Today’s passage: Luke 9:46-50

Helpful thoughts:

• After not one of the disciples understood what Jesus was saying, they argued about who was the best…
• Praise God for those who work in our Children’s ministries!  None of us are too important, too cool, too big to serve “the least of these.”
• Verse 49 depicts a moment when the disciples were perhaps the most like the Pharisees.  They had just failed to cast out a demon (Verse 40), and now they were trying to prevent someone else from doing it because it wasn’t within their realm of influence.

Questions to consider:

1. What seems to be the theme of these two instances?  What was the consistent problem in the hearts of the disciples?
2. What is your goal for ministry and service in the church?  Who are you serving/working for?  What do you hope will be the result?  What kinds of things tempt you want to quit and give up?  When those times of temptation come, how should we correct our thinking?
3. The gospel message is immensely profound and yet simple enough to explain to a child.  How would you share the gospel with a child?

Today’s passage: Luke 9:37-45

Helpful thoughts:

• Jesus’ sadness at the lack of faith in the people could have been aimed toward the man and his son (Or Israel as a whole), or He could have been referring to His own disciples who failed to have faith (Believing in the power of God as opposed to their own – Matthew 17:19-20).
• Jesus’ disciples followed Him around willingly for three years.  Even they did not understand until God graciously opened their minds (Luke 24:45).
• Man never overpowered God.  Jesus was delivered into the hands of men by God’s design for God’s glorious purposes.

Questions to consider:

1. What was of primary interest for the different people in this passage?  What did the people marvel over?  What stuck out in Jesus’ mind?  How does faith change our perspective on the events of the world?
2. Why would the disciples have been afraid to ask what Jesus meant?  What didn’t they want to admit?  What would this reveal about their hearts at the time?
3. Who is in complete control of events and of our understanding of spiritual things?  Whose power are we under before God graciously intervenes and saves (Ephesians 2:1-5)?  How should we respond to these truths?

Today’s passage: Luke 9:28-36

Helpful thoughts:

• On the heels of the disciples hearing Jesus speak of His coming rejection, death and resurrection, these three disciples got to see the kingdom of God in Christ’s glory.
• God used Moses and Elijah to speak to Jesus in the presence of Peter, James and John about what was to come.  They had just heard it from Jesus.  Now they heard it (Unless they were still sleeping!) from these prophets in the presence of the glorified Christ.
• If that wasn’t enough, God the Father confirmed the identity of Christ Himself.

Questions to consider:

1. Unless Moses and Elijah were wearing name tags, what might Peter’s ability to identify them mean for our knowledge of people in eternity?
2. What was so upside down and inside out about Peter’s suggestion?  Was Jesus lucky to have Peter and the disciples there?  Is THAT why that was a big moment?  Who was receiving the gift?  When we praise Jesus and give Him our all in obedience, is that a generous kindness we are showing Him or is that what He is due?
3. What command did God give after identifying Christ?  Are there any “tents” that you have built to have a sense of doing things for Jesus (Your own way) that have distracted you from simply listening and obeying Him?

Today’s passage: Luke 9:18-27

Helpful thoughts:

• For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. – Matthew 16:17 (See Matthew 16:13-20)
• Jesus came to suffer, to be rejected, to be killed and to rise from the dead.  And He’s coming again.
• Jesus’ promise in verse 27 would come to fruition about eight days later (And in the next several verses).

Questions to consider:

1. How do verses 18-20 compare and contrast with verses 7-9?  Why might Luke have placed these sets of questions and answers within the same passage?
2. Who is Jesus?  What results from knowing and believing in the correct answer?
3. What does it look like in the 21st century in our culture to take up our cross and follow Jesus?  What does it look like to be ashamed of Him and the Gospel?  How are you growing in this?  How can you continue to grow?

Today’s passage: Luke 9:1-17

Helpful thoughts:

• The disciples are sent out to do what they were discipled to do.  Their ministry and scope would expand in the not too distant future (Acts 1:8).
• The disciples were to go with nothing and to continue with nothing from town to town.  Even though they could actually heal people, they were not to profit materially or become wealthy from their ministry.
  • Staying in the same house while in town gave evidence to their selfless intent.  Other teachers would moved house to house through a town to extract as much as they could in those days…(Nothing new under the sun).
• Shaking the dust off of your feet came from a Jewish practice when they would leave Gentile areas.  It was used to signify “shaking off” all the paganism and all that could “contaminate” them.  For the disciples to shake the dust off as they left a Jewish town was an incredibly strong statement.  When the Jews rejected their own Messiah, His disciples shook the dust off.

Questions to consider:

1. If the apostles (Including Paul) had healed so many people at the beginning of their ministry after Pentecost, and then if Paul did not heal people like Trophimus in 2 Timothy 4:20 toward the end of the New Testament period, what can we see happening with healings (The frequency thereof) even in the course of the writing of the New Testament?  Were they increasing, consistent, or decreasing?  Should it alarm us if we see people trying to use Luke 9:1-2 as a ministry model today (Especially if they have accrued wealth as a result)?
2. Of all the suggestions made to Herod, who didn’t anyone say that Jesus was?  What was the answer to Herod’s question in verse 9?
3. What did the Jews want from Jesus after he fed them all (John 6:25-34)?  What did Jesus offer them instead?

Today’s passage: Luke 8:40-56

Helpful thoughts:

• Due to this woman’s bleeding, she would have been considered unclean according to Jewish law.  This explains her great desire to blend in with the crowd who had pressed in on Jesus and not make a scene in her hopes for healing.
• The Greek word translated as “made you well” in verse 48 is from the same word we translate as salvation or saved.  Jesus calls her “daughter” and tells her that her faith has given her salvation.  This woman appears to have been made well physically and spiritually.
• It was common for the wealthy to hire mourners for their dead in that culture.  This is why it would have been so easy for the “mourners” to go from weeping to laughter in a moment.
• Jesus’ divine power was not running low after healing the woman.  His batteries didn’t need to recharge to raise Jairus’ daughter.  God has all power.

Questions to consider:

1. Why did the Gentile crowd in verses 34-37 fear Jesus and ask Him to leave and the crowd of Jews press in on Jesus to ask Him for things?  What might have caused the different responses?  How many people are recorded as believing in each account?
2. How could the different characteristics of these crowds have impacted Jesus’ command to the former demoniac in verse 39 to go spread the news and then to tell Jairus and his wife to tell no one what had happened?
3. Given the meaning of verse 48, what was the greatest miracle in today’s reading?