Luke 10

Subdivision 5. (Luke 10:1-42; Luke 11:1-54; Luke 12:1-59; Luke 13:1-35; Luke 14:1-35; Luke 15:1-32; Luke 16:1-31.)God with men; and the responsibility connected with it. The transfiguration is a turning-point in all three of the synoptic Gospels. It follows the Lord’s announcement of His rejection by the Jews, and the prohibition of His being proclaimed as Christ. Earth has rejected Him, but heaven opens to Him; and this gives character to that which follows. In Luke especially is there the opening of heavenly things. It is only a glimpse indeed that we get into them. We must not expect the full opening that we have in Christianity, after Christ has gone in for us in the value of His accomplished work, and the Spirit is come out to enable us to enter in there. Still, in the peace-offering view that it presents, God and man are brought together, and we have the anticipation at least, of what is to be fully made known at a later time. Luke connects thus, as has been already said, with Paul’s line of truth and Gentile revelation; he himself being a Gentile. It is the portion of Luke to which we have now come that has specially this character; and we shall soon hear of Satan fallen from heaven; though only anticipatively announced, and of those whose names are written there. With this we have the inscrutable glory of the Person of Christ, the tender revelation of man’s blessed Neighbor, the fulness of the “good part” given to the saint, and the Spirit to be given to them that ask of God. All this is found in —

Luke 10:1-11

Section 1. (Luke 10:1-42; Luke 11:1-13.)The divine provision. the first section here, which speaks, therefore, of the divine provision which has been made for man; as the after ones will show us the opposition of Satan; the world, and the religion of the world, to God’s blessed ways, to which afterwards we return to see how God Himself is manifested in them.

1. (1) The commission of the seventy seems at first sight to be but a partial repetition of that given to the twelve. But it is easily seen that this must necessarily be, in so far as they are sent out as the heralds of the same Master into the same world. The number of those sent shows the urgency of the mes sage, as the appended woe upon the cities of Israel implies the nearing judgment of the nation. All being practically (though not openly) decided, makes the result to be manifestly but the separation of a remnant from the self-doomed people. Yet the Kingdom of God is come nigh, and its glories are opening more than ever yet, if hid from eyes that have no care to see them. (2) The return of the seventy with the joy of their success brings out the farther-sighted joy of their Lord, which plainly reaches on to where the “holy mount” has already carried us. They say exultingly, “Lord, even the demons are subjected to us by Thy Name;” and He replies, that He had beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven; the anticipation of that which Revelation 12:1-17 gives in its connection with still future history. It is when the man-child who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron is caught up to heaven; that Satan is cast down to earth. The man-child is surely Christ, as the woman of whom He is born is Israel; yet as soon as Satan is cast down; the three and a half years of the great tribulation begin; which immediately precede the Lord’s appearing (See Matthew 24:1-51 notes). The present period is thus passed over, as it is in the Old Testament prophecy, or where Israel is in the foreground, and thus the ascension of Christ and the taking up of saints of the present and the past are seen as one: they are identified with Him who shares with them His “rod of iron” (Revelation 2:27). To this time the Lord is looking on here, the beginning of that complete abolishing of Satan’s power of which the casting out of demons by the seventy was an anticipation. He goes on to confirm and extend the authority He has given: “Behold,” He says, “I have given you to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” And then He adds, “Yet in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subjected to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Thus already they are assured of a more blessed place than among the earthly people. They are enregistered in heaven (see Hebrews 12:23), as citizens of that “better country.” (3) Thus we are being led out beyond Israelitish hopes and promises, and we see along with the mission of the seventy the faint dawning of a new day. And here now we find in its true order of time, what Matthew for his purpose has connected differently, the Lord’s declaration of the inscrutable glory of His Person, and of the Father having put all things into His hand; though this was hidden indeed from wise and prudent ones, and revealed to babes alone. What else are men to God? and how could He crown with the knowledge of Himself the wisdom of the world which it had gained in departure from Him? But now had come that which many prophets and kings had desired to see, and not seen; and blessed indeed were the eyes of those who as disciples of this grace had seen it.
