Yeshua really is the King Messiah! He really is the Son of God who was sent from Heaven to Earth to enable us to gain eternal life! It was ordinary men and women who were attracted to Israel’s anointed Prophet, Priest and King. For the most part, Israel’s religious and political leaders opposed and rejected the Son of God.
In a fallen world that is demonically controlled and is opposed to God and Messiah and wrongly suppresses the truth; in a world where many rise to the top of the religious and political power structures and gain influence and wealth through pride and arrogance and by abusing power and cutting moral and ethical corners, it is great to know that it is simple, humble followers of the Jewish Messiah – men and women whom the world ignores, even rejects, who are truly praise-worthy. Better an ordinary man or woman with faith in God and Messiah and the Scriptures than a great scholar without it! Yeshua knew that, and that made Him very happy!
At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit and He said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that You have hidden these things (things like the truth that leads to salvation; the way to enter Heaven through simple faith in the Messiah; how to be genuinely reconciled to God; how gain eternal life) from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants (to the humble, to those who respond to the truth, who end their self-will, who end their rebellion against the King of the universe, who allow God and Messiah teach them and correct them and redirect them in the ways He wants them to go.). Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.
Messiah knew that it is God’s plan to humble the proud and honor the humble; to raise up the righteous afflicted ones and lower the faithless arrogant ones. So, you had better humble yourself before God and Messiah before it is too late; before you leave this world!
Fallen human beings are confused about God. The world’s many religions, including Judaism, are proof of this. We don’t know God the way we need to know Him. We may know a little about Him, but we don’t know Him – personally, intimately, in a saving way. We need to know Him! We need to know the path He has chosen for our salvation. We need to know His principles of atonement. We need to know what He has chosen, what He approves of and what He disapproves of. We need to know how to end our rebellion against Him, how to be reconciled to Him, how to genuinely acceptable to Him, how to have real peace with Him, how to live forever with Him.
Yeshua of Nazareth alone – not Mohammed, not Buddha, not Einstein or Marx or Freud or Darwin – can help us do this! The Son of God understands His God and His Father completely and perfectly. He knows the Father’s mind and will and heart. He knows the Father’s ways. He knows how to perfectly please the Father. He knows how to help us please the Father! He knows the way to the Father’s eternal kingdom. You want the Son to help you know the Father the way you need to know God!
God the Father and God the Son are both involved in the salvation of human beings. Therefore, if you are wise, don’t offend the Son! Believe in Him! Treat Him with the greatest possible respect! Don’t ignore Him. Don’t pretend He isn’t important! Don’t distrust Him! Humble yourself before Him, and learn about Him. And do it soon, and don’t delay!
Next Luke gives us an example of an expert in Jewish law who is an example of what we are not to be like. He represents the danger we need to avoid – religious human beings who are far from God and eternal life. And an expert in Torah stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Rabbi, what shall I do to inherit eternal life”? Even though he was an expert in Torah, and Israel’s Messiah was standing in front of him, he wasn’t able to recognize the One through whom the Earth, the sun and the moon and the starry galaxies were made. He had rejected the Seed of the Woman. He was opposed to the Prophet greater than Moses. He was testing the Star who came forth from Jacob. He wanted the Scepter who rose from Israel to be seen as ignorant; he wanted to be seen as smarter than the young Rabbi from Nazareth who didn’t go to any of the yeshivahs.
Yeshua didn’t fall for his trap. Instead, He answered his question with a question. And He said to him, “What is written in the Torah? How does it read to you? The Supreme Religious Authority among mankind acknowledged that there is a way to inherit eternal life. That is a real possibility for human beings! But Rabbi Yeshua was also teaching us that human beings, even those among the Chosen People, are not automatically headed to eternal life. We must do something to inherit eternal life. Eternal life can be gained or lost – depending on what we do, or do not do!
