled in the Middle East will know the annoyance of a beggar attaching themselves to you and just refusing to leave you. But watch how the locals deal with those types. They don&rsquo;t shout at them, or chase them. They will ask them to do something which is beneath even their dignity as a beggar to do. And they walk away shamefaced. I knew a brother who was a schoolteacher. The boss wanted to fire him because of his Christianity. The boss didn&rsquo;t say &lsquo;You&rsquo;re fired Clear off&rsquo;. He simply transferred him to a remote village in the middle of nowhere. And so the brother did the only reasonable thing- he resigned. The young man &lsquo;joining&rsquo; or &lsquo;gluing&rsquo; himself to the rich Gentile citizen was like the beggar who glues himself to you, and you don&rsquo;t know how to shake him off. The pig owner told him to go and feed his pigs- thinking that this would surely be beneath this once-wealthy Jew who was hassling him. But so desperate was the young man, that he had to swallow every drop of pride, national and personal- and go do it. And he felt like a pig- he was willing to eat what they ate. <i>This</i> is the picture of our desperation at every sin- but we need to feel it, if we are to experience the path back to the Father. In an age when sin is often more about the words you type on your keyboard than actual physical debauchery, this parable hits home hard. Of course it was pride which was in the way for the son, and it is swallowing pride which is the essence of repentance. And again, it was fear of shame that delayed the young man&rsquo;s return- fear of having to go through the <i>kezazah</i> ceremony of being officially disowned, fear of how the mob of young kids which roam every village street would whistle and shout and sing insults at him. And we need to pause and reflect whether we contribute to this significant barrier which surely hinders so many from returning to the Father&rsquo;s house. &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2877','1','42','15','16','16','<p>15:16 <i>And he would gladly have filled his belly with the husks that the pigs ate, but no one gave him anything</i>- The son was joined to a Gentile, and totally ritually unclean by working with the pigs. All hope of justification by the law was long gone.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2878','1','42','15','17','17','<p>15:17 <i>But when he came to his senses he said-</i>The sense that the prodigal had of having come to a complete end, realizing the ultimate wretchedness of sin, should be ours when we repent. The prodigal\'s repentance is ours. The prodigal among the pigs, rising up to return, should be a cameo of our repentances throughout each day. The allusion to the Septuagint of Prov. 29:21 shows how that despite having reached such an &quot;end&quot;, there is still a way back: &quot;He that lives wantonly from a child shall be a servant, and in the <i>end</i> shall grieve over himself&quot;. Yet we know that after that &quot;end&quot;, the prodigal returned. The son \'coming to his senses\' implies that his life of sin was madness, lived in a haze of semi-consciousness of his real spiritual self. This spiritual anaesthesia is <i>always</i> present when we sin. Yet it does not mean that God sees and feels our sins as we do; He has a constancy of spiritual awareness. An appreciation of this may help us in our struggle to sense the true seriousness of sin.</p><p><i>How many of my father\'s hired servants have bread enough to spare, but I perish here with hunger</i>- The prodigal\'s perishing with hunger and desperately needing bread suggests a connection with Jn .6:35: &quot;I am the bread of life: he that comes to me (cp. the prodigal\'s return) shall never hunger... him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out&quot; (cp. the receiving back of the prodigal). This coming to Christ is both ongoing and also specifically at baptism.</p><p>God hoped through the hope of Hosea that \'Gomer\' would say &quot;I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now&quot; (Hos. 2:17). But Gomer / Israel would not; and so the Lord picked up the idea and puts it in the mouth of the returning prodigal son in Lk. 15:17.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2879','1','42','15','18','18','<p>15:18 <i>I will rise and go to my father, and will say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight</i>- His plan was to use the phrase &ldquo;I have sinned against heaven and against you&rdquo;- but this is almost quoting verbatim from Pharaoh&rsquo;s words of insincere repentance in Ex. 10:16 He still failed to grasp that he was his father&rsquo;s <i>son</i>- he didn&rsquo;t &lsquo;get it&rsquo;, that <i>this </i>would be the basis of his salvation, rather than a master-servant relationship with his father based on hard work. It was the father&rsquo;s amazing grace which swept him off his feet just along the street from his father&rsquo;s home; it was the father&rsquo;s unconditional acceptance of him which made him realize what sonship and repentance was really all about. &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2880','1','42','15','19','19','<p>15:19 <i>I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants</i>- The young man hadn&rsquo;t quite learnt the need for total grace when he decided to return home. He decided to return and ask to be made &ldquo;as one of your skilled craftsmen&rdquo; (Gk.- he uses <i>misthios </i>rather than <i>doulos</i>, the usual word for &lsquo;slave&rsquo;). Presumably he figured that he could work and pay off what he had wasted.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2881','1','42','15','20','20','<p>15:20 <i>And he rose and went to his father. But while he was yet far away, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran and embraced and kissed him</i>- The Father\'s speed and zeal is captured by the repeated use of the conjunction &quot;and&quot;: &quot;His father saw him, <i>and</i> had compassion, <i>and</i> ran, <i>and</i> fell on his neck, <i>and</i> kissed him&quot;. The son\'s careful preparation of his request for mercy was needful for him, but not for the Father. This is a precise allusion to the spirit of Is. 65:24: &quot;Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear&quot;. This is primarily concerning God\'s relationship with men in the Kingdom. Yet our daily experience of forgiveness now should give us a foretaste of the glorious sense of restoration with God which will be ours in the Kingdom.</p><p>There was a Jewish custom called <i>Kezazah</i>, &lsquo;the cutting off&rsquo;. If a Jew lost the family fortune amongst Gentiles, he would be greeted at home by the whole family, who would break a pot and scream &lsquo;XYZ is cut off from his people&rsquo; (Kenneth E. Bailey, <i>The Cross And The Prodigal</i> (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005) p. 52). The family and community would have no more fellowship with the person (Kenneth E. Bailey, <i>Jacob And The Prodigal</i> (Downers Grove: IVP, 2003) p. 102). Moulton and Milligan describe the record of a public notice by which parents declare their dissociation from their son who had wasted their wealth (J.H. Moulton &amp; G. Milligan, <i>The Vocabulary Of The Greek New Testament Illustrated From the Papyri And Other Non-Literary Sources</i> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952) p. 89). This is what the Lord&rsquo;s Jewish audience would&rsquo;ve expected to come next in the story, when the son returns. But no There is the very opposite. Law and traditional expectation and even human perception of justice is thrown away, as the father races along the street towards his son and accepts him. For an elderly man to run publicly was yet again an unreal element in the story- mature men always walk, at a slow and dignified pace. Not gather up their robes and run, let alone publicly. Actually the Greek word translated &ldquo;run&rdquo; in Lk. 15:20 is that used about sprinting (1 Cor. 9:24,26; Gal. 2:2; 5:7; 2 Thess. 3:1; Heb. 12:1). Here again we see the self-humiliation of the father before men, as he expressed a radical acceptance. Even we from our distance expect there to be a &lsquo;telling off&rsquo;, a facing of the issues. But there isn&rsquo;t. The grace of God which meets the returning sinner leads him to repentance. It of itself, by its sheer magnitude, elicits the state of contrition which is indeed vital; but this is inspired&nbsp;by the huge initiative of the Father and Son. &nbsp;</p><p>The father&rsquo;s radical acceptance is the very basis of our salvation. It is challenging, supremely so. Perhaps we handle &lsquo;classic&rsquo; repentance easier- someone does wrong, goes off for a long time, is out of sight and out of mind, comes back, asks for our forgiveness with tears and humility. It&rsquo;s actually psychologically hard to say &lsquo;No&rsquo;. <i>That</i> kind of forgiveness is relatively easy. But what is so much harder is to show forgiveness and the nature of the father&rsquo;s love and grace time and again in daily life; to keep looking and hoping for the one who has offended us, ruined us, destroyed us, used and abused us&hellip; to be coming home. Actually I know virtually none amongst us who rise up to the father&rsquo;s love and grace in this. It remains a stark, sobering challenge to us all. &nbsp;<br />It needs to be understood that the father had to act as the village expected him to. They expected him to enact the <i>kezazah</i>, to hand the son over to them in some form for judgment, to make an example of this awful man. No village member is an island, all have to act within the expectations of the group. But the father breaks through all that. He again humiliates himself before the villagers by doing what he did. He likely angers them- for anger so often comes as a result of being confronted by the grace shown by others. We see it so often in the life of our spiritual community. Indeed, the Lord got at this in another parable, where He speaks of how some were angry at the extreme grace shown by the generous vineyard owner (Mt. 20:1-16). &nbsp;</p><p>The Father offered forgiveness without repentance to the prodigal son before there was any direct evidence of repentance- just a sign of general regret or desire to be in the Father&rsquo;s house. Indeed, it would see that the very fact the son <i>wanted </i>to return to the Father&rsquo;s house was quite enough to warrant his acceptance there- and the killing of the fatted calf. <br />The Lord\'s zeal for our redemption and His enthusiasm to see us as righteous is brought out in the parable of the prodigal. The Father (manifest in the Lord) runs out to meet the son. That story was masterfully tied back in to Is. 64:5-8: &quot;You meet him that rejoices and works righteousness, those that remember you in your ways... we have sinned... we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags... but now, O Lord, You are our father&quot;. The patient, hopeful father saw in the son a boy rejoicing and working righteousness; but this was hardly how <i>he</i> felt And so it will be with Israel in the last days. And so it is with each of us now, in our times of repentance. That surpassing grace is ours; we are seen as working righteousness when all we have is a bitter self-loathing and desire to somehow get back to God. But the crucial point is: <i>how often</i> do we have such a true repentance? We repeatedly sin, that we admit. But how frequently is there this kind of repentance which calls forth such grace, to see us as so righteous when we are so unrighteous, the grace of Jesus so great, so free...?&nbsp;<br />The parables so often allude to contemporary Jewish conceptions of grace, and show how God\'s grace is so far beyond them. The Father is watching for the return of the prodigal, even while the son was &quot;far off&quot; (Gk. <i>makron</i>); and this is the same word used about the &quot;far (Gk. <i>makros</i>) country&quot; where the son was (Lk. 15:13,20). The Divine eyesight sees the person who is far off in sin, and longs for their return. This was quite contrary to all Jewish and human notions of showing grace to those who return - <i>after</i> they return. There was a contemporary Jewish story about a son who wished to return to his father; and the father sends a message to him saying &quot;Return as far as you can and I will come the rest of the way to you&quot;. The Lord\'s parable showed how the care of the Father for His children is so far more than that. And He is there watching billions of cases, simultaneously... such is the passionate heart of God for the individual.</p><p>We must grow in our realization of the <i>enthusiasm</i> of God for our salvation. Consider how the Father ran unto the pathetic son and fell on (Gk. violently seized) his neck and kissed him (Lk. 15:20; the same Greek as in Acts 20:37). The Father restlessly watching for the prodigal\'s return matches the woman searching for the lost coin &ldquo;till she find it&rdquo; or the unusual shepherd who searches for his lost sheep &ldquo;until He finds it&rdquo; (Lk. 15:4,8,20). This involves God in huge activity- setting up providential encounters, nudging consciences through circumstance. The huge amount of &lsquo;work&rsquo; is one thing; but the mental energy of concern and thoughtfulness is phenomenal beyond our comprehension. God rises up early seeking His people- rather like us somehow being able to wake up early in the morning without an alarm clock, because our internal clock is restlessly wanting to be up and on our mission for the day. In all this we are to manifest God- for we too are to seek and save the lost.</p><p>The elder brother in the prodigal story shows an unbelievably self-righteous attitude. Yet, this truly is the position of the legalists of Christ\'s day and this. The love of the Father God for the son repentant Israel is quite something. Would a father really rush out and kiss him, i.e. forgive him (Lk. 15:20 cp. 2 Sam. 14:33) without first requiring an explanation and specific repentance? For this unusual Father, the mere fact the son wanted to return was enough. And when the vineyard workers refused to work and beat and killed the Owner&rsquo;s servants that were sent, the response we expect is that the Owner sends in some armed men and re-establishes control. But He doesn&rsquo;t. Why ever keep sending servants after some are killed? But this is the loving, almost desperate persistence of the Father for our response. This is what the parables of Israel teach. In the end, He does something humanly crazy. He sends a single Man walking towards them- His only Son. Or think of the parable of the older son. The loving Father divides all that He has between the two sons- and the son who remained at home therefore ended up with <i>all</i> that the Father had, seeing the younger son had blown the other half of it (Lk. 15:31). This was the extent of God&rsquo;s love for Pharisaic, hypocritical Israel. He gave them His all- the blood of His only Son. Elderly oriental gentlemen never run in public. But the Father will do so when the younger son returns. Such will be His joy, and such is His joy over every sinner who repents</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2882','1','42','15','21','21','<p>15:21 <i>And the son said to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no more worthy to be called your son</i>- The son admitted that he had sinned &quot;in your sight&quot;, exactly as David confessed after his sin with Bathsheba (Ps. 51:4). In the same way as David openly recognized that he deserved to die, so the prodigal wanted to be made a hireling. Yet in reality, God did not take David\'s life, the prodigal was not allowed to even get around to saying he wanted to be made a slave (:21 cp. 19), shoes being immediately placed on his feet (:22) to distinguish him from the barefoot slaves.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2883','1','42','15','22','22','<p>15:22 <i>But the father said to his servants: Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet</i>- The prodigal was not allowed to even get around to saying he wanted to be made a slave (:21 cp. 19), shoes being immediately placed on his feet (:22) to distinguish him from the barefoot slaves. The honour bestowed upon the son by the father is totally unreal. Without the slightest sign that the son is now responsible, is truly repentant, has the right motives&hellip; the father gives him the best robe, which is what was done for the person whom a leader wished to honour above all (Esther 6:1-9). And the father gives the son his signet ring (cp. Gen. 41:41,42). All this, before the prodigal has in any way proved himself. All he&rsquo;s done is come home, still not wanting to be a son, just a craftsman; and he was only driven home by his desperation. Such is the huge significance attached by the Lord to our turning up home. And in our dealing with returning sinners, which is every one of us day by day, we should reflect the same attitude.</p><p>The record of the prodigal\'s treatment at the homecoming suggests that we are to see in this the sharing of Christ\'s personal reward with repentant sinners. Removing his rags and clothing him with the best robe recalls Zech.3:4, concerning the very same thing happening to Christ at his glorification. Being given a robe, ring and shoes takes us back to Joseph/Jesus being similarly arrayed in the day of his glory (Gen. 41:42). This parable is rich in reference to the Joseph story, with Joseph\'s brothers typifying Israel and all sinners. But now there is a powerful twist in the imagery. The sinners (cp. the brothers) now share the reward of the saint (cp. Joseph). This is the very basis of the Gospel of justification in Christ, through having his righteousness imputed to us, so that we can share in his rewards. This will fully be realized at the marriage supper of the lamb, although it also occurs in a sense each time we repent, and live out the parable of the prodigal\'s repentance again. See on Rev. 6:11.<br />&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2884','1','42','15','23','23','<p>15:23 <i>And bring the fatted calf, kill it and let us eat and make merry</i>- The joyful homecoming and celebration feast after the prodigal\'s repentance then equates with the Messianic banquet. The fatted calf which was killed therefore connects with the &quot;fatlings&quot; which were killed for the marriage supper of the Kingdom in Mt. 22:4. And those Jews who refused the invitation to join in that feast easily equate with the elder brother. &quot;Let us eat and make merry&quot; is alluded to by the Lord in his later description of the marriage supper: &quot;Let us be glad and rejoice... for the marriage of the lamb is come&quot; (Rev. 19:7). &quot;Enter into the joy of your lord&quot; (Mt. 25:21) is the equivalent in the parable of the virgins. There is good reason to think that our Lord consciously designed his parables to allude to each other, and thus build up a more complete picture of his teaching.</p><p>The context of the parable is set in :2. It was in response to the Pharisees\' criticism of Jesus that he received sinners and ate with them. Jesus is replying by showing that the meal he ate with them was in the spirit of the joyful feasting occasioned by the finding of the lost coin, and the return of the prodigal. The prodigal\'s repentance is thus likened to those who were responding to Christ\'s gospel.</p><p>Compare &quot;Slay and make ready&quot; (Gen. 43:16). Joseph\'s welcome of his brothers is the basis of the prodigal son parable (Gen. 45:14,15 = Lk. 15:20); in this case another line of interpretation opens up, with the father representing Christ, and the prodigal is the repentant Jews, wanting to be servants and nothing else.</p><p>&quot;The fatted calf&quot; of Christ is \'killed\' by God on our repentance in the sense that He is aware once again of the death of Christ whenever we are granted forgiveness. The spirit of Christ groans for us when we sin, as he did on the cross and in Gethsemane (Rom. 8:26). Thus God looks on the travail of Christ\'s soul when He bears our sins away from us (Is. 53:11). To crucify Christ afresh as it were puts Christ through the process of death on behalf of sin once again, but because the believer does not \'resurrect\' to newness of life in forsaking the sin, neither does God \'visualize\' the Lord\'s triumph over the sufferings of sin in the resurrection. Such a person has left Christ suffering, travailing in soul, groaning with tears, without any triumph or resurrection.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2885','1','42','15','24','24','<p>15:24 <i>For this my son who was dead, is alive again He was lost and is found And they began to be merry</i>- The prodigal son was a favourite of Paul\'s. At least four times (Lk. 15:24 = Eph. 2:1,5; 5:14; Col. 2:13) he makes the point that he saw the repentant son as a type of every one of us: not just those who publicly disgrace themselves and go out of church life for a time.&nbsp;</p><p>As God took His repentant wife back to her former status, speaking of her once again as a virgin, so the Father emphasizes: &quot;This <i>my son</i> was dead...&quot;. The prodigal was dead, but then became alive (:32), in the same way as baptism marks both a one-off coming alive with Christ, and also the start of a newness of life in which we are constantly dying to sin and coming alive to God\'s righteousness (Rom. 6:13). Our repentance and subsequent acceptability with God at our baptisms should therefore be on a similar level to our confessions of sinfulness to God after specific sins in our daily lives, and also related to our doing this at the day of judgment.</p><p>Yet in the daily round of sin and failure, it is sometimes difficult to sense the degree to which God is actively seeking our return, and willing to slay the fatted calf. The earlier parables of the lost sheep and coin show God actively working to find us; whilst that of the prodigal implies that He is not doing anything physical. Yet the clear connections with the preceding parables show that the woman zealously turning the house upside down must therefore be a figure of the mental energy expended by the Almighty in seeking out our repentance. In our semi-aware spiritual days and hours, before we \'come to ourselves\', the Father\'s active mind is urgently seeking us. Surely this should motivate us in our stronger moments to be aware of the need <i>not</i> to sleep into the sleepy madness of spiritual indifference and sin. This indifference is effectively spending our substance with whores and riotous living. Prov. 29:3 is one of the root passages for the prodigal parable: &quot;Whoever loves <i>wisdom</i> rejoices his father: but he that keeps company with harlots spends his <i>substance</i>&quot;. There is a parallel here between wisdom and the Father\'s substance; continuing a popular Biblical theme that God\'s spiritual riches are to be found in His words of wisdom. An indifference to the spiritual riches which we have been given in the word of Christ is therefore being likened to the prodigal squandering the Father\'s substance with whores.</p><p>It is hard to appreciate that this parable really is intended to be read as having some reference to our daily turning back from our sins- such is the emotional intensity of the story. Yet such is the seriousness of sin that we must see in it an ideal standard to aim for in this regard. The parable alludes to a passage in Job which helps us better appreciate this. The prodigal\'s confession &quot;I have sinned... in your sight&quot;, and his returning from spiritual death to life (Lk. 15:21,32) connect well with Job 33:24-30: &quot;His flesh (of the forgiven sinner) shall be fresher than a child\'s: he shall return to the days of his youth (cp. the prodigal): he shall pray unto God, and He will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy... if any say (like the prodigal), I have sinned... and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from the pit, and his life shall see the light. Lo, all these things worketh God <i>oftentimes</i> with man&quot;. The prodigal\'s experience will often be worked out in our lives, the fatted calf slain time and again, and as such we will come to know and appreciate the Father\'s love even more.</p><p>The joyous feast around the fatted calf can therefore speak of the full fellowship with God which we enjoy each time we come to repentance. The return of Israel in Hos. 2 was one of the source passages for the parable. The feast at their return is there described as a betrothal feast. This is obviously a one-off act. Yet such is the constant newness of life which we can experience through continued repentance, that the feasts of joy which we experience can all have the intensity of a betrothal feast. In like manner our relation with Christ in the Kingdom is likened to a consummation which lasts eternally.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2886','1','42','15','25','25','<p>15:25 <i>Now his elder son was in the field- </i>The elder brother coming in from the field must be related to the parable about the servant coming home from the field in Lk. 17:7-10. The servant should then have prepared the meal, on the master\'s command, and then admitted that despite having been perfectly obedient, he was still unprofitable. The prodigal parable points the great contrast. <i>God</i>, while having every right to order the servant/ elder brother to prepare the meal, is the one who has actually prepared it. <i>God</i> asks the elder son to come and eat immediately after returning from the field, rather than ordering him to prepare the meal, as He could so justly have done. Yet despite God\'s boundless love, the elder son refused to act and think in the spirit of the Father\'s love.</p><p><i>And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing</i>- A calf, dancing and music recall the scene on Moses\' return from the mount (Ex. 32:17-19); the elder brother\'s response as he returned from the field and beheld this sight may well have been rooted in his attempt to place himself in Moses\' place. He zealously protested at what he liked to see as rank apostasy when it was actually the display of the real spirit of Christ, in receiving back a lost soul. For all this, the lesson is never learned. Schism after schism have been experienced over this very issue of having repentant brethren take their place at the memorial feast. The bad grace and bitterness of the elder brother as he stormed away from the happy feast is seen all too often amongst us. &nbsp;</p><p>The parable of the prodigal contains multiple allusions to the record of Jacob and Esau, their estrangement, and the anger of the older brother Esau against the younger brother (K.E. Bailey, <i>Jacob And The Prodigal</i> (Downers Grove: IVP, 2003) lists 51 points of contact between the Jacob / Esau record and the prodigal parable). There is a younger and an elder son, who both break their relationships with their father, and have an argument over the inheritance issue. Jacob like the prodigal son insults his father in order to get his inheritance. As Jacob joined himself to Laban in the far country, leaving his older brother Esau living at home, so the prodigal glued himself to a Gentile and worked for him by minding his flocks, whilst his older brother remained at home with the father. The fear of the prodigal as he returned home matches that of Jacob as he finally prepares to meet the angry Esau. Jacob\'s unexpected meeting with the Angel and clinging to him physically is matched by the prodigal being embraced and hugged by his father. Notice how Gen. 33:10 records how Jacob felt he saw the face of Esau as the face of an Angel. By being given the ring, the prodigal &quot;has in effect now supplanted his older brother&quot; (A.J. Hultgren, <i>The Parables Of Jesus</i> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) p. 79); just as Jacob did. As Esau was &quot;in the field&quot; (Gen. 27:5), so was the older brother.</p><p>What was the Lord Jesus getting at by framing His story in terms of Jacob and Esau? The Jews saw Jacob as an unblemished hero, and Esau / Edom as the epitome of wickedness and all that was anti-Jewish and anti-God. The Book of Jubilees has much to say about all this, as does the Genesis Rabbah (See e.g. Jacob Neusner,<i> Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary To The Book Of Genesis</i> (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985) Vol. 3 p. 176). The Lord is radically and bravely re-interpreting all this. Jacob is the younger son, who went seriously wrong during his time with Laban. We have shown elsewhere how weak Jacob was at that time. Jacob was saved by grace, the grace shown in the end by the Angel with whom he wrestled, and yet who finally blessed him. As Hos. 12:4 had made clear, Jacob weeping in the Angel\'s arms and receiving the blessing of gracious forgiveness is all God speaking to us. The older brother who refused to eat with his sinful brother clearly represented, in the context of the parable, the Jewish religious leaders. They were equated with Esau- the very epitome of all that was anti-Jewish. And in any case, according to the parable, the hero of the story is the younger son, Jacob, who is extremely abusive and unspiritual towards his loving father, and is saved by sheer grace alone. This too was a radical challenge to the Jewish perception of their ancestral father Jacob.</p><p>The parable demonstrates that both the sons despised their father and their inheritance in the same way. They both wish him dead, treat him as if he isn\'t their father, abuse his gracious love, shame him to the world. Both finally come to their father from working in the fields. Jacob, the younger son, told Laban that &quot;All these years I have served you... and you have not treated me justly&quot; (Gen. 31:36-42). But these are exactly the words of the older son in the parable The confusion is surely to demonstrate that both younger and elder son essentially held the same wrong attitudes. And the Father, clearly representing God, and God as He was manifested in Christ, sought so earnestly to reconcile both the younger and elder sons. The Lord Jesus so wished the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees to fellowship with the repenting sinners that He wept over Jerusalem; He didn\'t shrug them off as self-righteous bigots, as we tend to do with such people. He wept for them, as the Father so passionately pours out His love to them. And perhaps on another level we see in all this the desperate desire of the Father and Son for Jewish-Arab unity in Christ. For the promises to Ishmael show that although Messiah\'s line was to come through Isaac, God still has an especial interest in and love for all the children of Abraham- and that includes the Arabs. Only a joint recognition of the Father\'s grace will bring about Jewish-Arab unity. But in the end, it will happen- for there will be a highway from Assyria to Judah to Egypt in the Millennium. The anger of the elder brother was because the younger son had been reconciled to the Father without compensating for what he had done wrong. It\'s the same anger at God\'s grace which is shown by the workers who objected to those who had worked less receiving the same pay. And it\'s the same anger which is shown every time a believer storms out of an ecclesia because some sinner has been accepted back...