2. There follows that story of him that was neighbor to him who fell among robbers, which shows on the one hand the powerlessness of law to furnish a ministry of grace, and on the other the heart of Him who, apart from law and in such a way as to incur reproach for it and indeed the penalty of the law itself, brought help and salvation to the dying sons of men. It is given as a parable to one who being a lawyer, and thus a typical Jew of that day, would fain make trial of Him as to His relation to or conception of Moses, whose disciple it was his own boast to be. And yet he must have supposed it a difficult question that he was proposing for this end: “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Was he beginning, perhaps, to realize the difficulty of it? When the Lord makes the law the measure of doing, and puts it to him to answer his own question; he answers like a man who is not resting in the mere outside of things, but takes love to God and one’s neighbor as the very heart of the commandments, as indeed they were. In this, Christ emphatically approves his answer; let him do that, and he shall live. But to answer the question aright is one thing; to satisfy his soul with it is another: and here is again; perhaps, a token for good, amid all that is evil in his case: there is at least no self-complacency. He seeks to justify himself; but who has accused him? Conscience, it is plain; is at work with him, and that Moses whose disciple he is has become his accuser. He resists it: how we have most of us resisted and resented that sentence of the law which brings us all down to that common level of guilt, -Jews and Gentiles alike “under sin”! The man here is fighting with himself, if in fact he does not discern it, nor even has come yet to realize that it is the heart and not the head merely, as he would fain put it, that is astray: he passes over the “first and great commandment of the law,” which he has so clearly stated, to take up the second, and here to shelter himself under a question which he has no thought will turn; as it really does, so terribly against himself, “And who is my neighbor?” We have heard that it was said by them of old time, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.” Here, then; there might be a matter for much nice discrimination: whether the Israelite alone was the neighbor; whether every one of these was so; whether there was a third class between the two; and then whether, when the classification was uncertain; the duty attaching might be left in suspense too. Casuistry of this kind might certainly be carried far, and men might, of course, let themselves off more or less easily. After all how much uncertainty would come in thus, and correspondingly affect the issue! But the Lord goes beyond and deeper than all this, and with a searching appeal to the conscience of the questioner sets it all aside. He not only answers the question; He answers it in such a way as completely to expose him to himself, and show him (if he had candor to receive it) that it was but an unneighborly heart that could ask it. This man left half-dead upon the road: there is nothing to determine if he were Jew or Gentile; while it is certain that the priest and Levite were both Jews, and that the true neighbor was a Samaritan. It may be that it was their not having settled the lawyer’s question that made the men of law so absolutely without help for an unknown stranger. But the true neighbor of man is so depicted in this parable as to make us feel how the Lord had provided in it for the need of the one before Him (as for how many others since!) when once he had got into the place of need in which so many things become plain to us. Had he not heard what seems to have been no uncommon saying in the mouth of the people, and evidently from His attitude, as they considered it, toward Moses and the law, that He was a Samaritan (John 8:48)? How different the reproach would sound for one who had proved, as he, we may trust, was on his way to prove, the powerlessness of priest and Levite in his case! Commentaries are much given to warning us not to go too far in such application; but the danger of false interpretation is apt to be in the exact opposite direction. A picture out of which we may leave whatever features we please to consider of no use save for decoration; is surely that in which we are most liable to go astray. While the having to make every detail fit is just what will put bounds to the imagination when disposed to stray. The insisting upon as complete as possible agreement between the representation and what it represents is in the interests of exact interpretation every way. How vividly man’s natural course is set before us, in that down-hill, dangerous road, with the back upon the city of God and the face towards the place of curse, as which Jericho stands in the well-known history. The robbers may represent any of the many forms of evil that break in upon men and bring them to desolation; yet which God uses to make them realize their true state before Him. The stripping off of raiment is the loss of all with which we cover from ourselves the nakedness which from God we cannot hide. A wounded conscience, the consciousness of impotence -“ungodly and without strength” with the shadow of that death, which is awful banishment from the Life of life, stealing over the soul, -this is a picture true in every part of its tale of misery, the faithful representation of a convicted man. Who shall be neighbor now to one in this condition? who is there with will and power to help? The Jew, Moses, disciple, is brought before us in two illustrative witnesses: “the testimony of two men is true;” and the priest and Levite are good representatives, if any are, of the help the ministers of law can give. The priest is the first example; but one fatal phrase disqualifies him at the outset, -“By chance a certain priest went down that way.” It is plain what such a word means upon the