Soon afterwards, he went about through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of God’s Kingdom. With him were the twelve, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out; and Joanna, the wife of Chuzas, Herod’s steward; Susanna; and many others; who served them from their possessions. When a great multitude came together, and people from every city were coming to him, he spoke by a parable. “The farmer went out to sow his seed. As he sowed, some fell along the road, and it was trampled under foot, and the birds of the sky devoured it. Other seed fell on the rock, and as soon as it grew, it withered away, because it had no moisture. Other fell amid the thorns, and the thorns grew with it, and choked it. Other fell into the good ground, and grew, and produced one hundred times as much fruit.” As he said these things, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
Then his disciples asked him, “What does this parable mean?”
He said, “To you it is given to know the mysteries of God’s Kingdom, but to the rest in parables; that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’ Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those along the road are those who hear, then the devil comes, and takes away the word from their heart, that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rock are they who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; but these have no root, who believe for a while, then fall away in time of temptation. That which fell among the thorns, these are those who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. Those in the good ground, these are those who with an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it tightly, and produce fruit with perseverance.
“No one, when he has lit a lamp, covers it with a container, or puts it under a bed; but puts it on a stand, that those who enter in may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be revealed; nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Be careful therefore how you hear. For whoever has, to him will be given; and whoever doesn’t have, from him will be taken away even that which he thinks he has.”
His mother and brothers came to him, and they could not come near him for the crowd. Some people told him, “Your mother and your brothers stand outside, desiring to see you.”
But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are these who hear the word of God, and do it.”
Now on one of those days, he entered into a boat, himself and his disciples, and he said to them, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.” So they launched out. But as they sailed, he fell asleep. A wind storm came down on the lake, and they were taking on dangerous amounts of water. They came to him, and awoke him, saying, “Master, master, we are dying!” He awoke, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and they ceased, and it was calm. He said to them, “Where is your faith?” Being afraid they marveled, saying to one another, “Who is this then, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?” They arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee.
When Jesus stepped ashore, a certain man out of the city who had demons for a long time met him. He wore no clothes, and didn’t live in a house, but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, “What do I have to do with you, Jesus, you Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torment me!” For Jesus was commanding the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For the unclean spirit had often seized the man. He was kept under guard, and bound with chains and fetters. Breaking the bonds apart, he was driven by the demon into the desert.
Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered into him.
They begged him that he would not command them to go into the abyss. Now there was there a herd of many pigs feeding on the mountain, and they begged him that he would allow them to enter into those. Then he allowed them. The demons came out of the man, and entered into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned. When those who fed them saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country.
People went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who saw it told them how he who had been possessed by demons was healed. All the people of the surrounding country of the Gadarenes asked him to depart from them, for they were very much afraid. Then he entered into the boat and returned. But the man from whom the demons had gone out begged him that he might go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your house, and declare what great things God has done for you.” He went his way, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.
When Jesus returned, the multitude welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. Behold, a man named Jairus came. He was a ruler of the synagogue. He fell down at Jesus’ feet, and begged him to come into his house, for he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying. But as he went, the multitudes pressed against him. A woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her living on physicians and could not be healed by any came behind him, and touched the fringe of his cloak. Immediately the flow of her blood stopped. Jesus said, “Who touched me?” When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, “Master, the multitudes press and jostle you, and you say, ‘Who touched me?’”
But Jesus said, “Someone did touch me, for I perceived that power has gone out of me.” When the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared to him in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. He said to her, “Daughter, cheer up. Your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”
While he still spoke, one from the ruler of the synagogue’s house came, saying to him, “Your daughter is dead. Don’t trouble the Teacher.”
But Jesus hearing it, answered him, “Don’t be afraid. Only believe, and she will be healed.”
When he came to the house, he didn’t allow anyone to enter in, except Peter, John, James, the father of the child, and her mother. All were weeping and mourning her, but he said, “Don’t weep. She isn’t dead, but sleeping.”
They were ridiculing him, knowing that she was dead. But he put them all outside, and taking her by the hand, he called, saying, “Child, arise!” Her spirit returned, and she rose up immediately. He commanded that something be given to her to eat. Her parents were amazed, but he commanded them to tell no one what had been done.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv4, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 27, 29, 39, 40, 41, 43, 52, 55 The selfsame Gospel is sown everywhere, but not with…
The selfsame Gospel is sown everywhere, but not with like fruit, and that through the only fault of men themselves.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 1 And it came to pass afterward, that he…
1 And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him,
Ver. 1. He went through every city] To teach us unweariableness in God’s work. He went about doing good: so should we, waiting all opportunities.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 41 Still I cannot but observe, that preaching the gospel,…
Still I cannot but observe, that preaching the gospel, and thereby showing the glad tidings of salvation, (the principal means to bring men to the kingdom of God, whether that in this life, or the kingdom of glory in the life which is to come), was Christ’s great work. His working miracles was but subservient to this, and for the confirmation of the doctrine which he preached; hence, when a people showed a contempt of his word, he refused to work any miracles before them. How any one can dream, that either praying, or government, or administering sacraments, or any thing else, should be more the work of a minister of Christ than preaching, may justly amaze any thinking soul that ever read the gospel.
Christ went every where about preaching, and the twelve were with him, sometimes hearing, (as his disciples), sometimes preaching; some women also were with him, such as had been healed of evil spirits and other diseases. Mary Magdalene was one, out of whom he had cast seven devils, that is, many devils. Most think she had her name from Magdala, a city in Galilee, where she was bred, or dwelt. It is a great error to think she was the Mary mentioned Joh 11:1-57, the sister of Lazarus; she lived in Bethany, near to Jerusalem. Yet it is plain from Mar 16:1-20 that she was at Jerusalem at the time of Christ’s death and resurrection; but so were many that followed him from Galilee, Mar 15:41; Luk 23:49.
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And Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward. Christ hath his elect in all places, his Joseph in Pharaoh’s court, his Daniel and three children in Nebuchadnezzar’s court, his saints in Nero’s household, Phi 4:22, his Joanna in Herod’s family. This was that Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, he who put John the Baptist to death, and himself with his soldiers mocked Christ; possibly his steward was as bad, but his wife was one that followed Christ, knowing that though her husband had power over her body, he had none over her soul.
And they ministered to him of their substance. They were not ashamed to be seen following of Christ, though doubtless they met with scoffs enough. Nor were they ashamed to be reproached for their former failing; nor was Christ, because of their former lives, or the life of some of them, to have them following him. It is a glory to Christ, and to the church of Christ, to have great sinners brought to him, and brought into it; the only shame is to such as, being in the church, or pretending at least to be Christians, are debauchees still. Christ did not give himself for a people that were pure and holy, without spot or wrinkle, but that he might sanctify them and cleanse them, with the washing of water by the word, Eph 5:25-27. Following Christ they ministered to him. This was according to Christ’s doctrine, Mat 10:10, and his apostles after him, 1Co 9:11; 2Co 8:9; Gal 6:6. Some of them might be virgins, some widows, some wives, who had an allowance for themselves from their husbands; however, it could be no robbery to give of what was their husbands’ to him who was the Lord of all, which either their husbands or they possessed. Nor was Christ ashamed to live upon the baskets of others, while he was providing spiritual food for the souls of all, 2Co 8:9.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 11, 16, 19, 22, 26, 41, 43, 49 Observe, here, the great work and business, which not…
Observe, here, the great work and business, which not only the apostles, but Christ himself was engaged in, and employed about, namely, preaching the gospel, those glad tidings of salvation to a lost world.
Where note, that Christ himself labored in this work of public preaching; he did not send forth his apostles as his curates to work and sweat in the vineyard, while he himself took his ease at home; but he accompanies them himself, yea, he goes before them himself in this great and excellent work: Jesus went preaching the glad tidings of the gospel, and the twelve were with him.
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Learn thence, that preaching of the gospel is a great and necessary work, incumbent upon all the ministers of Christ, let their dignity and pre-eminence in the church be what it will. Surely none of the servants are above their Lord and Master! Did he labor in the word and doctrine?
Observe, 2. The places where Christ and his apostles preached, not only in the populous cities, but in the poor country villages: They went through every city and village preaching the gospel. Some will preach the gospel, provided they may preach at court, or in the capital cities of the nation; but the poor country villages are overlooked by them.
Our Saviour and his apostles were not of this mind: ’tis true, they were itinerary preachers, we are settled; but be the place never so mean and obscure, and the people never so rude and barbarous, we must not think it beneath the greatest of us to exercise our ministry there, if God calls us thither: Christ went through the villages, as well as cities, preaching.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 22, 40 We are here told,
We are here told,
I. What Christ made the constant business of his life - it was preaching; in that work he was indefatigable, and went about doing good (Luk 8:1), afterward - en tō kathexēs - ordine, in the proper time or method. Christ took his work before him and went about it regularly. He observed a series or order of business, so that the end of one good work was the beginning of another. Now observe here, 1. Where he preached: He went about - diōdeue - peragrabat. He was an itinerant preacher, did not confine himself to one place, but diffused the beams of his light. Circumibat - He went his circuit, as a judge, having found his preaching perhaps most acceptable where it was new. He went about through every city, that none might plead ignorance. Hereby he set an example to his disciples; they must traverse the nations of the earth, as he did the cities of Israel. Nor did he confine himself to the cities, but went into the villages, among the plain country-people, to preach to the inhabitants of the villages, Jdg 5:11. 2. What he preached: He showed the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, that it was now to be set up among them. Tidings of the kingdom of God are glad tidings, and those Jesus Christ came to bring; to tell the children of men that God was willing to take all those under his protection that were willing to return to their allegiance. It was glad tidings to the world that there was hope of its being reformed and reconciled. 3. Who were his attendants: The twelve were with him, not to preach if he were present, but to learn from him what and how to preach hereafter, and, if occasion were, to be sent to places where he could not go. Happy were these his servants that heard his wisdom.
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II. Whence he had the necessary supports of life: He lived upon the kindness of his friends. There were certain women, who frequently attended his ministry, that ministered to him of their substance, Luk 8:2, Luk 8:3. Some of them are named; but there were many others, who were zealously affected to the doctrine of Christ, and thought themselves bound in justice to encourage it, having themselves found benefit, and in charity, hoping that many others might find benefit by it too.
1. They were such, for the most part, as had been Christ's patients, and were the monuments of his power and mercy; they had been healed by him of evil spirits and infirmities. Some of them had been troubled in mind, had been melancholy, others of them afflicted in body, and he had been to them a powerful healer. He is the physician both of body and soul, and those who have been healed by him ought to study what they shall render to him. We are bound in interest to attend him, that we may be ready to apply ourselves to him for help in case of a relapse; and we are bound in gratitude to serve him and his gospel, who hath saved us, and saved us by it.
2. One of them was Mary Magdalene, out of whom had been cast seven devils; a certain number for an uncertain. Some think that she was one that had been very wicked, and then we may suppose her to be the woman that was a sinner mentioned just before, Luk 7:37. Dr. Lightfoot, finding in some of the Talmudists' writings that Mary Magdalene signified Mary the plaiter of hair, thinks it applicable to her, she having been noted, in the days of her iniquity and infamy, for that plaiting of hair which is opposed to modest apparel, Ti1 2:9. But, though she had been an immodest woman, upon her repentance and reformation she found mercy, and became a zealous disciple of Christ. Note, The greatest of sinners must not despair of pardon; and the worse any have been before their conversion the more they should study to do for Christ after. Or, rather, she was one that had been very melancholy, and then, probably, it was Mary the sister of Lazarus, who was a woman of a sorrowful spirit, who might have been originally of Magdala, but removed to Bethany. This Mary Magdalene was attending on Christ's cross and his sepulchre, and, if she was not Mary the sister of Lazarus, either that particular friend and favourite of Christ's did not attend then, or the evangelists did not take notice of her, neither of which we can suppose; thus Dr. Lightfoot argues. Yet there is this to be objected against it that Mary Magdalene is reckoned among the women that followed Jesus from Galilee (Mat 27:55, Mat 27:56); whereas Mary the sister of Lazarus had her residence in Bethany.
3. Another of them was Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward. She had been his wife (so some), but was now a widow, and left in good circumstances. If she was now his wife, we have reason to think that her husband, though preferred in Herod's court, had received the gospel, and was very willing that his wife should be both a hearer of Christ and a contributor to him.
4. There were many of them that ministered to Christ of their substance. It was an instance of the meanness of that condition to which our Saviour humbled himself that he needed it, and of his great humility and condescension that he accepted it. Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, and lived upon alms. Let none say that they scorn to be beholden to the charity of their neighbours, when Providence has brought them into straits; but let them ask and be thankful for it as a favour. Christ would rather be beholden to his known friends for a maintenance for himself and his disciples than be burdensome to strangers in the cities and villages whither he came to preach. Note, It is the duty of those who are taught in the word to communicate to them who teach them in all good things; and those who are herein liberal and cheerful honour the Lord with their substance, and bring a blessing upon it.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv2–55 And certain women which had been healed of evil…
And certain women which had been healed of evil spirits,.... Of devils, who had possessed them, and were healed by Christ, dispossessing them; See Gill on Luk 7:21.
and infirmities: various diseases of body: some were dispossessed of devils, and others freed from bodily disorders; of the first sort was
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Mary Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils: by the order of Christ, for he cast them out, Mar 16:9 and which shows, that this is to be understood, in a literal sense, of devils, and the dispossession of them by Christ; and not in a figurative sense, of vices, and the expulsion of them by the power of divine grace; for this same phrase is used where real dispossessions are intended: nor need it be thought strange that seven devils should be in one person, when, in this same chapter, we read of a legion in one man, and which also Christ cast out, Luk 8:30. This woman seems to be a different person from her spoken of in the latter part of the preceding chapter, seeing this looks as if it was the first time of her being taken notice of by this evangelist, and is described by a different character. She is called "Magdalene", to distinguish her from others of the same name; the reason of which See Gill on Mat 27:56. She is said (d) to be a widow, and so not being bound to an husband, was at leisure to follow Christ.
(d) Jerom in Mar. xv. 40.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 26, 29, 31, 32, 37, 40, 52 Mary Magdalene - Or Mary of Magdala, a town…
Mary Magdalene - Or Mary of Magdala, a town in Galilee: probably the person mentioned in the last chapter.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 54, 55 Jesus preaches through every city and village, 1.
CHAPTER VIII.
Jesus preaches through every city and village, 1.
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Women minister to him, 2, 3.
Instructs the multitudes by the parable of the sower, 4-8.
Explains it at large to his disciples, 9-15.
Directions how to improve by hearing the Gospel, 16-18.
His mother and brethren seek him, 19-21.
He and his disciples go upon the lake, and are taken in a
storm, 22-25.
They arrive among the Gadarenes, 26,
where he cures a demoniac, 27-39.
He returns from the Gadarenes, and is requested by Jairus to
heal his daughter, 40-42.
On the way he cures a diseased woman, 43-48.
Receives information that the daughter of Jairus is dead, 49.
Exhorts the father to believe; arrives at the house, and raises
the dead child to life, 60-66.
NOTES ON CHAP VIII.
Verse 1. Throughout every city and village] That is, of Galilee.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 16, 19, 22, 26, 40 Luk 8:1. And it came to pass afterward —…
Luk 8:1. And it came to pass afterward — Probably the day after he had dined with Simon; or, as the expression, εν τω καθεξης, may be understood to imply, in the order of his work; for he went through it regularly, and the end of one good work was with him the beginning of another; he went throughout every city and village — Namely, in those parts, preaching and showing, &c. — Κηρυσσων και ευαγγελιζομενος, proclaiming, and evangelizing, or publishing; the glad tidings of the kingdom of God — The kingdom which he was now about to erect among mankind: or, the glad tidings of his reconcileableness to men, of the necessity of reformation, and of the acceptableness of repentance, even in the chief of sinners. And the twelve were with him — As he thought it proper they should be for some time, that they might be further instructed for their important work, and that their having been thus publicly seen in his train might promote their reception, when they afterward came to any of these places by themselves.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 16, 19, 22, 40 Every city and village - Of Galilee.