</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2887','1','42','15','26','26','<p>15:26 <i>And he called one of the servants, and inquired what these things might mean</i>- Wondering what things might mean is an idea used by Luke several times, especially concerning Mary and others at the time of the Lord\'s birth. The ultimate meaning is grace in God\'s son. That was the meaning those earlier people were intended to come to, and it was the same for the prodigal.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2888','1','42','15','27','27','<p>15:27 <i>And he said to him: Your brother came, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound</i>- We are left to imagine in what tone of voice they replied. And whether in fact the elder son already knew what was going on, but was seeking to persuade some of the servants to adopt his perspective.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2889','1','42','15','28','28','<p>15:28 <i>But he was angry and would not go in; and his father came out and encouraged him</i>- The elder son would not \'go in\' to the wedding (Lk. 15:28); and the Lord surely constructed that story to use a word which so often is used about going in to the Kingdom (in Matthew alone: 5:20; 7:21; 18:3,9; 19:17,23,24; 25:21). His point clearly is that those who don\'t enter into His Kingdom <i>chose themselves not to do </i>so, they keep themselves out of the Kingdom, because they cannot bring themselves to show a true love to their brother. In the end, the very end, we receive our dominant desire.</p><p>To refuse a father&rsquo;s invitation to a family celebration was seen as totally unacceptable, rude, and a rejection of one&rsquo;s father. Hence the rudeness of the guests refusing the King&rsquo;s invitations. The older brother would usually have played a prominent role in such feasts. But this son refuses to attend. This would&rsquo;ve struck the Lord&rsquo;s initial audience as incredibly rude. Remember how Vashti&rsquo;s refusal to attend her husband&rsquo;s feast resulted in her being rejected (Esther 1). What the older son did would&rsquo;ve been seen as an insult to all the guests; and many fathers would simply have rejected and disowned their son for this, or at least, expressed significant disapproval. Indeed, this was expected of him by society and the other guests. But yet again, the father humiliates himself and breaks all Jewish norms and expectations of correctness and decency. He leaves the feast For the host to walk out was yet again seen as totally rude to the other guests- it of course echoes the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep and going off after the one lost sheep. &nbsp;The father doesn&rsquo;t go out and giving the arrogant, unloving, disobedient son a good talking to, as the audience would expect. Again, as so often, the Lord&rsquo;s parables set up an expectation- and then dash it. The father goes out into the darkness of the courtyard, and &ldquo;entreats&rdquo; his son (Lk. 15:28). The Greek <i>parakaleo</i> means literally to come alongside, as if the father is inviting the son to stand alongside him in his extension of grace. Perhaps Paul is making one of his many allusions to the Lord&rsquo;s parables when he uses the same word to speak of how he &lsquo;beseeches&rsquo; his legalistic brethren (2 Cor. 5:20). &nbsp;</p><p>But all this grace is ignored by the elder son. He insults his father. It may not be so apparent to us, but it would&rsquo;ve been picked up by the Lord&rsquo;s first hearers. A son should always address his father in this context with the term &ldquo;O Father&rdquo;. But he doesn&rsquo;t. He speaks of his brother as &ldquo;Your son&rdquo; rather than his brother. He speaks of how the prodigal &ldquo;devoured <i>your</i> living&rdquo;. And he speaks of how he has faithfully served his father <i>as a servant</i>- like his younger brother, he failed to perceive the wonder of <i>sonship</i>. His awful outburst is doing in essence what his younger brother had done some time before. He was saying that he didn&rsquo;t want a part in his father&rsquo;s family. The &ldquo;living&rdquo; or wealth of the family was no longer <i>his</i>. He wasn&rsquo;t going to respect his father as his father any more. He didn&rsquo;t want to be in the family, so he wouldn&rsquo;t go to the family reunion. That poor, dear father. And what is the father&rsquo;s response? He calls him his <i>teknon</i>, his dearly loved son. Notice how the more common <i>huios</i> is used for &ldquo;son&rdquo; throughout the story (Lk. 15:11,13,19,21,24,25,30). In the face of such awful rejection, he shows his special love. It&rsquo;s like the Lord giving &ldquo;the sop&rdquo;, the sign of special love and favouritism, to Judas- as he betrays Him. There&rsquo;s a powerful lesson here for those of us who find ourselves irked and angered by legalistic, arrogant brethren who refuse to fellowship with the rest of us. There was no anger and irksomeness in the father&rsquo;s attitude. He was only deeply sorry, hurt, cut up&hellip; but he <i>so</i> loved that arrogant elder brother. He goes on to say that he gives that son all that he has. But he could only actually do that through being dead The father is willing to die for that arrogant older brother, whose pride and anger stops him wanting anything to do with his father, whom he has just openly shamed and rejected. And the father wants to die for him. This is to be our attitude to the self-righteous, the divisive, those who reject their brethren. &nbsp;</p><p>But of course, there&rsquo;s a real and obvious warning not to be like the older brother. It worries me, it turns me, right in my very gut, when I see so many refusing to fellowship with their brethren because &lsquo;He&rsquo;s in that church&hellip; they&rsquo;ve had her back&hellip; she&rsquo;s divorced and remarried&hellip; he&rsquo;s never said sorry, his motives aren&rsquo;t right, she only said those words&hellip;&rsquo;. And those attitudes are made out to be expressions of righteousness. It is not for me to judge anyone; I seek to love those who act like this with the love and grief of the father for the elder son. But they must be gently warned as to the implications of their position. By refusing to fellowship with the rest of the family, by making such a fuss about the return of the prodigals, they fail to realize that they are in essence doing what the prodigals have done; and they are de facto signing themselves out of the Father&rsquo;s family. The issues are that serious. The parable isn&rsquo;t just a story with a possible interpretation which we can shrug our shoulders at and get on with life. The Lord&rsquo;s teaching, His &lsquo;doctrine&rsquo;, was and is in these parables. &nbsp;</p><p>The lost son story finishes, as do the other stories, with a banquet of rejoicing- rejoicing in the father&rsquo;s love. But it&rsquo;s no accident that Luke 15 is preceded by the parable of Lk. 14:15-24, where we have another great banquet- symbolic of our communion in the future Kingdom of God. The connection is clear. We will &ldquo;eat bread in the Kingdom of God&rdquo; if we eat bread with the Lord in the banquets of this life. And yet <i>so, so often</i> it is said amongst us: &lsquo;I won&rsquo;t break bread there. They have X or Z&hellip; who is divorced&hellip; who&rsquo;s not repentant&hellip; they have Q from that fellowship attending there&hellip; I&rsquo;m not going in there&rsquo;. It is not for us to judge. And I do not do so in what I write here. But it is the fairly obvious teaching of the Lord here that if we won&rsquo;t eat bread with Him in joy now, if we won&rsquo;t celebrate His grace and love for the lost in this life, then we will not in the future banquet. His grace is likely large enough to cover even the self-righteous; but we need to realize the eternal gravity of our decisions and feelings about our brethren in this life. Especially must we come to see ourselves as the prodigal. If we plan on being in the Kingdom, we must identify ourselves with the prodigal, and not with the self-righteous elder son who is left outside of the Father&rsquo;s fellowship, because he placed himself there.&nbsp; <br />&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2890','1','42','15','29','29','<p>15:29 <i>But he answered and said to his father: Look For so many years I have served you, and I never transgressed a commandment of yours, and yet you never gave me a kid that I might make merry with my friends</i>- He clearly represents the self-righteous Pharisees, who refused to eat with sinners. In the same way as the Jews refused to appreciate the spirit in which Christ was feasting with the repentant sinners who responded to his message (:2), so the elder brother refused to attend the celebrations. Thus he is set up as representative of hard hearted Israel; and all those in the new Israel who share his characteristics proclaim themselves to be aligned with the legalistic Pharisaism which failed to discern the real spirit of Christ when he was among them.</p><p>Yet the Lord is also talking obliquely to Himself. It was so much harder for the Lord to be as patient with sinners as He was, seeing that He Himself never sinned and experienced God\'s forgiveness. There is good reason to think that Jesus was speaking about the elder brother partly to warn himself. He was the favoured son, having the right of the firstborn. He alone could say to God &quot;neither transgressed I at any time your commandment&quot;. The Father\'s comment &quot;All that I have is yours&quot; (:31) connects with the references to God giving <i>all things</i> into the hands of the Son. His constant abiding in the Father\'s house echoes Jn. 8:35: &quot;The servant abides not in the house for ever: but the Son abides ever&quot;. Our Lord seems to have been indirectly exhorting himself not to be like the elder brother, thereby setting us the example of framing necessary warning and rebuke of others in terms which are relevant to ourselves. If our perfect Master was so sensitive to His own possibility of failure, how much more should we be, ever analysing our attitudes to our brethren, &quot;considering (ourselves) lest we also be tempted&quot;.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2891','1','42','15','30','30','<p>15:30 <i>But when this your son came, who has devoured your living with prostitutes, you killed for him the fatted calf</i>- Association with harlots is a common Biblical symbol of committing sin (see James 1:13-15); all our sins are unfaithfulness against Christ our husband. They are not just passing adulteries; the Spirit uses the even more powerful figure of harlotries. There are quite a number of other references in James to this parable, which indicate that the prodigal\'s experience can apply in an ongoing sense to the believer after baptism. The&nbsp;son \'<i>spending all\'</i> uses the same word which occurs in James 4:3 concerning the believer who \'asks amiss\' (cp. the prodigal\'s request to his father), that he might &quot;<i>consume</i> it (same word) upon (his) lusts&quot;. James 4:4 continues: &quot;Ye adulterers... know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?&quot;. This is all prodigal language. The next verses then seem to go in their allusions, implying that the prodigal is ultimately far more acceptable than the elder brother in the ecclesia: &quot;The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy (cp. the elder brother)... God... giveth grace (forgiveness?) unto the humble... draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you (cp. the prodigal\'s return being matched by the Father coming to meet him)... let your laughter (cp. the son\'s &quot;riotous living&quot;) be turned to mourning... he that speaketh evil of his brother (is) <i>not</i> a doer of the law (as the elder brother thought he was), but a judge&quot; (James 4:5-11).</p><p>The parables are full of almost incidental indications of how well the Lord knew our nature and how accurately He foresaw the future struggles of His body. He foresaw that the elder brothers would be self-righteous and unwilling to accept back into fellowship the repentant. Yet instead of making the father address the older boy with words like &quot;You hypocrite You yourself are disobedient Get away from me, you callous hypocrite&quot;, the Lord puts the words of grace themselves in the father\'s mouth: &quot;Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine&quot; (Lk. 15:30). The Lord foresaw that the elder brethren\'s relationship with the Father would be damaged by their harshness. But in the way the story ends, I see real hope for the hard line, right wing Christian who condemns his brother, in the light of the Lord\'s teaching that we will be judged as we have judged. Wrong such brethren certainly are; but their Lord is gracious enough, it seems, to still work with them. In the same breath as the Lord warned that by our words we will be justified and condemned, and that we will have to account for them at the judgment, He also said that whoever speaks words against Him, He will forgive. I\'d like to concentrate on other examples of where the Lord Jesus in His sensitivity foresaw this problem of dealing with apparently weak believers. &nbsp;</p><p>The prodigal son parable has as its end stress the problem of the self-righteous elder son. This is in fact the crux of the whole story. He refuses the invitation from his father to come in to the feast- an image used elsewhere in the parables to describe rejection of God&rsquo;s invitation. To refuse such an invitation was a public insult and rejection of his Father. He refuses to address his father as &ldquo;Father&rdquo; and refuses to call his brother &ldquo;brother&rdquo; cp. &ldquo;thy son&rdquo;. By breaking his relationship with his brother, he broke his relationship with his Father. As we do likewise. And the end stress of the whole wonderful parable is that we are left wondering how the story finished. The elder brother is left standing there, temporarily rejecting his father, wondering&hellip; whether to storm off into the evening darkness, or to turn back and go in to the feast and accept his brother. And this is really the essential point of the story, and the appeal which it makes to us. We may just mindlessly forget some disfellowship case of years ago, leave the decision to others, forget in our own minds that there is a brother or sister begging for our renewed fellowship and forgiveness. Yet it is exactly these issues and our response to them which may decide our eternal destinies. And this was the end stress of the parable&hellip;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2892','1','42','15','31','31','<p>15:31 <i>And he said to him: Son, you are ever with me, and all that is mine is yours</i>- See on :29. Who does the father represent? The context for the three stories is the Lord Jesus justifying his eating with sinners. The fact that the father had received the sinful younger brother is phrased in the same way as the Pharisees&rsquo; complaint about the Lord Jesus receiving sinners (Lk. 15:2 = Lk. 15:27). And each of the stories involve a closing scene featuring a joyful meal of celebration. The father would appear therefore to refer to Jesus; and yet clearly enough we are intended to see the father as also our Heavenly Father. I don&rsquo;t go for the primitive equation &lsquo;Jesus = God&rsquo;. I&rsquo;m not a Trinitarian. So I take this to be an exemplification of how &ldquo;God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their iniquities unto them&rdquo; (2 Cor. 5:19). Notice in how many ways the father humiliates himself before everyone, and breaks all traditional Jewish expectations to do so. He gives the younger son what he asks, and more than the Law allowed; he runs to meet the son; he accepts the son; he leaves the banquet where he is the host in order to plead with his older son; he doesn&rsquo;t discipline either of his sons as expected. He makes a fool of himself time and again, upsetting Jewish rules and norms. And the younger son pestering the father to divide up the inheritance may indicate that the father was about to die. Likewise, when the father says to the older son that he gives him there and then all that is his&hellip; this is language only really appropriate if the father is about to die, or has actually died. Does not all this speak of the cross as the basis for the Father&rsquo;s love, grace and acceptance? That there, God was in Christ to reconcile us to Himself, not imputing sin to us&hellip; there the Father was humiliated in Christ, made a fool of, ridiculed. The Almighty God came this low&hellip; to the public shame and death of the cross. The suffering of God in the cross was all about rejected and unaccepted love; and so it is to this day.</p><p>Much homework awaits someone to work out all the times when the Lord was speaking <i>to Himself</i> in the parables, through the elements of unreality. Perhaps He saw Himself tempted to be like the elder brother in the Prodigal parable, who was &ldquo;always&rdquo; in the Father&rsquo;s house (as Jesus per Jn. 8:35) and &lsquo;everything the father has is his&rsquo; is the very wording of Jn. 17:10. Or is it co-incidence that the only time the Greek word translated &quot;choked&quot; is used outside the sower parable, it\'s about the crowds \'thronging\' Jesus (Lk. 8:14,42- note how they\'re in the same chapter and section of the Lord\'s life)? Was the Lord not aware of how the pressure of the crowds, whom He carefully tried to avoid, could choke His own spiritual growth? Was it for this reason that He begged those He cured not to generate big crowds to throng Him? And thus yet another layer of the Lord\'s mind and thinking will be revealed to us.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2893','1','42','15','32','32','<p>15:32 <i>But it was fitting to celebrate and be glad. For this your brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost and is found</i>- We are left, as so often, to imagine how the story finished. How hard it would&rsquo;ve been for the younger son to live with the older brother And one day, dear, darling dad would&rsquo;ve died. The younger son would&rsquo;ve had <i>his</i> sons, been called upon to uphold the family honour, make decisions in the village. We are left to imagine how his experience of grace would&rsquo;ve made him judge differently to all others.</p><p>The three parables of the lost which climax in the parable of the lost son all depend for their power upon the many elements of unreality found within them; and the lost son parable requires us to fill in many details, try to finish the story, and to take due note of the crescendo of &lsquo;end stress&rsquo; which there is. To appreciate the full power and import of these parables, we need to try to read them through the eyes of the Palestinian peasants who first heard them. Correct understanding of Scripture requires us to read it and feel it within the context in which it was first given. Bombarded as we are by billions of pieces of information each day, especially from the internet, we only cope with it all by letting it all fit into the worldviews and assumptions which we&rsquo;ve adopted. Words and information and ideas tend to only fit in to what we&rsquo;ve already prepared to house them, rather than us seeing <i>God&rsquo;s</i> word as something radically different, and allowing it to totally upset and change our cherished worldviews, constructs and approaches to life. God&rsquo;s word is still words- although they are inspired words. The problem with words is that we read or hear them, and interpret them within our frames of reference and culture. Take an example: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s mad about her flat&rdquo;. An American takes this to mean that she&rsquo;s angry and frustrated about the puncture / &lsquo;flat tire&rsquo; which she has on her car. But in British English, the phrase would mean: &lsquo;She&rsquo;s really happy and enthusiastic about her apartment&rsquo;. To understand what the speaker or writer means by those words, we have to understand their cultural background. And so it is with the Lord&rsquo;s teaching, aimed as it was to first century peasants. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2894','1','42','16','1','1','<p>16:1 <i>And he said also to the disciples- </i>The Lord Jesus without doubt focused upon the twelve disciples; they were His special love, His predominant concern. And when they came to write up their records of their experience of this amazing Master, they bring this out very much. He clearly chose them in order to impress His character upon them, and then left them to continue the witness to Him. Even in high society, surrounded by the elitist Pharisees, He spoke parables which were to them- even though the others heard (Lk. 16:1,14; 20:45). There is a repeated feature, in Luke particularly, of the Lord teaching the twelve in front of a multitude- as if the huge crowds were there just listening to what the Lord was speaking specifically to the twelve. When one of the crowd interrupts, the Lord quickly returns His focus to the twelve (Lk. 6:19,20 cp. 7:1; 12:1,13,22). For Jesus, the disciples were His focus and priority.&nbsp;</p><p><i>There was a certain rich man, who had a steward; and the same was accused of wasting his goods</i>- The corrective to the elder brothers\' attitude is provided by the following parable of the unjust steward which comes straight afterwards in Lk. 16. The steward was accused of \'wasting\' his master\'s goods (Lk. 16:1), using the same Greek word translated &quot;substance&quot; in Lk. 15:13, concerning how the son wasted his father\'s substance. The steward forgave others, and therefore ultimately found a way of escape from his dilemma. The implication is that it was on account of the prodigal being willing to do this, not daring to point the finger at others in the Father\'s household because of his awareness of his own sins, that he was eventually saved. We can also infer that the elder brother walked out of the Father\'s fellowship because of his refusal to do this. Again we see how God works through our sins. Because of the prodigal\'s experience of sin and forgiveness, he was better able to show that vital love and tolerance towards others, without which we cannot receive God\'s ultimate acceptance. In a sense, it was much <i>more</i> difficult for the elder brother.</p><p>The parable of the unjust steward must be read in the context of the preceding parables of forgiveness. The man is in debt to his Master, surely speaking of our sinfulness (Lk. 16:3,4 cp. Mt. 18:24). He has wasted his goods- which are given to us at baptism (Lk. 16:1 cp. Mt. 25:14). He <i>could have</i> begged, but he was too proud. Therefore <i>in order to get forgiveness</i> he raced round forgiving everybody else. This suggests a spiritual selfishness which surely isn\'t ideal. And yet &quot;the Lord commended the unjust steward&quot;.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2895','1','42','16','2','2','<p>16:2<i> And he called him and said to him: What is this that I hear of you? Render the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward</i>- See on 20:25. The parable of the unjust steward suggests that there are times in this life when we are called to give an account of our stewardship- and how we react to those judgment calls is what will affect our ultimate destiny (Lk. 16:2). We have a tendency to consider God as passive to our failures and acts of righteousness, simply because His judgments are not openly manifest. We may forget that on, say, 6.6.96 we swore under our breath in anger&hellip; but God, in this sense, doesn\'t forget. The passage of time doesn\'t act as a pseudo-atonement for Him as it does in our consciences. The tendency for human beings to assume that God forgets our wrong actions and will never judge them is frequently commented upon in Scripture. &quot;They consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness&quot;, i.e. to judge them for it at a future date (Hos. 7:2). The day of judgment is likened to God \'awaking\' (Ps. 68:1; 73:20). Not that He is now sleeping; but then, the principles of His judgment which now appear to lie dormant will be openly manifested. Peter warns that the condemnation of false teachers is given by God in an ongoing sense, and that damnation doesn\'t slumber (2 Pet. 2:3).</p><p>The \'unjust steward\' was saved because he forgave others their debts after getting into a mess himself. He wasted his Lord\'s goods, as the prodigal did (Lk. 15:13 connects with 16:2). Seeing the prodigal represents all of us, the lesson is surely that we all waste our Lord\'s goods, therefore the basis of salvation is through our forgiving others as an outcome of our own faith in the Lord\'s grace. This is one explanation of why the parable of the steward flows straight on from that of the prodigal.</p><p>One of the most telling examples of an unfinished ending is to be found in the parable of the unjust steward. This is perhaps the hardest parable to interpret; but I suggest the thought is along the following lines. The steward has done wrong; but the element of unreality is that he isn\'t jailed or even scolded, it\'s just left as obvious that he can\'t do the job of steward any longer. The usual response of a master would be to jail servants for running up debts (Mt. 8:23-25). But the Master is unusually gracious. The steward now faces poverty, and so he takes a huge gamble. Before news of his fall is common knowledge, he urgently runs around to those in his master\'s debt and tells them that their debts are forgiven. His haste is reflected in the way he says &quot;Write quickly... and you... &quot;. He has to write off their debts before his master finds out, and before the debtors know that he now has no right to be forgiving them their debts. His gamble is that his master is indeed such a generous and gracious guy that he will actually uphold these forgivenesses or reductions of debt, and that therefore those who have received this forgiveness will be grateful to the steward, and be generous to him later, maybe giving him employment. The story reflects a theme of the other parables- how the servant knows and understands his master extremely well, and can guess his response. The way the servant invites the beggars to the feast even before his master has told him to do so is an example. But the power of the parable is in the unended story. Does the gracious Master indeed forgive those in his debt? And seeing he is impressed by how the steward has acted, does he in fact re-instate him, impressed as he obviously is by this sinful steward\'s perception of his grace? From the other parables we are led to believe that yes, the Lord and Master is indeed this gracious. And of course we are to see ourselves in the desperate position of the steward, staking our whole existences upon His grace and love beyond all reason. For me, this approach to the parable is the only one which can make any sense of the master dismissing the steward for fraud, and then praising him for his apparently \'dishonest\' behaviour in forgiving the debtors (Lk. 16:2,8). See on Lk. 10:34.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2896','1','42','16','3','3','<p>16:3 <i>And the steward said to himself: What shall I do, seeing that my master takes away the stewardship from me? I do not have strength to dig. To beg I am ashamed</i>- This continues the linkage with the ideas of the prodigal son parable which precedes it. The desperate son at rock bottom feeding the pigs is this disgraced steward. He is unable in his own strength to get himself out of this awful situation. He is ashamed to beg, rather like the son proposes to return to his father and ask to become a hired servant, so that he can repay his debt.</p><p>&quot;What shall I / we do?&quot; is a question which keeps occurring in the Gospels and Acts. It is one of those phrases which flies out of the text, forcing us to engage with it and to ask ourselves the same question (Mt. 20:32; 21:40; 27:22; Mk. 10:17; Jn. 6:28; 11:47). And especially in Luke: 3:10,12,14 the whole account of the gospel begins with people being forced to ask this question; 10:25; 12:17; 16:3,4; 18:18,41; 20:13,15. And Luke brings the question to a head when the crowds ask Peter: &quot;What shall we do?&quot;, and the same question is on the lips of the repentant Saul (Acts 2:37; 9:6; 10:6; 22:10). The answer of course is to repent and be baptized; and in the context here in this parable, it is to madly forgive others. But the rich fool ignored that and identified himself with his possessions (12:15), and answered accordingly.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2897','1','42','16','4','4','<p>16:4 <i>I have resolved what to do, so that when I am discharged as steward, others may receive me into their houses</i>- The parable of the unjust steward must be read in the context of the preceding parables of forgiveness. The man is in debt to his Master, surely speaking of our sinfulness (Lk. 16:3,4 cp. Mt. 18:24). He has wasted his goods- which are given to us at baptism (Lk. 16:1 cp. Mt. 25:14). He <i>could have</i> begged, but he was too proud. Therefore <i>in order to get forgiveness</i> he raced round forgiving everybody else. And we are to take this same full blooded \'resolution\'. This suggests a spiritual selfishness which surely isn\'t ideal. And yet &quot;the Lord commended the unjust steward&quot;- He makes concessions to our weakness.&nbsp;We all live within parameters of personality and spiritual development which we should exceed but will not- because none of us shall attain total moral perfection in this life. Pride in various forms is typical of those kinds of parameters. This is not to suggest that we are not to try; rather is this observation merely some comfort in our weakness.</p><p>The man envisaged having to declare bankrupt and losing absolutely all things, even his family- for he reasoned that if he forgave the debts of these debtors, they might have him as a family member, just allowing him to live out his days in their homes. It is this same spirit to which we should all be driven by the realization of our sin; willing to cast ourselves upon the mercy of our brethren, to live out our days in humbled fellowship with them.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2898','1','42','16','5','5','<p>16:5<i> And calling to him each one of his master\'s debtors, he said to the first: How much do you owe my master?</i>- The steward knew how much they owed. Quite possibly, the debtors stated a reduced figure, or didn\'t come clean about every aspect of their debt. But whatever they acknowledged, however they wanted to see it- he forgave them. And this is a pattern for our forgiveness of others, knowing the inevitability of our own shameful judgment. Forgiveness does not involve an agreed version of events and issues. We are to simply and frankly and urgently forgive.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2899','1','42','16','6','6','<p>16:6 <i>And he said: A hundred measures of oil. And he said to him: Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty</i>- See on Lk. 14:5. &quot;Quickly&quot; is the essence of all this; knowing that our judgment is just around the corner, there is no time to be lost in forgiving others. The steward reduced the debt rather than totally writing it off. That may be merely the furniture of the parable, but perhaps we are left to imagine that the further he reduced the debt, the more likely they were to later accept him as a family member (:4). And maybe we are intended to deduce that he would have been better to offer them a total forgiveness rather than some negotiated settlement.