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The Book of Luke, Steadfastly to Jerusalem - Lesson 125
In the ninth chapter of Luke we have been witness to the going forth of the disciples with power and authority to heal and to cast out demons.
We have read of the feeding of the five thousand, the proclamation of Peter that Jesus was the Christ, the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain and His Father’s identification of him with the words, This is my beloved Son: hear him.
We have seen the impotence of the disciples who thought of themselves as the power, instead of availing themselves of the power of God through prayer
We have listened to Jesus Christ instruct his disciples as to the way of servants in his kingdom and how a servant may be great in the kingdom.
After these things we read in: Luke 9:51-56, And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, 52And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. 53And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. 54And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? 55But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. 56For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.
The Lord has repeatedly told His disciples that He would be rejected by the Jews and specifically by the Jewish religious leaders.
Jesus Christ knew what this rejection would bring but this did not hinder him as he set his face as a flint toward Jerusalem as Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 51:7.
The word steadfastly that Luke uses, means to set fast, to turn resolutely in a certain direction.
It means to go in that direction without any thought of turning back or turning aside but going resolutely in one direction and only one direction.
So we are told by Luke in our passage that Jesus Christ is now headed with a resolute fixed spirit toward Jerusalem, where His rejection and death would soon take place.
On the way to Jerusalem where he would be rejected, the Lord passes through Samaria which is the shortest distance from Galilee to Jerusalem.
There was no thought of bypassing this region that was usually avoided by Jews traveling to Jerusalem from Galilee. Samaria means “mountain of watching,” and is the place name of a mountain, city, and region and the residents of that region are called Samaritans. The mountain is forty-two miles north of Jerusalem and protrudes from the broad valley which cuts across the central highlands of Israel. At the mountain lay the ruins of ancient Samaria which was the capital, residence, and burial place of the kings of Israel as opposed to the kings of Judah (1 Kings 16:23-28; 22:37; 2 Kings 6:24-30). Following the Northern Kingdom’s fall to Assyria 721 B.C., exiles from many nations settled Samaria (Ezra 4:9-10). Later, the Greeks conquered the region (331 B.C.) and populated the area with Greek inhabitants and culture. Then the Hasmoneans, destroyed the city in 119 B.C.. After a long period without inhabitants, Samaria lived again under Pompey and the Romans (63 B.C.). Finally, Herod the Great obtained control of Samaria in 30 B.C. and made it one of the chief cities of his territory. Again, the city was resettled with people from far away places, this time mercenaries from Europe. The name Samaritans originally was identified with the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom (2 Kings 17:29). When the Assyrians conquered Israel and exiled 27,000 Israelites, a “remnant of Israel” remained in the land. Assyrian captives from distant places also settled there (2 Kings 17:24). This led to the intermarriage of some, Jews with Gentiles and to widespread worship of foreign gods. By the time the Jews returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple and the walls of Jerusalem, Ezra and Nehemiah refused to let the Samaritans share in the experience. Sanballat, an arch enemy, was governor of Samaria. (Ezra 4:1-3; Neh. 4:7). The old antagonism between Israel to the north and Judah to the south was also in this mix causing hatred on both sides. Even today much of the northern area known as the West Bank lies in the area that was known as Samaria. The Jewish inhabitants of Samaria identified Mount Gerizim as the chosen place of God and the only center of worship, calling it the “navel of the earth” because of a tradition that Adam sacrificed there. Their scriptures were limited to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Moses was regarded as the only prophet and intercessor in the final judgment. In the days of Christ, the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans was greatly strained as we see in this passage and other passages of the scriptures(Luke 9:52-54; 10:25-37; 17:11-19; John 8:48). Each side had built up great hatred and animosity because of all the past that their peoples shared. I think that many of us have prejudices like the Jews and the Samaritans had, a natural dislike of a certain group because of past actions on the part of that group. For many years after the civil war and still today this kind of prejudice exists on both side of the Mason-Dixon line. Many people who lived during WW II cannot continuance a relationship with peoples of those countries that they fought against in the War. According to Webster’s 1828 dictionary prejudice is an opinion or decision of mind, formed without due examination of the facts or arguments with are necessary to a just and impartial determination. It is used in a good or bad sense. Innumerable are the prejudices of education; we are accustomed to believe what we are taught, and to receive opinions from others without examining the grounds by which they can be supported. A man has strong prejudices in favor of his country, or his party, or the church in which he has been educated; and often our prejudices are unreasonable. Prejudice is a previous bent or bias of mind for or against any person or thing. It does not necessarily have any relationship to facts but most likely is based upon relationships of the past. Remember the feud between the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s. They have been fighting for so long they forgot why they are fighting. But the rebuke of Jesus Christ given to his disciples was heavily influenced by the prejudice of his disciples against the Samaritans. The animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans was so great that the Jews bypassed Samaria as they traveled between Galilee and Judea adding many miles to their journey because of their prejudice. It was like cutting of your nose to spite your face. They went an extra distance through the barren land of Perea on the eastern side of the Jordan to avoid going through Samaria. But the Lord Jesus Christ would not join into his people’s hatred and prejudice of the Samaritans and we should learn from our Lord Jesus, to also banish prejudice from our hearts. Jesus rebuked His disciples for their hostility to the Samaritans for prejudice hindered their witness, for it set up barriers between themselves and the Samaritans. (Luke 9:55-56). The Lord Jesus Christ healed a Samaritan leper (Luke 17:16). He honored a Samaritan for his neighborliness (Luke 10:30-37). He praised a Samaritan for his gratitude (Luke 17:11-18) and asked a drink of a Samaritan woman (John 4:7), and preached to the Samaritans (John 4:40-42). Then in Acts 1:8, Jesus challenged His disciples to witness in Samaria. Philip, a deacon, opened a mission in Samaria (Acts 8:5). This shows us that God deals with people as individuals and not as a group. We need to be careful of dealing with people as a group for prejudice gets a foothold in such thinking. But in this particular town of Samaria, the Lord and His disciples were rejected.