Every city and village - Of Galilee.
Preaching an showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God - That the kingdom of God was about to come, or that his reign in the gospel was about to be set up over people. See the notes at Mat 3:2.
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The twelve - The twelve apostles.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 8, 9, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 41, 43, 45, 48, 55 Mention is made in the gospels, of a woman…
Mention is made in the gospels, of a woman who was a sinner, (Luke vii.) of Mary of Bethania, the sister of Lazarus, (John xi. and xii; Mark xiv; Matthew xxvi.) and of Mary Magdalene, who followed Jesus from Galilee, and ministered to him. Many think all this to belong to one and the same person: others think these were three distinct persons. See the arguments on both sides in Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, July 22d; and also more at large in the dissertations upon the three Marys, at the conclusion of the harmony in the Bible de Vence.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Luke Chapter 8
Luke Chapter 8
In chapter 8 the Lord explains the import and the effect of His ministry; and especially, I doubt not, its effect among the Jews.
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However great the unbelief, Jesus carries on His work to the end, and the fruits of His work appear. He goes to preach the good news of the kingdom. His disciples (the fruit, and the witnesses by grace, in their measure, in the same manner as Himself, of His mighty word) accompany Him; and other fruits of this same word, witnesses also by their own deliverance from the power of the enemy, and by the affection and devotedness flowing from thence by grace-a grace which acted also in them, according to the love and devotedness that attach to Jesus. Here women have a good place. [24] The work was strengthened and consolidated, and characterises itself by its effects.
The Lord explains its true nature. He did not take possession of the kingdom, He did not seek for fruit; He sowed the testimony of God in order to produce fruit. This, in a striking way, is the altogether new thing. The word was its seed. Moreover it was the disciples only-who had followed and attached themselves to His Person, by grace and by virtue of the manifestation of the power and grace of God in His Person-to whom it was given to understand the mysteries, the thoughts of God, revealed inChrist, of this kingdom which was not being openly established by power. Here the remnant is very clearly distinguished from the nation. To “others” it was in parables, that they might not understand. For that the Lord Himself must be received morally. Here this parable is not accompanied by others. Alone it marks out the position. The warning, which we considered in Mark, is added. Finally the light of God was not manifested in order to be hidden. Moreover everything should be made manifest. Therefore they must take heed how they heard, for, if they possessed that which they heard, they should receive more: otherwise even that should be taken from them.
The Lord puts a seal upon this testimony, namely, that the thing in question was the word, which drew to Him and to God those who were to enjoy the blessing; and that the word was the basis of all relationship with Himself, declaring, when they spoke to Him of His mother and brethren, by whom He was related to Israel after the flesh, that He acknowledged as such none others but those who heard and obeyed the word of God.
Besides the evident power manifested in His miracles the accounts that follow-to the end of chapter 8-present different aspects of the work of Christ, and of His reception, and of its consequences.
First the Lord-although, apparently, He takes no notice-is associated with His disciples in the difficulties and storms that surround them, because they have embarked in His service. We have seen that He gathered the disciples around Himself: they are devoted to His service. As far as man’s power to avert it went, they were in imminent danger. The waves are ready to swallow them up. Jesus, in their eyes, cares nothing about it; but God has permitted this exercise of faith. They are there on account of Christ, and with Him. Christ is with them; and the power of Christ, for whose sake they are in the storm, is there to protect them. They are together with Him in the same vessel. If as to themselves they might perish, they are associated in the counsels of God with Jesus, and His presence is their safeguard. He permits the storm, but He is Himself in the vessel. When He shall awake and manifest Himself, all will be calm.
In the healing of the demoniac, in the country of the Gadarenes, we have a living picture of what was passing.
As to Israel, the remnant-however great the enemy’s power-is delivered. The world beseeches Jesus to depart, desiring their own ease, which is more disturbed by the presence and power of God than by a legion of devils. He goes away. The man who was healed-the remnant-would fain be with Him; but the Lord sends him back (into the world that He quitted Himself) to be a witness of the grace and power of which he had been the subject. The herd of swine, I doubt not, set before us the career of Israel towards their destruction, after the rejection of the Lord. The world accustoms itself to the power of Satan-painful as it may be to see it in certain cases-never to the power of God.
The next two histories present the effect of faith, and the real need with which the grace that meets it has to do. The faith of the remnant seeks Jesus to preserve the life of that which is ready to perish. The Lord answers it, and comes Himself to answer it. On the way (it is there He was, and, as to final deliverance, He is still there), in the midst of the crowd that surrounded Him, faith touches Him. The poor woman had a disease which no means at marl’s disposal could heal. But power is found in the Man, Christ, and comes forth from Him for the healing of man, wherever faith exists, while waiting for the final accomplishment of His mission on earth. She is healed, and confesses before Christ her condition and all that had happened to her: and thus, by means of the effect of faith, testimony is rendered to Christ. The remnant is manifested, faith distinguishes them from the multitude; their condition being the fruit of divine power in Christ.
This principle applies to the healing of every believer, and, consequently, to that of the Gentiles, as the apostle argues. Healing power is in the Person of Christ; faith-by grace and by the attraction of Christ-profits by it. It does not depend on the relationship of the Jew, although, as to his position, he was the first to profit by it. It is a question of what there is in the Person of Christ, and of faith in the individual. If there is faith in the individual, this power acts; he goes away in peace, healed by the power of God Himself. But, in fact, if we consider in full the condition of man, it was not sickness merely which was in question, but death. Christ, before the full manifestation of the state of man, met it, so to speak, on the way; but, as in the case of Lazarus, the manifestation was allowed; and to faith this manifestation took place in the death of Jesus. Thus, here, it is permitted that the daughter of Jairus should die before the arrival of Christ; but grace has come to raise from the dead, with the divine power that alone can accomplish it; and Jesus, in comforting the poor father, bids him not to fear, but only to believe, and his daughter should be made whole. It is faith in His Person, in the divine power in Him, in the grace that comes to exercise it, which obtains joy and deliverance. But Jesus does not seek the multitude here; the manifestation of this power is only for the consolation of those who feel their need of it, and for the faith of those who are really attached to Him. The multitude know, indeed, that the maiden is dead; they bewail her, and do not understand the power of God that can raise her up. Jesus gives back to her parents the child whose life He had restored. Thus will it be with the Jews at the end, in the midst of the unbelief of the many. Meantime by faith we anticipate this joy, convinced that it is our state by grace; we live: only that for us it is in connection with Christ in heaven, the firstfruits of a new creation.
With respect to His ministry, Jesus will have this hidden. He must be received according to the testimony which He bore to the conscience and to the heart. On the way this testimony was not entirely finished. We shall see His last efforts with the unbelieving heart of man in the succeeding chapters.
Footnotes for Luke Chapter 8
24: It is exceedingly interesting to see the distinct place of the disciples and the women. Nor, as said above, have the women a bad place. We find them again at the cross and the sepulchre when-at any rate save John-the disciples had fled, or, even if called by the women to the sepulchre, gone home! when they saw He was raised.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 22, 26, 40 D. Galilee and the Surrounding Regions, without excluding Capernaum.…
D. Galilee and the Surrounding Regions, without excluding Capernaum. Luk_8:1 to Luk_9:50
1. The First Christian Family Circle.Luk_8:1-3
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1And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve werewith him, 2And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities,Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, 3And Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, Which ministered unto him [them, V. O.1] of their substance.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Luk_8:1. Afterward, ἐν τῷ καθ. sc. χρόνῳ.—Luke is here not concerned to arrange the different events in a strict chronological succession, but only in general to call attention to the fact that the activity of the Saviour, in His journeys through Galilee, was continued uninterruptedly, while he now adjoins a mention of the services rendered by women in this period, of which none of the other Evangelists make mention. Occasion to do this he more than probably found in the immediately preceding narrative.
Κατὰ πόλιν καὶ κώμην. From town to town, and from village to village; comp. Act_15:21. The unweariedness of the Saviour’s activity comes here with especial clearness into view.
Luk_8:2. And certain women.—In the earlier period the disciples still wondered when they saw their Master in conversation with a woman, Joh_4:27. Now there has already been formed a circle of female disciples, who were joined to the Master by thankful love.—Mary of Magdala. See above. Respecting Magdala, see Lange, on Mat_15:39.
Luk_8:3. Joanna is only here and in Luk_24:10 referred to by name, as the consort, perhaps the widow, of Chuza, steward of Herod. If we assume with some that Chuza was the βασιλικός (Joh_4:46-54), we might suppose that grateful love for the deliverer of her son had brought the mother to Jesus.—Susanna, that is, Lily, שׁוֹשׁנָּה, is not further known.—And many others.—Comp. Mat_27:55.
which ministered unto them.—The female friends of our Lord appear for the most part to have belonged to the well-circumstanced higher class, since the here-mentioned ministration doubtless consisted principally in support rendered to earthly necessities from their property. This ministration was rendered to the whole travelling company. The reading αὐτῷ is perhaps in some manuscripts a correction, which visibly arose from the effort to represent the service of these women as an act of Divine service, which was exclusively limited to the Master.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The brief account which Luke gives us respecting these women is peculiarly adapted to awaken a vivid conception of the journeyings of the Saviour through Galilee. We see Him proceeding from one town to another, wearing as clothing the simple yet becoming tunic, which was not sewed but woven from above throughout, perhaps the gift of love; the sandals bound crosswise over His uncovered feet; the disciples near by without money in their girdles, without shoes, staff, on wallet; perhaps a little flask with oil, after the Oriental usage, hanging over their shoulders, for the refreshment of their wearied limbs (Mar_6:13; Luk_10:34; Gen_28:18); and at a beseeming distance the women covered with their veils, who were concerned with tender affection for the wants of the company, now and then preparing for their beloved Master a refreshing surprise, and now holding discourse with one another, now with Him. The view of such a circle of brethren and sisters, whose centre the Lord is, makes an impression that elevates the heart.
2. The unhesitating way in which the Saviour admitted and accepted the loving services of these women is a striking proof not only of His condescending love, which endures services rendered to Him, although He did not come to be ministered unto (Mat_20:28), but at the same time of His firm confidence in the purity and faithfulness of these Galilean friends, which indeed did remain, even beyond His death, unchangeably the same.
3. We see here an emancipation of woman in the noblest sense of the word, and the beginning of the service of women in the church of Christ (Wichern), and at the same time also a decided triumph of the evangelical spirit over the limitation of the Jewish Rabbinism, and the prophecy of the new world of love called into being through Christ.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
In Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, man nor woman, but a new creature.—Thankful ministration of love well pleasing to the Lord.—Diversity and agreement among the first female friends of Jesus.—What the Saviour is for woman, and what woman must be for the Saviour.—Woman in Christ no longer slave of the man, but a fellow-heir of the grace of life, 1Pe_3:1.—Women of high condition also cannot possibly dispense with the Saviour.—The Head of the church served by and in His members.—The destination of earthly good also to the advancement of the kingdom of God.—The first Christian circle of sisters united for a work of love, 1. Whose origin is pure, 2. whose character is that of power, 3. whose fruit is abundant, 4. whose duration is perennial.—The service of the poor, Divine service (Angelus Merula).—Among the women of the evangelical history not one enemy of the Lord.
Starke:—Whoever hath tasted that the Lord is gracious, such an one cannot abandon Him.—If Christ was not ashamed of the ministrations of others, why should we be ashamed when we find ourselves in like circumstances?—Quesnel:—Godly women have at all times helped to build up the kingdom of God by the exercise of love towards Christ’s servants and His poor members, Rom_16:1-2; Rom_16:6.—Majus:—For spiritual benefits to render something temporal is becoming, and yet a poor payment.—For His poor children God knows well how to provide.
Footnotes:
[1]Luk_8:3.—Rec.: αὐτῷ. Αὐτοῖς has preponderating authority, see Tischendorf ad loc. “The singular appeared more obvious to the copyists, partly because ἧσαν τεθεραπ. preceded, partly through reminiscence of Mat_27:55; Mar_15:41.” Meyer. [Αὐτῷ, A., L., M., X., Cod. Sin.; αὐτοῖς, B., D., E.2, 10 other uncials.—C. C. S.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 16, 17, 18, 23, 40, 45, 46, 47, 55 certain women . . . healed, &c.--on whom He…
certain women . . . healed, &c.--on whom He had the double claim of having brought healing to their bodies and new life to their souls. Drawn to Him by an attraction more than magnetic, they accompany Him on this tour as His almoners--ministering unto Him of their substance. Blessed Saviour! It melts us to see Thee living upon the love of Thy ransomed people. That they bring Thee their poor offerings we wonder not. Thou hast sown unto them spiritual things, and they think it, as well they might, a small thing that Thou shouldst reap their material things (Co1 9:11). But dost Thou take it at their hand, and subsist upon it? "Oh, the depth of the riches" (Rom 11:33) --of this poverty of His!
Mary Magdalene--that is, probably, of Magdala (on which see Mat 15:39; see on Mar 8:10).
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went--rather, "had gone."
seven devils-- (Mar 16:9). It is a great wrong to this honored woman to identify her with the once profligate woman of Luk 7:37, and to call all such penitents Magdalenes. The mistake has arisen from confounding unhappy demoniacal possession with the conscious entertainment of diabolic impurity, or supposing the one to have been afflicted as a punishment for the other--for which there is not the least scriptural ground.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 16, 19, 22, 26, 41, 43, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56 § 42.— SECOND ITINERANCY IN GALILEE— HEALING A DEMONIAC—BLASPHEMY…
§ 42.— SECOND ITINERANCY IN GALILEE— HEALING A DEMONIAC—BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST, Luk_8:1-3.
See Mat_9:35; Mat_12:22-37; Mar_6:6.
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1. Afterward—After the laying of the Platform of the new dispensation, by preaching the Sermon on the Mount, and confirming it by miracles indicating his power over body and soul, Jesus entered upon an extensive range of ministry in Galilee.
The twelve were with him—As they had been regularly installed in their number before the Sermon on the Mount Their number was adjusted to that of the twelve tribes, so that Jesus was now fully prepared to receive all Israel into that kingdom of God which he and they went forth to announce.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56 Luk_8:1-3. The Ministering Women.
Luk_8:1-3. The Ministering Women.
1. And it came to pass afterward] The expression marks a new phase, a new departure, in Christ’s mode of action. Hitherto He had made Capernaum His head-quarters; regarded it as “His own city,” and not gone to any great distance from it. At this period—the exact beginning of which is only vaguely marked—He began a wider range of missions.
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shewing the glad tidings] The Baptist had preached ‘repentance’ as the preparation for the Kingdom: our Lord preached of the Kingdom itself, and this was ‘glad tidings,’ because the Kingdom of God is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Rom_14:17.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 55 (1) And it came to pass afterward.—The last word…
VIII.
(1) And it came to pass afterward.—The last word is the same as that translated “in order,” in Luk_1:3, and is interesting as showing the continuance of St. Luke’s purpose to narrate events, so far as he could, in their exact sequence. He is the only writer in the New Testament who uses it. The verse sums up an undefined and otherwise unrecorded range of work.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 56 Vers. 1-3. St. Luke"s brief notice of the women…
Vers. 1-3. St. Luke"s brief notice of the women who formed part of the company of Jesus.
And it came to pass afterward. St. Luke here notices an alteration in the Master"s way of life. From this time forward Jesus ceased to make Capernaum "his city," his usual residence; he now journeys with his little band of followers from place to place. From this time there was also a distinct change in the tone of his teaching. The Greek word rendered "afterward" is the same as that translated "in order" in Luk_1:3. Showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. The public work of Jesus may be well arranged under three heads: his work as Master, as Evangelist, and as Prophet. The first had especial relation to his own immediate followers, women as well as men. In the second, as the Preacher of the grace, mercy, and the love of God, he peculiarly addressed himself to the general population; this was the special side of the Lord"s work which St. Luke loved to dwell on; this is what he alludes to here. In the third, as Prophet, the Master spoke generally to an evil generation, and especially to the political and religious leaders of the Jewish society of his day.