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2900','1','42','16','7','7','<p>16:7 <i>Then said he to another: And how much do you owe? And he said: A hundred measures of wheat. He said to him: Take your bill and write eighty</i>- The man who owed oil was forgiven more than the man who owed wheat (100 reduced to 50, compared to 100 reduced to 80). Perhaps this reflects how our forgiveness is not of the frank and total measure of the Lord\'s, for in another parable we read of the Lord Himself frankly forgiving the total debt of His servant, rather than just reducing it somewhat. The steward had the power to act in his lord\'s name in reducing or even cancelling debt. Perhaps here we see here some reflection of the idea that what we unloose on earth is unloosed in heaven; our forgiveness of others is in a way accepted by God. How exactly this works out, and the mechanism and theology of it, is not explained. But there is some connection, however vaguely expressed, between our forgiveness of others and God\'s forgiveness of them. Whilst the steward is commended (:8), he could have totally forgiven them. We too tend to make limited deals of forgiveness with others, at least in our own minds; writing down the debt of one more than for another. When we ought to scribble the whole thing.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2901','1','42','16','8','8','<p>16:8 <i>And his master commended the unrighteous steward, because he had done wisely. For the sons of this world are for their own generation wiser than the sons of the light</i>-</p><p>There were times when the Lord used shock tactics to get His message over. He did and said things which purposefully turned accepted wisdom and understanding on its head. Thus He touched the leper, spoke of drinking His blood... and used leaven, the usual symbol for sin, as a symbol of the quiet influence of His Gospel. And His parables feature the same element. Because the parables are so familiar to us, we can overlook the fact that their true character is intended to be shocking and disturbing- they are most definitely not just comfortable, cosy, moralistic tales. Consider the way He chooses to take a lesson from a crook who fiddles the books. The \'hero\' of the story was a bad guy, not a good guy. Yet the point of the story was that we must realize how critical is our situation before God, and do literally anything in order to forgive others. We can\'t let things drift- disaster is at the door unless we forgive others <i>right now</i>. Everything is at stake in our lives unless we forgive others. The parables didn&rsquo;t give simple teaching to those who first heard them. He used that form of teaching so that men would <i>not</i> understand Him; and even His disciples had to come to Him in order to receive the interpretations.</p><p>The way &quot;the children of this world&quot; are so zealous in forgiving others their debts so as to get themselves out of major trouble is an example to us, the Lord said. It could be that His comment that they were &quot;wiser than the children of light&quot; was a rebuke to the children of light- that those in the world are more eager to forgive, more zealous in their secular lives, than many of us are. The unjust steward in the parable of Luke 16 ran round forgiving others their debts, so that in his time of crisis and judgment he would have a way out of his own debt problems. And in the context of forgiving our brethren, the Lord holds him up as an example. But He laments that sadly, the children of this world are often wiser than the children of the Kingdom, i.e. the believers. I take this as meaning that the Lord is sorry that His people don&rsquo;t see the same obvious need to forgive each other, in view of their own inadequacies and the coming of judgment. The children of this world see the coming of their judgments and the urgency of the need to prepare, far more strongly than many of us do; we who face the ultimate crisis of sinful, responsible man meeting with an Almighty God.</p><p>The story of the indebted steward likewise stresses the importance of true forgiveness. The master commends the steward because he had told others that their debts to his master were reduced. No <i>human</i> master would ever commend his steward for acting so irresponsibly. But the Lord Jesus does commend us for forgiving those who sin against Him, even though our forgiving of those indebted to us and Him is against all the laws of human common sense. See on Mt. 18:23.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2902','1','42','16','9','9','<p>16:9 <i>And I say to you: Make to yourselves friends by means of worldly riches; that, when they shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings</i>- The parable has been about forgiveness, following on from that of the prodigal son. But the Lord makes this parable have another meaning- concerning the need to use wealth wisely.</p><p>The Bible has a lot to say about the sacrifice of \'our\' material possessions; not because God needs them in themselves, but because our resignation of them to His service is an epitome of our whole spirituality. So great is the Lord\'s emphasis about this, that He suggests in the parable of the crafty steward that if we use our worldly things prudently, when we spiritually fail, the fact we have used them wisely will bring us into the Kingdom. This implication that we can almost buy our way into the Kingdom is hyperbole. This is a device the Lord commonly used in His parables: an exaggerated statement to make a point. When He spoke of the good shepherd leaving the 99 good sheep to go chase the foolish one, this doesn\'t really mean that He does in fact leave us. He will never leave us. But so great is His love of the lost that it\'s <i>as if</i> He leaves us for the sake of finding them. Or the command to gouge out our eye if it offends us. This is a gross exaggeration; but our self-deprival of those things which lead us into sin requires the same self-will and self-mastery. So here, the Lord is saying that the use of our material possessions is <i>so</i> important that it\'s <i>almost as if</i> (in the hyperbole) we can buy our way into the Kingdom. See on Lk. 11:41.</p><p>We have nothing now, we own nothing, all we have is given for us to use wisely, so that when we fail (morally, in the failures of our lives), our use of these things may prepare the way for our entry into the everlasting place of the Kingdom. We fall so easily into the trap of thinking \'this is <i>my</i> money&hellip; <i>I</i> worked for it, saved it&hellip;&rsquo;. It\'s God\'s money. The danger of materialism is to think it is <i>ours. </i>Israel were told that every seventh year they were to cancel debts, release each other from the debt they had; and yet it was &quot;the <i>LORD\'s </i>release&quot;. You released a man from his debt, Yahweh released him. What it meant was that your money was Yahweh\'s money. He released the debt, you released it. In being generous spirited, then, and realizing \'our\' money is God\'s, we are Yahweh-manifest. We are invited to see ourselves as the Levites- whose inheritance was Yahweh, and not anything material in this world. Relationship with God and the honour of doing His service was seen as the ultimate antidote to materialism. Eliphaz seems to have perceived this when he told the wealthy Job: &ldquo;Lay thou thy treasure in the dust&hellip; and the Almighty shall be thy treasure&rdquo; (Job 22:24,25 RV).</p><p>There is no doubt that our attitude to materialism is a sure indicator of our real spiritual position. We are to make friends of mammon riches by giving it away, forsaking all we have- the implication being that riches / mammon are our spiritual enemy, no matter how little of them we possess. And yet we are surrounded as never before by a materialistic, money <i>loving</i> world.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2903','1','42','16','10','10','<p>16:10<i> He that is faithful in a very little, is faithful also in much, and he that is unrighteous in a very little, is unrighteous also in much</i>- God Himself &lsquo;detests&rsquo; the mammon which man so highly esteems (Lk. 16:13-15 NIV). A day will come when man <i>will</i> despise material possession. &quot;In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold... to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks... for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty&quot; (Is. 2:20,21). But for us, today is the day of the Lord\'s coming in judgment. If we will be forsaking all we have in that day; we ought to now, in spirit. The parable of the unjust steward surely teaches that our attitude to the &ldquo;mammon of unrighteousness&rdquo; will determine our eternal destiny. The wealth of this world is called &ldquo;that which is least&hellip; that which is another&rsquo;s i.e. God&rsquo;s&rdquo; (Lk. 16:10,12 RV). We are told: &ldquo;make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when it shall fail at the Lord&rsquo;s return, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles&rdquo; (Lk. 16:9 RV). There will come a day when money will fail, and when we will despise it for what it was- &ldquo;that which is least&rdquo;.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2904','1','42','16','11','11','<p>16:11 <i>If therefore you have not been faithful in the handling of worldly riches, who will commit to your trust the true riches?</i>- Lk.16:11,12 draws a parallel between the &quot;true riches&quot; and &quot;that which is your own&quot;; both phrases, in the context, refer to our reward in the Kingdom. The true riches is the spiritual knowledge of God. In Christ are hid all the riches of God. David rejoiced at the truths of the word more than at finding great riches. We can look forward to a highly personal knowledge of God in the Kingdom; the riches of knowledge &quot;which is your own&quot;. This is in the same sense as Rev. 2:17 speaks of each believer receiving a stone with &quot;a new name written, which no man knows saving he that receives it&quot;. No other being will be able to enter into the personal knowledge of God which we will then have; as even in this life, it is scarcely possible to enter into another believer\'s spirituality and relationship with God. To some degree, the Kingdom will be something different for each of us, although this diversity will be bound together by the great unity of all being the collective bride of Christ, and all manifesting the same God, all having the same &quot;penny a day&quot;.</p><p>If we are faithful with the riches we have been given, <i>then</i> we will be given the true riches of eternal salvation. This &quot;unrighteous mammon&quot; is not our own, it is the wealth of &quot;another man&quot;, i.e. God, just as the steward was dealing with money which was not his but his lord\'s; whereas in the Kingdom, we will have our very own &quot;true riches&quot;. This is an altogether lovely idea. Whatever we have now is not ours; we come into this world with nothing, and at death we carry nothing out (1 Tim. 6:7). We must give our all if we are to attain the Kingdom.</p><p>If we are faithful in how we use the things lent to us by God in this life, we will be given &quot;the true riches&quot;. What we now have is &quot;the Truth&quot;, because this is how the Spirit speaks of it. But Truth is relative, and the Truth God wants us to accept as Truth is doubtless designed by Him to be acceptable by mere mortals. But it isn\'t &quot;the true riches&quot; spoken of here. We are asked to be faithful in that which is God\'s, and then we will be given &quot;that which is your own&quot; (:12) in the Kingdom, as if we will be given &quot;true riches&quot; which somehow are relevant to us alone, the name given which no one knows except ourselves (Rev. 2:17). &quot;Riches&quot; represent the riches of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:13), and they are paralleled with &quot;that which is your own&quot;, as if somehow in the Kingdom we will be given a vast depth of spiritual knowledge and perception which is in some way relevant to us alone. To me, those few words of Lk. 16:11,12 take me to the brink of understanding what the Kingdom will be about. We can go no further.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2905','1','42','16','12','12','<p>16:12 <i>And if you have not been faithful in what is another\'s, who will give you that which is your own?- </i>See on :11. The time is soon coming when I will be given that which <i>is</i> my own- the things associated with being in the Kingdom. We are slaves now, owning nothing (1 Cor. 6:19), but then we will be gloriously free (Rom. 8:21). So this idea of owning nothing, not even ourselves, is only true of this life; the day of release from slavery will dawn, we will receive that true freedom and that true concept of personal possession- if <i>now</i> we resign it. Abraham really grasped this idea that we now can own nothing. He swore to Yahweh as &quot;the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take anything that is yours...&quot; (Gen. 14:22,23). He knew that Yahweh is the owner of all, and <i>therefore</i> he was not going to yield to the temptation to increase what appeared to be \'his\' possessions. See on 1 Cor. 6:19.</p><p>We are asked to be faithful in that which is God\'s, and then we will be given &quot;that which is your own&quot; in the Kingdom, as if we will be given &ldquo;true riches&quot; which somehow are relevant to us alone, the name given which no one knows except ourselves (Rev. 2:17). &quot;Riches&quot; represent the riches of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:13), and they are paralleled with &quot;that which is your own&quot;, as if somehow in the Kingdom we will be given a vast depth of spiritual knowledge and perception which is in some way relevant to us alone. The reward given will to some degree be totally personal. Each works out his <i>own</i> salvation, such as it will be (Phil. 2:12)- not in the sense of achieving it by works, but rather that the sort of spirituality we develop now will be the essential person we are in the eternity of God\'s Kingdom.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2906','1','42','16','13','13','<p>16:13 <i>No servant can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else, he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money</i>- The Lord Jesus surely based His words on those of Elijah in 1 Kings 18:21: &ldquo;No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon&rdquo;. So although on one hand the Lord Jesus Himself quotes Elijah&rsquo;s &lsquo;truth&rsquo; approvingly, there is evidence galore that at the very same time, Elijah&rsquo;s attitudes were far from Christ-like. At the very same time, Elijah mocks the Baal worshippers, teasing them to shout louder, because maybe their god has gone &lsquo;in a journey&rsquo;- a Hebraism for &lsquo;gone to the toilet&rsquo; (1 Kings 18:27). This kind of mockery and crudeness is surely not how the Father and Son would have us act. Yet Elijah did this whilst at the same time deeply believing the fire would come down, and bringing it down by his faith. And saying other words which were alluded to with deep approval by the Lord.</p><p>Mammon is an &ldquo;abomination&rdquo; (:15)- a word associated in the Old Testament with idol worship. We are to not only be free of such idolatry, but despise materialism.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2907','1','42','16','14','14','<p>16:14 <i>And the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things; and they scoffed at him</i>- Scoffing at Divine wisdom recalls so many passages in Proverbs. They were &quot;fools&quot; for all their appearance of wisdom. They justified their love of money (:15), seeing their wealth as a reward for piety, just as the false gospel of wealth does today. They scoffed because they claimed that wealth was the reward for righteousness. But the rest of this chapter records the Lord\'s deconstruction of that position. They scoffed at the idea of reducing the debts of another- they would\'ve tried to get out of the problem by some other way.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2908','1','42','16','15','15','<p>16:15 <i>And he said to them: You are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God- </i>As noted on :14, they justified their love of wealth by claiming it was a reward for righteousness. But the Lord says that wealth is abomination to God. He saw as it were the wealth in their hearts, and hated it, treating it as an &quot;abomination&quot;- a term the Old Testament uses for idols.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2909','1','42','16','16','16','<p>16:16 <i>The law and the prophets were until John. From that time the gospel of the kingdom of God is preached- </i>This is an explanation of the cut-off point between the time of the Kingdom, and the period of the law and prophets. It was as if their work was being done up until John. The&nbsp;<i>law</i>&nbsp;prophesied until John (Mt. 11:13) in the sense that in the Messiah whom John proclaimed, the law&rsquo;s prophecies were fulfilled. Note that the law just as much as the prophets is to be seen as prophesying. And yet other changeover points or boundaries are suggested within the New Testament. The law would &lsquo;pass&rsquo; when all was fulfilled, which seems to hint at the &lsquo;finishing&rsquo; of all when the Lord cried &ldquo;It is finished&rdquo; on the cross. The law would not pass&nbsp;<i>until</i>&nbsp;this point (Mt. 5:18). The Lord&rsquo;s death was clearly a major ending point for the old system. And yet Heb. 8:13 speaks of the old system as decaying and becoming old, and being about to vanish away- surely in the destruction of the temple in AD70. There are other hints in the NT that the old system somehow operated with some level of acceptance from God until AD70. Why the different potential changeover points? Presumably because the hope and intention was that John would successfully prepare the way, and the Messianic reign would be ushered in by Israel&rsquo;s acceptance of their Messiah. And yet they killed Him. That point in itself was the theological changeover moment. But still not all Israel accepted the apostolic preaching of repentance for the crucifixion. And so in practice, the changeover point came when the temple was destroyed and any serious obedience to the old covenant was thereby rendered impossible. In all this we see God&rsquo;s amazing grace and desire continually to work with people, factoring in the possibility of their repentance.</p><p><i>And every man enters violently into it</i>- Just as the unjust steward urgently ran around trying to forgive others once he realized his own soon coming judgment, so John\'s declaration of judgment soon to come led repentant people to urgently dash into the Kingdom.</p><p>This can be seen as constructing a parable from the idea of Roman storm troopers taking a city. And those men, the Lord teaches in his attention grabbing manner, really represent every believer who responds to the Gospel of the Kingdom and strives to enter that Kingdom. The same word translated \'take by force\' is used by the Lord here in Lk. 16:16; true response to the Gospel of the Kingdom is a struggle. Entering the Kingdom is a fight (1 Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7), and we are right now in process of entering the city of God\'s Kingdom. It\'s not that we have no idea as to whether we shall enter it, waiting for judgment day to inform us. We have a sense of purpose to us, being in process of entering now. We either violently snatch / take the Kingdom by force (Mt. 11:12), or the devil of our own nature will snatch us away (s.w. Mt. 13:19; Jn. 10:12). The choice before us is that pointed: fight or fall. The Lord graciously and generously saw the zeal of the mixed up, uncertain, misunderstanding disciples as storm troopers taking the city of the Kingdom of God by force- knowing exactly where they were coming from and where they were going. The cause of the Kingdom must be forcefully advanced by &ldquo;violent men&rdquo;. This was the sort of language the Lord used. He wasn&rsquo;t preaching anything tame, painless membership of a comfortable community. The Lord saw the zeal of the uncertain, misunderstanding disciples as storm troopers taking the city of the Kingdom of God by force- knowing exactly where they were coming from and where they were going.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2910','1','42','16','17','17','<p>16:17 <i>But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fall</i>- Mt. 5:18 speaks of jot and tittle. Vine comments: &quot;Jot is for jod, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Tittle is the little bend or point which serves to distinguish certain Hebrew letters of similar appearance. Jewish tradition mentions the letter jod as being irremovable; adding that, if all men in the world were gathered to abolish the least letter in the law, they would not succeed. The guilt of changing those little hooks which distinguish between certain Hebrew letters is declared to be so great that, if such a thing were done, the world would be destroyed&quot;. The Lord is reminding them that they were under the Mosaic law. All their schemings to get around its more inconvenient requirements, in order to preserve and extend the wealth which they loved (:14), was in fact a breaking of the law which they were under.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2911','1','42','16','18','18','<p>16:18 <i>Everyone that puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he that marries one that is put away from a husband commits adultery</i>- The context here speaks of the need for forgiveness and a lack of materialism, which the Pharisees tried to cleverly get around by their various twists of the Mosaic law. Hence :17 has reminded them that they are still under that law. These two issues were particularly relevant to how and why they divorced their wives; and so this talk about divorce is exactly in context. And the next parable goes on to criticize them for their attitude to wealth. The divorce and remarriage in view is therefore specifically that practiced by the Pharisees, and is being criticized for not showing forgiveness and for being motivated by a love of wealth and its preservation.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2912','1','42','16','19','19','<p>16:19 <i>Now there was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, dining sumptuously every day</i>- The context is of the need to hold feasts to celebrate fellowship with the dirty prodigal who had been licked by pigs in chapter 15. The Pharisees loved wealth (:14), and have been set up as the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal. Their dining whilst excluding Lazarus equates with the older brother refusing to have a feast with the presence of the dirty, smelly, unclean younger son. This exclusion went on &quot;every day&quot;. The clothing in purple and fine linen could mean that it is specifically Annas or Caiaphas the high priest who is in view. We marvel that the Lord would even bother to try to get him to see the error of his ways; but such was His desire that literally all men repented. Purple and fine linen recalls Babylon in Revelation 18:12, which in its first century application refers to the Jerusalem temple cult who were persecuting the Christians whilst enjoying huge wealth. Dining sumptuously&quot; is the word used of the rich fool (12:19). The Lord is calling Caiaphas / Annas and the Jewish leadership no more than fools.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2913','1','42','16','20','20','<p>16:20 <i>And a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate, full of sores</i>- The &quot;gate&quot; is s.w. &quot;porch&quot; as in the temple porch, Mt. 26:71. \'Lazarus\' is a form of Eleazar- \'God is my help\'. He was the helper of those excluded by the Pharisees of the temple cult.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2914','1','42','16','21','21','<p>16:21 <i>Desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man\'s table. Yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores</i>- &quot;Desiring&quot; continues the linkage with the prodigal parable, where the prodigal \'desired\' to be fed with pig food (15:16 s.w.). The rich man should have invited Lazarus to his feast just as the Lord invited sinners to his. And the same word is used of the Gentile woman who wanted to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the table of orthodox Jewry (Mt. 15:27).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2915','1','42','16','22','22','<p>16:22 <i>And it came to pass, that the beggar died; and he was carried away by the angels into Abraham\'s breast, and the rich man also died and was buried</i>- &quot;Abraham\'s breast&quot; or bosom was a Rabbinic phrase referring to Paradise. The Lord is not teaching that the faithful literally go anywhere on death let alone to Abraham\'s breast; He is clearly using the terms and ideas which the Jews were familiar with, and telling a story within those frames of reference. Adam Clarke comments: &quot;By the phrase, Abraham&rsquo;s bosom, an allusion is made to the custom at Jewish feasts, when three persons reclining on their left elbows on a couch, the person whose head came near the breast of the other, was said to lie in his bosom. So it is said of the beloved disciple, Jn. 13:25&quot;.</p><p>Carrying by Angels after death is not a Biblical idea, but again is alluding to apostate Jewish beliefs.</p><p>The way the Lord constructed His parable about the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 is proof enough that He Himself alluded to false ideas without correcting them, but rather in order to make a moral point within the faulty framework of understanding of His audience. Indeed, the Bible is full of instances of where a technically &lsquo;wrong&rsquo; idea is used by God without correction in order to teach a higher principle. Thus an eagle doesn&rsquo;t bear its young upon its wings; it hovers over them. But from an earth-bound perspective, it would appear that looking up, the eagle is carrying its young on its wings. God accommodates Himself to our earthly perspective in order to lead us to Heavenly things. He doesn&rsquo;t seek to correct our knowledge at every turn, or else His end aim would not be achieved.</p><p>We assume too quickly that the Lord\'s reference to the Angels carrying Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham means \'straight after his death\'. But not necessarily so. He died, was buried, and then at the Lord\'s return, the Angels will carry the faithful to judgment / the Kingdom- they will go forth and gather the elect. The rich man would only be thrown into Gehenna at the last day, as Jesus so often taught elsewhere. The only element of accommodation to, or parody of, existing Jewish beliefs was in the rich man asking that Lazarus be returned from the dead to warn his brethren. And this element is doubtless inserted into the story by the Lord as a prophecy of how even His resurrection would not convert those who did not truly listen to the Old Testament.</p><p>So serious is the tendency to material acquisition that the Lord uses a telling hyperbole in Lk. 16 (in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus): He implies that the rich man was condemned just for being rich. This is hyperbole, an exaggeration to make a point. And the point was, that being rich is <i>very likely</i> to lead you to condemnation. The rust of riches is likened to the fire of condemnation and rejection (James 5:3).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2916','1','42','16','23','23','<p>16:23<i> And in Hades- </i>As noted on :22, the Lord used ideas current amongst the Jews for reward, i.e. &quot;Abraham\'s breast&quot;, and here He likewise uses their ideas of what happened as punishment. But this doesn\'t mean He approved their ideas as true. Job 21:13 clearly explains what happens to the rich on death: &quot;They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave&quot;.</p><p><i>He lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his breast</i>-Forget, for one moment, that \'the rich man and Lazarus\' is a \'difficult passage\'. Focus on how Lazarus is &ldquo;in&quot; Abraham\'s \'bosom\' or chest. This doesn\'t mean literally inside it. He was \'in\' Abraham\'s arms, on his chest; and this is explained to us in :25 as meaning that Lazarus was receiving &quot;comfort&quot; at the same time as the rich man was experiencing torment. Mic. 7:5 uses the same figure of being &ldquo;in&quot; a man\'s bosom to describe how a wife is held by her husband. And Lam. 2:12 uses it again to mean \'receiving comfort\'. This is what the Kingdom will be like, especially immediately after our reward. For this is what the parable is about- the rich man will not be eternally tormented, his torment will be on knowing the reality of the fact that he stands there rejected. But while he is temporarily tormented, some poor beggar brother is getting comforted by Abraham. Both of them with Divine nature. Abraham holding the other brother to his chest and comforting him. And, in passing, this would interpret for us John\'s words in Jn. 1:18: &quot;The&hellip; son, who is in the bosom of the Father&quot; (after His ascension). After His ordeal, Jesus was as it were receiving comfort from His Father. There was and is an emotional bond between them. And so there will be between us all in the Kingdom. The parable of Lk. 16 goes on to say that there will be those who will want to cross over from rejection to acceptance, and <i>also</i>- and note this- there will be some who will want to go the other way to save those in the group of the rejected- weeping, screaming, gnashing their teeth as they will be. But it won\'t be possible for them. Even in Divine nature, some of us will have the desire to do the impossible- to save those rejected. It will be rather like the Angels in the time of Ahab suggesting their plans of action to God, but they were all turned down except for one. To have Divine nature, as Angels do, doesn\'t preclude having emotional thoughts. Nor does it mean we will have 100% understanding of God\'s ways beamed into us.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2917','1','42','16','24','24','<p>16:24 <i>And he cried and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame</i>- The rich man appeals to his physical descent from Abraham (&quot;father Abraham&quot;), but this is of no value. As Lazarus had begged crumbs, so now the man begs for drops of water. His hard heartedness to Lazarus is exactly related to his punishment.</p><p>In the day of judgment, that man will cry out &quot;father... have mercy / pity on me&quot;, just as Lazarus used to cry out to him daily. The apparent terseness and indifference of Abraham\'s response in the parable is surely intended as a reflection of the attitude which the rich man had shown to Lazarus in his mortal life. A great gap had been <i>fixed</i> between the saved and the rejected; and the language begs the question, \'Fixed by whom?\'. Clearly, by the rich man in the attitude he adopted in his daily life. For it would not be God who fixed a gap between the damned and the saved; through His Son He seeks to save and bridge such gaps. The lesson is that whenever we hear the voice of the desperate, we hear inverted echoes of our own desperation at the final judgment. And how we answer now is related to how we will be answered then. We make the answer now.</p><p>Note that the parable talks in terms of tongues, fingers etc.