lips that are speaking here. It means that the Jewish priest was not the divinely provided minister for this condition. The message of law, “this do and thou shalt live,” is no gospel for any who could be pictured by this helpless and dying man. True, it could say also, “When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive:” and here salvation is proposed, but a self-wrought one, still containing the fatal principle. And even the sacrifices, though they proclaimed a God who forgave iniquity, transgression, and sin; left untouched what He Himself had joined with this, “who can by no means clear the guilty.” The old page might indeed be blotted out, but only that a new one might be turned, and the vain work begin again. Thus still the veil hung before the face of God: “None can see Me and live,” was His own affirmation. So the priest went by on the other side, and had no help. “Likewise also a Levite, when at the place, came and looked at him, and passed by on the other side.” The same inability, -the same chance visit, no divine messenger; only the Levite comes nearer, peers into the anguished eyes, for a moment lighted up with transient hope, and then he too passes by on the other side. Thus the ministers of the law declare only the helplessness of the law for salvation; and to emphasize this the more the actual savior is pictured as a Samaritan, a man not merely most distasteful to the Jew as a schismatic, but actually under the condemnation of the law itself. This the true Saviour must needs be: for the curse of the law, denounced on sin; must be really taken for men; if the law is to be maintained in honor, and the sinner saved. And here the antitypical Samaritan is therefore the One who has heart for men and the Witness of what is in the Divine Heart towards them. It is this that is the glory of the gospel. The law cannot bring God nigh, for such as we are. The gospel exhibits Him as come down in His love to seek the lost. This, because of its infinite value for us, is afterwards developed at length in the three parables of the fifteenth chapter, where the whole Triune God is seen in the “joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” Here it is Christ whom we see in this Samaritan, who “as he journeyed, came where” the wounded man “was, and when he saw him, had compassion on him.” The details that follow are again clear and significant, and present the grace of Christ in the fullest way. Faith’s appropriation of the blessing, true as it is from the human side, is not what we find here, but rather the appropriation is on the divine side, all the value of the work of Christ made over to the helpless and stricken soul. He is taken into tender hands, and his wounds closed or bound up by the authoritative Word of God: for it is the Word which binds the conscience, and here for healing, as when the sweet compelling utterance of “peace” from a Saviour’s lips made rest but duty for those that heard it. The oil and the wine follow for effectual healing: they are plain symbols of the joyful remembrance of Christ’s work -of His precious blood -applied in the power of the Holy Spirit. And here there is such unmistakable plainness, as if no manner of doubt must be permitted upon so fundamental a point. And now he is ready for the road with his deliverer. The tender care of the latter does not slacken. He lifts him up upon his own beast, -ktenos, not often used in the singular, as here, “acquirement,” what he had got for himself. The power which supports and carries us on is indeed what Christ has acquired for Himself: it is living power, the “Spirit of Christ,” which bare Him in His wondrous Manhood to our rescue, and who, that being effected, now bears us. So “he brought him to an inn” -according to the blessed universality of the gospel offer, a “place of reception for all.” This is what the Church as the house of God is; where still He “cares for” His own, -“takes charge of” them. How much is compressed in how little in these pregnant words! Now we hear of His departure, though His care abides. And “as he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatever thou spendest more, when I come again; I will repay thee.” It is to the care of the Spirit that Christ has left His people in the world: here it is impossible to go astray as to the interpretation. But what, then; are we to see in the “two pence”? We may equally with Van Oosterzee, refuse as “trifling” the thought of two sacraments, and yet believe that there is meaning, here as elsewhere. The two pence are plainly recompense for care bestowed, and we may find perfect fitness if we will note that in parabolic figures, such as we have to do with here, the Spirit of God is identified with His work, or with the agents through whom He works. We shall find as to the last a very decisive example in the “woman” of the second parable of the fifteenth chapter; and here it should be easy to see that it is to those by whom the Spirit works in the care of Christ’s people that the reward is given. Present reward: for “he that watereth shall be watered also himself;” and yet a future recompense also, when the departed Saviour shall return again. And thus the two pence (or denarii) may have the number of testimony, because the present reward is but the witness of that gracious remembrance of all that is done here for Him, which the future will exhibit in its full reality. Thus, from first to last, the parable speaks with perfect clearness; and it is of Christ above all it speaks: not mainly to answer a lawyer’s question; but beyond this to reveal Himself to the soul of a sinner, though, because of his condition, this cannot be done with the simplicity that would have welcomed need more fully confessed. In this way also it agrees with the place in which we find it, following the declaration of the personal glory of the Son of God with the revelation of His grace, and the full provision in it for the otherwise desperate state of man.
