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About-Him.Com Devotional 01-15-2005
Http://About-Him.Com/ My Thoughts on the Life of Christ, from His Baptism to His Ascension. 161: At the Pharisee's Supper - Luke 14:1-24 For the sake of those following the harmony of the Gospels found in the Thompson Chain Bible, our next segments cover four separate teachings of Jesus given when He was invited to eat at the home of an unnamed Pharisee. 162: The Man with Dropsy Healed - Luke 14:1-6 Luke 14:1 ¶ And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him. 2 And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. 3 And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? 4 And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; 5 And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? 6 And they could not answer him again to these things. Jesus, on the Sabbath day, went to a supper hosted by one of the chief Pharisees. There was a man nearby who was afflicted with dropsy, which is an accumulation of fluid in the body cavities. Quite possibly, this was a setup to see if Jesus would heal on the Sabbath day. The Pharisees watched Jesus to see what He would do. Jesus knew their thoughts and immediately asked if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath day. They would not answer and Jesus healed him and sent him on his way. He then asked if any of them did not hesitate to show mercy to an animal who had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath day. Again, they would not answer. Conclusion and Application: It had become the custom for those who were well off to host elaborate suppers on the Sabbath, often with entertainment. The only thing required was that the food be served cold, since it was unlawful to kindle a fire on the Sabbath day Exodus 35:3). Obviously, they were straining at the spirit of the law. Their custom was that anybody was free to drop in uninvited to eat and to listen to the ongoing conversation. Thus, the man with dropsy could have been either an invited or uninvited guest. We still have our inconsistencies today, don't we? A couple of things come to mind: We'll forbid laboring on Sunday and then hurry to the restaurant after church to let the unsaved wait on us, or we'll hurry home from church to watch the NFL on TV. I'm sure that you can think of many others. We realize that Sunday is not the actual Sabbath. Most of us have adopted the practice of meeting on the Lord's day, the first day of the week. I cannot condemn the person who feels to observe Saturday or the person who treats every day the same (Romans 14:1-8). If I do, I become like the Pharisees in our segment above. When Jesus asked if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath, the Pharisees could not refute his logic. Certainly if it was lawful to relieve the suffering of an animal on the Sabbath, it would also be lawful to relieve the suffering of a human being. The fact is that anytime we legislate a rule or a law, we will immediately have inconsistencies in it's application and of course these inconsistencies begat more laws. We can avoid these traps if we follow the words of Jesus. He stated that the greatest commandment of all was to love the Lord God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and then to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:29-33). All else will fall into place. Jesus observed many things at this supper which He used as object lessons to teach the crowd.
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"Oh, I sure am happy to see you," the little boy said to his grandmother on his mother's side. "Now maybe Daddy will do the trick he has been promising us." The grandmother was curious. "What trick is that?" she asked. "I heard him tell Mommy," the little boy answered, "that he would climb the walls if you came to visit."
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