For the definitive answer to this all-important question about gaining eternal life, Israel’s greatest Rabbi, who is never wrong, directed this man, and all of us, to the Torah. That Book of Books alone, and no other book from any other world religion, contains the roadmap to eternal life. The Word of God has the wisdom that can lead us to salvation. We must go to the to the divinely inspired writings of Israel. We must find out what they really teach. Then, we must apply the truths we find there.
The expert in Torah answered Yeshua’s question. Here is what he said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And you know what? The expert in Torah was right! And Yeshua said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” There are 613 commandments in the Five Books of Moses. The two greatest and most important commandments are the commands to love God with the totality of our being, and love our neighbor in the same way we love ourselves. This is the essence of the Torah. This is the basic message of the Word of God. This is what is essential to know, to understand, to focus on, to apply to every aspect of our lives.
And, the two great principles, if put into practice, will result in eternal life. If we love God properly, the way we should, the way we are expected to; and if we love other human beings the way we should, the way God wants us to, Messiah assures us that we will live – forever! But, since we are part of a fallen race that is confused and in great spiritual darkness; since darkness covers the Earth, and a deep and profound and impenetrable spiritual darkness covers the peoples of the world, it is not clear to humanity how to love God with the totality of our being; and it is not obvious to us how to love our neighbor the way we need to love him. We are not even sure who our neighbor is!
How do we love God the way we need to? To love God the way we need to, He must be our highest priority. He must come first. There must be total commitment to the Creator, devotion, adoration, priority in love and affection, consuming zeal for God above all other things.
To love God the way we need to, we must humble ourselves before Him. We must end our self-will, and yield to His will. We must break off our rebellion against Him, and submit ourselves to Him, and allow God to teach us in the ways we are to go.
To love God the way we need to, we need to have a close and intimate and personal relationship with God.
To love God the way we need to, we must love the Messiah that the Father loves and approves of and sent into this world to be mankind’s only Savior.
The reality was that this expert in the Torah did not love God the way he was expected to. He fell far short in fulfilling the commandment to love God.
And, also part of gaining eternal life is loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. Those who will gain eternal life must not be selfish, self-absorbed creatures. It must not be all about us, and our success and wealth and power and happiness. We must not be building ourselves up by hurting, or even ignoring, those around us. We must be loving, caring human beings. We must be helping suffering and hurting human beings. We must be our brother’s keeper.
But, we must really be helping them. We must really be doing what is best for them. Loved is based on the truth. If our efforts to help others are not based on the truth, them we may wind up harming them – not helping them. That is not love.
This expert in the Torah believed that he loved God enough, and loved his neighbor enough, especially if his neighbor could be define in a very narrow way. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Yeshua, “And who is my neighbor?” If we narrowly define our neighbor to mean those few who live close to us, and we don’t bother them, and occasionally help them out a little; or if we define our neighbor as those who attend the same synagogue as we do and are just like us, then sure – we can think: I love my neighbor the way the Torah commands. Therefore I am OK. But, Yeshua tells us that our neighbor is not to be defined so narrowly.
Yeshua taught this expert in the Torah that the neighbor we are to love must be defined very broadly. He did so by telling a story about a Priest, a Levite and a Samaritan: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
A priest was expected, among all human beings, to know God and the Scriptures the best. He was expected to love and help people the most. After all, the job of a priest is to bring human beings closer to God, and bring God closer to people. His life-work was about helping people. But, this priest did not help his fellow Jew who was suffering and needed help.
Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. Levites assisted the priests at the Temple. They too were expected to know the Scriptures. They too were involved in helping human beings. But, this Levite did not help this Jewish man who was hurting.
But a Samaritan (and the Samaritans had very serious religious differences with the Jewish people; and there was antagonism between the Jewish people and the Samaritans), who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. He inconvenienced himself. He went out of his way to help this man. He showed a lot of care.
On the next day he took out two denarii (two days wages for an average worker) and gave them to the innkeeper and said, “Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.” The bill could have been another couple of days wages, or more. That is a lot of money for the average person. That too showed a lot of selfless, loving care. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?
And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Yeshua said to him, “Go and do the same.”