3. After this we are made to understand the full provision for a saint, and how it is to be acquired, and how earnestly the Lord longs to have His people acquire it, how thoroughly He will guard them in their possession of it. Here, for our better instruction; we have contrasted the conduct of two saints. Martha and Mary are again, and more largely spoken of in the Gospel of John; and in accordance with the different character in which they are presented here. As two sides of Christian character, they are both needful for its proper display, the worker and the listener, the servant and the one who, even because she better understands His real dignity, lets her Lord serve her. It is easily to be seen that the latter is the fundamental necessity, and the higher blessedness. As sinners, as the previous parable has shown us, Christ must serve us first, or we should never find ability, nor have the heart to serve Him either. We would willingly reverse this order, but it cannot be. So too as saints we are prone to get our service out of place, and that because of the same root of self-sufficiency which troubled us as sinners. Served us, of course, He has; and now it is our part to serve Him; but how prone we are to do it after Martha’s fashion. How little we realize the need we have of being served by Him all through, and the little need He has of us, save as the objects of His love, and as those in whom the exceeding riches of His grace are to be shown out through the ages. Martha has received Christ into her house, and surely into her heart. If she is busy, she is busy serving Him; yet that does not prevent her being distracted by it. She is more: she is vexed and irritated. Mary her sister is sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus, listening to His word; and she blames even the Lord for permitting it, while she needs her help so much. But -the Lord asserts that Mary has chosen the good part, and it is moreover the only needful thing: it shall not be taken from her. But is learning of Jesus, then; the one needful thing? Is activity nothing? is service nothing? We may be sure the Lord is very far from meaning that. But if a man brings me, let us say, an apple, I do not despise it when I say, “The one thing is the tree that bears the apples.” One may hear Christ’s words and never hearken. There may be even an occupation with them which is little better than mere idleness. But to hear as Mary did, that implies service also, and the right kind of service, -wisdom and power for service; and a service which shall be in the sanctuary also, -worship in the heart of it. For what fruit will not grow upon that seed sown in the heart -the Scripture able to furnish thoroughly the man of God unto all good works? And how else shall we be able to gain and maintain communion with God than by drinking in the thoughts of God? On the other hand, it is easy to see, and there is plenty of sad experience to show, how service unenlightened by the Word may carry us out of communion with God; and how the cares engendered by it may, as with those of common life, choke much of the good seed. Yet if it is to be feared that there are more Marthas than Maries in the Church today, is it not to be feared that there are more than both of these united, of those to whom the cares and pleasures of the world are, far more than any service of the Martha sort, the causes of distraction? Shall we not covet more that good part which with the Lord’s approbation Mary had chosen? Have we not the power today to choose where she did? The portions that men naturally covet pass away beyond recall; here is that which the Lord Himself emphatically pronounces “good,” and which He seals with eternity of possession to him who has chosen it.