- bodies and not \'immortal souls\' are in view. Note that only 11 of the 26 parables recorded in Luke are called &quot;parables&quot;. This is clearly a parable and not to be taken as a literal description of things. G. B. Caird, <i>The Gospel of St. Luke</i> (Penguin Books), p. 191 concludes that &quot;the story of the wicked rich man and the pious poor man, whose fortunes were reversed in the afterlife, seems to have come originally from Egypt, and was popular among Jewish teachers.&nbsp; ...It was not the intention of Jesus to propagate a strict doctrine of rewards and punishments...or to give a topographical guide to the afterworld.&quot;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2918','1','42','16','25','25','<p>16:25 <i>But Abraham said: Son, remember how you in your lifetime received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now here he is comforted, and you are in anguish</i>- &quot;Son&quot; reflects the Lord\'s pity and tenderness even towards the condemned. Or it could be that this continues the idea of the rich man appealing to Abraham as his father. Indeed he was a son of Abraham- but that was of no avail. Abraham is dead and not yet rewarded (Heb. 11:8,13,39,40) so the idea of Abraham being alive after death is all the language of the Jewish beliefs being used. In the same way the Lord spoke as if Beelzebub really existed, when this was a pagan god (Mt. 12:27 cp. 1 Kings 1:2).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2919','1','42','16','26','26','<p>16:26 <i>And besides all this, between us and you there is fixed a great gulf, so that they that would pass from here to you cannot, and none may cross over from there to us</i>- The eternal chasm between them was foreseen by the Psalmist: &quot;As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity cp. the condemned goats: but peace shall be upon Israel the sheep, looking on at the rejection of the wicked&quot; (Ps. 125:5). Those who will want to cross the chasm then will be unable to (Lk. 16:26); the great gulf is fixed. In the context of describing the establishment of the Kingdom, we read that God\'s servants will eat, drink and rejoice, singing for joy of heart, at the same time as the rejected will be ashamed, hunger and thirst and howl for &quot;breaking of spirit&quot;- all the language of the rejected (Is. 65:13,14,17,18 RVmg.). It seems that this is a picture of the rejected watching the accepted eating with Christ as the Passover is eaten anew. Hence their howling and shame; for shame implies being naked in the presence of others. Thus the rejected will in some sense be in the presence of the accepted.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2920','1','42','16','27','27','<p>16:27 <i>And he said: Therefore I beg you father that you would send him to my father\'s house</i>- The point of the parable is at the end, and such \'end stress\' is common in the parables. After death, there is no literal communication between the rewarded faithful and the wicked; these were all incorrect Jewish ideas which the Lord was using to construct a story which led up to His major point. He as God\'s messenger had indeed been sent to the father\'s house, the people of Israel and their leadership, with an appeal to urgently repent.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2921','1','42','16','28','28','<p>16:28 <i>For I have five brothers- </i>The High Priest Annas had five sons who each succeeded to the Priesthood,&mdash;Eleazar, Jonathan, Theophilus, Matthias, and Annas. These therefore were the brothers in law of Caiaphas, who appears to be the rich man in view.</p><p><i>That he may testify to them, lest they also come into this place of torment</i>- The fact that sin really does result in eternal death, and that death is really unconsciousness, there is no immortal soul, the Hebrew word nephesh doesn\'t mean that, leads us to preach the hope of resurrection which we have. It must do- for otherwise we would be plain selfish. And it makes us realize for ourselves the decisiveness and finality of this life\'s decisions for the determining of eternal destiny. The hope of resurrection is the first and most basic need of our fellows. It was said of the 18th century British preacher Richard Baxter that &quot;he preached as a dying man to dying men&quot;. Our mortality, and our appreciation of that of others, should lead to an intensity of appeal to them. Knowing the truth about death leads to a great desire to testify to others. Recall how the rich man in the parable, once he perceived the truth about the death state, earnestly wished to testify to his brethren and persuade them to believe (Lk. 16:28). Elie Wiesel tells how victims of the holocaust either facing death or reflecting upon it later, felt an overbearing desire to testify to others: &quot;We victims of the holocaust have all been witnesses and we all feel we have to bear testimony... and that became an obsession, the single most powerful obsession that permeated all the lives, all the dreams, all the work of those people. One minute before they died they thought that was what they had to do&quot;. We don\'t- quite- have to go through those starings of death in the face to perceive death as we should; for the Bible has a lot to say about it, and if we accept the Biblical definitions, then we too will feel this strong compulsion to testify to others.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2922','1','42','16','29','29','<p>16:29 <i>But Abraham said: They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them</i>- The Lord&rsquo;s argument was that hearing the Old Testament was going to be more motivational to change than meeting the risen Jesus. In Jn. 14-16 He likewise seems to discount His personal presence; the disciples were so upset that He would not be physically with them, but He assures them that the presence of His Spirit in their hearts was going to be of far greater spiritual moment for them than His physical presence. Resurrected persons of themselves were not going to be a powerful source of persuasion to the Jews unless the hearers first of all respected Moses and the prophets. And this very thing, in which Jewish Orthodoxy were so proud, was actually their weak point. The Lord in Jn. 6:45 makes the same point; every man who had truly &ldquo;heard&rdquo; the prophets would come to Jesus as Lord.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2923','1','42','16','30','30','<p>16:30 <i>And he said: No father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent</i>- Reflect on what the Lord was really saying in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It was Abraham who showed the rich man how useless were human riches. The rich man thought that his natural ancestry was enough- he appeals to &ldquo;father Abraham&rdquo;. But the point of the parable was surely that the rich man was not a true son of Abraham because he had been materialistic and had neglected the needs of his poorer brother. <i>This</i> was and is the implication of being a true son of Abraham.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2924','1','42','16','31','31','<p>16:31 <i>And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, even if one rises from the dead</i>- See on Lk. 24:11. &quot;Persuaded&quot; is parallel with &quot;repent&quot; (:30). Repentance is a persuasion; whether it takes seconds, minutes or years, we are persuaded towards it.<br />The parable of the rich man and the poor beggar Lazarus surely carried with it the message that we ought to be generous to the poor; and that there is a need to do this in view of the judgment to come and sense of the future we may miss because of our selfishness in this life. The condemned rich man wanted to warn others of the need to be generous to the poor so that they would not be condemned. The Lord\'s comment was that it was His resurrection from the dead which was intended to &quot;persuade&quot; people of this (Lk. 16:31). Accepting the import of His resurrection therefore should result in our being &quot;persuaded&quot; towards a life of generosity to the marginal- just, of course, as the Lord\'s death and resurrection was God\'s grace to us, the marginal beggars in spiritual terms.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2925','1','42','17','1','1','<p>17:1<i> And he said to his disciples: Stumbling blocks are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come</i>-The context of chapter 17 has been an appeal to the Pharisees to accept the likes of the prodigal son and the beggar Lazarus, and not to make them stumble by refusing to have them present at their fellowship table- continuing a theme which began at the beginning of chapter 15. The Lord is urging the disciples not to have any part in the system which caused stumbling. The Jewish religious system caused men to stumble, as the Lord often pointed out (e.g. Mt. 18:7). But there would be an especial woe to the individuals who caused the stumbling, because for doing this they will be liable to personal condemnation. The Jewish world, the system, was to face the &quot;Woe&quot; of Divine judgment specifically because it made men stumble spiritually. That\'s what these words of Jesus seem to be saying, and His criticisms of that system recorded elsewhere would accord with that view- the \'Woes\' He pronounces on the Jewish system in Mt. 23 particularly focus on the damage that system did to people, and the barrier it became between God and man.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2926','1','42','17','2','2','<p>17:2 <i>It would be better for him if a millstone was hung about his neck and he was thrown into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble</i>- As noted on :1, the &quot;little ones&quot; in view are the likes of the prodigal son and Lazarus. Our attitude to the spiritually &quot;little&quot;, the spiritually vulnerable, is critical to our discipleship. And not having them at our table, like the elder brother of Luke 15 and the &quot;rich man&quot; of chapter 16, is to cause them to stumble. So often, those turned away from fellowship then stumble. And the woe pronounced is so great that we have to urgently enquire of ourselves whether we are in any way responsible for such exclusions. Even if we are separated from this world externally, we can still act in a worldly way, and share the world&rsquo;s condemnation. The Lord taught that the believer who makes his brother stumble should have a millstone hung around his neck and be cast into the sea (Lk. 17:2). This is exactly Babylon&rsquo;s judgment (Rev. 18:21). The unloving in the ecclesia will be treated like the unloving world whose spirit they share.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2927','1','42','17','3','3','<p>17:3 <i>Pay attention to yourselves If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him- </i>The context of :2 is that we must not make little ones stumble; and we make them stumble by not forgiving them, not welcoming them at our table, like the elder son of chapter 15 and the &quot;rich man&quot; of chapter 16, which forms the context for these words<i>. </i>This is alluded to in Acts 20:28, where Paul says we should <i>take heed to ourselves</i> of the likelihood of false teachers. Surely what he\'s saying is \'Yes, take heed to forgive your brother personal offences, take heed because you\'ll be tempted <i>not </i>to forgive him; but have the same level of watchfulness for false teaching\'. But the Lord is not necessarily teaching that we are to only grant forgiveness upon repentance; for the implication of much Bible teaching is otherwise. He may be setting us up to think that this is what He means, and then in :4 He challenges us by saying we should forgive even if repentance is so evidently insincere that effectively it is not repentance.</p><p>The Greek and Hebrew words translated &lsquo;repentance&rsquo; strictly mean a change of mind, and not necessarily any works / actions. God in this sense can &lsquo;repent&rsquo;. It seems to me that we have to recognize a changed state of heart in our repentant brother, without demanding &lsquo;works&rsquo;. In Mt. 18:15, the Lord says of a sinful brother: &ldquo;If your brother sins&hellip; go and point out the fault&hellip; if he listens to you, you have regained your brother&rdquo;. But in Lk. 17:3, He says: &ldquo;If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him&rdquo;. This would parallel the brother&rsquo;s &lsquo;repentance&rsquo; with him &lsquo;listening&rsquo; to you. Seeing repentance is a state of the heart, and we simply can&rsquo;t know the hearts of others, it seems to me very hard indeed to judge the level of another&rsquo;s repentance.</p><p>&ldquo;See that you despise not one of these little ones&rdquo; is how the parallel account puts it (Mt. 18:10). We offend people by &lsquo;despising&rsquo; them, as the &quot;rich man&quot; did to Lazarus and the older brother did to the prodigal. To&nbsp;<i>not</i>&nbsp;seek others&rsquo; salvation by forgiving them is to despise them. We may not think we are despiteful people. But effectively, in His eyes, we are&hellip;if we neglect to actively seek for their salvation until we find it. To not offend others is thus made parallel to seeking their salvation.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2928','1','42','17','4','4','<p>17:4<i> And if he sins against you seven times in the day and seven times turns again to you, saying: I repent: You shall forgive him</i>-Peter found it hard to grapple with the idea that the degree or amount of sin was irrelevant. But &quot;seventy times seven&quot; indicated how far out he was. Even when a brother\'s repentance seems humanly unlikely (the 490th time in the day, the seventy sevens of Matthew, takes some believing), we must still have that covenant mercy for him. Note that only a verbal repentance was required- and the Lord said that the forgiver was to just accept this, rather than demand evidence of \'forsaking\' in physical terms. The Greek word for repentance is a compound meaning &lsquo;to think differently after&rsquo;. Repentance is essentially a changed <i>attitude of mind</i>. This is why it&rsquo;s difficult to judge whether it exists within the heart of another person. and the Lord seems to be saying that we are not to judge the quality of another\'s\' repentance, which effectively means not demanding repentance before forgiving. We live constantly in need and receipt of mercy, every second of our existence. The New Covenant is often spoken of in the Old Testament as &quot;mercy&quot; and/or &quot;truth&quot;. If we are <i>in</i> that Covenant, we are permanently living <i>in</i> grace/mercy. Mercy is not something which we just receive in the few moments while we pray for forgiveness. It is something constantly ongoing. We live <i>in</i> it. If we appreciated this, we would not see our forgiveness of others as something we occasionally \'grant\'; we will extend mercy to them constantly, as God does to us. So the Lord\'s apparent requirement for repentance before forgiveness in :3 is tempered by this explanation- that we are to forgive when repentance seems so insincere that it is not repentance. This is rather typical of His teaching style and usage of language and ideas.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2929','1','42','17','5','5','<p>17:5 <i>And the apostles said to the Lord: Increase our faith- </i>The disciples asked that as a community, their faith may be increased so as to forgive others as Jesus requires them to. They believed, correctly, that faith can be given directly by the Lord; and through His Spirit He likewise works on human hearts today too. The same word is used in Mk. 4:24 of how the Lord adds spirituality to those who have it. The Lord\'s response is that they should on an individual level realize that even if they were perfectly obedient, they were &quot;unprofitable servants&quot; (Lk. 17:10)- and the only other time that term occurs on the Lord\'s lips is when speaking of how the unprofitable servant will be cast away to condemnation at the last day (Mt. 25:30). What He\'s saying is: \'Imagine condemnation. Being cast away as you stand before the judgment seat. That\'s you- that\'s what <i>should</i> happen, even if you &quot;do&quot; all. Get it- you\'re saved by grace, an amazing grace- respond to that, and forgiving others and zealous service will flow easily and naturally enough from that\'.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2930','1','42','17','6','6','<p>17:6 <i>And the Lord said: If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this sycamore tree: Be rooted up and be planted in the sea- and it would obey you</i>- As noted on :5, the faith in view concerns the ability to accept and forgive others. And the Lord says that if they had faith, then the sycamore tree could be planted in the sea. Israel was then covered with sycamore trees (1 Kings 10:27) to the point that the tree became emblematic of Israel (Is. 9:10). By faith, they could extend Israel to the Gentiles, the sea of nations. The choice was either to be cast into the sea in condemnation for refusing to accept the spiritually little ones (:2), or to take the hope of Israel into the sea and plant it there, so that the sea of nations became as the land of Israel. \'Planting\' is a metaphor regarding the teaching of the Gospel in 1 Cor. 3:6-8, and the parables of the \'planting\' of a vineyard likely have the same sense. It was by faith, the disciples\' faith in inclusivity and grace, that the gospel of the hope of Israel could be taken to the Gentiles. And the mustard seed is a symbol of the basic Gospel, which grows up into a tree giving shelter to the Gentiles (13:19). Here, it refers to their faith in grace, forgiveness and inclusivity toward others- which was necessary for them to take that Gospel to the Gentiles.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2931','1','42','17','7','7','<p>17:7 <i>But who is there of you, having a servant ploughing or keeping sheep- </i>Not all the disciples were dirt poor. Their fishing business employed hired servants. The parable about &ldquo;one of you&rdquo; having a servant ploughing and preparing his food was spoken to the twelve. This continues the theme so far developed in the chapter; that we should have the love, faith and vision to be forgiving and radically inclusive of others. The disciples had asked for more faith to forgive effectively without repentance when repentance is patently insincere; and the Lord gives part of the answer in this observation that we are all desperate sinners. The motivation for radical forgiveness of others is because we recognize that even if we are fully obedient, we are &quot;unprofitable servants&quot;; and even the highest standard of behaviour, as was seen uniquely in the Lord, is simply what is expected of us as God\'s servants.</p><p><i>That will say to him when he comes in from the field: Come immediately and sit down to eat</i>- We are not worthy to sit at the table of our master and eat. Eating together has been a theme of this entire section, beginning in chapter 15, where the Lord answers the objection that He eats with sinners. The elder brother of chapter 15 and the &quot;rich man&quot; of chapter 16 refuse to eat with the likes of the prodigal son or Lazarus. To motivate us in not being exclusive and rejecting our brethren from the Lord\'s table, we are here reminded that our place at His table is by grace. For in no secular situation at that time would a servant ever eat at his lord\'s table as an equal, let alone have his master serve him there. And yet this is that the Lord Jesus does to us; this is the unique nature of His table.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2932','1','42','17','9','9','<p>17:9 <i>Does he thank the servant because he did the things that were commanded? I think not- </i>A master doesn\'t thank his slave for ploughing all day. When he comes home in the evening, the slave\'s job is to get the Master\'s food ready, and then when the Master has been looked after, he can get himself something. The Master has no need to thank (Gk. <i>charis</i>, s.w. to give &quot;grace&quot;) the slave, and the slave expects nothing else. This is how the Lord sees our works; He expects us to serve Him for nothing, because of our role as His slaves, and not because we expect any gratitude, recognition or reward. We serve because we are His slaves. The parable teaches that absolute obedience should be the norm of our lives, not the exception, and that this is only what our Master demands and expects. From the way He told the story, the Lord framed our sympathy to be with the slave. But His point is that when we have done all, worked all day and then gone the extra mile in the evening, we should still feel unprofitable slaves, slaves who aren\'t mush profit to their Master. The passive, unspoken <i>acceptance</i> seen between Master and slave in the parable should be seen between us and the Lord. There is no attempt by the Lord to ameliorate the Master : slave figure; &quot;You call me master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am&quot; (Jn. 13:13). And yet we are told that at the judgment we will receive &quot;praise of God&quot; (1 Cor. 4:5). This can not, therefore, be praise of our efforts at obedience; it will be praise for the status we are in on account of being in Christ, being counted as righteous as Him. The parable was spoken in the context of the disciples thinking that God would be very happy with them if they forgave their brother seven times a day (Lk. 17:3-6). But the Lord is replying that things like this, which to us may seem going more than the extra mile, should be the norm; such heights of spirituality are only the daily ploughing of the field, and are only the obvious minimum which Christ accepts. He won\'t shew us grace (&quot;thank&quot;) for doing this- with the implication that His grace is totally undeserved, not related to our forgiveness of others or other acts of obedience. The story paints the Master as being rather ungrateful and hard, to see his servant work so hard, then go the extra mile, and not utter a word of thanks. And the Lord is saying: \'Yes, to the natural mind, that\'s how I am\'.&nbsp;Christ says that the slave will not expect the Master to say to him &quot;Sit down to meat&quot;, but will expect to be told, tired as he is, to gird himself and serve his Master (Lk. 17:7,8). The Lord\'s words here are surely intended to recall when He said that in the Kingdom He would make us each sit down to meat and come forth and serve us (Lk. 12:37). The point of the connection is to show that Christ\'s treatment of us in the Kingdom <i>will</i> be different from that of an ordinary Master, but we really, honestly shouldn\'t expect it; we should serve because we are His servants, not expecting any praise or response from him. And this experience of grace should motivate us to forgive whether or not the repentance seems sincere (:5). As it happens, He will give us all this in the Kingdom, but we shouldn\'t expect this at all. As the slave would have been dumbfounded if his Master did this, so should our response be in the Kingdom. What makes it difficult is that we <i>know</i> our Master is like this, that He\'s a most unusual Lord, one who washes our feet (Jn. 13:13,14); and the extraordinary relationship we have with Him ought to make us eagerly desire to show a similar service to our brethren, and to forgive them whether or not their repentance appears sincere.</p><p>The story of the slave who worked all day in the field and was then expected to come home and cook for his master without a word of thanks to him seems to be more realistic, lacking the element of unreality usually seen in the parables. But the Greek word <i>charis</i>, usually translated &quot;grace&quot;, is the one used for &quot;thank&quot; here. The point is that we don\'t receive grace because of our going the extra mile, as we are inclined to think. We receive grace, but not as a result of all our special efforts; these are what are expected of us, on account of the fact that we have become salves to our Master, the Lord Jesus. At the end of all our special efforts (in whatever sphere), we must consciously make an effort to recognize that we are &quot;unprofitable servants&quot; (Lk. 17:10). This must surely connect with Mt. 25:30, which describes the rejected at the day of judgment as unprofitable servants. If we judge / condemn ourselves, we will not be condemned (1 Cor. 11:31). This is just one of many examples of where the Lord\'s parables seem intended to be linked with each other- which further proves that they are not stories with a deeper meaning, whose storyline is not intended to be carefully considered. We must recognize not only that we are unprofitable servants, but that we have only done what was our &quot;duty&quot; or debt to do- the implication being that we were sold into slavery on account of an unpayable debt. This is exactly the figure used by the Lord to describe us in Mt. 18:25. &nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2933','1','42','17','10','10','<p>17:10 <i>Even so you also, when you shall have done all the things that are commanded of you, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do- </i>It may be that this is taking us forward to the Kingdom; it is at the judgment that we \'do all\' (Eph. 6:13), it is in the Kingdom that we will obey all the commandments (Ps. 119:6). This parable is a glimpse into the appreciation of grace we will have as we enter the Kingdom; once we are fully righteous, we will realize how unprofitable we are of ourselves (notice we may still feel in a sense &quot;unprofitable&quot; then). We will realize that all our service is only the repaying of the huge debt incurred by our sinfulness. <i>Then</i>, and perhaps only then, will we see works in their true perspective. This surely is the purpose of the judgment seat. We will walk away with the sense of wonder at the grace of Jesus that filled the one-hour workers as they walked away from the pay table with a day\'s wages.&nbsp;</p><p>The sin offering to be offered after the Nazarite vow had finished (Num. 6:14) suggests the principle of Lk. 17:10 was being taught even back there. There was to be no spiritual pride in commitment made apparently over and above God\'s minimal requirements. The language of &quot;have done all those things which are commanded&quot; recalls the language of the priests and Moses doing all things which were commanded them under the old covenant (Ex. 29:35; Lev. 8:36; Dt. 1:18). Lk. 17:10 would therefore be hinting that even complete obedience to God\'s law was not of itself enough to make a man profitable unto God, which was something Job likewise concluded (Job 22:2). And the legislation about concluding the Nazarite vow was teaching the same.</p><p>We shouldn&rsquo;t be discouraged if in our self-perception we see ourselves as serious sinners. We must say of ourselves that &ldquo;we are unprofitable servants&rdquo;- i.e. condemned, for this is how the phrase is used elsewhere in the Lord&rsquo;s thinking (Mt. 25:30). This is the finest paradox of all. If we perceive ourselves as worthy of&nbsp;condemnation, we will be saved. If we would judge i.e. condemn ourselves, we will not be judged / condemned (1 Cor. 11:31). If we understand the seriousness of our sin, then forgiveness of others will come easier- and this is the purpose of the story (:5). If we realize our utter spiritual desperation, our worthiness of rejection, our betrayals of our Lord\'s love, if we condemn ourselves in our own judgment; <i>then</i> we will not have to go through this process when the Lord comes. Yet if we don\'t do this, Paul says, then we are drinking condemnation to ourselves at the last day. It\'s a powerful, terrifying argument. Such <i>must be</i>- not ought to be- our level of self-analysis and knowledge of our desperation. If we so know our desperation now, we will not be condemned. Knowing and feeling our desperation is the key to so many Christian problems: monotony and boredom in spiritual life, problems with our partner, with our ecclesia, pride, a critical, ungrateful spirit, a lack of heartfelt praise, a reserve in witnessing. Even division amongst us would be outlawed by a true sense of our personal desperation. See on Lk. 6:42.</p><p>As slaves, we serve without expecting any thanks at all; and the service in the immediate context is forgiving our brother whether or not his repentance appears sincere. We do what is our duty to do by reason of who we are- sinners. The Lord spoke this in response to the disciples saying it was impossible for them to accept His teaching about unconditional forgiveness of each other (:5). Man&rsquo;s ingratitude is perhaps one of the hardest winds to weather, and it can so easily blow us off course in our service. But as the Lord&rsquo;s slaves, judged by Him alone, we didn&rsquo;t ought to look for recognition of our labours nor our forgiveness of others; neither should we demand apologies for <i>anything</i>. The Lord humbled Himself to wash the feet of His brethren, even though He was their leader (Phil. 2:4-11 is full of allusion to the foot washing incident, as if there the Lord exemplified the spirit of the cross). There may be brethren who consider it beneath them to talk to others or forgive others, who think it is not for them to help wash up or move furniture or all the host of other tasks that our gatherings require. But in these things lies the spirit of Christ. Paul didn&rsquo;t lord it over others, but was a fellow-worker with them (2 Cor. 1:24). It is one of the finest paradoxes: that he who is the greatest must be the servant of all. See on Mk. 10:45.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2934','1','42','17','11','11','<p>17:11<i> And it came to pass, as they were on their way to Jerusalem, that he was passing along the borders of Samaria and Galilee</i>-Time and again, the Gospel records reveal how the disciples manifest the Lord Jesus. There are several passages where the text is unclear, as to whether it should read, e.g., &ldquo;As <i>they </i>were on the way&rdquo; or &ldquo;As <i>He </i>went&rdquo; (Lk. 17:11 RV cp. AV). The textual confusion may reflect the unity between the Lord and His preachers. Even within the Gospels, incident after incident shows the Lord doing something alone, and then the disciples somehow being presented as doing the same.</p><p>Even when He was heading away from Jerusalem during the course of that final journey, He\'s still described as going to Jerusalem. This was the degree to which His focus was upon His journey unto death; when He passed through a Samaritan village, His whole body language was as if He were going up to Jerusalem (9:53). And we are asked to have the same focus and sense of direction as we carry His cross.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2935','1','42','17','12','12','<p>17:12<i> And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men who were lepers, who stood far away- </i>Reflect how the group of ten lepers huddled together, Jew and Samarian together, their differences sunk in their common appreciation of their desperation. In deep seated humility, we can wait with unfeigned faith for the day of acceptance to dawn, serving with a true love, not interested in feuding with our brethren, thankfully partaking of the emblems with them, not forgetting <i>how</i> we were cleansed from our past sins (cp. 2 Pet. 1:9 RV- a sure allusion to the nine ungrateful lepers who forgot the wonder of their cleansing). If we remember how we were cleansed, then there will abound in us virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, culminating in a true love (so Peter&rsquo;s logic runs in 2 Pet. 1:5-9). For our desperation, the cross of the Lord Jesus, the frankness of the Father\'s forgiveness- these things will ever <i>live</i> within our grateful, gracious souls.