Luke tells us in verse 53 the reason for this rejection: And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.
Now what is wrong with going to Jerusalem?
Well the Samaritan woman at the well addressed this very issue.
19The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. 20Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
The was the keystone issue between Jews and Samaritans.
Where was the proper place to worship!
Jesus was going to Jerusalem and the people of the village knew that his face was steadfastly set to go to Jerusalem.
Now, the Samaritans in this village were not tolerant.
"They did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem" (Luke 9:53).
They knew that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to worship in the Jewish Temple there.
He was not coming to worship in their Samaritan temple.
He had a different religion, so they would not receive Him.
This feud between the Samaritans and orthodox Jews continued and was heated on both sides.
We see, here, that the Samaritans of this village turned Jesus down for coming to minister, because He was headed for the temple in Jerusalem where they had been forbidden to worship.
But Christ had a mission and that mission was to be fulfilled in Jerusalem.
Two of the three disciples who had accompanied Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, James and John, the sons of thunder, were irate and angry.
They were angry because of the Samaritan’s intolerance and prejudice but they simply revealed their own intolerance and prejudice in what they proposed to do to the Samaritans.
Righteous indignation oozed from James and John and the ooze was pressured by prejudice.
The disciples, like the Jews of their day, felt superior to the Samaritans.
They requested the Lord’s permission to bar-be-que or torch the Samaritans” by calling down fire from heaven on them, much as Elijah (whom they had just seen on the mount of transfiguration) had done to the Israelite soldiers sent out against him in 2 Kings chapter 1.
They are relating these people to the prophets of Baal but in reality there was a similarity in belief between the Jews and the Samaritans for the Samaritans were believers in the first 5 books of the Bible.
James and John, like Jonah, would rather watch their enemy suffer the wrath of God than to experience His grace.
The disciples would have enjoyed calling down fire from heaven to destroy their enemies.
But Jesus rebuked them for their prejudice against these people who were outsiders and did not conform to Jewish ways.
The prejudice of the disciples that motivated them was not in keeping with the spirit or the intent of Jesus’ coming to earth.
55But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.
Jesus was essentially saying to them.
Remember what family you are from.
Remember your name and your Father’s name.
Remember the family name.
This is the kind of spirit that you should be exhibiting.
Remember whom you serve.
That spirit of destruction is not in me today for I have come to save and not to destroy.
Jesus always was about His Father’s business and His Father’s business was not to call down fire on the Samaritans and neither should that be the business of James and John.
And what it particularly interesting is that the motivation of the disciples in wanting to call fire down on the Samaritans” is precisely the same as the Samaritans’ motive for not welcoming them.
The Samaritans were just as prejudiced against the Jews because they were intent on worshipping in Jerusalem.
The disciples found the Samaritans worthy of death for their prejudice, but did not recognize the same evil in themselves.
This old wicked heart refuses to stop judging and refuses to see that judging others judges you.
Judge not lest ye be judged Jesus said to us in no uncertain terms.
The accounts that we have read about the disciples actions after the transfiguration show forth three root sins.
We first see the sin of self-sufficiency.
This sin excludes God in our lives.
The demon of the boy was not cast out by the disciples because of self-sufficiency which was not up to the task.
Jesus said it was not cast out because of a lack of prayer and fasting.
The power of self was insufficient to do God’s work.
God’s work can only be done with God’s power.
The second sin that is revealed is the sin of self seeking.
It is the sin of looking out for yourself instead of letting God look out for you.
It was shown in the reasoning of the disciples as to who was greatest.
There is no room in the kingdom of God for self-seeking.
The third sin that was revealed was the sin of self-righteousness that was expressed in Samaria by the lack of compassion on the part of James and John.
They hated the Samaritans and in the cloak of piety they wished to call down fire upon their enemies, and enemies in their minds was anyone who was not a Jew. These three selves are to be cast out if we are to abide in Christ for these three selves will not find welcome in the Lord Jesus Christ. |