Yeshua outlined duties for His 12 closest disciples, and these instructions help guide us today.
Tag: Gospel of Luke
There are three main classes of interpretation: 1. Yeshua is heralding the “end of Torah” and the “beginning of Grace.” 2. Yeshua was simply correcting unwarranted additions to the Torah. 3. Yeshua is talking about a “higher standard” for the Torah.
Yeshua had authority to heal paralytics, forgive sins and call tax collectors to His select 12 disciples. The punchline and the context of these stories and the parables Yeshua told are crucial clues to the meaning of Yeshua’s parables and miracles. A common interpretation of the parables of the cloths and wineskins is that Yeshua is teaching that one needs to unlearn the Torah to learn the gospel, but parables of the same time period employing the same symbols have a different point.
Part of Yeshua’s calling was to heal the sick and there was no disease that caused more Jews to tremble than the prospect of leprosy. Once a priest diagnosed a person with leprosy, that person was an outcast, shunned in the community and compelled to live a life of loneliness. Healthy people who came into contact with a leper were considered unclean, too. Yeshua’s healing of these lepers is very significant because he not only healed them with his words but with his touch. Some claim that Yeshua’s cleansing of lepers in this fashion was a rebuke and a refutation of the Levitical system but Yeshua’s healings actually uphold the Levitical system because he commands the lepers to go back to the priests to have their healing confirmed so they can rejoin the community of believers.
On the surface it appears that the apostles just jumped at Yeshua’s offer without thought or consideration, but there was far more consideration in their decision to follow Yeshua than we could ever imagine.
Yeshua proclaims from the Scriptures that He is the fulfillment of messianic prophecy in Isa. 61:1-2. Yet the people of His hometown demand more signs and reject His proclamation.
A medieval polemic against Christianity faulted Luke for a “garbled,” deceptively shortened quotation of Isaiah 61. How valid is that claim?
In this next chapter, Yeshua travels away from His anointing at His baptism and is sent “by the Spirit” to the wilderness to suffer temptation at the hands of the Adversary. These temptations, His reaction to them and how He overcame them were a crucial training ground to prepare Him for His final mission of crucifixion and resurrection.