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2936','1','42','17','13','13','<p>17:13 <i>And they lifted up their voices, saying: Jesus, master, have mercy on us</i>- The grammar suggests they the many had one voice. And yet they included at least one Samaritan, with whom normal Jews would have nothing to do. The basis of our unity should be our desperation for grace and healing.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2937','1','42','17','14','14','<p>17:14 <i>And when he saw them, he said to them: Go and show yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, as they went, they were cleansed</i>- The motive for this in 5:14 had been in order to make a testimony to the priests. Such was His zeal for their salvation. And the fact that &ldquo;a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith&rdquo; (Acts 6:7) shows how this apparently hope-against-hope desire of the Lord for the conversion of His enemies somehow came true. We noted on Mt. 8:3 that the work of the priests was to cleanse the leper- but this had been done by the Lord. The man was therefore to show himself to the priests- in order to demonstrate to them that another priest and priesthood was already coming into operation.</p><p>The healing happened &quot;as they went&quot;. There had to be an element of faith and obedience before the cure- in this case. For the Lord operated variously when it came to preconditions for healing.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2938','1','42','17','15','15','<p>17:15 <i>And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, glorifying God in a loud voice</i>- He turned back from going to the priests to thank the Lord, because he perceived that not only would he as a Gentile not get much audience with them, but because he saw that the Lord Jesus was far greater than the priesthood. He took the initiative in technically disobeying the Lord\'s commandment to come and thank the Lord. It was when he saw that he was healed that he praised God. The others presumably thought that their full healing would only be once they appeared before the priests. But the Samaritan perceived that the total power of healing was with the Lord and that the priests had no role to play in this. Being a Samaritan and therefore separated from the community of Israel made this perception somewhat easier for him, just as those outside religious systems find it easier to perceive the direct hand of the Lord Jesus in their lives- once they encounter Him.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2939','1','42','17','16','16','<p>17:16 <i>And he fell upon his face at his feet, giving him thanks- though he was a Samaritan</i>- Jews and Samaritans had no dealings, and yet they lifted up their voices as one voice (:13 Gk.). They were united in their desperation, just as we ought to be. This is one of many hints that the work of the Lord Jesus was for non-Jews as well as Jews, and that the Gentiles would respond better to it. The command to go and teach &quot;all nations&quot; the Gospel seamlessly follows from all these hints throughout the Lord\'s ministry, and the disciples and the early church were all the more culpable for initially refusing to perceive it. But such is the power of assumed correctness of inherited positions, prejudice, nationalism and elitism- even within the hearts of otherwise sincere believers.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2940','1','42','17','17','17','<p>17:17 <i>And Jesus responded: Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?</i>- The Lord\'s response was to the Samaritan. The implication was that the Lord was deeply disappointed in the Jewish response, and in their consideration of the priestly acceptance of them as being far more important than gratitude to their healer-Messiah. And He wanted the Samaritan to know that indeed, Israel were not OK with God. The Lord Jesus was on that man\'s side and not, in that sense, approving of Israel just on the basis of their ethnicity. The question as to &quot;Where are the other nine?&quot; was a leading one. The answer was \'With the priests\'. The implication was that they should have been with the Samaritan at the Lord\'s feet, and not, in the first instance, with those priests.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2941','1','42','17','18','18','<p>17:18 <i>Were there none found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger?</i>- This comment seems more towards the disciples, or perhaps the Lord was just speaking to Himself. The Samaritan had returned to Jesus, glorifying God (:15). It would be far too simplistic to assume that Jesus as He stood there was God Himself. For no man can see God. Further reflection reveals a far profounder situation. By returning to Jesus in gratitude, the man was glorifying God. The worship and glorification of the Son is therefore to the glory of God the Father, as Phil. 2 makes explicit.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2942','1','42','17','19','19','<p>17:19 <i>And he said to him: Arise and go your way. Your faith has made you whole</i>- The healing had occurred &quot;as they went&quot; to the priests (:14). It could be that the Lord is saying that the man\'s faith had made him so whole that he didn\'t need to go to the priests. He was to go his way, back to his Samaritan community, as the living witness to the Lord\'s passionate care for non-Jews. Luke seems to stress the role of faith in the cures (7:50; 8:48). He also speaks more about Samaritans than any other gospel; perhaps because his material was partly aimed at converting Samaritans and other Gentiles.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2943','1','42','17','20','20','<p>17:20 <i>And being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God comes, he answered them and said: The kingdom of God comes not with observation</i>- The disciples repeat the Pharisees\' question about when the end will come- in almost the same words. They were clearly influenced by them (Lk. 17:20 cp. Mk. 13:4). &quot;When will the Kingdom come?&quot; was another perennial question- again answered by the Lord redirecting the entire enquiry. &quot;The kingdom of God is within you... as it was in the days of Lot... one shall be taken and the other shall be left&quot; (Lk. 17:34). \'Don\'t worry about the calendar date, don\'t let a fascination with prophecy distract you from the personal reality that whenever I do come, some will be left behind. Will that be <i>you</i>?\'. See on Lk. 19:11. The implication could be that the Kingdom of God is hastened by action- by the repentance of Israel, the spiritual maturity of God\'s believing children, intense prayer, outreach to the Gentile world and other preconditions for the Lord\'s return. It will not be hastened by attempts to match current events with Bible prophecies- which perhaps is what the Lord refers to by &quot;observation&quot; here. It\'s as if He is warning against the obsession with latter day political prophecies which has stymied so much spirituality over the ages.</p><p>And yet &quot;observation&quot; translates a word which only Luke uses to describe how the Jews critically &quot;watched&quot; Jesus (6:7; 14:1; 20:20). They were actually looking at Him; the Kingdom was amongst them. They need not observe / look around / watch out for Messiah any further.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2944','1','42','17','21','21','<p>17:21 <i>Neither shall they say, Here it is, or, There it is For the kingdom of God is among you- </i>The life that He had and now lives is the essence of the Kingdom life. Who He was and is, this is the definition of the Kingdom life. It&rsquo;s why one of His titles is &ldquo;the kingdom of God&rdquo;. And it&rsquo;s why it can be said that we &lsquo;have&rsquo; eternal life now, in that we can live the essence of the life we will eternally live, right now. &quot;The kingdom of God is within you&quot; (AV) is more correctly translated &quot;the kingdom of God is <i>among</i> you&quot; (see A.V. mg.).&nbsp;The context shows that Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees (:20);&nbsp;the &quot;you&quot; therefore refers to them.&nbsp;They were certainly not Christian believers- the kingdom of God was not established in <i>their</i> hearts. The Jews were making a great public show of their zeal in looking for Messiah.&nbsp;In this passage, &quot;the kingdom of God&quot; seems to be a title of Messiah, seeing He is to be the king of the kingdom.&nbsp;Thus when the Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem, the people shouted, &quot;Blessed is he (Messiah) that comes in the name of the Lord:&nbsp;blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that comes in the name of the Lord&quot; (Mark 11:9,10).&nbsp;This parallels Messiah and &quot;the kingdom&quot;.&nbsp;Thus John the Baptist preached that &quot;the kingdom of heaven is at hand.&nbsp;For this is he (Jesus) that was (prophesied)&quot; (Matt. 3:2,3).&nbsp;So here, the Lord answered their question about &quot;when the kingdom of God should come&quot;, by speaking about the coming of &quot;the son of man&quot;. His point was that the Jews were making so much show of being on the look out for Messiah\'s coming, expecting Him to be suddenly revealed in power, that they failed to realize that that Messiah- &quot;the kingdom of God&quot;- was already among them in the humble person of Jesus.&nbsp;Thus He warned them:&nbsp;&quot;The kingdom of God (Messiah) comes not with outward show... behold, the kingdom of God is among you&quot; (Luke 17:20,21). A well known theologian, Joachim Jeremias, has come to the same conclusion: &ldquo;The meaning &lsquo;indwelling in&rsquo; can certainly be excluded. Neither in Judaism nor elsewhere in the New Testament do we find the idea that the reign of God is something indwelling in men, to be found, say, in the heart; such a spiritualistic understanding is ruled out both for Jesus and for the early Christian tradition&rdquo; (Joachim Jeremias, <i>New Testament Theology</i> (London: SCM, 1972) p. 101).&nbsp;He goes on to draw out the parallel between Lk. 17:21 and Lk. 17:23,24: &ldquo;Neither shall they say, Lo, here or, There for lo, the kingdom of God is within you&hellip;And they shall say to you, Lo, there Lo, here go not away, nor follow after them: for as the lightning, when it flashes out of the one part under the heaven, shines unto the other part under heaven; so shall the Son of man be in his day&rdquo;. <br />The parallel is between the Kingdom of God coming at the return of Christ at the last day- and the Kingdom being &lsquo;within&rsquo; or &lsquo;among&rsquo; you. Jeremias suggests on this basis that &ldquo;the Kingdom of God is within / among you&rdquo; means &lsquo;The Kingdom of God will come among you suddenly and visibly, at the last day- so it&rsquo;s no good expecting it right at this moment now&rsquo;.<br />Who He was and is, this is the definition of the Kingdom life. It&rsquo;s why one of His titles is &ldquo;the kingdom of God&rdquo; (Lk. 17:21). And it&rsquo;s why it can be said that we &lsquo;have&rsquo; eternal life now, in that we can live the essence of the life we will eternally live, right now.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2945','1','42','17','22','22','<p>17:22 <i>And he said to the disciples: The days will come, when you shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man and you shall not see it</i>- Yet Jn. 8:56 implies it is always possible to see one of the days of the Son of man through faith in Him. As explained in Jn. 14-16, the promised Comforter would enable believers to always have the same sense of the Lord\'s presence as His followers had during His ministry. Is the Lord not hinting here that there will be a clouded spiritual vision amongst His latter day followers, even though they will &ldquo;desire&rdquo; this not to be the case? And can we not see uncomfortable similarities with our position and feelings today, realizing our vision is somewhat clouded, desiring for things to be different, but still not seeing&hellip;?</p><p>The Lord\'s coming is &quot;the day of the Son of man&quot;; and yet He speaks of the days of His ministry as the days of the Son of Man. The Lord is the same yesterday, today and forever. The same Jesus who was then in Palestine, speaking from the larynx of a Palestinian Jew, is essentially the same who shall return, likewise as judge, friend and patient saviour. Lk. 17:24-26&nbsp;speaks of&nbsp;the &quot;days of the Son of man&quot; and refers them to three things: <br />1. The days of the Lord\'s ministry<br />2. The time leading up to His return<br />3. The day of judgment, of His actual second coming.<br />Putting these together, we come to the following conclusion: those living in the very last days will effectively be living with the actual presence of the Lord, it will be as if He has physically returned, although He has not done so. This may well be in order to provide encouragement to the persecuted saints in their latter-day tribulation; but it surely suggests that they will <i>know</i> that the Lord is about to return, that they are living in the days of the Son of man. The Comforter will be poured out, or accepted, so that the believers feel strongly the Lord\'s presence.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2946','1','42','17','23','23','<p>17:23 <i>And they shall say to you, Look there, or, Look here. Do not go, nor follow after them</i>- The Lord has been teaching that He is &quot;amongst&quot; them; there is no need to go looking for Him anywhere. But His thought moves on specifically to the time of His return. For the Lord repeats this warning in the Olivet prophecy. There will be false Christs and bogus claims that the Lord has returned. Spoken to the disciples, this suggests that they were the ones who would see these things associated with the return of Christ. But they did not. And in any case, all twelve of them were being addressed, and one of them would turn away from Christ. So there was in any case a conditionality attached to the Lord&rsquo;s words.&nbsp;</p><p>&ldquo;Lo&rdquo; AV suggests the actual pointing out of a person. &ldquo;Here&hellip; or there&rdquo; is poor translation, because the same original word is behind both &ldquo;here&rdquo; and &ldquo;there&rdquo;. The impression is given of people pointing out actual individuals and claiming that &lsquo;This is Christ&rsquo;. The faithful are to flee once the sign is obvious that the Lord is about to be revealed, and in those days and they may literally be days or hours the world will know that His return is imminent, and therefore all manner of charlatans will start claiming &lsquo;It&rsquo;s me&rsquo;. The relatively few claims to be Jesus Christ which are made today are hardly credible, no temptation at all for the faithful, and nearly always the person making the claim is mentally ill. But the Olivet prophecy suggests that these claims by false Christs will be so credible that even the faithful will be sorely tempted to believe them. The risk of deception would be so great that the Lord repeatedly warned against it. If there is some worldwide sign that the Lord is about to return, perhaps literally in the sky, as &ldquo;the sign of the Son of Man in Heaven&rdquo;, then in those days, such claimants will have far more credibility. It could be that one claimant is particularly persuasive, leading to the final show down on Mount Zion between the true Christ and the anti-Christ, the fake duplicate of Christ.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2947','1','42','17','24','24','<p>17:24 <i>For as the lightning shines from one part under the heaven to the other part under heaven, so shall the Son of Man be in his day</i>- This is the &quot;lightning&quot; and earthquake associated with the return of Christ when His people, natural and spiritual, are at the nadir of persecution and tribulation (Rev. 4:5; 8:5; 11:19; 16:18). Lightning doesn&rsquo;t do as described here. The reference is therefore to the Old Testament manifestation of lightning as part of the Cherubim, which flashed with lightning (Ez. 1:4,14). Ezekiel saw the Cherubim depart from the temple (24:1 has alluded to this already), go Eastward to the mount of Olives and then mount up to Heaven (Ez. 10 :19; 11 :22,23). This is why &ldquo;the Glory&rdquo;, the lightning of the Cherubim chariot, was seen as returning to the Mount of Olives &quot;by the way of the east&quot; into the temple (Ez. 43:2-4).&nbsp;</p><p>As the Lord stood amongst them, He was the Son of Man in His day. Those who accepted Him as Messiah were accepting His \'coming\' to them. For those who did not, and who argued about whether or not He fulfilled all the prophecies they were analysing &quot;with observation&quot;, He would \'come\' unmistakably, but in judgment. The day of the Lord was right upon them, if only they would realize it; and they made the decision standing right there as to whether they would then be saved or condemned.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2948','1','42','17','25','25','<p>17:25 <i>But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected by this generation</i>- We wonder whether the Lord\'s tone of voice and body language changed; having talked of the glories of His second coming, He returns to the reality that He must be crucified by His people. The Lord\'s rejection by Israel is a major theme (Mt. 21:42; Mk. 8:31; 12:10; Lk. 9:22; 20:17; 1 Pet. 2:4,7 all use the same word). Any who struggle with rejection find an instant connection with the Lord. It has been given to us to &quot;suffer for His sake&quot;, the same word used here for &quot;suffer&quot; (Phil. 1:29). His sufferings are reflected in our experience, that we might experience in practice the status of being &quot;in Christ&quot;. The passages just listed mainly state that the Lord would be rejected by &quot;the builders&quot;, by the &quot;elders... priests... scribes&quot;. Now He extends that to all &quot;this generation&quot;. They followed their religious leaders- to reject God\'s Son and all His love. This is the danger of following religious leaders without thinking things through for ourselves from God\'s word.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2949','1','42','17','26','26','<p>17:26 <i>And as it was in the days of Noah, even so shall it also be in the days of the Son of Man</i>- See on 2 Pet. 2:5-8. &ldquo;The days&rdquo; are parallel with &ldquo;the coming&rdquo; of the Lord. The scenario outlined elsewhere is of the Lord &lsquo;coming&rsquo; for the faithful, them consciously choosing to go to meet Him, and then their &lsquo;coming&rsquo; along with Him in judgment upon the unfaithful and Israel&rsquo;s immediate enemies. Therefore a period of time is made parallel with the Lord&rsquo;s &ldquo;coming&rdquo;. The &quot;days of Noah&quot; may refer to the way in which God told Noah of the flood, but in Gen. 7:1,4 told him that now there were &quot;yet seven days&quot; until the flood actually came, and he must now enter the ark. The gathering of the animals was done within those seven days (Gen. 7:1-3). In this lies the similarity with the last days. We know the outline picture- that judgment will come, and there are reasons and signs of that. But only a few days before judgment breaks will the faithful be invited to go to meet the Lord, to enter the ark. And in that period the Gospel will be spread to all nations, the last final appeal will be made. Just as Noah filled the huge ark, which could have saved so many people, with any animal willing to agree to come on board. The shutting of the door of the ark would then directly correspond with Mt. 25:10; Lk. 13:25: &quot;The door was shut&quot;. Just as desperate people would\'ve knocked on the shut door of the ark, so the unfaithful will knock on the door which the Lord has now closed. In this life we can knock on the closed door, recognizing our condemnation- and it will be opened (Lk. 11:7; Rev. 3:8). But after the Lord has \'come\' in the sense of inviting us into the ark, to go forth and meet Him, the door will be shut.</p><p>Perhaps those seven days were a period of feasting in the world around Noah, just as there will be a brief period of hedonistic prosperity in the world before Christ\'s coming, perhaps because of some international agreement which offers prosperity to the entire planet in return for some nominal acceptance of false religion Islam?. We note the period of &quot;seven days&quot; used for funeral celebrations (Gen. 50:10; 1 Sam. 31:13), wedding celebrations (Jud. 14:12,17) and general feasting (Esther 1:5; Job 1). The people around Noah were doing this right up until the last day of the seven days. Passover, a clear type of the final deliverance of God\'s people at the Lord\'s second coming, required a similar seven days preparation period (Ex. 12:19; 13:6) followed by a &quot;day of the Lord&quot;, the actual feast, and &quot;a solemn assembly&quot; (Neh. 8:18). Indeed, the feasts of Yahweh all required a seven day period (Lev. 23), and each of them was in some way typical of the second coming.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>A number of passages describe the AD70 judgments of Israel in terms of the flood; which suggests that they also have reference to the last days:<br />- 2 Peter 3 is a clear example, describing the destruction of the Jewish system in AD70 as being by fire as opposed to water used in Noah\'s time. Yet the chapter also has reference, e.g. through its links with the new Heavens and earth of Is. 65, with the destruction of the present age at the Lord\'s return.<br />- Nahum 1 describes the coming judgements on Israel in terms of mountains and hills splitting, and there being a great flood; all Genesis flood language.<br />- Dan. 9:26 describes the Romans in AD70 destroying &quot;the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood&quot;, the LXX implying with a sudden flood, as in Noah\'s time.<br />- Is. 54:9 describes the judgments on Israel being &quot;as the waters of Noah&quot;. The end of the flood, the end of Israel\'s judgments, therefore typifies the second coming.<br />- In the light of this the Lord\'s parable about the man building on sand whose house was destroyed when the heavy rain came (Mt. 7:25,27) must have primary reference (as so many of the parables do) to the judgement on the Jewish house in AD70. Those who built on sand as a result of not hearing Christ\'s words were the Jews- also described as shoddy builders in Mt. 21:42; Acts 4:11; 1 Pet. 2:7; Mic. 3:10; Jer. 22:13.<br />- The flood waters were upon the earth for 5 months. The siege of Jerusalem in AD70 lasted for the same period, coming after 3 years of the Roman campaign against Israel which started in AD67. The three and a half year suffering of Israel which culminated in AD70 may well point forward to a similar period in the last days; in which case the flood would typify the final months of that period, during which the judgments will be poured out most intensely. The five month tribulation of Rev. 9:10 may also have some relevance here.</p><p>Thus the state of Israel in AD70 was typified by the world of Noah\'s time, which therefore looks forward also to the last days, in the light of the evident connections between that period and our last days which are made in 2 Pet. 3 and the Olivet prophecy.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2950','1','42','17','27','27','<p>17:27 <i>They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all</i>- Lk. 21:34 is specific: &quot;And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, so that day come upon you unawares&quot;. It could fairly be asked \'Why is there this warning, if the believers of the last days are to be actively persecuted?\'. This verse implies that the world will be in a materially prosperous state in the last days; it will be possible for us to become so preoccupied with it that we do not prepare for the time of tribulation, so that it comes as a sudden surprise. Of if &quot;that day&quot; is the day of Christ\'s coming, then it may be that by opting out of the persecution, we will be able to continue to enjoy the materialism of the world, in which case we will be caught unawares by the second coming. Thus while the saints are persecuted, the world enjoys a time of prosperity as it did in the times of Lot and Noah.</p><p>The flood &quot;came&quot;, Gk.&nbsp;<i>erchomai</i>. This is effectively the same word as used about Noah &quot;entering&quot; or \'coming into\' the ark (<i>eis-erchomai</i>). The coming of the flood represents the coming of Jesus to the world-<i> erchomai</i>&nbsp;is so often used in the context in that connection (Mt. 24:30,42,43,44,46,48; 25:6,10). The \'coming in\' of Noah into the ark seven days before the flood (cp. the response of the faithful to the call to go out and meet the returning Lord Jesus) is essentially the coming of the Lord, even if His public \'coming\' may be a few days after the \'coming\' to the believers. Keil translates Dan. 9:26,27:&nbsp;&ldquo;The city, together with the sanctuary, shall be destroyed by the people of the prince who shall come, who shall find his end in the flood; but war shall continue to the end, since destruction is irrevocably decreed. That prince shall force a strong covenant for one week on the mass of the people, and during half a week he shall take away the service of sacrifice, and borne on the wings of idol abominations cp. Ps. 18:10, where the true God is also borne on wings shall carry on a desolating rule, till the firmly decreed judgment shall pour itself upon him as one desolated&rdquo; (<i>Commentary&nbsp;</i>&nbsp; p. 373). Antichrist&rsquo;s destruction with&nbsp;<i>the</i>&nbsp;flood note the definite article comfortably connects with the Lord&rsquo;s usage of the flood as a symbol of the latter day judgment upon His enemies (Mt. 24:39). The person spoken about will be involved in war until the end of his days; he will die at the end of his military campaign against God&rsquo;s people. This was certainly not true of Titus in AD70.</p><p>In <i>Contra Celsum</i> we read Origen justifying the Christian church against Celsus&rsquo; criticisms that it is a church of poor, simple people. That the majority of Christians would be poor and simple was indeed the expectation of both the Lord Jesus and Paul. Yet Origen seeks to justify the Christian church as middle class and respectable, with respected intellectuals amongst its membership. It was and is this desire to be seen as worldly-wise and &lsquo;normal&rsquo; which is the death-knoll for any revival of Christianity. It was this which led to the acceptance of the Trinity; and it is this which robs true Christianity of its radical nature and appeal today. Perhaps in our last days this lesson needs to be learnt as never before. The Lord&rsquo;s picture of the world of the last days is of a household eating and drinking, absorbed with being normal (Mt. 24:38; Lk. 17:27). But the Lord&rsquo;s point is that this very &lsquo;normal&rsquo; behaviour done in the wrong spirit is what He finds so wrong.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2951','1','42','17','28','28','<p>17:28 <i>Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot- they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built</i>- There can be no doubt that the sexual aspects of Sodom\'s sins have great similarity to the moral filth of our present world. But significantly it was not this aspect which our Lord chose to highlight when speaking of how &quot;the days of Lot&quot; typified those of His return. Instead He spoke of those things which were more likely to ensnare His people: &quot;<i>They</i> (as well as our present world) did eat, <i>they</i> drank, <i>they</i> bought, <i>they</i> sold, <i>they</i> planted, <i>they</i> built&quot;. Their obsession with daily activities without an awareness of God was as bad as their other sins; a point we would do well to be aware of. However, their eating and drinking must have been to gross excess- Ez. 16:49 defines &quot;the iniquity of Sodom&quot; as being &quot;fullness of bread&quot; among other things. Some lavish Christian lifestyles frequently feature &quot;fullness of bread&quot; - but because it is not perceived as a gross sin, this unhealthy similarity with Sodom slips by unchallenged.&nbsp;&quot;They bought, they sold&quot; suggests that Sodom was a major trading centre, rapidly increasing in wealth; &quot;they planted, they built&quot; implies a real boom town. Such success resulted in the people being proud and haughty (Ez. 16:49,50); the wealth created at the expense of others brought about &quot;abundance of idleness in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy&quot; (Ez. 16:49). It is these aspects of Sodom which are so precisely matched by our self-centred, money mad world. As our Lord realized, it is these aspects which are most likely to ensnare the child of God. Yet Sodom\'s people were not completely unaware of their religious conscience. Jeremiah likened the false prophets of Israel to the people of Sodom, who effectively taught that sin was service to God, (Jer. 23:14). This is another hint that the people of Sodom had some degree of responsibility, as have latter day Israel whom they typify.</p><p>Lot is presented here as representative of the latter-day believers. But he was hardly strong in faith. He chose to live in Sodom, first pitching his tent near it and then getting a house within the city and even becoming a judge. His wife was consumed in the materialism of the city as were most of his children. He argued with the Angel about leaving Sodom and was only saved by grace; and even after that, he slept with both his daughters whilst drunk. And yet he was counted as faithful. All the virgins in the parable slumber and sleep at the time their Lord comes; when clearly the last generation is exhorted not to slumber but to keep awake. We can conclude that the last days will be a time of spiritual weakness for the church.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2952','1','42','17','29','29','<p>17:29 <i>But in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all</i>- Lot in his last days in Sodom was a type of the believers living in the world at the time of the end. Lot in those last hours was walking around the streets of that city trying to save his family, walking amidst angry, blind people who hated him, drunk on their own lusts. Walking those streets must have been an uncanny experience. But that is God\'s picture of the world of our day, and our own uncanny, almost charmed life amongst the sleepwalkers. The whole human experience is analogous to sleepwalking; we go through the motions of reality, but actually (as a race) we are spiritually asleep. The world around us are sleepwalking, in God\'s eyes. And we too should share His perspective.</p><p>The Lord initially has in view that Jerusalem is as Sodom, an equation the Old Testament prophets make several times. The need to leave Sodom referred to the need to break with the temple cult, and the Olivet prophecy urges the faithful to flee out of Jerusalem to the mountains to avoid her judgment. This is the language of &quot;Babylon&quot; in Revelation, which in its primary application refers to the Jerusalem temple cult. All who remained in it would perish; hence the appeal of the letter to the Hebrews to leave it and resist the temptation to return to it.