4. There follows now, in that order which we have seen to be so constant in Scripture, after the fulness of the blessing provided, that recognition of creature need which makes the living God so absolute a necessity. We must do more than know about Him; we must have the strength of His arm, a resource in Him ever available. And this is what prayer expresses, the cry to One who hears and who answers. “The fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous man availeth much.” The need of it is pressed in an epistle like Ephesians, where we are at the topmost height of heavenly position: it there, perhaps, requiring most to be emphasized that we are not above it. “Praying always with all prayer, and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” (Ephesians 6:18). There could be surely no more earnest exhortation, nor in a more suited place than where the height of all the blessing needs to be practically realized and maintained in daily walk. The prayer that the Lord teaches His disciples here is that which we have in Matthew substantially, with certain omissions according to all recent editors, for which nevertheless it is hard to account. Certainly Luke it is who gives us the original form of the prayer, if the difference is to be maintained; as it is impossible to imagine the disciples asking to be taught to pray, if they already had been. Then in the sermon on the mount afterwards the Lord must have amplified the prayer by these added petitions, unless Luke can be supposed to have omitted part of what was first given; which again seems hard to believe. A reason for the omissions, if the larger form were first, is as hard to suggest. Nor, apart from all critical questions, can one well see the meaning of such a difference. It would be a bad argument to reason from one’s ignorance; yet, on the whole we may be pardoned if we incline to the fuller form, (perfect as we realize it to be,) as found in Matthew. There it has already been before us, and there would be no profit in mere repetition.
   The Lord adds an encouragement to perseverance which at first sight looks strange enough, but which must have therefore a lesson in this strangeness. How many arguments does the devil use, and which our own hearts assent to for their plausibility, against the continuance of apparently unsuccessful petitions. Yet if there be no more than this against them we are taught here to urge them still. And striking it is that the parallel suggested between the success of importunity with man and with God is one which seems as little capable of full application, -seems as capable of having serious arguments against it, -as any that could be suggested in this line. Nay, the Lord Himself points to the difficulty, while He presses the argument as if there were none. “I say unto you, though he will not rise and give because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” Can we apply this to God? Not the motive, surely: God does not give to get rid of the petitioner; spite of which the Lord goes on: “And I say unto you, Ask, and ye shall have; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.” Thus the Lord shows us that we may seek continuously, seek importunately, seek, as one needy man from another; although it might be argued, You are forgetting the difference between God and man. Difference there is, indeed; but we are not to use it to check the pouring out of our full hearts to Him. Be it so that He knows all before we ask; be it that we may be tempted to say with Job, “He is of one mind, and who can turn Him?” let us not heed arguments that would shut us from all the comfort of knowing that we have for our necessity a living God that hears and answers prayer. Ask as if He would yield to mere importunity. Cling to Him as Jacob clung, and say, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.” Ask until you hear Him say, “As a prince hast thou power with God . . . , and hast prevailed.” Then the Lord goes on to speak of the difference between God and man; but which is all in His favor. If men that are evil can be depended on to give good gifts to their children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" He guards against the abuse of the doctrine of importunity. He does not want us to think that we can by our importunity wring a gift out of our heavenly Father’s hand that is not good. In madness sometimes, perhaps, we might desire it; only, surely, in madness. But how can He refuse to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? Type of all good gifts this, the Holy Spirit. And John has told us that when the Lord was yet on earth, the “Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.” We must look at what this implies in another place; but we know quite well that the work of the Spirit in enlightening, sanctifying, working all spiritual work in man; was needed then as now, and being needed, was found and enjoyed. And now that, in the Christian sense, the Spirit is given; we can still have, and are called to prove the way in which our Father will respond with fulness of spiritual blessing to the prayers of His people. How comforting is the Lord’s assurance here! yet how it reproves us also! Here if we lack, “we have not because we ask not.” Shall we be content to go without the fulness of what Christ our Lord has certified to us to be ours if only we value it enough to seek it from the blessed hand of God?