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Vers. 1-21. The evangelistic circuit.
Observe
I THE PLAN OF CIRCUIT. (Ver. 1) "He went," or "went about," or "kept journeying." Hitherto Capernaum had been the centre from which short excursions were taken, the Lord always returning to it. Now he moves steadily on from place to place, "passing in patience until his work is done." "Through cities and villages." He will not omit any abode of man. If social influence and power had been the aim, this Prophet would have limited his operations to the chief centres of life; but his meat is to do the Father"s will, and where there is even one soul waiting for the message, there is he. To the Father, to him, there is the same value in the soul of the. peasant as in that of the prince. "Preaching and bringing the good tidings of the kingdom of God." The distinction between the words, "preaching and showing the good tidings or, to give the exact English rendering, "evangelizing is not to be pressed too far; but the latter word seems to mark an advance of thought on the former. The "preaching" was the more general proclamation, and the "evangelizing" was the presentation of the gospel thus proclaimed to the diversities of experience and need, the opening up of its several aspects of blessing, so that men from their different standpoints might realize the great love of God and behold the glories of his kingdom. Kings grant pardons, but they only send them; this King comes himself with the pardon, and deals personally with the sinner. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him thus bringing good tidings, and publishing peace; bringing good tidings of good, publishing salvation, saying unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!
II A NEW STYLE OF DISCOURSE. One which thenceforth becomes a marked feature of the teaching. He had frequently used comparisons, traced likenesses between the natural and the spiritual. But what had been an occasional trait now became a characteristic mode of conveying truth, and for the reason given by himself (ver. 10). To us, familiar with the sound and meaning of the parable, nothing can seem more apposite and happy as a means of communicating thought. By it the highest and deepest mysteries of the kingdom are most gently infused into the apprehension of the mind, whilst there is always a reserve of meaning on which we can draw. But the gamble was not all this to those who heard it. It stimulated inquiry rather than imparted knowledge. It brought the disciples to Jesus, saying, "Expound to us;" "What might this story be?" Those who did not wish to learn were sent away with the feeling, "A dark saying has been uttered: who can hear it?" Jesus says that this defined his purpose in adopting it. He meant it to be a test of the spirit of the mind. Thus he laid his hearers in the balances. May we be of those "to whom it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven"!
III THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. This is the only one of the famous seven given in Matthew 13 which St. Luke places in our view. It falls more naturally to be considered at length in connection with the former of the accounts. Observe here on this St. Luke is explicit the point to which the discourse of Jesus looks (ver. 18), "Take heed therefore how ye hear." In this connection recall the four kinds of place in which the seed is sown: the wayside, where the seed is trodden down and devoured by the fowls; the rock, or stony places, where the seed springs up, but soon withers through want of moisture; the thorny ground, where the seed and the thorns grow together, and the thorns choke the seed; and the good ground, where the seed springs up and bears a hundredfold. These places are identified (vers. 12-15) with classes of hearers. There are the wayside hearers those in whom there is no mental exercise on that which they hear, whose minds are thoroughfares for all sorts of thought. And what follows? As soon as they hear, the devil comes some impish fancy or distracting influence, and takes away the word. "I never heard a sermon," said a man, who for years attended church, "I attended, but, whilst you were speaking, I reviewed the last week"s task and arranged for the next." There are the rocky-place hearers those who hear with interest, with emotion; you can see the response to the word in the animation of the countenance, in the tokens of lively feeling. But the message does not grasp the character, the centres of the life remain unchanged, and thus "in time of temptation they fall away." There are the thorny-ground hearers those who have heard and yielded to the truth, but the busy, care-crowded, or pleasure-seeking world is waiting for them; the seed is not altogether lost, but the mind is choked with alien interests or pursuits. The poet Robert Burns compares himself to a lonely man walking where fragments of marble columns lie on the ground, overgrown by rank, tall weeds. There are the good-soil hearers those in whom the earnest longing to know, to do, God"s truth is a preparation for the word; who, having heard, hide the word in the heart, and patiently and habitually submit to it-, and, through the blessing of the Holy Spirit, bring forth fruit abundantly. To which of these types of hearers does each of us belong? Oh the responsibility of hearing! Note the distinction, in ver. 18, between those who have and those who seem to have, or think they have. What is the warning? Whoso only thinks that he has, or is content with the appearance of having, is losing his possession. The life is really moving on other lines than those laid down in the word. The power of reception is diminishing: "Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he thinketh he hath." "Take heed therefore how ye hear." It is the manner of hearing that is the main thing the motive, the desire, the extent to which the heart and the soul are engaged whilst hearing. Persons are apt to blame the speaker, to lay the want of effect at his door. It may be so; no doubt it often is so. But what of these persons themselves? Let each examine himself. Eloquence, it has been said, is in the audience; and, undoubtedly, the sympathy of the audience has much to do with the power of the utterance. Christ reminds us that, where there is failure, the hearer at least divides the blame. He reminds us, too, that the life declares the quality of the hearing. Vers. 16, 17, "For nothing is hid, that shall not be made manifest; nor anything secret, that shall not be known and come to light.
IV THE HELPERS AND THE HINDERERS IN THE MINISTRY. The twelve are with him. It is their university curriculum. Would to God that all who pass through universities and seminaries realized this curriculum also first, and then ministers of the Word"! But he has other companions than the apostles; and the noteworthy thing as to these other companions is that they ministered to him of their substance. "The Son of God," says Godet, "lived by the love of those whom his love had made to live." Who are they? Women. Three names are singled out. Mary of Magdala," from whom seven devils had gone out" (vide previous section), once passionate, perhaps depraved, in her life; but henceforth the most loving and devoted; the one to whom the risen Saviour first appeared (John 20). And with her are named the wife of Herod"s steward, and Susanna, of whom nothing is known. "Many others," we are told. But we do not find, as Farrar has pointed out, the wives of Peter or of the married apostles; nor yet the mother of our Lord. The ministry of woman to Jesus! There is a deep sympathy between the true woman-heart and the Lord; the self-sacrificing love so pure and strong in the true woman-heart being the special attraction. Christianity has exalted woman, has raised her position, and purified her influence. But woman has more than paid back all that she owes to Christianity in respect of this. Who, indeed, that has been blessed by Christian mother, wife, sister, friend, does not know that God has created the ministry of his Word male and female? giving to the female an even more winning beauty and a more spiritually educative service than the male. The apostles are with, Jesus; but certain women minister to him of their substance. These are the helpers: who are the hinderers? His mother and his brethren (ver. 19). The Lord is compelled to say that, whilst the relation according to the flesh is respected, they are not at that moment connected with him by the affinities which alone are permanent. See how this bears on the idolatrous honour paid by the Roman Church to Mary. She has been prevailed on by her children, not to intercede with Jesus, but to join them in the effort probably meant in kindness, but showing deficiency of insight to prevent him from continuance in toils and prayers. And note, he distinctly declines to recognize any rights grounded on the motherhood with regard to his work; only spiritual relationships will he recognize. Even when he looks down from the cross and sees her standing, he says to the beloved disciple only, "Behold thy mother." But, apart from this, is it not suggestive, mournfully suggestive, that the hinderers are the nearest of relations mother and brethren? So it has been often since. An unsympathetic home and circle of friends sometimes constitute the sorest trial which one must face who wills to have fellowship with the Son of God, "He goeth forth weeping, bearing the precious seed.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Ver. 1. The gospel of the kingdom.
In a parallel passage in Matthew (Mat_4:23) we read that Jesus went about all Galilee, "preaching the gospel of the kingdom;" here we read of the same thing in a very slightly different form the glad tidings of the kingdom of God." It will clear away all possible confusion of thought respecting "the gospel" and "the kingdom" if we dwell upon the gospel (or the glad tidings) of the kingdom.
I THE KINGDOM OF GOD. This kingdom of God, or of heaven, or of Christ (for our Lord sometimes spoke of it as his own), is something transcendently nobler than anything which the most pious or the most sanguine Jew ever hoped for in his heart or pictured in his imagination. (see homily on Luk_1:31-33) As Jesus Christ conceived it, and as it will be when it has been fully and finally established, this glorious kingdom is or is to be:
1. A kingdom of God; one in which God himself will be the one Sovereign, all men everywhere being his subjects, owning his sway and loyal to his will
2. An essentially spiritual kingdom; all the obedience and submission rendered being that of the heart and the will, as well as of the tongue and the hand.
3. A righteous kingdom; in which every citizen will act in accordance with "the golden rule". (Luk_6:31)
4. A beneficent kingdom; the spirit of kindness, of practical helpfulness, animating every subject.
5. A universal kingdom; coextensive with the human race.
6. An ever lasting kingdom; going down to the remotest generation. Such, in its purity, its nobility, its inherent greatness, its absolute uniqueness, is the "kingdom of God.
II THE GOSPEL (THE GLAD TIDINGS) OF THE KINGDOM. The features of this kingdom which so much commend it to the hearts of erring, sinful, dying men, constituting "the glad tidings of the kingdom," are:
1. That entrance into it is open to every child of man. This is now so familiar to us as to be quite commonplace. But lock at it in the light of the doctrine of Divine favouritism once prevalent; in the light of the incident recorded in the fourth chapter of this Gospel (vers. 23-29); then we cannot be too thankful that the gates of this blessed kingdom are open, stand wide open, to every comer to the poor, to the despised, to the neglected, to the barbarous, to those whom men may consider irrecoverable or not worth redeeming.
2. That its Divine Sovereign is actively seeking all souls, that they may enter. It is not only that no one is excluded; the good news, the glad tidings, is more and better than that it is that every one is being individually, lovingly invited, nay, pressed and urged to enter; it is that out into the "far country" of forgetfulness and dislike the heavenly Father goes in parental yearning, and bids each wandering child "Return;" it is that away over hill and mountain of estrangement and guilt the good Shepherd goes, seeking and finding and bringing back the sheep which was lost; it is that long and lovingly, at the door of each human soul, the patient Saviour stands and knocks, and cries, "If any man will open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him.
3. That admission is open to every humble and trustful soul at once. If we have grieved some human friend and become estranged from him, and if there be a proposal to seek reconciliation, our decision will probably be determined by the consideration whether we shall be at once fully restored or whether there will be a long interval before full reconciliation is effected. It is the gospel (the glad tidings) of the kingdom of God that every penitent and believing soul is immediately and without any delay whatever taken into the favour of God. As soon as the submissive spirit of the man says, "Father, I have sinned," so soon is grace bestowed, so soon is the name entered on the roll of the heavenly citizenship.
4. That citizenship now means citizenship for ever. It is a large part of the gospel of Jesus Christ that this earth is only an antechamber of the Father"s house, or only a small outlying province of his boundless empire. To be a faithful citizen here and now means being a happy citizen somewhere for evermore. Life under the benign sway of this heavenly King is not counted by years or decades; it is without a bound; it is continued, perpetuated, in other regions of his glorious domain. This is the "glorious gospel" of the kingdom. Is it well to wait for a better? Dare we hope that, if we reject these glad tidings, we shall over hear any that we shall accept? "Behold, now is the accepted time. C.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Vers. 1-21. Incidents in evangelistic work.
We have now to contemplate Jesus as fairly loosed from Capernaum as the centre of his mission work, and as making systematically the tour of the province of Galilee. The "beloved physician" gives to us here just such an insight into the material conditions of Christ"s evangelistic work as we naturally desire. Let us, then, notice
I THE SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL SIDES OF OUR LORD"S EVANGELISTIC WORK. (Vers. 1-3) Twelve men and a number of holy women form Christ"s band a choir, so to speak, of joyful evangelists. The substance of the message was "the glad tidings of the kingdom of God." Christ himself was Preacher. None of the others could enter into the nature of this coming kingdom. But it was to be a kingdom of peace and of joy to all who became members of it. Hence the preaching was "glad tidings." The spiritual side of the work was, therefore, joy-inspiring. The temporal conditions of the work are here revealed. Our Lord lived on charity, or, as we should put it, on love. Hospitality, especially to every one who professed to be a rabbi, would supply Christ with much; but it could not cover the whole case; consequently, certain women, who had been delivered from demoniacal possessions, and who were correspondingly grateful to their Deliverer, were proud to follow him and minister to him of their substance. Joanna, whose husband seems to have looked after Herod"s housekeeping, transfers her attentions to a greater King,. and becomes chief minister, we may believe, to her Master"s wants. The twelve disciples were candidates for the ministry under training; the holy women were the caterers for the college; and so our Lord, as President, received the help of men and women in their respective spheres.
II THE ELEMENT OF JUDGMENT IN PARABOLIC TEACHING. Before noticing briefly the parable of the sower, we must ask attention to the change m our Lord"s method of ministration. It would seem that up to this time he had preached less figuratively, but as the Pharisees had taken up their position of hostility, it was absolutely necessary for him to exercise what may be called intermediate judgment (cf. Godet, in loc. ). This was by taking to parabolic teaching. While to a docile and childlike spirit a parable sets truth in its most attractive aspect, to a proud, self-sufficient spirit it veils and hides the truth. It is light or darkness according to our spiritual attitude. Hence the change in the Preacher"s method heralded a new stage in his work. The common people would still hear him gladly, but the proud would be kept at a convenient distance through the veiled character of the truth presented in parables.
III THE PARABLE OF WARNING. (Vers. 4-8, 11-15) This, according to all the evangelists, was the first parable. It was breaking ground in the delivery of parables. Hence its character as a warning. Its subject is the hearing of the Word. Its warning is that there are three bad ways of hearing as against one good way. These are:
1. Careless hearing represented by wayside seed devoured by the birds before it can fall into the earth and bear any fruit. The devil visits careless hearers, and takes the Word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.
2. Rapturous hearing represented by seed failing into rocky soil and springing up suddenly, only to wither away. Hence the danger of hearing with rapture and resting in the rapture. It is the religion of feeling, of happy times, and such superficialities. Something deeper is needed than this.
3. Careworn and preoccupied hearing represented by seed falling into soil that is not cleansed of roots and thorns, and where the seed is choked. We cannot hear to advantage if we put anything before the Word. Unless it is put before worldly concerns, there will not be much fruit.
4. Honest and good-hearted hearing represented by the seed falling into good and cleansed ground. In this ease there is knit-bearing, in some cases up to a hundredfold. Hence the warning voice, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." Unless the multitude hearing Jesus, unless in particular the disciples, took the Word of God ministered by Jesus patiently and honestly into their consideration, they could not bring forth fruit unto perfection.
IV THE APPLICATION TO THE TWELVE. (Vers. 16-18) The disciples had received Jesus" explanation of the first parable. And now he further applies it to their case. They are intended, he tells them, to be lights in the world; and he has no intention of putting them under a bushel or bed, where the light would be lost and useless, but on a candlestick to illuminate all who enter the house. In this beautiful and figurative way our Lord indicates the position he means to give them in his Church. Consequently, they must remember that every secret thing is on its way to manifestation (ver. 17), and so their lives, no matter how secret and apparently insignificant, are public lives. By this thought all hearing will be intensified with a new sense of responsibility. Besides, he tells them that the law of capital obtains in hearing as well as in everything else This is the law by which the person, who has something to start with, gets something more. For example, if we bring to the contemplation of the truth a "good and honest heart," then its goodness and honesty will be intensified and increased by the truth; whereas, if we bring a vacant heart, an inattentive mind, then our heart will be still more vacant, and our mind still more inattentive. We lose power by indifferent hearing, just as we gain power by attentive and honest hearing. This was a most important lesson for the candidates about him. Doubtless they profited by it.
