Luke 5

Luke 5 starts out with the story about Jesus calling Peter to follow Him. This story seems a bit out of order chronologically because it's sandwiched between Jesus leaving Capernaum to preach in Judea at the end of chapter 4, and Jesus healing a leper in "one of the towns" in Luke 5:12. This goes to show that chronological order was not always a writer's first priority - sometimes they organized their stories to emphasize other points. And they certainly weren't held to the same literal standards as we are. We tend to take things very literally, whereas they tended to have a lot more flexibility in their story telling.

One sign that Peter met Jesus before their encounter at the boats was that Peter didn't question Jesus when He told him to put his nets down. He did start to argue with Jesus, but then obeyed - calling Him Lord, and received the blessing. That makes sense when you take into account that Jesus had already performed miracles at Peter's house. Another finer point is that Luke says that Peter, James and John were partners, where Matthew and Mark have Peter and Andrew together and James and John a little farther away. John turns the whole story around, having Andrew follow Jesus first and then introducing Peter to Him later.

I guess my point today is that there are certainly differences between the different gospel accounts, but you have to allow for the different perspectives of each writer, along with the different points each writer is trying to make - and flavor that with the cultural differences between our writing standards and theirs.

After Luke established that Jesus had called several men to be His disciples the story picks up with Jesus healing a leper in "one of the towns," so they were on the move and Jesus was ministering to the people around Israel. It's ironic that Jesus told people not to tell anyone about Him, and the people were not able to keep quiet - compared to now where Jesus has told us all to tell everyone about Him and it's a struggle for many to even have a conversation about Him. I wonder what the world would be like if the Great Commission was "Do not tell anyone."

In all seriousness, though, publicly thanking and praising someone that helped you was an unspoken cultural requirement in those days. A person's reputation was their credit score in those days, so if you did not give someone credit for doing good it was like you were robbing them. I think Jesus was simply telling them that they did not owe Him anything - but they were so grateful that they felt compelled to praise Him to others anyways. It was against their cultural instincts not to tell others about Him after He did such wonderful things for them. Note that we never see Jesus getting angry or rebuking anyone for praising Him to others after He told them not to.

Jesus healed the paralytic in the context of publicly stating that his sins were forgiven. The healing was a physical sign of a spiritual truth. The spiritual truth did not depend on the physical sign, but the people witnessing needed the physical sign in order to believe the spiritual truth. I think a lot of our life is like that. We are desperately seeking spiritual truth, but the only way we know how to ask for it is in the form of physical signs. Don't make every spiritual blessing depend on a physical blessing - that is to say, don't base your faith on healing or material prosperity. God may give you both - but the spiritual blessing is what really matters. That being said, the physical sign did seem to have the desired impact because all the people marveled at Jesus and glorified God. Even the scribes who were questioning Jesus in their hearts seemed to marvel at Him or at least they didn't immediately want to kill Him.

Then Jesus did the most controversial thing yet - He called a tax collector to follow Him, and then went to a part filled with sinners. This astounded everyone and the simple truth that Jesus spoke about it cut through every argument - "I'm not here for the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance." That was his mission in a nutshell.

Then people started questioning Him about rituals - why don't your disciples fast like everyone else. Jesus didn't say it wasn't necessary - just that He wasn't here to enforce a ritual.

And then He gave them a parable to explain that He was bringing a new covenant. Basically it meant that they would need to change their thinking from the old traditional ways to the new way that He was teaching.