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2953','1','42','17','30','30','<p>17:30 <i>After the same manner shall it be in the day that the Son of Man is revealed</i>- This commonly used phrase &quot;Son&nbsp;of man&quot; (Mt. 16:28; 24:27,30,39; 26:64) clearly quotes from Dan. 7:13: &ldquo;One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven&rdquo;. This prophecy clearly speaks of the giving of the Kingdom to the Lord Jesus and His people at the end of the dominion of the fourth beast and its related horns. The prophecy could have been fulfilled in the first century- but it was rescheduled. This is another example of the conditionality in Daniel&rsquo;s prophecies which we discussed in an earlier digression. Dan. 7:13 speaks of how the Son of Man comes with the clouds of Heaven&nbsp;<i>before the Ancient of Days</i>&nbsp;and is given the Kingdom. What is in view is not so much the coming of Christ to earth but His coming to receive the Kingdom from the Father. Dan. 7:26,27: &ldquo;The judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end. The kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole Heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High: His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him&rdquo;. &ldquo;The Son of Man&rdquo; is here interpreted as &ldquo;the people of the saints of the Most High&rdquo;. The Son of Man, therefore, refers not just to the Lord personally but to all those in Him. Having chosen to go out to meet Him once they hear the trumpet call, they are snatched away to meet Him in the air and the Lord comes with them in judgment. This is the picture presented in 1 Thess. 4:16,17 and elsewhere. This is why His &ldquo;coming&rdquo; is parallel with a period of time, &quot;the days of the son of man&quot;.</p><p>The Son of man will be &ldquo;revealed&rdquo;; and yet the other references to the Son of man being revealed refer to the way He is even now revealed to His true followers by the Father (Mt. 11:27; 16:17 etc.). At the second coming, the real nature of God&rsquo;s Son, the essence of His character, will be revealed to all. At the very time that the Wicked One will be revealed, so will the Son of God (2 Thess. 2:8). In the way God judges man, His character is again glorified and revealed; for in the way He judges, His essential characteristics are revealed. It is therefore possible to see anticipations of the day of future judgment in how God has judged in the past- thus incidents like Adam and Cain\'s rejection, the Babylonian and Roman invasions and the subsequent condemnation of God\'s people, the flood... all these are prototypes of the future judgment. Take, for example, the prophecy of Obadiah against Edom. It is full of language elsewhere used about the judgment seat.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2954','1','42','17','31','31','<p>17:31 <i>In that day, he that shall be on the housetop with his goods in the house- </i>The idea is that flight could be taken by jumping from housetop to housetop, without going back into the house. Escaping that way would best be done in any case without carrying anything. This is clearly language relevant specifically to first century Palestine, and is a parade example of how the prophecy was ideally intended for fulfilment then. The latter day fulfilment of these words will therefore only be in essence, rather than in detail. That is a principle we must bear in mind when considering many other Bible prophecies; the essence but not necessarily the detail will be fulfilled in the rescheduled and delayed version of their fulfilment. The implication of the language here is that the sign to flee will be momentary; the signs are not, therefore, to be perceived over decades or even years, leading slowly towards the Lord&rsquo;s coming. Rather these signs, especially of the abomination, will appear suddenly, to the extent that the believer must flee immediately, quite literally without a moment to lose.</p><p>But this reflection leads us to wonder whether the fleeing away in a split second, be it from the field or housetop, is more likely a reference to the need to respond immediately to the call to leave secular life and go to meet the Lord. The example of a person in the field needing to leave immediately naturally connects with the words of :36 about the snatching away of the believers at the Lord&rsquo;s return: &ldquo;Two shall be in the field, the one shall be taken, and the other left&rdquo;. This would dovetail well with the implication elsewhere that the immediacy of our response to the knowledge that &lsquo;He&rsquo;s back&rsquo; will effectively be our judgment. Those who themselves want to go to Him will be snatched away and meet Him, whilst those who delay will be rejected, as the foolish virgins who went first to buy oil.</p><p><i>Let him not go down to take them away, and let him that is in the field likewise not return back</i>- See on Lk. 14:33. The allusion is clearly to Lot fleeing Sodom, also &ldquo;to the mountains&rdquo;. This is a type of the response of the believers to the call to judgment at the Lord&rsquo;s return. If we don&rsquo;t separate from the world, we will share their judgment. The immediacy of response is so stressed, and will be ultimately indicative of where our heart is. Any desire to gather any material possessions will reveal that our heart is not wholly and solely with the Lord. All who love the Lord in spirit and in truth will respond to the sign or call to leave with immediacy.</p><p>Initially, it does not appear that there will be much compulsion to come to the judgment. After a meeting of the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:17), both sheep and goats eventually appear before the judgment seat. When the Angels first come to call us to judgment at the second coming (Mt. 13:39), there will be an element of choice as to whether we immediately accept the call to go and meet Christ. &ldquo;In that day&rdquo; we will have the choice to go and take our goods from the house, or to go immediately with the Lord (Lk. 17:31). Under the law, the trumpet sounded and Israel had to gather themselves together (Num. 10:4); yet Paul says in Thessalonians that the Lord comes with a trumpet to gather His people together. If this is indeed based upon the Old Testament pattern, then there is an element of choice as to whether we gather ourselves unto Him- at least initially. Noah and Lot were invited, not forced, to leave the world. Those who respond to Christ\'s return &quot;immediately&quot; will be accepted, implying that the unworthy delay. This means that the response is optional in the first instance (Lk. 12:36). There are other indications of this.&nbsp; The most obvious is in the parable of the virgins, where the wise go out to meet their Lord immediately, whilst the foolish delay in order to spiritually prepare themselves. Our attitude in that split second is so vital. The rejected will mourn and wail, in anticipation of their future condemnation, when they see the sign of the Son of man indicating His imminent coming (Mt. 24:30,31). And this is why there is the implication that effectively, the division between sheep and goats happens in the gathering process (Mt. 25:33); our response to the gathering is our judgment. The parables invite us to see the Lord gathering the wheat to one place and the tares to another, as if the gathering is the judgment (Mt. 13:30); the wheat is gathered to the garner, and the chaff to the place of burning (Mt. 3:12). The Angel who reaps for judgment \'thrusts in\' his sickle, and \'casts out\' the wicked in rejection (Rev. 14:19). But \'thrust in\' and \'cast out\' in that verse both translate the same Greek word <i>ballo</i>- the implication being that the gathering-to-judgment process is in fact the separation process. Likewise the net is &quot;cast&quot; into the sea in order to gather people for judgment, and then the rejected are &quot;cast&quot; away (Mt. 13:47,48).</p><p>The news that Joseph was alive and glorified was received rather like that of Christ\'s resurrection: initial disbelief, but then the family of Jacob who believed it rose up and left all they had to go to be with Joseph; Israel in AD70 and the last days are likewise bidden leave their stuff and go to be with Christ (Gen. 45:20 cp. Lk. 17:31).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2955','1','42','17','32','32','<p>17:32 <i>Remember Lot\'s wife</i>- Lot seems to have gone to Sodom for material ends- our Lord holds up his wife as an example of those who love the materialism of this world more than the reality of his Kingdom. But the Angels speak of spiritually prepared people as being the only real possessions Lot had: &quot;Whatever you have in the city, bring them out&quot;.<br />&quot;But his wife looked back from behind him&quot; (Gen. 19:26) suggests the picture of the wife following behind Lot, filled with remorse at the loss of all she had held dear. Our Lord comments concerning not desiring our &quot;stuff which is in the house&quot; in the day of his coming: &quot;Remember Lot\'s wife. Whosoever (like her) shall seek (Greek: \'plot\') to save his life shall lose it&quot;. We can infer from this that she plotted and schemed how to save her possessions- i.e. her \'life\', seeing that for her, her life did consist of the abundance of the things which she possessed (Lk. 12:15). These feelings grew so strong that she paused to take a loving, wistful look at the city. Remember that the fire only fell after Lot was in Zoar; therefore the city was looking as it normally did. Their exodus was at night- &quot;the sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar&quot; (Gen. 19:23), so she would have seen the flickering lights of the city in the distance. Compare this with how the virgins of Mt. 25 go out to meet their Lord at night. <br />&quot;Remember Lot\'s wife&quot; suggests that we should meditate upon her position as it has especial warning for the last days. Her leaving of Sodom appears to have been due to the personal influence of Lot her husband, yet ultimately she failed to have that personal desire to obey God. It would not be pushing the type too far to suggest that the wives of latter day believers may feel that they can enter the Kingdom in the spiritual shadow of their husbands. One cannot help wondering whether she left Ur not through personal response to the promises but because the others were leaving. Doubtless her uncle Abraham would have led her and the whole family in regular prayer and meditation during the journey towards Canaan. But somehow the reality of the God of Israel was never allowed to touch her inner being, and the years of the soft life in Sodom would have sealed her spiritual state. It is hard to avoid making the point that many of us may be in a similar position. Gen. 19:14 RVmg. brings out the likely immediate background to her decision. Lot&rsquo;s sons in law &ldquo;were to marry&rdquo; his daughters. The Lord too perceived that they were marrying and giving in marriage the very day the flood came, and He pointed out the similarities with the Sodom situation (Lk. 17:27-29). Could it not be that the very day of the double wedding, they had to leave? With all the build up to the wedding, Lot and his wife would so wanted to have stayed just another day to see the wedding of their two daughters. It is to the girls credit that they both left. But Lot&rsquo;s wife had invested so much in it emotionally that she just had to look back.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2956','1','42','17','33','33','<p>17:33 <i>Whoever shall seek to gain his life shall lose it, but whoever shall lose it shall preserve it</i>- The Lord Jesus speaks of how a person can lose their place in the Kingdom as a person losing or forfeiting their own self; He was thereby teaching that a place in the Kingdom was possessing one&rsquo;s own real self (Lk. 9:25 RV). To lose life is paralleled with the Lord to unashamedly witnessing to Him in an unbelieving world; and He calls us each one to lose our lives in this way (Mk. 8:35).</p><p>The Lord had earlier taught in Mt. 10:28 that in the condemnation of the last day, it is God who will destroy s.w. &ldquo;lose&rdquo; life &ldquo;soul&rdquo;, s.w.. But here the Lord says that a man will lose / destroy his own life if his life consists in what he owns (12:15) and seeks to save it. The point is that ultimately the condemned will have condemned themselves; the process of losing / destroying life is initiated and performed by people in this life, and the final condemnation is simply giving them what they themselves wished for. And the Lord goes further to say that whoever &lsquo;finds his life&rsquo; will lose or destroy it (Mt. 10:39). To find life for ourselves, to think that by obtaining &lsquo;finding&rsquo; the world, the ideal life for ourselves, is to actually lose or destroy life. The Lord had earlier taught that He had not come to destroy s.w. &lsquo;lose&rsquo; men&rsquo;s lives, but to save (Lk. 9:56). It is men who destroy / lose their own lives, they condemn themselves, rather than the Lord seeking to condemn them. The Father likewise has no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked. Rather does He simply confirm their own self-destruction. John&rsquo;s version of this saying about losing life is found in the context of the Lord speaking to Himself about the need to die on the cross: &ldquo;He that loves his life shall lose it&rdquo; (Jn. 12:25). To avoid the cross is to love life- this fleeting life. Attitudes like &lsquo;Spoil yourself&rsquo;, &lsquo;You deserve it&rsquo; and &lsquo;Have a fun time- you only live life once&rsquo; are all examples of loving life rather than losing it in self-condemnation for the hope of the eternal life. And so Lk. 17:33 repeats the words, in the context of commenting upon Lot&rsquo;s wife- her wistful look back to Sodom was because that was her life, the life she had loved.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2957','1','42','17','34','34','<p>17:34 <i>I say to you: In that night there shall be two men in one bed. One shall be taken, and the other shall be left</i>- Not only is the city of Sodom representative of the world of the last days, but Lot\'s calling out of Sodom by the Angels is typical of our being \'taken\' by Angels to meet the Lord.<br />In that day, &quot;One will be taken,&nbsp;whilst the other will be left behind&quot; Lk. 17:34. The Greek for &quot;taken&quot; is the same as in Jn. 14:3- the Lord comes again to <i>take</i> us to be with Him. Seeing this passage also speaks of the second coming, it seems to fit more logically that the faithful are taken away; and the rejected \'left behind&quot;. The Greek word for &quot;left&quot; really has the idea \'sent away\'. Whilst it\'s not the same Greek word, it is the same <i>idea</i> as in several pictures of the judgment- the rejected are \'sent away\'; the idea of being \'left sitting\' doesn\'t seem to be there. So in the very moment of the Lord\'s return, the essential division is made; the faithful are taken, whilst the rejected are &quot;left&quot;, but their being &quot;left behind&quot; is actually their condemnation, their being sent away from the Lord.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2958','1','42','17','35','35','<p>17:35 <i>There shall be two women grinding together at the mill; one shall be taken and the other shall be left</i>- The present tense is used here: &ldquo;One is taken, the other is left&rdquo;. Perhaps this was to heighten our sense that the essence of judgment is now; the call of the Gospel is a call to journey to judgment day. So much of the Lord&rsquo;s teaching sensitively gives examples including men, and then including women. He was so very far ahead of His time in being so gender inclusive.&nbsp;They were grinding using millstones, which are always used in the Bible as symbolic of condemnation. These people were working out their own condemnation. Perhaps the idea is that one the responsible would be taken away to destruction, the other not responsible to Divine judgment would be &ldquo;left&rdquo;.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2959','1','42','17','36','36','<p>17:36 <i>There shall be two men in the field; one shall be taken and the other shall be left</i>- I suggested on :34 that the taking away is to salvation and those left behind are destroyed with the world, after the pattern of Lot being saved and his family destroyed. But a case can be made the other way around. The \'taking away\' is in judgment / condemnation / destruction, just as the unbelieving world were \'taken away\' (Mt. 24:39). The ambiguity in interpretation is intentional. For we are to reflect that we shall be taken or left, and to where shall we be taken, and for what shall we be left. &quot;Left&quot; in the Greek has a wide range of possible meanings here- the word is translated \'forgiven\', \'sent away\', and perhaps there is here the hint that they will be preserved to hear the Gospel of the Kingdom. In this sense we must remember the Lord\'s definition that &quot;the field is the word&quot; (Mt. 13:38). And in the Olivet prophecy He has foreseen that the faithful who are called away will be &quot;in the field&quot; (Mt. 24:18). The parable of the prodigal son likewise features the two sons, both in a field (Lk. 15:15,25 s.w.). The prodigal leaves the field and goes to the Father. The older son refuses to ultimately leave the field and go in to the Father. Legalism and judgmentalism is therefore quite enough to warrant being \'taken away\' to condemnation.&nbsp;See on 1 Thess. 4:15.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2960','1','42','17','37','37','<p>17:37 <i>And they answered and said to him: Where, Lord? And he said to them: Where the body is, there will also the eagles gather together</i>- God sometimes uses language in a way which we may find embarrassing or inappropriate, reading from the distance of our age and culture, where there is an awkwardness at talking about the raw side of human nature. Thus when creating a mini-parable to explain the gathering of the responsible to him at the second coming, Jesus likens himself to a rotting carcass which will instinctively attract the eagles, representing the responsible. One of the well known shames of crucifixion was that the body was pecked by birds, even before death occurred. The idea of an uncovered body attracting birds (i.e. the believers) would have been readily understood as a crucifixion allusion. But within our use of language, it seems inappropriate to liken the Lord Jesus Christ to a decaying carcass. It seems similarly inappropriate to liken God&rsquo;s response to our prayers to an unjust judge who grudgingly answers requests (Lk. 18:1-7), or to repeatedly compare Jesus to a thief (Mt. 24:43; Lk. 12:39,33; 1 Thess. 5:2-4; Rev. 3:3; 16:15). It seems out of place to liken believers struggling to enter the Kingdom to violent people trying to storm a city by force (Mt. 11:12). The absentee landlords of Galilee were despised by all; and yet the Lord uses one of them as a figure for Himself (Lk. 20:9). Most stunning of all is Psalm 78:36,65,66: &ldquo;They (Israel) did flatter Him (God) with their mouth&hellip; then the Lord awaked&hellip; like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine. And he smote his enemies in the hinder parts&rdquo;. This just isn&rsquo;t what we expect; to read about God being flattered by foolish men, and for Him to be likened to a drunken soldier who goes on the rampage kicking others in their private parts (this is alluding back to 1 Sam. 5:9). And the Lord likens His final appeal to Israel to casting dung around them (Lk. 13:8).</p><p>This whole verse has various possible interpretations which each seem to me to have things to commend them and yet also their own problems. This verse is an expansion upon the Lord\'s teaching that His coming will be visible, will be as the lightning of judgment upon those who have not &quot;gone forth&quot; to Him, and no credence should be given to any claims He has come invisibly. The Lord may be likening His coming to the coming down from the sky of eagles upon the carcass- of Israel. This could have had an AD70 fulfilment in the \'eagles\' of the Roman legions, just as Yahweh\'s Old Testament \'comings\' in judgment upon Israel were at the hands of the Babylonian and Assyrian armies. But the final coming of Divine judgment will be in the literal, personal coming of God\'s Son to earth in judgment. The same Greek word translated &quot;where&quot; is found in Mk. 13:14- the abomination of desolation will stand &quot;<i>where</i>&nbsp;it ought not&quot;. It could be that this location on the temple mount is what the Lord has in view. This is where He will come down in judgment. Upon the very location He was then standing upon with the disciples, the pride and glory of an apostate Judaism. It was already no more than a carcass in God\'s eyes. The temple was &quot;where s.w. the Jews always resort&quot; (Jn. 18:20). The carcass or dead body may not necessarily refer to Israel. In Rev. 11:8,9 we find the same Greek word used about the dead bodies of the faithful remnant who share their Lord\'s death in Jerusalem and lay exposed for three days- perhaps literal days. The metaphor of the eagles coming speaks of&nbsp;Divine judgment from Heaven, ultimately in the personal coming of Christ to earth. In this case, the eagles would come because of the dead bodies / carcass of those who had died the death of Christ in Jerusalem in the final tribulation. The Greek word for &quot;carcass&quot;,&nbsp;<i>stoma</i>, literally means \'a fallen one\', and is from the verb&nbsp;<i>pipto</i>, to fall. And this word is used about the fall of Jerusalem- also in Revelation 11. The city &quot;fell&quot; (Rev. 11:13), just as Jerusalem was to &quot;fall by the edge of the sword&quot; (Lk. 21:24).</p><p>It&rsquo;s possible that the Lord intended us to understand the carcass as Jerusalem, and the vultures as the latter day invaders of Israel (Jer. 4:13).&nbsp; Or it has been suggested by Harry Whittaker that &ldquo;If you (my disciples) show yourselves to be spiritually a carcass (as in Rev. 3:1), you will certainly find yourselves the prey of these &quot;vultures,&quot; the false teachers&rdquo;.&nbsp; &quot;Where, Lord?&rdquo; may not necessarily mean &lsquo;<i>to&nbsp;</i>where&rsquo;. That the Roman invasion of AD67-70 was a detailed fulfilment of some parts of the Mosaic prophecies of curses for disobedience is well known and chronicled; here the quotation would be from Dt. 28:26 &quot;your carcasses shall be meat unto the fowls of the air&quot;.</p><p>So this may refer to the coming of Christ down from Heaven in judgment upon either the carcass of Israel, or for the sake of the carcasses of the slain believers. The Greek for &quot;eagle&quot;,&nbsp;<i>aetos</i>, literally means \'one of the air <i>aer</i>\', and&nbsp;<i>aer</i>&nbsp;is used of how the Lord Jesus will come in the &quot;air&quot; <i>aer</i> with the faithful in judgment (1 Thess. 4:17). This would be the pouring out of the seventh vial into &quot;the air&quot; <i>aer</i>, when finally &quot;It is done&quot; (Rev. 16:17).&nbsp;Yet here in Lk. 17:37 the Lord speaks of the gathering of the eagles in terms of explaining how His people will be gathered to Him and judgment. The same word for \'gather\' is used repeatedly for the gathering of the faithful in the last days (Mt. 3:12; 13:30; 25:26,32; Jn. 15:6). Most notably, we find it used in 1 Thess. 4:14, comforting the believers that God will at the last day \'gather\' the dead believers at the last day (AV &quot;will God&nbsp;<i>bring</i>&nbsp;with Him&quot;). This will be the &quot;gathering together unto Him&quot; (2 Thess. 2:1 s.w.). This is all impressive evidence that the language of \'gathering\' is used about the gathering of the believers to Christ at His coming, and according to 1 Thess. 4:16,17 this will involve a literal being snatched away from persecution, according to the Olivet prophecy. Just as the believers will be led / gathered to human judgment seats (Mk. 13:11,&nbsp;<i>ago</i>), gathered / lead / brought <i>ago</i> before human kings (Lk. 21:12), so they will be gathered to the judgment seat of Christ the King <i>sun-ago</i>.&nbsp;</p><p>The Lord responds to the question about how we will get to judgment by saying that eagles fly to where the body is. It&rsquo;s possible to interpret eagles as Angels- e.g. Rev. 8:13 speaks of an Angel flying through the sky in the last day, crying &lsquo;woe&rsquo;- the Greek&nbsp;<i>ouai</i>&nbsp;would&rsquo;ve been understood as an imitation of the noise an eagle makes. And there are other links between Rev. 8 and Mt. 24. So perhaps the Lord&rsquo;s answer was that we are not to worry about getting there, as our Angels will take us to judgment. Zech. 14:5 speaks of the coming of the Lord Jesus &ldquo;and all the holy ones with him&rdquo;. But it is applied to the believers in 1 Thess. 3:13 and to the Angels in 2 Thess. 1:7. In this sense, the believers come with their Angels to judgment; but because the process happens in a moment of time, it appears that in fact Jesus returns with the faithful. This is why elsewhere the Lord Jesus is described as returning both with Angels (Mt. 16:27; 25:31; Lk. 9:26) and with the saints (Rev. 19:14 cp. 17:14).</p><p>And yet the Lord may simply be saying that questions like \'Where?\' and \'When?\' are irrelevant. We shall be taken to judgment just as eagles find their way to the carcass, but we are to ensure that we are not that dead carcass.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2961','1','42','18','1','1','<p>18:1 <i>And he spoke a parable to them, that they should always pray and not lose heart, saying</i>- This comes straight after the teaching in chapter 17 about readiness for the Lord\'s coming; and continued, intense prayer is part of that preparedness. There are so many allusions by Paul to this verse and the ensuing parable. This shows just how like us Paul was; he had his favourite parables, one or two that really stuck in his mind, just as we do. And he alluded to them They were in his heart, to inspire and motivate him, just as the Lord intended. Paul picks up the idea of not fainting in 2 Thess. 3:13: &quot;Brethren, be not weary (s.w. &quot;not to faint&quot;) in well doing&rdquo;. What well-doing did Paul have in mind? Attending the Sunday meetings? Being patient with some difficult sister in the ecclesia? The connection with Lk. 18:1 tells us what he had in mind: keep on praying intensely. It\'s no co-incidence that Paul started that section of 2 Thess. 3 (in v.1) with the exhortation: &quot;Brethren, pray for us&quot;. And he concludes it with the same rubric: &quot;Brethren, be not weary&quot; (faint not), in your prayers. He knew from the parable that repeated prayer was powerful. And so he asks them to keep at it for him, because he needed it. Perhaps Paul had the same thing in mind when he wrote to the Ephesians (3:13): &quot;In (Christ) we have boldness and access with confidence (to God, in prayer, cp. Heb. 4:16)... <i>wherefore</i> I desire that you faint not (s.w. Lk. 18:1) at my tribulations&quot;; is he not implying \'You know how powerful prayer is, so don\'t faint in it, you know what struggles I\'m having, <i>please</i> keep on praying for me, like that persistent widow in the parable\'. This fits in with a number of other passages in which Paul unashamedly begs his brethren to pray for him. In this we see his humility, his high regard for other brethren who were almost certainly weaker than him, and also the physical desperation of his daily life.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2962','1','42','18','2','2','<p>18:2 <i>There was in a city a judge, who did not fear God and had no regard for man</i>- The judge, representing God, lived in the same city as the widow, representing us (:3). The Kingdom of God is likened to a city which we are to enter. We are in a sense within it now, having entered through the narrow gate. The unjustness of the judge is setting up the final point of this parable; the end stress of the parable is that if this is how an unjust judge acts, then how much more sensitive is God to our cries for justice. But we are to note that Israel were commended to appoint judges who feared God (Ex. 18:21). The existence in Israel of judges who did not fear God was therefore a criticism of Israel as a whole. The judge did not &quot;regard&quot; man; the word means to respect to the point of reverence (s.w. 20:13; Mt. 21:37; Heb. 12:9). The implication is that God so respects us, that He, unlike this judge, is eager to hear our prayers. And we are to respect others likewise; the implication here is that if we fear / respect God, we will respect men who are made in His image. And disrespect of human persons is thereby disrespect of God.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2963','1','42','18','3','3','<p>18:3 <i>And there was a widow in that city; and she came often to him, saying: Give me justice against my adversary</i>- Note the Psalmists\' <i>joy</i> that judgment is coming (Ps. 67:4; 96:12,13). The same spirit can be seen in the parable of the woman who keeps begging the unjust judge to open her case. She may have had her little piece of land taken away from her, whatever it was, she is confident she has a watertight case and this is why she so pesters the judge to judge her (Lk. 18:1-5). Now this is a powerful challenge to those believers who seem to <i>fear</i> the judgment process. David shows the same spirit in asking God to \'avenge my cause\' (Ps. 35:23). There is the same confidence that by grace, he is in the right and longs for justice to be done. So much of Romans is dedicated to the images of the court room; we are justified, and we should&nbsp;be earnestly seeking the vindication of Spirit against flesh.</p><p>The parable speaks especially of faith in prayer in the last days before the Lord\'s coming (:7,8). The implication is that the woman, the church, is under persecution from a great satan / adversary; and her earnest prayers will elicit God\'s dramatic judgment and intervention in this earth. This is all very much the language of the book of Revelation.</p><p>Much of the pain felt by the spiritually abused focuses upon the issue of injustice. They were treated like <i>this</i>, but others are treated like <i>that</i>; <i>you</i> can\'t break bread in a church, but <i>he</i> can; <i>she</i> isn\'t allowed to attend the gathering but <i>he </i>is, and so forth. The Lord told a parable about a woman who repeatedly asked for \'justice\', with the implication that she would only eventually find it at the Lord\'s return. But He went straight on to tell another parable, about the repentant man who beat upon his breast saying &quot;God have mercy upon me, the sinner&quot;; this man &quot;went down to his house <i>justified</i>&quot;. The theme of \'justification\' is thus a thread which continues from the woman demanding \'justification\' (Gk.) against her abuser (Lk. 18:3). The Lord\'s point wasn\'t merely that justice will only be ultimately done at His return; but further, that we are all serious sinners, who have been \'justified\' by God\'s grace; and this colossal-scale experience of receiving undeserved justice / justification should mean that we\'re not so concerned about receiving justice in human matters in this life. There cannot be perfection this side of God\'s Kingdom being established upon earth. To seek for perfection in relationships is perhaps reflective of a lack of faith or understanding relating to the Kingdom of perfection which is yet to come. One of the greatest things for me about that Kingdom is the unity and perfection of relationships which there will then be. It is, however, all so hard because the New Testament presents how the church should be- an ideal of loving, sensitive, caring relationships in the spirit of Christ. And this is very attractive to us. It\'s very hard, therefore, to face the reality that this great intention, this lofty possibility, has actually been left unachieved by the church. It\'s like reading the descriptions of God\'s house in Ezekiel 40-48. This wonderful temple could\'ve come about in Ezekiel\'s time. The possibilities are given in such great detail- but their fulfilment was quite simply dependent upon whether Judah wished to make it come real by living up to it (Ez. 43:10-12). And they chose not to. It\'s the same with the ideal &quot;house of God&quot; presented to us in the New Testament. Those who tend towards perfectionism find this very hard to cope with. It is indeed a tragedy, that so much Divine potential is as it were wasted, not realized, by our dysfunction. But none of this should take away from the personal reality of salvation and relationship with God which we each have. This is not to say that exposing abuse and dealing with it shouldn\'t happen. It should. But let\'s not feel that if justice isn\'t done, we are somehow without justice. We are the ultimately justified, and our standing before God\'s judgment seat is far more significant that our standing before that of mere humans.