V BLOOD-RELATIONSHIP VERSUS SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIP. (Vers. 19-21) We learn from the parallel passages that this incident occurred in consequence of our Lord"s enthusiasm. His relatives thought him mad, and that he ought to be put under restraint. His reply to their message is most significant. As Gess says, "He draws his true disciples the more closely around him as the hostility of his own relatives increases, and calls them his family." We have thus, as Sanrin puts it, the family of Jesus Christ according to the flesh contrasted with the family of Jesus Christ according to the Spirit. The spiritual relationship is put before the blood-relationship, other things being equal. It is not that Jesus loved his brothers and mother less, but that he regarded the Father"s will and those who obeyed it as more to him than they can be. His conduct on this occasion most likely conduced to the conversion of his kindred to believe upon him. It enabled them to see exactly the principle of his work. And in this loyalty to members of God"s family we must follow our Lord. We must not allow others to usurp their rights under any pretence of relationship or authority. R.M.E.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 25, 27, 35, 38, 40, 41, 43, 49 He went throughout every city and village, preaching
Luk_8:1
He went throughout every city and village, preaching
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Village preaching
I.
WE HAVE HERE THE SUBJECT OF OUR LORDS MINISTRY--the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. In these words there is a manifest allusion to the predictions in which the prophets foretold the dispensation of grace and truth by Jesus Christ. The Greek word translated kingdom is of a more extensive meaning than the English one by which it is rendered, being equally adapted to express both the terms reign and kingdom. The first relates to the time or duration of the sovereignty, the second to the place or country over which it extends. Yet although it is much oftener the time than the place that is alluded to in the Gospels, it is never in our common version translated reign, but always kingdom. The expression is thereby often rendered obscure and awkward, as for instance, when motion is applied to a kingdom; when it is spoken of as coming, approaching, being near at hand, and the like. The word is rightly translated kingdom when it refers to the state of perfect felicity to be enjoyed in the world to come; but it is not always thus rendered with the same propriety when it relates to the reign of Christ, by His truth and Spirit upon earth. If, therefore, it be asked, when did the reign of heaven properly begin? we answer, When that prediction in the Psalms was fulfilled--Thou hast ascended up on high, Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God (the Holy Spirit) might dwell amongst them. To a limited extent Jesus reigned before His ascension. He pardoned sins, promulgated laws, and brought very many under the dominion of His truth and grace. But the plenitude of the Holy Spirits miraculous gifts and sanctifying influences was reserved till Christ was glorified, to grace His inauguration as King of Zion; as monarchs when they are crowned, although they may have reigned some time before, on that great occasion bestow favours on their subjects, and elevate sonic to distinctions and honours.
II. WE NOW PROCEED TO CONSIDER THE SCENE OF OUR LORDS MINISTRY. He preached in Judaea, and Samaria; in Jerusalem, in Sychar; but His time was chiefly spent in the towns and villages of Galilee--a distant and despised province, which the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judaea regarded with such contempt that it was asked, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? One would think that had our Saviour intended that secular princes should rule in His Church, that the head of the State should by virtue of His office be also the head of the Church within His dominions, instead of spending so much of His time in Galilee, He would have converted Herod, and given him authority to settle all matters of doctrine and discipline for His subjects.
1. We have fully revealed to us and in our possession that truth by which Christ reigns, and accomplishes His gracious purposes. No new, additional revelation will be granted to the end of time.
2. We have Christ, enthroned in universal dominion, full of grace and power, present by His Spirit, with all His faithful servants, to make His truth effectual in the accomplishment of the purposes of eternal mercy. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)
Preaching everywhere
Three commercials entered the railway carriage at C, and it was not long before all in the compartment were in conversation, Being one of the number, I took my part in the discussions which were held upon various topics. As per usual, the weather was commented upon, the state of Ireland, and the dulness of trade. This last subject seemed to be the most fruitful, for each traveller had his own tale to tell. As the different towns were mentioned which were the markets for the goods travelled in by the three gentlemen, I mentioned various incidents in connection with most of them, and through constantly visiting these places displayed some acquaintance with nearly every one spoken of by the commercials; until one of them said, Are you on the road? Yes, said I, I have been on the road ever since I was nine years old. All looked surprised, and then another made the remark, That was rather early to begin such a rough life! This produced the following reply upon my part: Oh, there is nothing like starting young--a good beginning is half the race. May I ask what you travel for? inquired a third. I am on the road to heaven, and I travel for my Master; preaching everywhere for the salvation of souls. (T. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Chapter 14
Chapter 14
THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. - Luk_8:1-18
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IN a single parenthetical sentence our Evangelist indicates a marked change in the mode of the Divine ministry. Hitherto "His own city," Capernaum, has been a sort of center, from which the lines of light and blessing have radiated. Now, however, He leaves Capernaum, and makes a circuit through the province of Galilee, going through its cities and villages in a systematic, and as the verb would imply, a leisurely way, preaching the "good tidings of the kingdom of God." Though no mention is made of them, we are not to suppose that miracles were suspended; but evidently they were set in the background, as secondary things, the by-plays or "asides" of the Divine Teacher, who now is intent upon delivering His message, the last message, too, that they would hear from Him. Accompanying Him, and forming an imposing demonstration, were His twelve disciples, together with "many" women, who ministered unto them of their substance, among whom were three prominent ones, probably persons of position and influence-Mary of Magdala, Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herods steward, and Susanna, who had been healed by Jesus of "evil spirits and infirmities"-which last word, in New Testament language, is a synonym for physical weakness and disorder. Of the particulars and results of this mission we know nothing, unless we may see, in the "great multitude" which followed and thronged Jesus on His return, the harvest reaped from the Galilean hills. Our Evangelist, at any rate, links them together, as if the "great multitude" which now lines the shore was, in part at least, the cloud of eager souls which had been caught up and borne along on His fervid speech, as the echoes of the kingdom went resounding among the hills and vales of Galilee.
Returning to Capernaum, whither the crowds followed Him, every city sending its contingent of curious or conquered souls, Jesus, as St. Matthew and St. Mark inform us, leaves the house, and seeks the open stretch of shore, where from a boat-probably the familiar boat of Simon-He addresses the multitudes, adopting now, as His favorite mode of speech, the amplified parable. It is probable that He had observed on the part of His disciples an undue elation of spirit. Reading the crowds numerically, and not discerning the different motives which had brought them together, their eyes deceived them. They imagined that these eager multitudes were but a wave-sheaf of the harvest already ripe, which only waited their gathering-in. But it is not so; and Jesus sifts and winnows His audience, to show His disciples that the apparent is not always the real, and that between the hearers of the word and the doers there will ever be a wide margin of disappointment and comparative failure. The harvest, in Gods husbandry, as in mans, does not depend altogether upon the quality of the seed or the faithfulness of the sower, but upon the nature of the soil on which it falls.
As the sower went forth to sow his seed, "some fell by the way-side, and it was trodden under-foot, and the birds of the heaven devoured it." In his carefulness to cover all his ground, the sower had gone close up to the boundary, and some of the seed had fallen on the edge of the bare and trampled path, where it lay homeless and exposed. It was in contact with the earth, but it was a mechanical, and not a vital touch. There was no correspondence, no communion between them. Instead of welcoming and nourishing the seed, it held it aloof, in a cold, repelling way. Had the soil been sympathetic and receptive, it held within itself all the elements of growth Touched by the subtle life that was hidden within the seed, the dead earth itself had lived, growing up into blades of promise, and from the full ear throwing itself forward into the future years. But the earth was hard and unreceptive; its possibilities of blessing were locked up and buried beneath a crust of trampled soil that was callous and unresponsive as the rock itself. And so the seed lay unwelcomed and alone, and the life which the warm touch of earth would have loosened and set free remained within its husk as a dead thing, without voice or hearing. There was nothing else for it but to be ground into dust by the passing foot or to be picked up by the foraging birds.
The parable was at once a prophecy and an experience. Forming a part of the crowd which surrounded Jesus was an outer ring of hearers who came but to criticize and to cavil. They had no desire to be taught-at any rate by such a teacher. They were themselves the "knowing-ones," the learned, and they looked with suspicion and ill-concealed scorn upon the youthful Nazarene. Turning upon the Speaker a cold questioning glance, or exchanging signals with one another, they were evidently hostile to Jesus, listening, it is true, but with a feline alertness, hoping to entrap the sweet Singer in His speech. Upon these, and such as these, the word of God, even when spoken by the Divine Son, made no impression. It was a speaking to the rocks, with no other result than the awaking of a few echoes of mockery and banter.
The experience is still true. Among those who frequent the house of God are many whose worship is a cold, conventional thing. Drawn by custom, by the social instinct, or by the love of change, they pass within the gates of the Lords house ostensibly to worship. But they are insincere, indifferent; they bring their body, and deposit it in the accustomed pew, but they might as well have put there a bag of ashes or an automaton of brass. Their mind is not here, and the cold, stolid features, unlighted by any passing gleam, tell too surely of a vacancy or vagrancy of thought. And even while the lips are throwing off mechanically "Jubilates" and "Te Deums" their heart is "far from Me," chasing some phantom "will o the wisp," or dreaming their dreams of pleasure, gain, and ease. The worship of God they themselves would call it, but God does not recognize it. He calls their prayers a weariness, their incense an abomination. Theirs is but a worship of Self, as, setting up their image of clay, they summon earths musicians to play their sweet airs about it. God, with them, is set back, ignored, proscribed. The personal "I" is writ so large, and is so all-pervasive, that there is no room for the I AM. Living for earth, all the fibers of their being growing downwards towards it, heaven is not even a cloud drifting across their distant vision; it is an empty space, a vacancy. To the voices of earth their ears are keenly sensitive; its very whispers thrill them with new excitements; but to the voices of Heaven they are deaf; the still, small voice is all unheard, and even the thunders of God are so muffled as to be unrecognized and scarcely audible. And so the word of God falls upon their ears in vain. It drops upon a soil that is impervious and antipathetic, a heart which knows no penitence, and a life whose fancied goodness has no room for mercy, or which finds such complete satisfaction in the gains of unrighteousness or the pleasures of sin that it is purposely and persistently deaf to all higher, holier voices. Ulysses filled his ears with wax, lest he should yield himself up to the enchantments of the sirens. The fable is true, even when read in reversed lines; for when Virtue, Purity, and Faith invite men to their resting-place, calling them to the Islands of the Blessed, and to the Paradise of God, they charm in vain. Deafening their ears, and not deigning to give a passing thought to the higher call, men drift past the heaven which might have been theirs, until these holier voices are silenced by the awful distance.
That the word of God is inoperative here is through no fault, either of the seed or of the sower. That word is still "quick and powerful," but it is sterile, because it finds nothing on which it may grow. It is not "understood," as Jesus Himself explains. It falls upon the outward ear alone, and there only as unmeaning sound, like the accents of some unknown tongue. And so the wicked one easily takes away the word from their heart; for, as the preposition itself implies, that word had not fallen into the heart; it was lying on it in a superficial way, like the seed cast upon the trampled path.
Is there, then, no hope for these way-side hearers? And sparing our strength and toil, shall we leave them for soils more promising? By no means. The fallow ground may be broken up; the ploughshare can loosen the hardened, unproductive earth. Pulverized by the teeth of the harrow or the teeth of the frost, the barren track itself disappears; it passes up into the advanced classes, giving back the seed with which it is now entrusted, with a thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold increase. And this is true in the higher husbandry, in which we are permitted to be "Gods fellow-workers." The heart which today is indifferent or repellent, tomorrow, chastened by sickness or torn by the ploughshare of some keen grief, may hail with eagerness the message it rejected and even scorned before. Amid the penury and shame of the far country, the fathers house, from which he had wantonly turned, now comes to the prodigal like a sweet dream, and even its bread has all the aroma and sweetness of ambrosial food. No matter how disappointing the soil, we are to do our duty, which is to "sow beside all waters"; nor should any calculations of imaginary productiveness make us slack our hand or cast away our hope. When the Spirit is poured out from on high, even "the wilderness becomes as a fruitful field" and death itself becomes instinct with life.
"And other fell on the rock; and as soon as it grew it withered away, because it had no moisture." Here is a second quality of soil. It is not, however, a soil that is weakened by an intermixture of gravel or of stones, but rather a soil that is thinly spread upon the rock. It is good soil as far as it goes, but it is shallow. It receives the seed gladly, as if that were its one mission, as indeed it is; it gives the seed a hiding-place, throwing over it a mantle of earth, so that the birds shall not devour it. It lays its warm touch upon the enveloping husk, as the Master once laid His finger upon the bier, and to the imprisoned life which was within it said, "Arise and multiply. Pass up into the sunlight, and give Gods children bread." And the seed responds, obeys. The emerging life throws out its two wings-one downwards as its roots clasp the soil; one upwards, as the blade, pushing the clods aside, makes for the light and the heavens that are above it. "Surely," we should say, "if we read the future from the present merely, the hundredfold is here. Pull down your barns and build greater, for never was seed received more kindly, never were the beginnings of life more auspicious, and never was promise so great." Ah that the promise should so soon be a disappointment, and the forecast be so soon belied! The soil has no depth. It is simply a thin covering spread over the rock. It offers no room for growth. The life it nourishes can be nothing more than an ephemeral life, which owns but a today, whose "tomorrow" will be in the oven of a burning heat. The growth is entirely superficial, for its roots come directly to the hard, impenetrable rock, which, yielding no support, but cutting off all supplies from the unseen reservoirs beneath, turns hack the incipient life all starved and shrunken. The result is a sudden withering and decay. A foundling, left, not by some iron gate which the touch of mercy might open, but by a dead wall of cold, unresponsive stone, the plant throws up its arms into the air, in its vain struggle for life, and then wilts and droops, lying at last, a dead and shriveled thing, on the dry bosom of the earth which had given it its untimely birth.
Such, says Jesus, are many who hear the word. Unlike those by the wayside, these do not reject it. They listen, bending toward that word with attentive ears and eager hearts. Nay, they receive it with joy; it strikes upon their soul with the music of a new evangel. But the work is not thorough; it is superficial, external. They "have no root" in a deep and settled conviction, only a green blade of profession and of mock promise, and when the testing-time comes, as it comes to all, "the time of temptation," they fall away, or they "stand off," as the verb might be literally rendered.
In this second class we must place a large proportion of those who heard and who followed Jesus. There was something attractive about His manner and about His message. Again and again we read how they "pressed upon Him "to hear His words, the multitude hanging on His lips as the bees will cluster upon a honeyed leaf. Thousands upon thousands thus came within the spell of His voice, now wondering at His gracious words, and now stunned with astonishment, as they marked the authority with which He spoke, the compressed thunder that was in His tones. But in how many cases are we forced to admit the interest to be but momentary! It was with many-shall we say with most?-merely a passing excitement, the effervescence of personal contact. The words of Jesus came "as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice," and for the moment the hearts of the multitudes were set vibrating in responsive harmonies. But the music ceased when the Singer was absent. The impressions were not permanent, and even the emotions had soon passed away, almost from memory. St. John speaks of one sifting in Galilee when "many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him," {Joh_6:66} showing that with them at least it was an attachment rather than an attachment that bound them to Himself. The bond of union was the hope of some personal gain, rather than the bond of a pure and deep affection. And so directly He speaks of His approaching death, of His "flesh and blood" which He shall give them to eat and to drink; like an icy breath from the north, those words chill their devotion, turning their zeal and ardor into a cold indifference, if not into an open hostility. And this same winnowing of Galilee is repeated in Judaea. We read of multitudes who escorted Jesus down the Mount of Olives, strewing His path with garments, giving Him a royal welcome to the "city of the Great King." But how soon a change "came oer the spirit of their dream!" how soon the hosannas died away! As a hawk in the sky will still in a moment the warbling of the birds, so the uplifted Cross threw its cold shadow upon their hearts, drowning the brief hosannas in a strange silence. The cross was the fan in the Masters hand, with which He "thoroughly purged His floor," separating the true from the false. It blew away into the deep Valley of Oblivion the chaff, the dead superficialities, the barren yawns, leaving as the residuum of the sifted multitudes a mere handful of a hundred and twenty names.