Those who live in our neighborhood are our neighbors. Those who are members of our synagogue are our neighbors. But, those who live far away from us are our neighbors. Our neighbors also include those who may strongly disagree with us, and we with them. Moslems are our neighbor; Catholics are our neighbor; homosexuals are our neighbor; those who may be persecuting us are our neighbors; Democrats are our neighbors; Republicans are our neighbors; Blacks and Whites and Hispanics are our neighbors. If they are suffering, with sacrificial love we are to be compassionate and try and help them.
This expert in the Torah did not love his neighbor as he loved himself, because he so narrowly defined who his neighbor was. It is not easy to love God the way we should. It is not easy to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
We need God’s help, God’s intervention, to love God the way we need to. We need God’s Messiah to love God the way we need to. Then, only after we have experienced God’s help, God’s intervention, and God’s Messiah, and love God and know that He loves us, only then can we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. And, loving them and showing compassion toward them also means declaring the truth to them! Tell them about God and Messiah and salvation, and God’s righteous ways, because they are spiritually suffering. They are far from God! They are dying! They are perishing! They are headed to death, not life, to Hell, not Heaven.
Their greatest need is to be reconciled to God, to overcome the overwhelming destructive forces of Satan, sin and death. If we love them, we must help them with that need. We must not remain silent. We must not pass them by, knowing that they are spiritually suffering, and do nothing, and say nothing – like the priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side. That is not what it means to love our neighbor.
This expert represents a lot of religious people who are in actuality, far from God. Many human beings think of themselves as being good enough, religious enough; that they believe in God enough; that they treat their fellow human being good enough; that their sins aren’t that bad; that if eternal life is a reality, they are headed for it! But, the truth is that they are not good enough. This expert knew a lot about God, but knowing about God, even knowing a lot about God, is not enough. This expert knew a lot about the Torah, but even knowing a lot about the Torah, is not enough.
In contrast to this expert in the Torah who rejected Yeshua, Luke introduces us to a family who models for us what we are to do. Most of the powerful and wealthy and the religious leaders rejected Yeshua. But, there was one well-to-do family who kissed the Son – who welcomed Him, who honored Him, who learned from Him. The family of Lazarus, and his two sisters Mary and Martha, were a wealthy and prominent family who lived close to Jerusalem. Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations.
Showing hospitality to guests, and serving them and feeding them is an important responsibility, especially when it was an special guest like the young miracle working Rabbi from Nazareth, this great teacher, whom some thought was the Messiah. Martha busied herself feeding and serving Yeshua.
The other sister, Mary, knew that Yeshua was a Rabbi who was worth learning from, and that her time with Him would be limited. So, instead of busying herself with lots of preparations and service, Mary concentrated on listening to Rabbi Yeshua. Martha did not like the fact that her sister wasn’t helping her, and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Not all prayers are good, and will be answered with a positive response by the Lord. This is an example of one.
Messiah “knew that it was with a proper motive that Mary had withdrawn herself on this occasion from the ordinary household duties in order to hear the words of everlasting life from Yeshua’s mouth… The Lord points out to Martha that she is inwardly anxious and over-zealous and outwardly restless amid all her preparations for entertaining Him. But the most important task of all is not to try and serve Him by this kind of action, but through the spiritual exercise of fellowship as practiced by Mary. Material things and the honoring of Him through outward means are evanescent matters, things that quickly vanish, but the soul’s communion with the Lord can never be removed, not even by death. Therefore the highest from of service consists in this” (Geldenhuys, paraphrase).
We need to be going and doing and serving, but we also need to quietly hear from the Lord. To have successful lives and ministries, we need the right balance of getting close to God, and hearing from Him, and also going and doing and serving.
May God the Father, the Lord of Heaven and Earth prevent us from being wise or powerful, yet have the most important things hidden from us – like this expert in Torah! And may He enable each one of us to have a genuine relationship with the Living God, like Mary and Martha did, so that saving truth is revealed to us.