</p><p>First century Palestinian peasant courts have been described in some detail. They involved a mass of men shouting at the judge, who usually decided cases according to who gave the largest bribe. Women never went to court. It was a man\'s world there. This woman had no male in her extended family to speak for her. She had no money to pay a bribe. But still she went to court and sought to persuade the judge. In this element of unreality we see the bravery of prayer, the height of the challenge; that we who have nothing and no human chance of being heard, will indeed be heard. It would\'ve struck the initial peasant hearers of the story as strange that above all the male shouting, somehow this heroic woman was heard- and was heard repeatedly. Again, we see an encouragement to prayer. And to liken powerful praying to a woman was in itself unusual in that male dominated age.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2964','1','42','18','4','4','<p>18:4 <i>And for a while he would not, but afterward he said to himself: Though I neither fear God, nor regard man</i>- The idea is that eventually there is response even from one who has no sensitivity to people nor fear of God; and how much more quickly and deeply will come the response from the just judge of all, who does &quot;regard man&quot; with great pity (Ps. 144:3).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2965','1','42','18','5','5','<p>18:5 <i>Yet because this widow troubles me, I will give her justice, lest she wear me out by her continual coming</i>- The connection is perhaps with the man of the parable in Lk. 11:8, who was so bold and confident in his request that he shamelessly \'troubled\' the rich man to give him his request; and this too was explaining our confidence in prayer to the Father.&nbsp;</p><p>The widow by her continual coming in prayer \'wearied\' the judge into responding; Strong defines this Greek word as meaning \'to beat and black and blue\' (RVmg. gives &quot;bruise&quot;). It\'s a strange way of putting it, but this is another reminder of the intense struggle of prayer. Jacob\'s wrestling with the Angel was really a clinging on to him, pleading with tears for the blessing of forgiveness; and in this he was our example (Hos. 12:4-6). Lk. 21:36 RV speaks of the believer \'prevailing\' with God in prayer. Our prayers are to give the Father no &quot;rest&quot; (Is. 62:7), no cessation from violent warfare (Strong). See on Col. 2:1. Again, the idea is that if the unjust judge is so sensitive to this woman\'s words, to the point he feels beaten up by them- how much more sensitive is the Father to our prayers</p><p>The parable of the widow who keeps nagging the free-wheeling judge is rather humanly unlikely. Would such a tough guy really pay attention to the repeated requests of the woman? But although he considers himself independent of both God and men, he ends up being controlled by the widow. This reflects the immense power which there is in human prayer, and God&rsquo;s willingness to respond if we are importunate enough.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2966','1','42','18','6','6','<p>18:6 <i>And the Lord said: Hear what the unrighteous judge says</i>- Perhaps the fact the ungodly judge is worn out by the woman\'s requests is the element of unreality in the story; for usually, if she paid no bribe, she would not even get a hearing, let alone be repeatedly listened to. And it flags up the essential point of the parable, which is that God will be even more sensitive to us. The emphasis is on the word &quot;unrighteous&quot;. The <i>righteous</i> judge is going to be even more sensitive and quicker to respond than the unrighteous judge. The justice of God as judge is emphasized throughout the Old Testament, and the Lord describes Himself likewise as a just judge who responds to what He hears rather than to bribes or pressure from others in human society, Jn. 5:30.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2967','1','42','18','7','7','<p>18:7 <i>And shall not God give justice to His chosen, who cry to Him day and night?- </i>The unjust judge was worn down by the woman\'s repeated appeals. The implication is that God is far more sensitive and will therefore respond quicker. Even though His response may appear slow, compared to the magnitude of our request, His response is quick. </p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2968','1','42','18','7','7','<p>18:7- see on 2 Pet. 3:9.<br />The many connections between Revelation and the Gospels need to be followed up; the incidents in Christ\'s earthly experience seem to be woven by him into the fabric of the visions he gives John. The theme of persecution is especially common. The widow crying to God because of persecution represents the prayers of the &quot;elect&quot; or &quot;chosen&quot; remnant of the last days (Lk. 18:7 cp. Mk. 13:20). They will be asking for vengeance against the beast which is persecuting them, and thus this parable is the basis for the souls under the altar crying out for vengeance (Rev. 6:9). Christ\'s return is therefore the day of vengeance (Lk. 21:22; Is. 34:8; 61:2; 63:4) of his persecuted latter day ecclesia. Despite the power of prayer in bringing about the Lord\'s return in vengeance, Lk. 18:9-14 continues in this same context to warn that despite this: <br />- Perhaps the Lord won\'t find such faith in prayer when he returns <br />- Many will pray but be so sure of their own righteousness that their prayers are hindered <br />- The disciples will tend to despise the little ones in the ecclesia. <br />All these are latter day problems: abuse of &quot;the little ones&quot;, self-righteousness and lack of real faith in prayer.</p><p><i>Will He be slow to help them?</i>- God <i>will</i> shorten the period of time of trouble before His return (2 Pet. 3:9); and we read that He <i>will</i> also lengthen the period of grace (Lk. 13:6-9)&hellip; <i>if</i> His people ask Him. What He &lsquo;will&rsquo; do perhaps should be read as what He <i>can</i> do. And this is why so much prophecy is conditional. Significantly, no other religion that I know contains this feature- of a God so passionate and so real that He will change His stated will and intention for the sake of His people&rsquo;s prayers.</p><p>The AV &quot;though he bear long with them&quot; is accurate. 2 Pet. 3:9 uses the same word in teaching that &quot;The Lord... is longsuffering to us-ward&quot; (AV) of the last days. This longsuffering of Jesus spoken of by Peter alludes to this parable of the persistent widow, whose continued requests should match our prayers for the second coming (the vengeance of our adversaries which she requested will only come then). &quot;Though he bear long&quot; (s.w. \'longsuffering\') with us, &quot;God shall avenge His own elect, which cry day and night unto Him&quot; (Lk. 18:7 AV). The &quot;us&quot; whom Peter refers to as experiencing the Lord\'s longsuffering (\'bearing long\') are therefore to be equated with &quot;the elect&quot; in their fervent prayers for the second coming. The days being shortened for the elect\'s sake therefore refers to the hastening of the second coming on account of the elect\'s prayers (Mt. 24:22). In view of the later references to Mt. 24, it is not unreasonable to think that Peter is consciously alluding to Mt. 24:22 concerning the shortening of the days for the sake of the elect\'s prayers, through his allusion to the parable of the persistent widow of Lk. 18:7.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2969','1','42','18','8','8','<p>18:8<i> I say to you, that He will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, shall he find faith on the earth?</i>- &ldquo;Nevertheless&quot;, despite the fact God answers prayer, being far more sensitive to our cries than the unjust judge- it is still a question as to whether there will be faith in prayer in the last days, at the Son of Man\'s coming. Whilst the article is indeed used, <i>&quot;the </i>faith&quot; doesn\'t have to mean \'the set of doctrines which comprise the one faith\'. It may refer to that, but the article may be used here simply for emphasis. Will He find faith, <i>the </i>kind of faith which there ought to be given His sensitivity to us? The implication is that the experience of answered prayer <i>ought</i> to develop faith, but such will be the spiritual perils of the last days and the lack of serious prayer, that there may well be no faith in the final generation. Lot has just been cited in chapter 17 as an example of the latter day believers- and he was weak in faith, although saved. Likewise even the five wise virgins of the parable are sleeping when they ought to have stayed awake for their Lord\'s return.</p><p>The theme of prayer continues. Despite the power of prayer in bringing about the Lord\'s return in vengeance, Lk. 18:9-14 continues in this same context to warn that despite this:<br />- Perhaps the Lord won\'t find such faith in prayer when he returns<br />- Many will pray but be so sure of their own righteousness that their prayers are hindered<br />- The disciples will tend to despise the little ones in the ecclesia.<br /><i>May we not give way to these latter day temptations</i></p><p>There is the real possibility that when Christ returns, none will hold the faith. Only eight people were truly&nbsp;watching when the flood came; and Peter cites this as an example for us at the time of Christ\'s return. No wonder there is such emphasis upon the need to watch. If we are the generation which will see Christ\'s appearing, we will be the only people who never physically die. And we will be those who welcome the Lord Jesus to this earth, who stand ready to welcome Him. This is an honour higher than we probably appreciate. No wonder there is this pressing need in these last days to watch our doctrine, our way of life, <i>to hold on</i> to the great salvation which we have been given in prospect.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2970','1','42','18','9','9','<p>18:9 <i>And he spoke also this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt</i>- The theme continues from the previous parable. There, the woman representing us prays for justice. &quot;Justice&quot; and &quot;righteousness&quot; are connected ideas in Hebrew and Greek thought. The woman wanted justice / righteousness; but she did not have it of herself. It had to be granted by a judge, and we are in relationship with the just judge, who alone gives justice / righteousness. Those who think they are righteous of themselves do not therefore fear God and they therefore despise men, just as the unjust judge did. The Pharisee who &quot;treated others with contempt&quot; therefore equates with the unjust judge of whom we have just read; and the woman desperately begging for justice is the tax collector begging for forgiveness, for rightness with God, who goes down to his house justified, with justice / righteousness, just as the widow went away with justice.</p><p>Paul alludes here when he says that the sentence of death we have within our bodies requires a bodily resurrection and transformation of the body far beyond our power to achieve; and therefore we cannot trust in ourselves, i.e. our own righteousness (2 Cor. 1:9). Rather must we cast ourselves upon God\'s grace.</p><p>The Lord was &quot;despised&quot;, the same word here translated \'to treat with contempt\' (23:11; Acts 4:11). Those despised by religionists are fellowshipping their Lord\'s sufferings; and the religionists by doing so are taking the side of His abusers.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2971','1','42','18','10','10','<p>18:10 <i>Two men went into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector</i>- Many of the parables feature two people; the self-righteous, and the serious sinner. One saved, the other lost. The parable of the older and younger sons in chapter 15 is a clear example. We have it again here. If we don\'t identify with the serious sinner- then we have to identify with the self-righteous.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2972','1','42','18','11','11','<p>18:11<i> The Pharisee stood and prayed thus- </i>AV &quot;Prayed thus with himself&quot;. The OT idiom of prayer &lsquo;returning into one&rsquo;s own bosom&rsquo; is surely the quarry from which the Lord dug His image of a man praying <i>with himself</i>. It isn&rsquo;t real prayer; it&rsquo;s one part of the brain talking to a black box in another part of the brain, that we call &lsquo;God&rsquo;.</p><p><i>God, I thank you that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector</i>- Luke uses the same term in recording how &quot;the rest of men&quot; would seek and find the Lord (Acts 15:17). Those despised as secular, non-religious and the hopeless sinners are the very ones whom the Lord came to save; rather than the self-righteous religionists. And these are the ones we should be reaching out to, rather than attempting to convert religionists from one flavour to another. The same word for &quot;rest&quot; has just been used in :9 for how the Pharisee despised &quot;others&quot;. It means to put down, to set at nothing; and this is how the tax collector, and those in his category, are made to feel by the self-righteous. It\'s a big reason why secular folk who are searching for God won\'t attend church.</p><p>&quot;Or even as&quot; could as well be translated to the effect that &quot;this tax collector&quot; was the epitome of an extortioner, unjust and adulterer. And his deep penitence could suggest there might have been some truth in that accusation. But he, the &quot;unjust&quot;, was the one who went away &quot;justified&quot; (:14). Luke was personal friends with Paul, and it could be argued that his Gospel record was preparation for Paul\'s later theological writings. The idea of the unjust being justified by faith through grace is exactly the theme of Paul in Romans and elsewhere.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2973','1','42','18','12','12','<p>18:12 <i>I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I get</i>- Fasting was only required by the Law on the day of Atonement; and tithing was only of cattle and agricultural produce. Obedience to law, and even exceeding legal requirements, was not the basis for justification; for it is the hopeless sinner who goes away justified (:14); as noted on :11, Luke seems to be preparing the way for Paul\'s later expositions on justification of sinners by faith and not legal obedience.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2974','1','42','18','13','13','<p>18:13 <i>But the tax collector, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but struck his breast, saying: God, be merciful to me, the sinner</i>- Ps. 51:1 &ldquo;Have mercy on me, O God&hellip;&rdquo; is quoted by the publican in Lk. 18:13. He felt that David&rsquo;s prayer and situation was to be his. And he is held up as the example for each of us. In Romans 4, Paul quotes David\'s sin with Bathsheba as our pattern. We along with all the righteous ought to &ldquo;shout for joy&rdquo; that David really was forgiven (Ps. 32:11)- for there is such hope for <i>us</i> now. David is our example, and yet therefore the intensity of David&rsquo;s repentance must be ours. He hung his head as one in whose mouth there were no more arguments, hoping only in the Lord&rsquo;s grace (Ps. 38:14 RVmg.). Paul alludes here and sees this man as himself (1 Tim. 1:15,16). See on Lk. 23:48.</p><p>Usually men prayed with hands crossed over their chest. But men even at funerals don\'t usually beat upon their breast: &quot;The remarkable feature of this particular gesture is the fact that it is characteristic of women, not men&quot;. The man was quite exceptionally upset and in grief- because of his sins. Beating his breast suggested a blow to his heart, as if confessing himself worthy of death. And personal recognition of private sin wasn\'t a big feature of first century life. The Lord\'s initial audience would\'ve been amazed at the contrition and grief which this man had because of his secret sins; and this is the lesson for us. The times of prayer in the temple coincided with the offering of the daily sacrifices. The man asks for God to \'have mercy on me\' (Lk. 18:13). But he uses a different word to that in Lk. 18:38, where the same translation commonly occurs. <i>Hilastheti moi</i>, he says; and the noun occurs only in Rom. 3:25; Heb. 9:5; 1 Jn. 2:2; 4:10 to describe the atonement sacrifice. It seems the man was so extraordinarily moved by his own sin and the sacrifice offered. No wonder the same phrase occurs in Lk. 23:48 about people likewise beating their breasts in repentance when they saw the actual sacrifice of Christ on the cross.</p><p>The humble man &ldquo;smote his breast, saying, God, be <i>merciful</i> to me a sinner&quot;. &ldquo;Be merciful&quot; translates the word elsewhere translated &ldquo;make propitiation&quot;, in describing the atoning death of Jesus on the cross (Heb. 2:17). The man&rsquo;s sinfulness drove him to plead for the cross: &lsquo;Please God, make a propitiation for me&rsquo; was his plea. He realized his need for the cross. And we should look back at the cross and feel and know the same need&hellip; According to the Lord\'s own teaching, there are in some ways only two types of believer: either we are the self-righteous Pharisee, or the publican who beats his breast in self-loathing, hating his corrupt heart, begging for &ldquo;mercy&rdquo; Gk. propitiation, confessing that he is <i>the</i> sinner (Lk. 18:13 Gk.). Paul, in one of his many allusions to the Gospels, reached the same height of contrition when he said, in total honesty, that he was &ldquo;the chief of sinners&quot; (1 Tim. 1:15,16).&nbsp; James 4:9 tells some believers in the Jerusalem ecclesia that their joy ought to be turned to heaviness, implying the downcast look of the publican who could not so much as lift up his eyes to God. This man is held up by the Lord and James as some kind of hero and example to us.</p><p>The man who &lsquo;humbled himself&rsquo; smote upon his breast in knowledge of his own sin and his Lord&rsquo;s grace. The Greek phrase occurs elsewhere only once, again in Luke&rsquo;s thought, in describing how those humbled by the vision of the cross beat upon their breasts (Lk. 23:48)- surely in recognition of their sin and contrition before the grace of God outpoured. In the cross, we see self-humbling that we might be exalted. And we respond by likewise humbling ourselves, that others may be exalted.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2975','1','42','18','14','14','<p>18:14 <i>I say to you, this man went home rendered righteous rather than the other. For everyone that exalts himself shall be humbled, but he that humbles himself shall be exalted</i>- This is alluded to in 2 Cor. 11:7. Paul told Corinth that he had abased himself so that <i>they</i> might be exalted, so that they could share the exaltation he would receive on account of his humility. In all this, of course, he reflected to his brethren the very essence of the attitude of the Lord Jesus for toward us. It was through refusing funding for his work from the Corinthians that he <i>abased</i> himself that they might be <i>exalted</i>- all language of the crucifixion (cp. Phil. 2:8,9). Thus his refusing of legitimate help to make his way easier was an enactment in himself of the cross. We live in a world which has made the fulfilment of personal aims of paramount importance. It has affected the fabric of every society, and become embedded in every mind. To <i>live to serve</i>, to put oneself down that others may rise&hellip; this is strange indeed. John the Baptist had this spirit, for he rejoiced that he decreased whilst the Lord&rsquo;s cause increased. Paul likewise abased himself that others might be exalted, after the pattern of the cross. God&rsquo;s gentleness, His humility / bowing down (Heb.) has made us great, lifted us up (Ps. 18:35). And we respond to it by humbling <i>our</i>selves.</p><p>So we are taught here that he who humbles himself in prayer will be exalted. Paul perhaps had this in mind when he spoke of how the Lord Jesus on the cross humbled Himself that He might be exalted (Phil. 2). Real prayer is a humiliating experience, a true humbling of self after the pattern of the Lord&rsquo;s crucifixion. We really need to ask ourselves whether this is anywhere near true of our prayer life.</p><p>To come before &quot;the throne of grace&quot; is to come in essence before the judgment and before the cross of our Lord. Inevitably these things convict us of our desperation. The publican who beat upon his breast &quot;went down to his house justified&quot;. Yet we were justified by the shedding of the blood of Christ (Rom. 5:9). That man\'s faith was consciously focused upon the Lord\'s sacrifice. We believe on Him who justifies us, through the blood of the cross (Rom. 4:5), and this faith is manifested through focusing upon the cross, and expressing it in prayer to be justified. The publican went home after prayer &quot;justified rather than the other&quot;. It has been suggested that this reflects &quot;a Semitic idiom which describes&hellip; an anticipation of his acquittal in the final judgment&quot;.</p><p>The language of justification &quot;rendered righteous&quot; as noted on :11 and :12 is preparing the way for Paul\'s inspired expansion of these ideas in Romans.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2976','1','42','18','15','15','<p>18:15 <i>And they were bringing to him even their babies, that he should touch them- </i>His blessing was and is mediated without physical contact. The need for physical contact in order to receive blessing was embedded in the religious mentality of the time, and is seen to this day in so many rituals and traditions of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The sick woman thought to herself that if she could only&nbsp;<i>touch&nbsp;</i>Jesus, she would be made whole; but He responded that He made her whole because of&nbsp;<i>her faith</i>&nbsp;(Mt. 9:21,22). He was gently correcting her mistaken understanding of the power of touch. And yet the Lord made a concession to this misunderstanding by indeed touching the children as requested.</p><p>The touching was understood as a form of blessing. The implication is that the Lord agrees to the request, blessing little ones for the sake of the efforts of third parties who bring them to Him (as in Mk. 2:5 and so often in the work of saving and curing men). As the children &lsquo;received&rsquo; this blessing, so the Lord urges the disciples to &lsquo;receive&rsquo; the things of the Kingdom- for Mk. 10:15 records the Lord&rsquo;s further comment that &ldquo;whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no way enter into it&rdquo;. Those children receiving His grace and blessing, all the more gracious because they received it thanks to others bringing them to it, represent each disciple who receives the grace and blessing of the Kingdom.</p><p><i>But when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them</i>- Just as they had turned away the little one in Matthew 18, as they sought to send away the hungry crowds, forbad John&rsquo;s disciples and tried to turn away the Syro-Phoenician woman. And they did this despite the Lord&rsquo;s sober warning that turning away little ones is making them stumble, and will lead to eternal rejection from God&rsquo;s Kingdom. The disciples in their preaching, of which the Gospels are transcripts, were stressing how they had so failed to grasp this vital teaching.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2977','1','42','18','16','16','<p>18:16 <i>But Jesus called them to him, saying: Permit the little children to come to me, and do not forbid them. For to such belongs the kingdom of God</i>- The Lord rebuked the disciples for \'forbidding\' John\'s disciples and the little ones to come to Him (Mk. 9:38); and yet He uses the same word to describe how the lawyers hindered s.w. \'forbad\' people to enter the Kingdom. There\'s a very clear parallel here between the disciples and their Jewish teachers who had so influenced their thinking. But they finally got there- for Peter insisted that Gentiles should not be forbidden s.w. \'hinder\' baptism (Acts 10:47); and he uses the same word again when he says that now, he will not &quot;withstand s.w. \'hinder\' God in hindering people to come to Him (Acts 11:17). The awfulness of the disciples\' attitude is brought out by the use of the word in 1 Thess. 2:16, where Paul says that the way the Jews \'forbad\' or hindered the preaching of the Gospel was cause for the wrath of God to come upon them &quot;to the uppermost&quot;. And the disciples initially followed their Jewish elders in this kind of behaviour. In passing, there is a sober warning here to those who would likewise \'forbid\' baptism to those who sincerely seek it, and who will not allow &lsquo;little ones&rsquo; to the Lord&rsquo;s table.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2978','1','42','18','17','17','<p>18:17 <i>Truly I say to you, Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no way enter into it</i>- &lsquo;Be babes&rsquo; Peter later exhorted, &lsquo;and grow as they do&rsquo; (1 Pet. 2:2). The same word occurs here in Lk. 18:15 in description of the &ldquo;infants&rdquo; whom Peter rebuked. The Lord&rsquo;s response had been to tell Peter to be like them. And, having been humbled into learning something of a child&rsquo;s teachableness, a babe&rsquo;s desire for the sincere milk, Peter now asks others to learn the lesson.&nbsp;</p><p>The idea of &ldquo;receiving&rdquo; is often used about people accepting the Gospel. The implication is that one can receive the Gospel of the Kingdom of God- and yet not enter it, because we didn&rsquo;t receive it as a child. We didn&rsquo;t accept that we are the &lsquo;little ones&rsquo;, accepting we know so little, and just marvelling at the special grace being shown us which we accept in awed wonder. The language of &lsquo;entering the Kingdom&rsquo; is used both of our final entry into the Kingdom when Christ returns (Mt. 25:10,21; Jn. 3:5), and of our current entering the Kingdom. The rich man can enter the Kingdom right now if he sheds the load of his wealth (Mt. 19:23,24). The Scribes stopped and hindered those who were entering the Kingdom from entering, locking the door through which the Kingdom could now be entered, all because they chose not to enter themselves (Mt. 23:13; Lk. 11:52). So it&rsquo;s a case of &lsquo;Now but not yet&rsquo;. We do&nbsp;<i>now&nbsp;</i>enter into God&rsquo;s rest, and yet we are promised that we&nbsp;<i>will</i>&nbsp;enter that rest at Christ&rsquo;s return (Heb. 4:1-11). The Lord had warned that our righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes, or we will likewise not enter the Kingdom (Mt. 5:20); but that righteousness is in accepting the blessing of righteousness as a little child; for without&nbsp;<i>that</i>&nbsp;we shall not enter the kingdom. Those who do the will of the Father will enter the Kingdom (Mt. 7:21)- and that will is to be as little children and accept gifts without seeking to justify ourselves or earn them.</p><p>We will enter the Kingdom as shy children. It doesn\'t just mean that we must <i>now</i> be as little children, but more that we will enter the Kingdom as little children. For Jesus had just said that &quot;of such is the Kingdom&quot;. Children unspoilt by the hardness of this world and this flesh&hellip; this is how we will be as we walk away from the judgment seat into the Kingdom. And we should live the Kingdom life now. See on Lk. 12:37.</p><p>The Lord perceived spiritual prompts in the ordinary things of everyday life. He saw in those children the qualities of those who would be in His Kingdom. Those kids weren\'t \'spiritual\' in themselves. They were just Palestinian kids with well meaning, superstitious mums who believed in the power of the touch of the holy man. Yet, the Lord explained, that was no reason to disregard them. They should be seen as reminders of spiritual qualities which should be in us all. And this was how He perceived everything in His daily round of life. He raised everything to an altogether higher level.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2979','1','42','18','18','18','<p>18:18 <i>And a certain ruler asked him, saying: Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?</i>- Mark adds that he came running to Him and kneeled before Him. The idea was: \'Give me a list of dos and don\'ts, I\'m game\'. But the answer was ultimately: &quot;Follow me&quot; (:22)- \'don\'t worry about specifics, but have a spirit of life committed to following Me, bearing My cross\'. For that is reward enough. Likewise Peter was interested in what the reward would be for having given things up for the Lord; and the final answer is really \'I\'m going to die on the cross- please share that death with me\' (Lk. 18:28-33 and parallels).</p><p>The man was clearly influenced by the Jewish idea that one supreme good deed could assure the doer of salvation. This was particularly popular amongst the zealots, who considered that suicidal attacks on the Romans could assure them of salvation; the same mentality is to be found in Islamic suicide bombers today. But in His typical manner, the Lord doesn&rsquo;t address the misunderstanding but rather works with it. He ends up telling the man that if he sells all he has and gives to the poor, then he will have &ldquo;treasure in Heaven&rdquo; (:22). This, therefore, isn&rsquo;t a global command to every Christian. It was designed especially for this young man who thought that just one great act of obedience would secure salvation. The Lord went along with this by giving him such an example; but added: &ldquo;And come and follow Me&rdquo;, thus gently correcting the idea that one great act is enough for salvation.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Rom. 7:19 is Paul&rsquo;s allusion here, where he laments that like the young man, the good that he would do same Greek words &quot;shall I do&quot; he finds himself unable to do because of the sin that dwells within him. But instead of walking away from the Lord as this man did, Paul threw himself upon the Lord&rsquo;s grace. This zealous young man was also understood by Peter as representative of us all; for he clearly alludes to him in 1 Pet. 3:10,11: &ldquo;He who would love life and see good days cp. the young man wanting to &ldquo;have eternal life&rdquo;&hellip; let him&hellip; do good&rdquo; (same Greek words).