These pro tem believers are indigenous to every soil. There never is a great movement afloat-philanthropic, political, or spiritual-but numberless smaller craft are lifted up on its swell. For a moment they seem instinct with life, but having no propelling power in themselves, they drop behind, soon to be embedded in the mire. And especially is this true in the region of spiritual dynamics. In all so-called "revivals" of religion, when the Church rejoices in a deepened and quickened life, when a cooling zeal has been rewarmed at the heavenly fires, and converts are multiplied, in the accessions which follow almost invariably will be found a proportion of what we may call "casuals." We cannot say they are counterfeits, for the work, as far as it goes, seems real, and the change, both in their thought and life, is clearly marked. But they are unstable souls, prone to drifting, their direction given in the main by the set of the current in which they happen to be. And so when they reach the point-which all must reach sooner or later-where two seas meet, the cross current of enticement and temptation bears hard upon them, and they make shipwreck of faith. Others, again, are led by impulse. Religion with them is mainly a matter of feeling. Overlooking the fact that the emotions are easily stirred, that they respond to the passing breath just as the sea ripples to the breeze, they substitute emotion for conviction, feeling for faith. But these have no foundation, no root, no independent life, and when the excitements on which they feed are withdrawn, when the emotion subsides, the high tide of fervor falling back to its mean sea-level, they lose heart and hope. They are even ready to pity themselves as the objects of an illusion. But the illusion was one of their own making. They set the pleasant before the right, delight before duty, comfort before Christ, and instead of finding their heaven in doing the will of God, no matter what the emotions, they sought their heaven in their own personal happiness, and so they missed both.
"They endure for a while." And of how many are these words true! Verily we must not count our fruits from the blossoms of spring, nor must we reckon our harvest in that easy, hopeful way of multiplying each seed, or even each blade, by the hundredfold, for the blade may be only a short-lived blade and nothing more.
"And other fell amidst the thorns; and the thorns grew with it, and choked it." Here is a third quality of soil in the ascending series. In the first, the trampled path, life was not possible; the seed could find not the least response. In the second there was life. The thinly sprinkled soil gave the seed a home, a rooting; but lacking depth of earth and the necessary moisture, the life was precarious, ephemeral. It died away in the blade, and never reached its fruitage. Now, however, we have a deeper, richer soil, with an abundance of vitality, one capable of sustaining an exuberant life. But it is not clean; it is already thickly sown with thorns, and the two growths running up side by side, the hardier gets the mastery. And though the corn-life struggles up into the ear, bearing a sort of fruit, it is a grain that is dwarfed and shriveled, a mere husk and shell, which no leaven can transmute into bread. It brings forth fruit, as the exposition of the parable indicates, but it has not strength to complete its task; it does not ripen it, bringing the fruit "to perfection."
Such, says Jesus, is another and a large class of hearers. They are naturally capable of doing great things. Possessing strong wills, and a large amount of energy, they are just the lives to be fruitful, impressing themselves upon others, and so throwing their manifold influence down into the future. But they do not, and for the simple reason that they do not give to the word a whole heart. Their attentions and energies are divided. Instead of seeking "first the kingdom of God," making that the supreme quest of life, it is with them but one of many things to be desired and sought. Chief among the hindrances to a perfected growth and fruitfulness, Jesus mentions three; namely, cares, riches, and pleasures. By the "cares of life" we must understand-interpreting the word by its related word in Mat_6:34 -the anxieties of life. It is the anxious thought, mainly about the "tomorrow," which presses upon the heart as a gore and constant burden. It is the fearfulness and unrest of soul which gloom the spirit and shroud the life, making the Divine peace itself a fret and worry. And how many Christians find this to be the normal experience! They love God, they seek to serve Him; but they are weighted and weary. Instead of having the hopeful, buoyant spirit which rises to the crest of passing waves, it is a heart depressed and sad, living in the deeps. And so the brightness of their life is dimmed; they walk not "in the light, as He is in the light," but beneath a sky frequently overcast, their days bringing only "a little glooming light, much like a shade." And so their spiritual life is stunted, their usefulness impaired. Instead of having a heart "at leisure from itself," they are engrossed with their own unsatisfactory experiences. Instead of looking upwards to the heavens which are their own, or outwards upon the crying needs of earth, they look inward with frequent and morbid introspection; and instead of lending a hand to the fallen, that a brotherly touch might help them to rise, their hands find full employment in steadying the world, or worlds, of care which, Atlas-like, they are doomed to carry. Self-doomed, we should have said; for the Divine Voice invites us to cast "all our anxiety upon Him," assuring us that He careth for us, an assurance and an invitation which make our anxieties, the fret and fever of life, altogether superfluous.
Exactly the same effect of making the spiritual life incomplete, and so unproductive, is caused by riches and pleasures, or, as we might render the expression, by the pursuit after riches or after pleasure. Not that the Scriptures condemn wealth in itself. It is, per se, of a neutral character, whether a blessing or a bane depends on how it is earned and how it is held. Nor do the Scriptures condemn legitimate modes and measures of business; they condemn waste and indolence, but they commend industry, diligence, thrift. But the evil is in making wealth the chief aim of life. It is deceptive, promising satisfaction which it never gives, creating a thirst which it is powerless to slake, until the desire, ever more greedy and clamorous, grows into a "love of money," a pure worship of Mammon. Religion and business may well go together, for God has joined them in one. Each keeping its proper place, religion first and most, and business a far-off second, together they are the centrifugal and centripetal forces that keep the life revolving steadily around its Divine center. But let the position be reversed; let business be the first, chief thought, let religion sink down to some second or third place, and the life swings farther and farther from its pivotal center, into wildernesses of dearth and cold. To give due thought to earthly things is right; nay, we may give all diligence to make our earthly, as well as our heavenly calling sure; but when business gets imperious in its demands, swallowing up all our thought and energy, leaving no time for spiritual exercises or for personal service for Christ, then the religious life declines. Crowded back into the chance corners, with nothing left it but the brief interstices of a busy life, religion can do little more than maintain a profession; its helpfulness is, in the main, remitted to the past, and its fruitfulness is postponed to that uncertain nowhere of the Greek calends.
The same is true with regard to the pleasures of life. The word "pleasure" is a somewhat infrequent word in the New Testament, and generally it is used of the lower, sensual pleasures. We are not obliged, however, to give the word its lowest meaning; indeed, the analogy of the parable would scarcely allow such an interpretation. Sinful pleasure would not check growth; it would simply prevent it, making a spiritual life impossible. We must therefore interpret the "pleasures" which retard the upward growth, and render it infertile, as the lawful pleasures of life, such as the delights of the eye and ear, the gratification of the tastes, the enjoyments of domestic or social life. Perfectly innocent and pure in themselves, purposely designed for our enjoyment, as St. Paul plainly intimates, {1Ti_6:17} they are pleasures which we have no right to treat with the stoics disdain, nor with the ascetics aversion. But the snare is in permitting these desires to step out of their proper place, in allowing them to have a controlling influence. As servants their ministry is helpful and benign; but if we make them "lords," then, like "the ill uses of a life," we find it difficult to put them down; they rather put us down, making us their thrall. To please God should be the one absorbing pursuit and passion of life, and wholly bent on this, if other pure enjoyments come in our way we may receive them thankfully. But if we make our personal gratification the aim, if our thoughts and plans are set on this rather than upon the pleasing of God, then our spiritual life is enfeebled and stifled, and the fruit we should bear shrivels up into chaff. Then we become selfish and self-willed, and the pure pleasures of life, which like Vestal Virgins minister within the temple of God, leading us ever to Him, turn round to burn perpetual incense before our enlarged and exalted Self. He who stops to confer with flesh and blood, who is ever consulting his own likes and leanings, can never be an apostle to others.
"And other fell into the good ground, and grew, and brought forth fruit a hundredfold." Here is the highest quality of soil. Not hard, like the trampled path, nor shallow, like the covering of the rock, not preoccupied with the roots of other growths, this is mellow, deep, clean, and rich. The seed falls, not "by," or "in," or "among," but "into" it, while seed and soil together grow in an affluence of life, and passing through the blade-age and the earing, it ripens into a harvest of a hundredfold. Such, says Jesus, are they who, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring forth fruit with patience. Here, then, we reach the germ of the parable, the secret of fruitfulness. The one difference between the saint and the sinner, between the hundredfold hearer and him whose life is spent in throwing out promises of a harvest which never ripens, is their different attitude towards the word of God. In the one case that word is rejected altogether, or it is a concept of the mind alone, an aurora of the Arctic night, distant and cold, which some mistake for the dawn of a new day. In the other the word passes through the mind into the deepest heart; it conquers and rules the whole being; it becomes a part of ones very self, the soul of the soul. "Thy word have I hid in my heart," said the Psalmist, and he who puts the Divine word there, back of all earthly and selfish voices, letting that Divine Voice fill up that most sacred temple of the heart, will make his outer life both beautiful and fruitful. He will walk the earth as one of Gods seers, ever beholding Him who is invisible, speaking by life or lips in heavenly tones, and by his own steadfast, upward gaze lifting the hearts and thoughts of men "above the worlds uncertain haze." Such is the Divine law of life; the measure of our faith is the measure of our fruitfulness. If we but half believe in the promises of God or in the eternal realities, then the sinews of our soul are houghed, and there comes over us the sad paralysis of doubt. How can we bring forth fruit except we abide in Him? And how can we abide in Him but by letting His words abide in us? But having His words abiding in us, then His peace, His joy, His life are ours, and we, who without Him are poor, dead things, now become strong in His infinite strength, and fruitful with a Divine fruitfulness; and to our lives, which were all barren and dead, will men come for the words that "help and heal," while the Master Himself gathers from them His thirty, sixty, or hundredfold, the fruitage of a whole-hearted, patient faith.
Let us take heed, therefore, how we hear, for on the character of the hearing depends the character of the life. Nor is the truth given us for ourselves alone; it is given that it may become incarnate with us, so that others may see and feel the truth that is in us, even as men cannot help seeing the light which is manifest.
And so the parable closes with the account of the visit of His mother and brethren, who came, as St. Matthew informs us, "to take Him home"; and when the message was passed on to Him that His mother and His brethren wished to see Him, this was His remarkable answer, claiming relationship with all whose hearts vibrate to the same "word": "My mother and My brethren are those which hear the word of God, and DO IT." It is the secret of the Divine life on earth; they hear, and they DO.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 16, 19, 22, 26, 40 1. He went throughout every city and village. A…
1. He went throughout every city and village. A thorough missionary tour of Galilee.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 19, 22, 26, 40, 43, 49 Luk_8:1. Went throughout every city.—This marks a new departure…
CRITICAL NOTES
Luk_8:1. Went throughout every city.—This marks a new departure in the work of Christ: hitherto He had made Capernaum His headquarters, and had not gone very far away from it: now He began to extend the range of His activity. The time, however, is not precisely indicated. Shewing the glad tidings.—There is only one word in the original—“evangelising.”
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Luk_8:2. Certain women. Cf. Mat_27:55-56; Mar_15:40-41. Mary called Magdalene.—I.e. of Magdala, on the Lake of Gennesaret. As stated in a previous note, there is no authority for identifying her with “the sinner” of the last chapter. She is introduced here as one whose gratitude to Jesus had been excited by His having delivered her from the direst form of Satanic possession, and as a person evidently of wealth, both of which circumstances seem incompatible with those of the woman there named. Joanna.—Mentioned again in Luk_24:10 : nothing more known of her. As here stated, she had been cured by Jesus of some infirmity. Chuza.—Conjectured by some to be that “nobleman” (or courtier) whose son Jesus had healed (Joh_4:46). Herod.—I.e. Herod Antipas. Steward.—The word is a very vague one, and may denote lieutenant of a province, treasurer, house or land steward, agent or manager. The fact of Christ having a disciple or disciples among those in the court of Herod explains what is said (in Mat_14:2) about Herod’s speaking “to his servants” about Jesus. Susanna.—Not again mentioned.
Luk_8:3. Ministered.—Supplied the necessaries of life. Unto Him.—Rather, “unto them” (R.V.), i.e. to the apostolic company.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Luk_8:1-3
Grateful Disciples.—In some instances those who had profited by the exercise of Christ’s miraculous power, and had been healed of their diseases, rewarded Him with ingratitude, and did not even thank Him for their cure. But in many, perhaps in most cases, those whom He healed became His disciples. Yet only some of these became, or were allowed to become, His followers in the literal sense of the word. One, at any rate, who wished to accompany Him whither soever He went was not allowed to do so, but was told to return to his friends and tell them of the great things God had done for him (Luk_8:39). In this paragraph of the gospel history we read of a number of women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities being permitted to manifest their gratitude by following Him and by ministering to His necessities and to those of His apostles. There is something very pleasing in this eager desire to be with Christ—to listen to His teaching and to see His beneficent works, more especially those works of healing which would remind them of their own deliverance. Yet the love and gratitude thus manifested implied devotion of a heroic type, for many things conjoined to interpose obstacles in the way of carrying out the desire to accompany the Saviour in His missionary journeys. Two of these obstacles we may indicate.
I. The life they shared was not without hardships and dangers.—Perhaps, as we view them from this distance, the journeyings of the Saviour and His disciples seem full of excitement and interest; the varied scenes, the picturesque incidents, the remarkable persons who figure in them, the wonderful deeds of the Saviour and His gracious discourses, appear to us as clothed with an almost romantic charm. What could be more delightful than to listen to the Sermon on the Mount, to witness the raising of the widow’s son from the dead, to partake of the food miraculously multiplied, or to be present on occasions when Christ showed mercy to the outcast and friendless, or overcame His adversaries by a wisdom which they would neither gainsay nor resist! But we need to remember that there must have been many days of hardship and discomfort. Sometimes the Son of man was wearied and exhausted, sad in heart at the sight of misery, distressed by the unbelief of the multitude and the hatred of the ruling classes. It was no light matter to follow Him day after day—to share His fatigues, and griefs, and humiliations, and to become subject to the danger which loyalty to Him often involved. Following Him when there was not leisure so much as to eat—when He spoke words which sifted the crowds and drove many away—when His enemies took Him up to the cliff to cast Him down, or when they were on the point of stoning Him—was possible only for those of strong love and ardent faith. We who are wedded to ease, and ruled by habit and custom, need not delude ourselves by imagining that following Christ in these circumstances was a privilege we would have been eager to secure. We are only too easily discouraged by obstacles in the religious life—by our aversion to discomfort and our regard for the world’s opinion—to be sure that if we had lived in the days of Christ’s earthly ministry we should have displayed a devotion like that of these disciples.
II. The perfect holiness of Christ, too, hindered many from following Him.—It did not hinder these. If holiness does not attract, it repels. It is a constant rebuke to all insincerity, double-mindedness, self-righteousness, and conceit, as well as to all positively vicious tendencies and practices: it assails the faulty motive as well as the sinful act. And the only way in which to live with any degree of comfort in the society of one who is truly holy is to strive to become the same. Following Christ, therefore, meant imitation of Him. In no other way could the spectacle of His piety, love, humility, and heavenly-mindedness be borne day after day. If we find ourselves incapable of a devotion to the Saviour like that of this faithful band of women, we may well ask ourselves, Have we like them known Him as a Healer and Deliverer? If we had really passed through their experience, we could scarcely fail to manifest a gratitude like theirs.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luk_8:1-3
Luk_8:1. “Throughout every city and village.”—Christ now began to enlarge the sphere of His work, and, instead of making Capernaum His headquarters, to enter upon a systematic and complete visitation of the whole province of Galilee. From this time it is that He speaks of Himself as not having where to lay His head. His apostles too are called to give up their secular occupations and place themselves at His complete disposal—either to be with Him as He preached, or to go upon missions He might give them. The difference between the subject-matter of His preaching and that of John the Baptist is very plainly indicated. John spoke of preparing for the coming of the kingdom of God; Jesus announced the glad tidings that it had come. The main duty of the Christian preacher is, like Christ, to proclaim the good news of God’s love to men, though he will feel bound also to speak words of warning to the indifferent and impenitent.