&nbsp;</p><p>Mk. 10:17 notes that he also asked what he must do to &ldquo;inherit&rdquo; eternal life, as if he considered eternity a right that he must receive if he does only one great deed. The disciples heard the Lord assuring His people that those who follow Him will &ldquo;<i>have</i>&nbsp;eternal life&rdquo;, enter the Kingdom, enter into life, etc. But having heard all that, Peter asked: &ldquo;We have left all&hellip; what shall we&nbsp;<i>have</i>?&rdquo; (Mt. 19:27). The irony of it all is tragic. They&rsquo;d just been promised they would &ldquo;have&rdquo; eternal life. But that wasn&rsquo;t enough. Their focus was very much on this life; what shall we have&nbsp;<i>here and now</i>? They couldn&rsquo;t see very much beyond the present, past the curvature of their earth.&nbsp; Ruth&rsquo;s unnamed relative could have been her redeemer; but when he realized he would have to marry her and have children, and split up his fields into more strips so as to give those children an inheritance along with that of his existing children- he pulled out. He wouldn&rsquo;t &lsquo;mar his inheritance&rsquo;. He saw ahead to his death, to the next generation. His horizon was 20 years at most. But Boaz who didn&rsquo;t think like this established his spiritual inheritance eternally, and is therefore mentioned in the Lord&rsquo;s genealogy. Whilst the short sighted man passed off the page of history anonymously; his name wasn&rsquo;t preserved.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2980','1','42','18','19','19','<p>18:19 <i>And Jesus said to him: Why do you call me good? None is good, save one- God</i>- The Greek may not mean that the Lord was implying &lsquo;Only God is good- I am not good&rsquo;. Translators have added a number of words to try to flesh out the meaning of the words. The sense could just as well be &lsquo;None is as good as the one God&rsquo;- and therefore, we should keep&nbsp;<i>His</i>&nbsp;commandments. In other words, the Lord is not so much saying that He Himself is not &lsquo;good&rsquo; but rather refocusing the man&rsquo;s direction away from Himself towards the Father. For the man had come running to Him asking what he should do in order to inherit or rightfully have eternal life. And the Lord is refocusing the man upon the Father and the Father&rsquo;s commandments. The Lord may therefore have a rhetorical sense in His question &lsquo;<i>why</i>&nbsp;do you call Me good?&rsquo;. His sense would have been: &lsquo;Why are you so keen to call me &ldquo;good&rdquo;, setting me on a level with God? Instead, focus on obeying God&rsquo;s commandments and tackle your hardest challenge- to give away your wealth, and then follow Me in the itinerant life towards the cross&rsquo;. The man&rsquo;s overly high and unrealistic view of Jesus, as if He were God Himself, was really an excuse for his own refusal to face the challenge of living the Christian life. Every false doctrine has a psychological basis, and the idea that Jesus is God and the Trinity are no different. To accept Jesus as less than God, as totally human, is a far deeper challenge to our living than accepting Jesus as being God Himself. If Jesus was human, sharing our own flesh, in which there dwells no good thing (Rom. 7:18), and yet was able to be perfect- this lays down a huge challenge to each of us. It&rsquo;s far less challenging to accept Jesus as God and therefore good and perfect by nature. This is why I suggest the Lord is probing&nbsp;<i>why</i>&nbsp;the man called Him &ldquo;good&rdquo;- and redirected him towards the need for keeping the commandments and living the committed life in practice. So we have here a passage of deep significance for discussions about the Trinity. The Lord cites the unity of God as meaning that He alone is ultimately &lsquo;good&rsquo;, and challenges the man who wanted to treat Him as God as to whether this was not just an excuse for not doing the hard work of following Him in practice.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2981','1','42','18','20','20','<p>18:20 <i>You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery. Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Honour your father and mother</i>- Harry Whittaker makes an interesting but not totally convincing case that the rich young man here was Barnabas and these commands were very relevant to him as a Levite- see&nbsp;<i>Studies in the Gospels&nbsp;</i>chapter 148. Paul\'s references to the Gospels suggests that he had carefully meditated upon the passages to which he consciously alludes. The fact and way in which he&nbsp;<i>alludes</i>&nbsp;rather than quotes verbatim reflects the fact he had thought through and absorbed the teaching of the passages rather than learning them parrot fashion. Here the Lord Jesus combines two quotations from the Law: Ex. 20:12-16 followed by Lev. 19:18. Paul, in a different context, to prove a different point, combines those same two passages, although separating them by a brief comment (Rom. 13:9). This surely indicates that he had meditated upon how his Lord was using the Law, and mastered it so that he could use it himself.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2982','1','42','18','21','21','<p>18:21 <i>And he said: All these things have I observed from my youth</i>- The record in Mt. 19:20 stresses the incongruity and inappropriacy of the young man&rsquo;s self-righteousness: &ldquo;The&nbsp;<i>youth</i>&nbsp;answered, all these have I kept from my&nbsp;<i>youth</i>&nbsp;up&rdquo;. He was young- and he says that since a young man he had kept all the commands. Now the Lord doesn&rsquo;t lecture him about self-righteousness, nor does He point out that the young man is way over rating his own spirituality and obedience. Instead, the Master focuses on the positive- as if to say &lsquo;You are zealous for perfection? Great So, sell what you have and give to the poor. Go on, rise up to the challenge&rsquo;.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2983','1','42','18','22','22','<p>18:22 <i>And when Jesus heard it, he said to him: One thing you lack yet- </i>Matthew records that this was in response to his question: &quot;What do I still lack?&quot;. And Lk. 18:22 provides the Lord&rsquo;s answer: &ldquo;One thing you&nbsp;<i>lack</i>&nbsp;s.w.&rdquo;, but the &ldquo;one thing&rdquo; was to distribute his wealth and to follow Christ. The two things seem therefore related; it was the wealth which was stopping the following of Christ. The man had come to the Lord asking what great deed he must do to obtain eternal life, and so he was aware of his obedience to the commandments. He obviously felt that obedience to Mosaic law was not going to be the basis of eternal life, and he sensed that there was some great deed he must yet achieve. Therefore &ldquo;What do I still lack?&rdquo; shouldn&rsquo;t be read as an arrogant statement that he lacked nothing because he had been legally obedient. Rather is it a genuine question, seeking a concrete, clear and achievable answer.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>The Lord was quoting from the LXX of Ps. 23:1. Because the Lord Jesus is our shepherd, &quot;not one thing is lacking to me&quot;. The selling and sharing of his wealth is paralleled by the Lord with following Him. The one thing that was lacking was to shed his wealth&nbsp;<i>and</i>&nbsp;follow Christ. To follow Christ, to have Him as our shepherd, is therefore no merely intellectual affair, nor is it a question of legalistic obedience to a set of principles we inherited from our youth. It requires the most painful sacrifices.</p><p><i>Sell all you have and distribute to the poor- </i>Luke again uses the word in describing how the early believers did indeed sell their possessions and \'distribute\' to the poor within the ecclesia (Acts 4:35).</p><p><i>And you shall have treasure in heaven- </i>Alluded to in James 1:12. We note that the Lord treated each person differently. He approved Zacchaeus\' distribution of only half of his possessions- whilst demanding that this rich young man give away literally all. And He never seems to have demanded that those of His followers who owned houses should sell them. The same principle is seen in His preceding teaching about divorce and remarriage- His ideal standard is not &lsquo;given&rsquo; to everyone, just as it is not a requirement of everyone that they sell and they have and give to the poor. The Lord taught that we receive the Lord\'s goods s.w. &quot;what you have&quot; on conversion to Him (Mt. 25:14). We resign all, but receive all. By giving away our earthly wealth, we directly receive wealth in Heaven. Lk. 12:15,33,44 make a sustained play on this Greek word: &quot;A man\'s life doesn\'t consist in the abundance of the&nbsp;<i>things which he possesses</i>&nbsp;s.w.... sell&nbsp;<i>what you have</i>&nbsp;s.w. and give alms... the Lord will make such a man ruler over all&nbsp;<i>that he has</i>&nbsp;s.w.&quot;. Whilst the specific command to the young man to sell all he had and give it to the poor was not in one sense universal, i.e. not a command to every believer, yet the spirit of it (according to Luke 12) is indeed to be followed by us all. We must at least &quot;forsake \'to bid farewell to\' all that we have s.w.&quot; (Lk. 14:33). The early believers did not \'say\' that anything they possessed s.w. was their own (Acts 4:32)- Luke surely intends us to connect this with his earlier record of how the Lord had taught that our attitude, at very least, must be that we do not really \'own\' those things which we apparently \'have\'.&nbsp;</p><p><i>And come follow me</i>- See on Mk. 10:21; Lk. 10:42. In the first century, family and the family inheritance was everything. The way the Lord asked His followers to reject family and follow Him was far more radical than many of us can ever appreciate. Likewise His command to sell everything and follow Him implied so much- for the Middle Eastern family estate was the epitomy of all that a person had and stood for. And to be asked to give the proceeds of that inheritance to poor strangers... was just too much. It could seem, once one gets to know Middle Eastern values, that to abandon both family and the village home in favour of Jesus was just impossible- those things were more valuable to a Middle Eastern peasant than life itself. But still He asked- and people responded.</p><p>Consider the parallels between the Lord&rsquo;s demand of the young man, and Peter&rsquo;s comment (Lk. 18:22 cp. 28; Mk. 10:21 cp. 28):&nbsp;</p><div align=center><table border=0 cellspacing=10 cellpadding=0>    <tbody>        <tr>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>            &ldquo;Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor</p>            </td>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>&ldquo;We have left all</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>&hellip;and come, take up the cross</p>            </td>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>no comment by Peter- he censored this bit out in   his hearing of the Lord\'s words</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>and follow me&rdquo;</p>            </td>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>&hellip;and have followed you&rdquo;</p>            </td>        </tr>    </tbody></table></div><p>Peter seems to have subconsciously bypassed the thing about taking up the cross. But he was sure that he was really following the Lord. He blinded himself to the inevitable link between following Christ and self-crucifixion; for the path of the man Jesus lead to Golgotha. We have this same tendency, in that we can break bread week after week, read the records of the crucifixion at least eight times / year, and yet not let ourselves grasp the most basic message: that we as followers of this man must likewise follow in our self-sacrifice to that same end.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2984','1','42','18','23','23','<p>18:23 <i>But when he heard these things, he became exceedingly sorrowful. For he was very rich</i>- Again Luke\'s record of the early church alludes here, speaking of how possessions were sold and the money distributed to the poorer believers (Acts 2:45; 5:1 s.w.).&nbsp;Mk. 10:22 describes him as &quot;sad&quot;, literally the Greek means that he became overcast, as the sky clouding over. His joy, therefore, was because he had wrongly assumed that he could do some simple dramatic act well within his comfort zone, and thus attain an assurance of salvation. But his face clouded over when he realized that he was being called outside of his comfort zone. This is an exact picture of the disillusion which clouds so many once they perceive that the call of Christ is not to a mere social club or to surface level religion.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2985','1','42','18','24','24','<p>18:24 <i>And Jesus looking at him, said: How hard it shall be for those that have riches to enter into the kingdom of God</i>- Mk. 10:24 speaks of the man who trusts in riches; the parallel Lk. 18:24 speaks of him who <i>has</i> riches. To have riches is, almost axiomatically, to trust in them. This is the nature of wealth \'possession\'. For the man who has / trusts in riches, he must bow down like the camel wriggling through the small gate on its knees, having shed <i>all</i> its mountain of goods. This parable was given in the context of the Lord\'s straight statement: &quot;He that humbles himself will be exalted&quot; (Lk. 18:14 cp. 25). As the camel rose up from its knees the other side of the gate, so within the Kingdom\'s gates, those who have shed their trust in possessions will likewise be exalted.</p><p>The sense is not simply that it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom, but that he shall enter with difficulty. The Lord goes on to say that such shall enter the Kingdom only by God\'s grace and possibility of saving those who do not rise up to the higher levels that He bids us to (:27). In what, then, is the hardness or difficulty- if God is willing to accept our living on lower levels? The difficulty is in not walking away from Christ as the young man did, because of our pride; what is hard is to be like a child, the model throughout this entire discourse, and simply accept God\'s grace in Christ.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2986','1','42','18','25','25','<p>18:25 <i>For it is easier for a camel to enter in through a needle\'s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God</i>- The man walked away, whereas if he had cast himself upon the Lord\'s grace, or better still, sold what he had and given to the poor, then he could have right then begun to enter into the Kingdom. We begin entering the Kingdom right now; we are, according to another teaching, walking on the road to the judgment, and must get right with our brother who walks on the way there with us. The parable of the camel (i.e. the rich would-be believer) being unloaded of its wealth before it enters the city (Mt. 19:23,24) represents a rich man entering the Kingdom (the city = the Kingdom, as in Rev. 22:14; 21:2; Heb. 13:14; 11:16; a city can also represent believers). If he sheds his riches now, it follows he is then able in some sense to enter the Kingdom now. In these few words is our highest challenge in this age.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>In the beauty and depth of His simplicity, the Lord comprehended all this in some of the most powerful sentences of all time:&nbsp;<i>It is very hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom.&nbsp;</i>He&nbsp;<i>must</i>&nbsp;shed his riches, like the camel&nbsp;<i>had&nbsp;</i>to unload to pass through the needle gate. This is such a powerful lesson. And it\'s so simple. It doesn\'t need any great expositional gymnastics to understand it. Like me, you can probably remember a few things very vividly from your very early childhood. I remember my dear dad showing me this as a very young child, with a toy camel and a gate drawn on a piece of paper. And I saw the point, at four, five, maybe six. It is&nbsp;<i>so clear</i>. But what of our bank balances now, now we\'re old and brave? It\'s easier for a camel, the Lord said. Why? Surely because someone else unloads the camel, he (or she) has no say in it. But in the story, surely we must be the camel who unloads himself, who shakes it all off his humps, as an act of the will. And as we\'ve seen, the spirit of all this applies to every one of us, including those without bank accounts.</p><p>Luke\'s writings bear the marks of a doctor writing; he uses exact medical terms. Luke\'s medical language is clearly seen in how he records the Lord\'s words about &quot;passing through the eye of a needle&quot;. He uses the Greek medical term <i>belone</i>- a surgeon\'s needle. Matthew and Mark use the more domestic word <i>raphis </i>(Mt. 19:24; Mk. 10:25).</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2987','1','42','18','26','26','<p>18:26 <i>And they that heard it said: Then who can be saved?</i>- They were really so shocked (Mt.) that wealth made it hard to enter the Kingdom, implying they were strongly persuaded that wealth was a gift from God and a sign of His approval of a man. This of course was quite foreign to the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and other teaching of the Lord, and so we see how far they had been from understanding His most basic teachings. </p><p>&quot;Can be...&quot; translates the same word the Lord uses in the next verse to say that with God, even the saving of the wealthy who don\'t quit their wealth is &quot;possible&quot;- on the basis, therefore, of His willingness to accept a lower standard of achievement to that He ideally requires.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2988','1','42','18','27','27','<p>18:27 <i>But he said: The things which are impossible with men are possible with God</i>- The status of&nbsp;<i>para&nbsp;</i>God is often applied to the Lord Jesus (Lk. 2:52; Jn. 6:46; 8:40; 16:27; Acts 2:33). The suggestion could be that because of the status of the Lord Jesus with the Father, such gracious salvation is possible which would be impossible if men simply had to have the steel will to obey the Father&rsquo;s ideal principles.</p><p>The idea of possibility with God is lifted from the Septuagint of the word to Sarah about the birth of Isaac (Gen. 18:14). Those Old Testament heroes were not merely stained glass figures- our own belief in salvation regardless of wealth is as dramatic as the belief of an old woman that she could have a child. The context here, however, is talking of how those who choose a lower level- in this case,&nbsp;<i>not</i>&nbsp;selling their wealth and giving to the poor- can still be saved by God&rsquo;s gracious possibility.</p><p>There are at least two instances in the Gospels where the Lord Jesus is quarrying his language from the book of Job, and shows a certain identification of himself with Job. Here the Lord explains the irrelevance of riches to the spiritual good of entering the Kingdom, saying that &quot;with God all things are possible&quot;- without money. This is almost quoting Job 42:2, where Job comes to the conclusion that all human strength is meaningless: &quot;I know that You can do everything&quot;. It may be that Jesus is even implying that through the tribulation of his life he had come to the same conclusion as Job.&nbsp;See too Mt. 5:27-30.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2989','1','42','18','28','28','<p>18:28 <i>And Peter said: We have left our own- </i>See on Lk. 14:27. The family based structure of the first century is hard to fully empathize with from our distance. Family was all. Peter comments that the disciples had &ldquo;left our own homes&rdquo; (Lk. 18:28 RVmg.), and the parallel Mt. 19:27 says &ldquo;left <i>all</i>&rdquo;. Your home was your all. To have to leave it for the sake of Christ was the most fundamental thing you could do. Hence the real meaning in the first century of the Lord&rsquo;s response that such converts would receive families in this life, i.e. in their relationships in the ecclesia. And yet the radical call of Christ is no less demanding and intrusive as men and women meet it today, the only difference being that the starkness of the choices is less pronounced today- but just as essentially real.</p><p><i>And followed you</i>- Just as Peter&rsquo;s claim to have &ldquo;left all&rdquo; was perhaps questionable, likewise Peter seems to have under-estimated what &lsquo;following Christ&rsquo; really meant- for the idea of carrying the cross is strongly connected with following Christ (Mt. 10:38; 16:24). And Peter failed to carry that cross to the end, for he denied the Lord when the going got tough.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2990','1','42','18','29','29','<p>18:29 <i>And he said to them: Truly I say to you- </i>This is in response to Peter\'s claim that they had &quot;left all and followed You&quot; (Mt. 19:27). The Lord doesn\'t comment upon Peter\'s claim. This may well have been because He knew that Peter had not in fact &quot;left all&quot; to the degree that Peter thought he had. They hadn&rsquo;t then grasped the idea of what really following involved; they hadn&rsquo;t in one way or another laid down their lives with Christ. The Lord was so generous spirited towards His disciples. He knew that Peter would not follow Him as planned, to the cross- indeed, none of them would (Jn. 13:36,37), but He speaks to them as if they would be successful ultimately in following Him.</p><p><i>There is no one that has left house, or wife, or brothers, or parents, or children, for the kingdom of God\'s sake</i>- See on Acts 8:12. This list of things to be forsaken, with Matthew adding houses and lands, recalls the language of the Levites forsaking these things in order to serve God (Ex. 32:26-29; Dt. 33:8-10). The secular disciples again are encouraged to see themselves as the Levites of the new Israel the Lord was creating. And note that the Lord speaks of how His followers will each have left mother, brother etc. to serve Him, referring to how Moses blessed Levi for forsaking these very things so as to God\'s service (Dt. 33:9). And there is no Christian who has heart and soul committed themselves to the Gospel\'s work, either in the world or amongst their brethren, who has not lived to see the truth of this definition of priesthood.</p><p><i>&quot;</i>For My Name&rsquo;s sake<i>&quot; </i>is parallel with<i>&nbsp;</i>&ldquo;The kingdom of God&rsquo;s sake&rdquo; (Mt. 19:29). The things of the Name and the things of the Kingdom were therefore not two different things, rather were they different ways of referring to the same realities.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2991','1','42','18','30','30','<p>18:30 <i>Who shall not receive many times more in this time- </i>&nbsp;See on Mt. 10:27 for the allusion to Job. The Lord&rsquo;s prophecy that the believer receives fathers, mothers, houses, lands etc. only has its fulfilment insofar as the ecclesia is willing to share these things and relationships with its members. But the condition of the fulfilment was&nbsp;not explicitly stated. We forsake all human relationships to follow the Lord Jesus (Mt. 19:27-29). And He promises to compensate for this even in this life. But it depends to what extent we are willing to accept and perceive it. Through meaningful fellowship with our brethren we will find those relationships which we have given up compensated for, even if we aren&rsquo;t physically close to our brethren. In reference to Israel&rsquo;s deliverance from Egypt we read: &ldquo;God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains&rdquo; (Ps. 68:6). To be set in a new family is paralleled with being brought out from slavery. Part of the process of our redemption is that we are set in a new ecclesial family. This must be a reference to how Israel were brought out on Passover night, where the families and lonely ones had to join together into households big enough to kill a lamb for. The implication of Ps. 68 could be that it was in these family groups that they travelled through the wilderness. The N.C.V. reads: &ldquo;God is in his holy Temple. He is a father to orphans, and he defends the widows. God gives the lonely a home. He leads prisoners out with joy...&rdquo;. The very house / family of God becomes the house / family of the lonely. Hence the ecclesia&nbsp;<i>is</i>&nbsp;the house of God (1 Cor. 3:16). We find true family in the new family of God. By baptism we are &ldquo;added together&rdquo; with those others who are likewise saved in Christ (Acts 2:47 RVmg.). We will live together eternally with the other members of this new body and community which we enter. The links between us within that new family are even stronger than those with our natural family; and hence any division amongst the family of God is the greatest tragedy. What this means in practice is that we must fellowship each other. Even if we are isolated from other believers, one can always write letters, make phone calls, invite others to visit them, attempt to meet others&hellip;</p><p><i>And in the age to come, eternal life</i>- These are the very words of the rich young man earlier in the chapter. The answer to that man&rsquo;s question was that we have to lose now, if we are to win eternally; we must forsake material things if we are to inherit the life eternal. As he was only a young man, it&rsquo;s likely that his wealth had been inherited. He was being told that the greatest inheritance was of life eternal, but this didn&rsquo;t come easily nor by good luck or circumstance, but in response to a lifetime of following Jesus. The things which were to be forsaken include putting the records in Mark and Luke together with Matthew: family, brothers, sisters, father, mother, lands, houses etc. These were all the things which the young man had received by inheritance, and to forsake association with his family, on behalf of whom he had received his wealth, would&rsquo;ve been crazy and social suicide. It was as crazy as trashing a winning lottery ticket and walking away the same you were before you bought it. But this is the radical calling of those who must forsake materialism in order to inherit eternity. Therefore all seeking for material advantage in this life is surely inappropriate if in fact we are to forsake it even if it comes to us without our seeking it.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2992','1','42','18','31','31','<p>18:31 <i>And he took aside the twelve- </i>The implication is that there were others travelling with them, and the Lord wished to explain the reality of the cross to the disciples alone.</p><p><i>And said to them: We will go up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written through the prophets about the Son of Man shall be accomplished</i>- Mark adds: &ldquo;And Jesus went before them, and they were amazed; and as they followed they were sore afraid&rdquo;.&nbsp;They went &ldquo;up&rdquo;, uphill to Jerusalem. These small details all support the position that the Gospels were written by eye witnesses and were not created many years later by people who were not present. They were going the opposite direction of man in the parable of the Good Samaritan, who went&nbsp;<i>down</i>&nbsp;from Jerusalem to Jericho. We may be able to infer that the Lord intended us to read that man as one who was not going in the way of the cross, who was going away from Jerusalem rather than towards it- and who was still saved by the grace of the Samaritan / Jesus.&nbsp;</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2993','1','42','18','32','32','<p>18:32 <i>For he shall be delivered up to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and shamefully treated, and spat upon</i>- See on 1 Thess. 2:2. As noted on :15, this refers to the judgments upon Israel in Is. 50:2,6. The Greek for &quot;delivered up&quot; means literally &lsquo;to hand over&rsquo;; the idea of betrayal was maybe implicit, but not as explicit as in the English word &lsquo;betrayed&rsquo;. The word is very common on the lips of the Lord, as if He saw the moment of &lsquo;handing over&rsquo; as the quintessence of all His sufferings- the hand over from God&rsquo;s providential protection to the powers of darkness. He has just spoken of how the Pharisee treated the tax collector shamefully, and the unjust judge had no shame in shaming those who needed justice. The Lord is asking them to see that He is the one identified with those weak, marginalized, sinful people; and will suffer at the hands of those in secular power just as they had done.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2994','1','42','18','33','33','<p>18:33 <i>And they shall scourge and kill him, and on the third day he shall rise again</i>- The scourging alludes to the punishments upon Israel in Josh. 22:13. Indeed so many of the judgments on Israel were experienced by Jesus on the Cross:</p><p>Hos. 2:3,6 = Mt. 27:27-29; Jn. 19:28<br />Josh. 22:13 = Lk. 18:33<br />Ps. 89:30-32; Is. 28:18 = Mt. 27:30<br />Ez. 22:1-5 = Jesus mocked by Gentile Roman soldiers, Mt. 27:27-31<br />Is. 50:2,6 = Mt. 26:67; 27:30; Lk. 18:32<br />Jer. 18:16 = Mt. 27:39<br />These similarities are too close to have been engineered humanly; if it is accepted that Jesus was crucified, it does not seem unreasonable to accept that the sufferings of Jesus described in the New Testament really did happen. It therefore follows that Jesus of Nazareth did bear the sin and judgments of Israel, and therefore He is their saviour-Messiah. Judaism struggles with this observation.</p><p>The Lord\'s detailed knowledge of His sufferings could have been beamed into Him, or He could have worked some of it out from Old Testament types and prophecies. But it seems to me that because He gave His life of Himself, it was not taken from Him by the machinations of others, He therefore arranged the entire scenario so that these things would happen.</p>');
insert into `nev_dcomm` (`id`, `active`, `book`, `chap`, `startverse`, `endverse`, `html`) values('2995','1','42','18','34','34','<p>18:34<i> And they understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, and they did not understand the things that were said</i>- See on Lk. 9:45. Luke earlier notes that the saying about the cross was &ldquo;hidden&rdquo; from them (Lk. 9:45), in confirmation of their own refusal to understand it because it demanded that they too suffer with their Lord. And yet in prayer to the Father, He rejoices that these things are not hidden from them (Lk. 10:21,23). This gives insight into the Lord&rsquo;s present mediation for us in prayer- speaking of us as far better than we are. The message of Christ crucified was &ldquo;hid&rdquo; from them (Lk. 9:45; 18:34)- and Paul surely alludes to this when he says that this message is hid by the veil of Judaism from those who are lost (2 Cor. 4:3). Matthew adds that there arose a controversy as to who should be the leaders in the new community; and when the Lord earlier explained His passion, Luke also adds that straight afterwards, &ldquo;there arose a dispute among them, which of them was the greatest&rdquo; (Lk. 9:46). Time and again we see this in the Gospels- when the Lord speaks of His upcoming death, the disciples change the subject. This explains our own problem with mind wandering at the breaking of bread or in the study or even reading of the crucifixion accounts. This difficulty on focusing upon Him there is likely because His death requires our death and suffering, and subconsciously we realize that- and would rather not.</p>');