Luk_8:2-3. “Ministered unto them” (R.V.).—A subordinate but still an interesting question suggests itself as to how Christ and the twelve were sustained now that they had given themselves up to spiritual work among men. From what source was the common purse replenished? (Joh_13:29). How did they provide for bodily necessities and have wherewith to give to the poor? (Joh_12:6). St. Luke here gives the answer. It was not by making use of His miraculous power that Jesus provided sustenance for Himself and for His apostles, but by consenting to receive assistance from some of those who were grateful to Him for blessings they had obtained from Him. “He who was the support of the spiritual life of His people disdained not to be supported by their gifts of things necessary for bodily life. He was not ashamed to penetrate so far into the depths of poverty as to live upon the alms of love. He only fed others miraculously; for Himself, He lived upon the love of His people. He gave all things to men His brethren, and received all things from them, enjoying thereby the pure blessing of love; which is then only perfect when it is at the same time both giving and receiving. Who could invent such things as these? It was necessary to live in this manner that it might be so recorded” (Olshausen).
“All these things shall be added.”—Jesus thus fulfilled the precepts, and found the accomplishment of the promises He gave to His disciples: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things (food, clothing, etc.) shall be added unto you” (Mat_6:33); “Every one that hath forsaken houses, … or father, or mother, … or lands, … shall receive an hundredfold” (ibid. Luk_19:29).
A Messiah living on the Bounty of Men.—What a Messiah to the eyes of the flesh was this One who lived on the bounty of men! But what a Messiah, to the eyes of the spirit, was this Son of God, living by the love of those whom His love had made to live!—Godet.
The Maintenance of Ministers of Religion.—The principle according to which Christ acted is that laid down in the New Testament for the guidance of the Christian Church in the matter of maintaining those who minister to the spiritual needs of the community. “The labourer is worthy of his hire,” and “the Lord hath ordained that they who preach the gospel should live of the gospel” (chap. Luk_10:7; 1Co_9:14).
“Certain women.”—The part played by women in ministering to the necessities of Christ and His apostles is most appropriate; for it is to Him that they owe their emancipation from degradation, and admittance on equal terms with men to all the privileges of His kingdom. In Christ there is “neither male nor female” (Gal_3:28).
The Notices of Women in the Gospels.—It is interesting to notice that the Gospel history does not mention the case of any woman who was hostile to Jesus, but speaks of many who were devoted to Him. Martha served Him in Bethany, and Mary sat at His feet; Mary anointed Him, and so did the woman in the house of Simon; most signal examples of faith were afforded by the Canaanitish woman and by her who touched the hem of His garment; a woman, the wife of Pilate, bore witness to His innocence at the time the unjust sentence was passed on Him; women lamented Him on His way to crucifixion, and drew near to the cross; women went forth early to the grave of the risen Lord, and a woman was the first to see Him after His resurrection.
The Same Kind of Devotion, still Possible.—May not His loving people, and particularly those of the tender, clinging sex, still accompany Him as He goes from land to land preaching, by His servants, and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God? and may they not minister to Him of their substance by sustaining and cheering these agents of His? Verily they may; and they do. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Yes, as He is with them “alway, even unto the end of the world,” in preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, even so, as many as are with the faithful workers of this work, and helpful to them in it, are accompanying Him and ministering to Him of their substance.—Brown.
“Mary … out of whom went seven devils.”—She had been
(1) delivered from the direst form of misery, and
(2) was now admitted to the highest felicity in following her Lord and in ministering to His wants.
“Joanna … wife of Herod’s steward.”—Not even the corruptions of Herod’s court could hinder the holy influence of Christ from penetrating to the hearts of some of those there. In like manner there were Christians in the household of Nero (Php_4:22).
“Susanna.”—Otherwise unknown; but what more glorious record could be preserved of any life than is here indicated by the mention of her name in this connection? what purer or more lasting fame can any one win than that of having ministered to Christ?
The Needs of an Oriental comparatively Few.—It must be borne in mind that the needs of an Oriental are very small. A few dates, a little parched corn, a draught of water, a few figs or grapes plucked from the roadside trees, suffice him; and in that climate he can sleep during most of the year in the open air, wrapped up in the same outer garment which serves him for the day. Hence the maintenance of a poor man in Palestine is wholly different from the standard of maintenance required in such countries as ours with their many artificial needs.—Farrar.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 19, 21, 22, 26, 36, 41, 43 Luk 8:1-3. “And it came to pass consecutively, He…
WOMAN’S MINISTRY
Luk 8:1-3. “And it came to pass consecutively, He was going through city and village, proclaiming and preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and the Twelve were along with Him, and certain women who had been healed from evil spirits and disease; Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom seven demons had gone, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the steward of Herod, and Susanna, and many others, who continued to minister unto Him from those things which appertain to them.” In this catalogue of Christian workers who accompanied our Lord, assisting Him in His vast and stupendous ministry in the interest of both soul and body, also supplying Him and His apostles, doubtless, with temporalities, were Mary, called Magdalene, from her resident city Magdala, which stands on the northwestern coast of the Galilean Sea. It is now a dirty, barbaric village, occupied by nomadic Arabs. Many have taken up the conclusion that she was this fallen woman described in the preceding chapter. Of this we have no evidence whatever, and should not indulge in gratuitous fancy. This woman was in Capernaum, about ten miles from Magdala overland. Some able writers have pronounced Mary Magdalene a common harlot. This may have been true, but we have no evidence of it. Jesus cast seven demons out of her, but we do not know what kind; but we do know that she became one of His truest disciples and brightest saints, standing at the front of the faithful sisterhood, who lingered last at the cross, and were the first to look into the empty sepulcher, and the first to go and preach the risen Jesus, and doubtless is this day one of the brightest glorified saints. We see here that Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the steward of Herod Antipas, was also a constant minister of our Lord, keeping her king and his court well posted about the mighty works of Jesus, as ever and anon she returned home to the royal palace at Machaerus, where her husband was a member of the king’s cabinet. Besides these two sisters, so prominent in the ministry of our Lord, were Susanna and many others, who ministered unto Him constantly and regularly. This is the second great tour our Savior takes, peregrinating the whole country from city to city, accompanied by the twelve apostles and these ministering sisters, constituting a grand evangelistic force, so they could go into a city and literally capture it with the agencies of gospel grace.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Use the Bible.
Luk 8:11
Use the Bible.
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I. God’s Word is a portion of the food He has given to man to live by. It is the spiritual sustenance He has provided to support the spiritual part of us, the soul. For the soul, as well as the body, requires its fitting food. Both must be supported and nourished, if we would have them thrive. Does not all nature cry, from every part of the creation, that everything earthly must be fed? Fire must be fed, water must be fed, even the earth itself, which feeds all things, must be fed, else it will crumble into dust, or harden into a rock. So it is with the soul. That, too, as well as the body, must be fed with food suited to its nature. This is so plain that the heathen themselves knew it. They were fully aware that the soul would never thrive, unless it was nourished with food suitable to it; and to find that food was the great desire of the best and wisest men among them. Now if they did this, they who only knew that their spirits required food, from feeling them crave for it, what will God say to us, if we are less anxious about the nourishment of our souls?
II. For the Bible is not a charm that, keeping it on our shelves or locking it up in a closet, can do us any good. Neither is it a story-book to read for amusement. It is sent to teach us our duty to God and man; to show us from what a height we are fallen by sin, and to what a far more glorious height we may soar, if we will put on the wings of faith and love. This is the use of the Bible, and this use we ought to make of it. If we use the Bible thus, Christ, who is the way of life, will open our eyes to see the way. He will send you the wings I spoke of, and they shall bear you up to heaven. For this must be borne in mind, that God alone giveth the increase. Unless He gives it, no increase shall we receive. Our joy will not be increased; so that the study of God’s Book will continue an irksome task. The only way of insuring that our labour shall not be fruitless is by prayer; the only way of drawing down a blessing on our study is to ask for it.
A. W. Hare, The Alton Sermons, p. 278.
Luk 8:11-12
I. The seed is the Word of God. And thus we are taught (1) That it is not in the hearers themselves. It is no result of their reasoning; it is no creature of their imagination. It comes to them from without. (2) It possesses living, germinating power. The power is its own. It is not taken up into and made part of us, but it takes us up and makes us part of itself. (3) The seed itself does not exert its power spontaneously and independently. There must be the concurrence of three requisites: the deposition of the seed; its entrance into the soil; fitness of the soil for its germination and nurture. Where these do not concur, there is no effectual growth, no eventual bearing of fruit. Wonderful as are the powers of the seed, it is a dependent and conditional agent. Its action is first dependent on one who sows.
II. The seed, then, is scattered everywhere; and some falls by the wayside. A path or road passing through the field, by the side of this, not absolutely on the hard beaten track itself, but still where many footsteps pass and harden the soil, some of the seeds are deposited. Thus situated, the seed is liable to two dangers—"it was trodden down, and the birds of the air devoured it." The class of hearers of God’s Word which is here intended is the class that understandeth not. God speaks by His minister, speaks by His revealed words, speaks in judgment, speaks in mercy; and for a moment His word lies on our hearts; for a moment we are in contact with the incorruptible regenerating seed; but our enemy knows it, he knows the import of that moment, he knows the life-giving power of that seed, and he contrives that a frivolous incident should catch the attention, or a worldly thought light down on the same surface, or a trifling companion cross our path; for these there is more desire than for the heavenly seed; they occupy the ground, and we toy with them till the seed is gone.
III. The heart is hardened: (1) By the tread of many footsteps. Much converse with the world, much converse with, the Word itself, habituation of every kind, deadens susceptibility. (2) The heart may be self-hardened by long-continued worldliness of spirit. (3) Another section of our wayside hearers are those who are intellectually preoccupied. (4) Over-fastidiousness has a hardening influence; the heart remains shut to the living seed of the Word because it comes not exactly in the way desired. Take heed how ye hear; for with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
H. Alford, Sermons at Cambridge, p. 1.
References: Luk 8:11.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 430. Luk 8:12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1459.
Luk 8:13
I. As the Lord is evermore speaking to us, and we evermore hearing Him, so must the receiving the Word with joy be extended in its meaning to include all possible receptions of that which He says. And, thus extended, we may interpret the characteristic to mean, as applied to the class before us, that they are such as do not present to the suggestions of Christ’s spirit a hard, impenetrable heart; whose surface is not trodden down like the wayside, so that the seed lies on it exposed to the passing depredator, but soft and genial, so that it sinks in at once; whose soil is not the cold unkindly clay, which would keep back the seed, but warm and open, so that it swells and springs up without delay. It is good, doubtless, in a certain sense, to receive the Word with joy; it cannot be for a moment doubted, that among those who receive it with joy are some of the best and the noblest of us, some of the very flower and choice of our society.
II. "These," it is added, "have no root." The seed within them, so quick to germinate, found no depth of soil wherein to strike its roots. Above, all was genial and inviting growth; but beneath, all was hard and impenetrable. (1) Impressibility is liable to be joined with want of depth of character; it is no criterion of genuine religion, no guarantee for endurance; in other words, what are called religious impressions are very far from being religion, and must not be mistaken for it. (2) There is another perilous consideration for the susceptible. Men are not strongly impressed on one subject only. They hear the Word with joy; but it is not the only thing which they thus hear. The world, too, has a voice, the tempter has a voice; all these, it is to be feared, they hear with joy likewise—such, at least, is their tendency. They have no root; nothing with them strikes deep into the individual character. Their joy in the Word is evanescent, their impression fleeting. That love to Christ which sprung up in their hearts, that holy obedience which seemed to be the rule of their lives, having no root, never having come from firm conviction or thorough persuasion, shall pass away, and be as though they had never been.
H. Alford, Sermons at Cambridge, p. 25.
References: Luk 8:13.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 11; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 11th series, p. 45.
Luk 8:14
I. With the class of hearers mentioned in this verse all is favourable, and all goes well at first. Hearers of this kind present not to the Word of God the inattentive ear, nor the hardened heart; they rejoice not with easy and shallow susceptibility over that which they have heard. They are, at the sowing-time, such soil as the sower loves. They hear and weigh and understand. And having heard, they go forth into the world again, thoroughly determined to practise that which they have heard. But, alas! they are not men living in habits of diligent self-culture and discipline. The heart which ought to have long ere this cleared for God’s Word to grow in, to assimilate, to take up into itself, is filled with rank growths of worldliness, and possessed by the tangled roots of the weeds of passion; and as soon as they have gone forth, these spring up with the Word, and ultimately choke its progress.
II. "The cares of life"—"the deceitfulness of riches." It has been commonly supposed that these two embrace the two conditions of life—the poor and the rich; those who have to care for every day’s supply of want, and those who are deceived and forget God, in consequence of its ample supply. But for this there seems no necessity. The two may co-exist in the heart of the same hearer, be he rich or poor. As riches increase cares increase; and, in the very poorest, the deceitfulness of worldly substance, and the love of amassing it, and the danger of trusting to it, may be active or imminent. And as every portion of the parable points to a whole department of Christian duty, to be earnestly taken in hand and attended to, so in this case it is self-discipline which is mainly pointed at—discipline of thought, discipline of affection, discipline of pursuit. Let this be our discipline against the deceitfulness of riches—to think more of Christ’s character and of that great work which He has done for us. Let our discipline for care be faith, and for worldliness, obedience; the one teaching us to trust Christ, the other to imitate Him.
H. Alford, Sermons at Cambridge, p. 47.
Luk 8:15
The hearers referred to in the text yield fruit, which none of the others did. In them, all pointed at failure; in these, all point at success. In them, even the bright colours of promise were dashed with sadness; in these, even the weakness of our common humanity is gilded with the coming glory. In them, every apparent success contained the elements of failure; in these, even partial failure is an earnest of final success.
I. Notice how the difficulties are overcome, and the hindrances removed, in an inverse order from that in which they were fatal. The deepest defect, the most deadly hindrance, was in the will; the will undecided, many-purposed, disloyal; the outworks taken, but the citadel still rebellious. Now mark the difference. First, the will is secured. The heart is honest and good; the direction of the will is plain and simple. The expression "an honest and good heart" conveys to us the idea of ingenuousness, nobleness of purpose, united with goodness, properly so called; such a person would be clear and simple in intent, and that intent a good one.
II. "Having heard the Word, they keep it; they hold it with a fulness of conscious and permanent possession; the feelers of the mind, so to speak, clasp round it, and its roots become twined inseparably among them; they take the Word to themselves in the very depth of affection and earnestness, as a father the son in whom he delighteth." In a word, and that word one often heard, but little pondered on, and even less realised, they love God; their hearts are drawn after Him; a new and mighty power has taken possession of them, and is transforming them into the Divine likeness, and making them to bring forth fruit acceptable to God, and that in rich abundance.
III. As in the parable of the talents, so here, every man bears fruit according to his several ability. One plant becomes a great tree, and overshadows a wide space of the forest; another remains, equally healthy and prolific, but of smaller growth, and more limited shade. The seed is received as each man has ears to hear. But let us notice one point common to all three of the degrees of reproduction—the high standard at which all are fixed. Thirty, sixty, and a hundred. Must we not enquire whether the usual measure of our choicest Christian attainments reaches even the lowest of these? Where is the thirty-fold return even from our best soil?
H. Alford, Sermons at Cambridge, p. 71.
References: Luk 8:15.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 252; H. Alford, Sermons on Christian Doctrine, p. 150; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 359; F. Temple, Rugby Sermons, 1st series, p. 180. Luk 8:16.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 353.
Luk 8:18
Notwithstanding the importance here attached to preaching, many who listen to sermons are really no better for it. Indeed, our Saviour more than intimates in the text that such may be the case, and hence His emphatic warning, "Take heed, therefore, how ye hear." Several classes of persons, to be met with in every congregation, should attend to this caution.
I. In the first rank of these may be placed the indifferent hearer.
II. Another class who should give heed to the warnings of the text are represented by the critical hearer.
III. A third class of church-goers who derive little benefit from preaching may be described as captious hearers. Note three simple rules in regard to hearing sermons: (1) Endeavour always to listen to the preaching of the Gospel with a mind free from prejudice. (2) Sermons should be heard with a desire to profit by them. (3) Sermons should be heard with humble dependence on God’s Holy Spirit, to open the understanding and to touch the heart.
J. N. Norton, Golden Truths, p. 334.
References: Luk 8:18.—Preacher’s Monthly, p. 213; Parker, Christian Commonwealth, vol. vi., p. 503; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College, vol. i., p. 87; C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical, p. 157; J. Kelly, Christian World, Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 51. Luk 8:22-25.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 249. Luk 8:23.—Ibid., vol. ii., p. 253.
Luk 8:24
I. There is much in that expression that "Christ rebuked the wind and the waves." You will miss a great part of the intention of the incident if you merely look upon it as a miracle of stilling a tempest. Why did Christ rebuke the elements? The word appears the language of one who either sees moral guilt, or who, in his affection, is indignant at something which is hurting those he loves. The elements, in themselves, cannot, of course, do a moral wrong. But is it possible that the prince of the power of the air had anything to do with that storm? Was there some latent fiendish malice in that sudden outbreak of nature upon Christ and His Church? And was Christ indeed ejecting an evil spirit when He did just what He always did, and said just what He always said, when He was dealing with those who were possessed with devils? "He rebuked them." But, however this may be, there is another aspect in which we ought to see it. We know that to the Second Adam was given what the first Adam forfeited—perfect dominion over all creation. In this light the present hurricane was like a rebellion, and Christ treated it as such, that He might show His mastership. Hence that royal word, "He rebuked them," and hence the instant submission.
II. The winds were the emblem of the external influences which affect and harass; the waves, of the inward heavings and distresses which those external influences produce upon the mind: the winds, the active, evil agencies of life; the waves, the consequence of the trials, when they fall upon you; because, as the wave answers to the wind, rising or falling with its swell or subsidence, so do our weak hearts beat or be still, and respond sensibly to the ills about us. Do not wish exemption from evil, neither from sorrow, nor yet from temptation. Immunity from grief is not half as great as God’s consolation under it. Exemption is not the true peace, but deliverance, victory; the peace which Christ makes out of the materials of our troubles; the silenced fear, the subdued restlessness, the sealed pardon, the interposing grace, the triumph of an omnipotent love.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 309.
Luk 8:25
The question before us has in it a wild sublimity. The waves had just found their resting-place; the wind was gone back into its treasure-house; and our Saviour stood upon the calm, and seemed to say, "The fierce enemies have been and gone, but where is your faith?"
I. Everybody has faith. To have a trust in something is so natural, that I could almost say it is indispensable to human nature. There are faculties and principles of the human heart which must cling. Every man, however independent he thinks himself, is constituted to have some feeling in him which goes forth—which is as the creeper that creeps over your door, or as the vine which is wedded to the air. Those feelings made to twine may trail in the dust; those affections made to mount may often trail down like withered, disappointed things; they may grasp that which will never bear, or drive to that which sends back poison and death where we had looked for sustenance. Is our faith in the First Great Source? or is it in second causes?
II. Trusting to second causes is sheer idolatry. It is the essential of God that He is final; what is final is made God. There is many an idolater in heathenism who never looks upon his wretched idol, but his thoughts are led to that invisible being that the idol represents. Those who look at second causes and do not look at the First Cause are greater idolaters than the heathen. Look at our marts of commerce, look at our great assemblies, look at our great entertainments, look at our churches, and say is it not so. Are not instruments being looked at as if they were all-effective causes? What remains for a jealous God but to scatter second causes which have been elevated into a supremacy which belongs only to Him? The winds that came down upon the Sea of Galilee were but as strings in the hands of God, causing the waves to become tempestuous; and you who go up and down trusting to that which is wise in man and beautiful in nature, beware! lest presently your bright prospect gets beclouded, and a more fearful storm than that which swept over the angry sea come into your heart, to teach you to have no confidence anywhere but in God, and to look up from the dangers of this disappointing world to Him who only sits at the helm of all, and cry to Him, "Master, Master, we perish!"
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 1874, p. 189.
References: Luk 8:25.—F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxi., p. 253. Luk 8:28.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 778. Luk 8:34.—R. Heber, Parish Sermons, vol. i., p. 160.
Luk 8:35
I. Consider this Story of the Demoniac. A man who was wild and furious becomes calm and orderly. He sits at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. What has wrought this mighty change? Is it the announcement to him of some law which God has laid down for His creatures? Is it anything whatever which we comprehend under the ordinary notion of moral discipline? All these regulations were desirable, doubtless, for a man in the condition of the maniac. But common sense pronounced them ridiculous. It was obvious that they could take no effect; they must be wasted. Far more direct and simple methods were resorted to. He was chained. But that was as ineffectual a scheme of regulation as the other. The fetters were burst asunder, the chains were broken. It is just when all mere regulations, human and Divine, are found absolutely vain to restrain him from being the curse and plague of his fellowmen, that Christ is said to have met the man Himself, to have entered into colloquy with that which could hear no laws, could be restrained by no force, and to have emancipated and reformed that. And here is the result: Not a new excitement substituted for the old, not religious paroxysms taking the place of other paroxysms; but quietness and order: he is in his right mind.
II. It is not true of the Gospel of Christ, that if you take from it its original character, if you strip it of those claims which apostles and martyrs put forth on its behalf, it may challenge respect on a lower ground, it may claim a sort of useful and recognised position for itself among the other agents of civilisation. I know such an opinion prevails in many minds. They say that "’Reft of a crown, it still may share the feast." You will find it is not so. You will find that if we dare not proclaim Christ as the Deliverer of the spirit of man from its bondage, if we dare not say that He has come actually to reveal God’s righteousness to men, we had better cease to speak of Him at all. For it is such a one that men want; it is for such a one that in their inmost hearts, even when their language against the Son of Man is loudest, they are crying. It was so in former ages; so it is now. It was so among the most miserable and the most respectable; it is so still. If preachers of the Gospel do not answer the cry—if they only represent it as one of the regulative forces that are at work in society—it will be felt to be the feeblest of all these processes; the chain and the prison-house will be found stronger.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. v., p. 145.
References: Luk 8:35.—A. Ramsay, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 321; T. R. Stevenson, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 139: E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. i., p. 360; (Clerical Library) Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 80.
Luk 8:38
The Religious Use of Excited Feelings.
I. All the passionate emotion, or fine sensibility, which ever man displayed, will never by itself make us change our ways, and do our duty. Impassioned thoughts, sublime imaginings, have no strength in them. They can no more make a man obey consistently than they can move mountains. If any man truly repent, it must be in consequence—not of these, but of a settled conviction of his guilt, and a deliberate resolution to leave his sins and serve God. Conscience, and reason in subjection to conscience: these are those powerful instruments, under grace, which change a man. But you will observe, that though conscience and reason lead us to resolve on and to attempt a new life, they cannot at once make us love it. It is long practice and habit which make us love religion; and in the beginning, obedience, doubtless, is very grievous to habitual sinners. Here, then, is the use of those ardent, excited feelings which attend on the first exercise of conscience and reason, and to take away from the beginning of obedience its grievous-ness, to give us an impulse which may carry us over the first obstacles, and send us on our way rejoicing. Not as if all this excitement of mind were to last (which cannot be), but it will do its office in thus setting us off; and then will leave us to the more sober and higher comfort resulting from that real love for religion, which obedience itself will have by that time begun to form in us, and will gradually go on to perfect.
II. To those who feel any accidental remorse for their sins violently exerting itself in their hearts, I say: Do not loiter; go home to your friends, and repent in deeds of righteousness and love; hasten to commit yourselves to certain difficult acts of obedience. Follow on to know the Lord; and to secure His favour by acting upon these impulses; by them He pleads with you as well as by your conscience; they are the instruments of His Spirit, stirring you up to seek your true peace. Still, be quite sure that resolute consistent obedience, though unattended with high transport and warm emotion, is far more acceptable to Him than all those passionate longings to live in His sight, which look like religion to the uninstructed. At the very best, these latter are but the graceful beginnings of obedience, graceful and becoming in children, but in grown spiritual men indecorous as the sports of boyhood would seem in advanced years. Learn to live by faith—which is a calm, deliberate, rational principle, full of peace and comfort, and sees Christ, and rejoices in Him, though sent away from His Presence to labour in the world. You will have your reward. He will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. i., p. 112.
References: Luk 8:38.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 242. Luk 8:38, Luk 8:39.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 282. Luk 8:40.—Ibid., vol. vi., p. 226; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts, p. 96. Luk 8:42.—Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 217; T. Birkett Dover, The Ministry of Mercy, p. 79. Luk 8:43-47.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 150.
Luk 8:45-46
Faith’s Touch.
Notice:—
I. What this woman did. "Jesus said, Who touched Me?" That more is meant here than the mere manual or external touch is evident, not only from the whole circumstances of the narrative, but from the explicit and emphatic testimony of our Lord Himself. He expressly distinguishes between her touch and that of the unthinking crowd around as a thing totally and essentially different; and then, in His closing words, He declares plainly what that thing was. "Daughter: thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." That is, it was not the mere bodily contact that constituted the saving touch, but that living faith of the heart, of which it was but the instinctive and touching expression. Hers was (1) secret faith, (2) trembling faith, (3) an imperfect faith, (4) a strong faith, (5) an earnest and resolute faith.
II. What the multitude did. Note the difference between the attitude of this woman and that of the multitude around her. Theirs was the mere contact of the body, hers of the heart and soul; theirs a mere external and unmeaning pressure; hers a living act of trust and love. The human eye, indeed, could detect no difference. To a mere spectator, all stood in the same relation to Him. Surely it were vain amid such a crowd, all of whom are pressing on Him, and thronging His path, to single out any one to whom more than another the charge may be applied. But no; while thousands throng the Saviour, one alone toucheth Him. Jesus answered, "Somebody hath touched Me."
III. The test to distinguish between the one touch and the other. "Jesus said, Somebody hath touched Me: for I perceive that virtue hath gone out of Me." This, then, was the test; the sacred touch was proved by the outflowing of the healing virtue. There is no healing influence without faith—no true faith without healing influence. Therefore, the fact so well known to Him who is the one Source and Dispenser of grace, that such influence had gone forth from Him to this woman, was the decisive and infallible proof that she had touched Him in a way that none of the throng around her had. Thus alone can we surely know that we have truly believed in Jesus to the saving of our souls; when it has become manifest to all men and ourselves that a saving virtue has come from Him to us, and that through that mighty virtue old things are passed away, and all things are made new.
I. Burns, Select Remains, p. 46.
I. In the case of this woman, we perceive that two things went together—an inward act of faith, and recourse to something external; both the internal and the external bearing upon Christ. She touched the hem of His garment. Our Lord in all His miracles required a susceptibility on the part of the applicant for His mercy, and an outward action as regarded Himself. He required faith on the part of the person seeking His aid; and then He touched that person, or spake certain words to him, or anointed his eyes with clay, or bade him have recourse to some action insignificant in itself. The two acts were combined, the inward and the outward; one suffered not without the other, but both went together.
II. It is not superstition, then, for faithful men to use and rely upon the ordinances of the Christian religion; there is no superstition in having recourse to actions, between which and their results there exists no discernible connection, if only those actions be either enjoined or sanctioned by God. It would not be superstitious for a man, sick of the palsy, to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in expectation of a cure, if the Lord God had commanded him to do so, and had promised restoration to health as the reward of his obedience; but to do this, or any similar thing, without a promise, this would be superstitious. The superstitious property in an act consists not in having recourse to means, apparently inefficacious, but in having recourse to them without a sufficient warrant from reason or from revelation. It is through things external that many of the gifts and graces which we expect to realise in the Church are to pass from Christ, from whom alone the virtue emanates, to our souls. Love Christ and prove your love by keeping His commandments. But having done all, remember that, notwithstanding your love, the disease of sin is upon you, and touch the hem of His garment. Rely on Christ only for salvation, and prove that you do so, not by pleading your faith, as if faith were anything meritorious, but by permitting your faith to lead you to Christ, that you may touch the hem of His garment.
W. F. Hook, Sermons on the Miracles, vol. i., p. 242.
We have here (1) a touch incited by past failure; (2) a touch effective through faith; (3) a touch publicly acknowledged.
E. Mellor, The Hem of Christ’s Garment, p. 1.
References: Luk 8:45.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 251; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 281. Luk 8:46.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 227. Luk 8:47.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 45. Luk 8:48.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 283. Luk 8:49.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. iv., p. 31; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 184. Luk 8:52.—T. Gasquoine, Ibid., vol. viii., p. 58. Luk 9:1-6.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 253. Luk 9:1-11.—A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 99. Luk 9:1-48.—F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, p. 150. Luk 9:10-17.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 291. Luk 9:11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1624. Luk 9:12-17.—A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 120.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v22 Subdivision 3. (Luk 8:22-56; Luk 9:1-36.)
Subdivision 3. (Luk 8:22-56; Luk 9:1-36.)
The Fulness of Salvation.
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The third subdivision also for the most part simply puts together in different connection what Matthew and Mark have already given us. Together the details show us the fulness of salvation which Christ has provided for us, and which the opposition of the world only brings into fuller prominence. There must be deliverance out of it also, only we must not expect here the full Christian deliverance of the epistle to the Galatians, but a moral one rather, from its spirit and ways, the rejection of Christ being that of every follower of His, and faith, therefore, giving victory over it.
1. We have, first, deliverance from the power of circumstances through identification with Him who is supreme over all. Thus for faith there is peace through whatever storms: although this does not mean that the hearts of disciples are always on the level of their privileges. Here on the sea of Galilee they were plainly not so. Jesus was with them, that they knew; but He was asleep, and the winds and waves seemed to have no regard for Him. In their fear they rouse Him, to find relief in His display of a power with which they had not credited Him, but to meet the sorrowful reproof on His part, "Where is your faith?" In truth our prayers in their very urgency often betray our unbelief, and would reproach the Lord on His side with a passivity which is but a sign of the confidence that He would fain repose in us as those who know His truth and steadfastness. "He that feareth is not perfected in love" -His love: he has not learned as yet the lesson of such entire trustworthiness as is to be found in Him.
Peace, then, at all times, is God’s provision for us; the greeting with which Christ ever meets us; the legacy which His death has left us. All winds and waves yield alike to Him; all things good and evil serve Him, and therefore serve His people, through His abiding care.
2. We have next the story of the demoniac possessed with the "legion," the picture of whose condition is as full as that in Mark, fuller than Matthew. We see the awful power of Satan over him whom he has enslaved, in contrast with the same man "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind."
We see also the world preferring Satan to the Deliverer, begging Him to depart, while the delivered man beseeches Him that he may be with Him. Yet the Lord dismisses him to be a witness for Him at home of the divine compassion which has wrought in his behalf.
3. After this we have the twofold story of the daughter of Jairus raised from the dead, and the faith that touched the hem of His garment, and found the healing that it anticipated from the touch. In this we have seen already a parabolic meaning, the divine and human sides of salvation being given in these intertwined miracles: the dead hearing the voice of the Son of God and living, while faith draws from the Saviour the virtue that it needs. Matthew here is the briefest of the three Gospels, Mark’s account somewhat the fullest; but of the differences we do not seem able to give a proper account.
4. (1) The Lord now sends out the twelve as messengers of His mercy in a needy world. They have authority over the power of Satan and disease, and are to preach the Kingdom of God, of which the miracles are signs and anticipants. This communicated authority is very significant: for as communicated it could not be supposed to be due to the character of those who were but the delegates of Another, yet as such clothed with power from God. Luke merely gives a partial outline of this commission; of which Matthew furnishes the full details. Here we have simply the breadth of their authority, the claim upon men which it carries with it, and the testimony against those who reject that claim. The evangelizing is in the forefront, but what hope for those who reject the precious grace of God? yet the denunciation is part of that grace, its last effort to rouse the consciences of men to respond to it.
(2) Herod himself is roused by all this, but partially, to a foreboding perplexity. He has beheaded John; and here is One exhibiting a power which John had not. Luke shows us the tyrant concluding in an opposite way to that which we find in the previous Gospels. Between the incredulity of a Sadducee and the terror of conscience which breaks out beyond the control of it, he vacillates evidently. But here is a problem that he cannot solve, and he is drawn by that which he fears, because he fears it: "he sought to see him." By and by we shall find how, misled by a carnal mind which cannot penetrate the mystery of the Cross, he is able to treat with awful mockery the object of his former fears; and so he disappears out of inspired history.
(3) The twelve return; and the Lord takes them apart privately into a desert place for needed rest. But the multitudes, hearing of it, follow and break in upon Him, and their various necessities call forth once more His compassion actively to minister to them. "He received them, and spake unto them of the Kingdom of God, and healed those that had need of healing." There ensues that first miracle of the multiplication of the loaves which is the only one recorded by Luke and John as well as the other evangelists. With John it is the text of the Lord’s discourse upon the bread of life. Luke is somewhat briefer than any of the others, and omits entirely the scene upon the lake which follows it. As Jehovah, with a marvel of creative power, "He satisfies Israel’s poor with bread." The need of the world, true wilderness as it is, is made to manifest the divine resources which are in the hand of Him who because of its misery has come into it. The Creator of it is the Redeemer for it: Christ, the Son of man, is both. The details of the miracle we have had before us in Matthew.
5. But the world is not only a place of want and misery, or of sin as lying at the root of these: it is a place into which the Redeemer has come and they know Him not, but reject and cast Him out. This, therefore, is what really characterizes the world for those who receive Him, and salvation must be a salvation out of it. Judgment awaits it; Christ is gone out: heaven receives whom the world has rejected; and for His followers also, if the earth be closed, heaven is opened. Thus the wonder of salvation is increased with the wonder of a rejected Saviour; grace descends lower to find its objects, (for we are all upon the world’s dead level,) and places them where all the glory of it will be shown out: for "in the ages to come God will show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Eph 5:7).
This is now beginning to be shown out to us, although for the full reality of it we must wait until Christ being ascended, the Holy Spirit shall have come down to make known all His glory and the fruit of His work. In the meanwhile, as His rejection becomes manifest, and the way of the cross is seen as the way of discipleship, there is permitted an anticipative vision of "the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," that His people may along the road "be strengthened with all might according to the power of His glory" (Col 1:11) so displayed.
(1) Again we find Him in prayer. The unbelief of men; as we may infer from His question presently, is shadowing His soul with all its sorrow and its bitter fruits. He rises from it to ask His disciples, "Who do the multitudes say that I am?" He is not speaking of manifest rejectors, and their answer does not take its color from the enmity of the scribes and Pharisees. "John the Baptist," "Elias," a prophet of old time risen from the dead, are the conjectures of those who mean to do Him honor; but they are conjectures merely, and not faith, and none of them rise up to the reality: they all fail to apprehend the glory of His Person, and therefore the end for which He is come. The light of His glory who is among them has not shone into their souls; He is not their Saviour, -not the Christ: the Baptist had absolutely disclaimed it, and had declared of the One that was coming after him that He was too great for him to be worthy to undo the latchet of His shoes.
And the Lord questions His disciples: "But who do ye say that I am? Peter answers in behalf of them, The Christ of God." But He forbids them to declare it now, for if Israel had not faith to receive Him, He on His part was going on to fulfil the divine purpose in stooping to suffering and death at their hands; then, on the third day, to be raised up.
He adds nothing to this, the first open, literal announcement of what, even in this way, was too hard a saying for them to understand. The doctrine of the Cross, though found in all the Gospels, yet develops slowly there. The Old Testament types of it, to us so familiar, were to the disciples as yet like a fountain sealed, inaccessible; and thus much that we should look upon as plain language -as for instance, the Baptist’s witness to the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world" -would be to them a dark saying. Israel in general were looking for a conquering, not a suffering, Messiah. "We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever," they said in answer to one of His own declarations, "and Thou sayest, the Son of man must be lifted up: who is this Son of man?" (Joh 12:34). Thus the unwelcome truth struggled through the darkness, and those who confessed His Person were still, as to His work, in darkness like the rest. As a consequence, much of what was plainly announced remained as seed in the ground for a future harvest.
(2) The Lord goes on to declare the way of His followers to be that of the Cross, and here virtually therefore, as He had not yet, the manner of His own death. But He uses the word symbolically, as the expression "daily (only found in Luke) would convey to them. To follow Him they must sacrifice their life -themselves -in all that the world counts life; perhaps literally lay it down for Him. The life so lost for His sake would be saved, while he who would grasp the present must lose the future. It is a world hostile to Christ through which we pass, and the confession of Him will cost in such a scene. He gives no reason to expect that it will alter in its spirit essentially, but the reverse: the path He treads is, in this fact that it is His, the path for all His followers; and of those who are ashamed of Him and of His words, He will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory -this is only in Luke -and that of His Father, and of the holy angels.
All this, with the exceptions named, is found, and has been considered, in the previous Gospels. The Lord closes, as in them, with the assurance, that some standing there would in no wise taste of death until they should see the Kingdom of God.
(3) The reference to the transfiguration in this has been also considered. Luke links them more directly together than the other evangelists by his reference: "about eight days after these words." Matthew and Mark say "after six days." Luke’s "eight" stamps it with that character of "newness" which attaches to the number. A new scene indeed for the old sin-stricken earth to witness; and the centre of all its glory a Man in prayer!
Such is the new Adam upon whom rests all the blessing of the new creation; and in this sign we read its permanence. Man is no more to lapse from God into a fancied but impossible independence; and the path of obedience is no more to be thought of as one of hard and servile drudgery when the Son of God has chosen it for His own. The glory that now alters the fashion of countenance and radiates from His very garments is His own proper glory, veiled in tenderness only to those to whom He has come to minister, that they might know Him better, as through a darkened glass we better see the sun.
But He is not alone: for where He is must be the fruit of His work and the companions of His love. Two men are with Him, and appear in glory also; but they with a glory which is not their own. Moses and Elias, the law-giver and the prophet, shine, as in fact they did, in His glory; and that of which they are speaking is that departure which He is to accomplish at Jerusalem, the very thing of which He has been speaking to His disciples without finding ears to hear.
Now, in fact, they are weighed down with sleep. As upon another, how different occasion, but when the same departure was before Him, He compassionately said of them, the spirit might be willing, but the flesh was weak. The heaviness of earth clung about them, and there was not power to rise above it. Only when they were fully awakened did they see His glory and the two that stood with Him. How much too of what we might see do we fail to see, not because of positive evil, and yet because of lack of energy to reach what is so near, yet so beyond us. But what might our lives be -what might they not be -if things were different with us!
So even when they are awake, they are dazed and confounded. As the two men are departing, Peter makes an effort to stay them by a proposal to build tabernacles for them, as also for the Lord. But then comes the Cloud and overshadows them; Moses and Elias disappear into the Cloud; and out of it the Father’s voice once more as at the Jordan-baptism proclaims His Son. Let them hear Him. And Jesus is found alone.
Here is the end, then; anticipated, which is to strengthen for all the way. We have looked at it already in the previous Gospels, each of which has, no doubt, its differences, though we may be feeble in presenting these. We shall soon reach now what is peculiar to Luke.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 14, 15, 43, 50 Luk 8:2 - Luk 8:3.
Luke
THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN
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Luk 8:2 - Luk 8:3.
The Evangelist Luke has preserved for us several incidents in our Lord’s life in which women play a prominent part. It would not, I think, be difficult to bring that fact into connection with the main characteristics of his Gospel, but at all events it is worth observing that we owe to him those details, and the fact that the service of these grateful women was permanent during the whole of our Lord’s wandering life after His leaving Galilee. An incidental reference to the fact is found in Matthew’s account of the Crucifixion, but had it not been for Luke we should not have known the names of two or three of them, nor should we have known how constantly they adhered to Him. As to the women of the little group, we know very little about them. Mary of Magdala has had a very hard fate. The Scripture record of her is very sweet and beautiful. Delivered by Christ from that mysterious demoniacal possession, she cleaves to Him, like a true woman, with all her heart. She is one of the little group whose strong love, casting out all fear, nerved them to stand by the Cross when all the men except the gentle Apostle of love, as he is called, were cowering in corners, afraid of their lives, and she was one of the same group who would fain have prolonged their ministry beyond His death, and who brought the sweet spices with them in order to anoint Him, and it was she who came to the risen Lord with the rapturous exclamation, ‘Rabboni, my Master.’ By strange misunderstanding of the Gospel story, she has been identified with the woman who was a sinner in the previous chapter in this book, and her fair fame has been blackened and her very name taken as a designation of the class to which there is no reason whatever to believe she belonged. Demoniacal possession was neither physical infirmity nor moral evil, however much it may have simulated sometimes the one or the other.
Then as to Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, old Church tradition tells us that she was the consort of the nobleman whose son Christ healed at Capernaum. It does not seem very likely that Herod’s steward would have been living in Capernaum, and the narrative before us rather seems to show that she herself was the recipient of healing from His hands. However that may be, Herod’s court was not exactly the place to look for Christian disciples, was it? But you know they of Caesar’s household surrounded with their love the Apostle whom Nero murdered, and it is by no means an uncommon experience that the servants’ hall knows and loves the Christ that the lord in the saloon does not care about.
And then as for Susanna, is it not a sweet fate to be known to all the world for ever more by one line only, which tells of her service to her Master?
So I will try to take out of these little incidents in our text some plain lessons about this matter of Christian service and ministry to Christ, with which it seems to be so full. It will apply to missionary work and all other sorts of work, and perhaps will take us down to the bottom of it all, and show us the foundation on which it should all rest.
Let me ask you for a moment to look with me first of all at the centre figure, as being an illustration of-what shall I say? may I venture to use a rough word and say the pauper Christ?-as the great Pattern and Motive for us, of the love that becomes poor. We very often cover the life of our Lord with so much imaginative reverence that we sometimes lose the hard angles of the facts of it. Now, I want you to realise it, and you may put it into as modern English as you like, for it will help the vividness of the conception, which is a simple, prosaic fact, that Jesus Christ was, in the broadest meaning of the word, a pauper; not indeed with the sodden poverty that you can see in our slums, but still in a very real sense of the word. He had not a thing that He could call His own, and when He came to the end of His life there was nothing for His executioners to gamble for except His one possession, the seamless robe. He is hungry, and there is a fig-tree by the roadside, and He comes, expecting to get His breakfast off that. He is tired, and He borrows a fishing-boat to lie down and sleep in. He is thirsty, and He asks a woman of questionable character to give Him a draught of water. He wants to preach a sermon about the bounds of ecclesiastical and civil society, and He says, ‘Bring Me a penny.’ He has to be indebted to others for the beast of burden on which He made His modest entry into Jerusalem, for the winding sheet that wrapped Him, for the spices that would embalm Him, for the grave in which He lay. He was a pauper in a deeper sense of the word than His Apostle when he said, ‘Having nothing, and yet possessing all things, as poor, and yet making many rich.’ For let us remember that the great mystery of the Gospel system-the blending together in one act and in one Person all the extremes of lowliness and of the loftiness which go deep down into the very profundities of the Gospel, is all here dramatised, as it were, and drawn into a picturesque form on the very surface; and the same blending together of poverty and absolute love, which in its loftiest form is the union in one Person of Godhead and of manhood, is here for us in this fact, that all the dark cloud of poverty, if I may so say, is shot through with strange gleams of light like sunshine caught and tangled in some cold, wet fog, so that whenever you get some definite and strange mark of Christ’s poverty, you get lying beside it some definite and strange mark of His absoluteness and His worth. For instance, take the illustration I have already referred to-He borrows a fishing-boat and lies down, weary, to sleep on the wooden pillow at the end of it; aye, but He rises and He says, ‘Peace, be still,’ and the waves fall. He borrows the upper room, and with a stranger’s wine and another man’s bread He founds the covenant and the sacrament of His new kingdom. He borrows a grave; aye, but He comes out of it, the Lord both of the dead and of the living. And so we have to say, ‘Consider the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich.’
The noblest life that was ever lived upon earth-I hope you and I think it is a great deal more than that, but we all think it is that at any rate-the noblest life that was ever lived upon earth was the life of a poor man. Remember that pure desires, holy aspirations, noble purposes, and a life peopled with all the refinement and charities that belong to the spirit, and that is ever conscious of the closest presence of God and of the innate union with Him, is possible under such conditions, and so remember that the pauper Christ is, at the least, the perfect Man.
But then what I more immediately intended was to ask you to take that central figure with this external fact of His poverty, of the depth of His true inanition, the emptying of Himself for our sakes, as being the great motive, and Oh! thank God that with all humility, we may venture to say, the great Pattern to which you and I have to conform. There is the reason why we say, ‘I love to speak His name,’ there is the true measure of the devotion of the consecration and the self-surrender which He requires. Christ gave all for us even to the uttermost circumference of external possession, and standing in the midst of those for whose sakes He became poor, He turns to them with a modest appeal when He says, ‘Minister unto Me, for I have made Myself to need your ministrations for the sake of your redemption.’ So much, then, for the first point which I would desire to urge upon you from this incident before us.
Now, in the next place, and pursuing substantially the same course of thought, let me suggest to you to look at the love-the love here that stoops to be served.
It is a familiar observation and a perfectly true one that we have no record of our Lord’s ever having used miraculous power for the supply of His own wants, and the reason for that, I suppose, is to be found not only in that principle of economy and parsimony of miraculous energy, so that the supernatural in His life was ever pared down to the narrowest possible limits, and inosculated immediately with the natural, but it is also to be found in this-let me put it into very plain words-that Christ liked to be helped and served by the people that He loved, and that Christ knew that they liked it as well as He. It delighted Him, and He was quite sure that it delighted them. You fathers and mothers know what it is when one of your little children comes, and seeing you engaged about some occupation says, ‘Let me help you.’ The little hand perhaps does not contribute much to the furtherance of your occupation. It may be rather an encumbrance than otherwise, but is not there a gladness in saying ‘Yes, here, take this and do this little thing for me’? And do not we all know how maimed and imperfect that love is which only gives, and how maimed and imperfect that love is which only receives, so that there must be an assumption of both attitudes in all true commerce of affection, and that same beautiful flashing backwards and forwards from the two poles which makes the sweetness of our earthly love find its highest example there in the heavens. There are the two mirrors facing each other, and they reverberate rays from one polished surface to another, and so Christ loves and gives, and Christ loves and takes, and His servants love and give, and His servants love and take. Sometimes we are accustomed to speak of it as the highest sign of our Lord’s true, deep conviction that He has given so much to us. It seems to me we may well pause and hesitate whether the mightiness and the wonderfulness of His love to us are shown more in that He gives everything to us, or in that He takes so much from us. It is much to say, ‘The Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister’; I do not know but that it is more to say that the Son of man let this record be written: ‘Certain women also which ministered to Him of their substance.’ At all events there it stands and for us. What although we have to come and say, ‘All that I bring is Thine’; what then? Does a father like less to get a gift from his boy because he gave him the shilling to buy it? And is there anything that diminishes the true sweetness of our giving to Christ, and as we may believe the true sweetness to Him of receiving it from us, because we have to herald all our offerings, all our love, aspirations, desires, trust, conformity, practical service, substantial help, with the old acknowledgment, ‘All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.’
Now, dear friends, all these principles which I have thus imperfectly touched upon as to the necessity of the blending of the two sides in all true commerce of love, the giving and bestowing the expression of the one affection in both hearts, all bears very directly upon the more special work of Christian men in spreading the name of Christ among those who do not know it. You get the same economy of power there that I was speaking about. The supernatural is finished when the divine life is cast into the world. ‘I am come to fling fire upon the earth,’ said He, ‘and oh, that it were already kindled!’ There is the supernatural; after that you have to deal with the thing according to the ordinary laws of human history and the ordinary conditions of man’s society. God trusts the spread of His word to His people; there will not be one moment’s duration of the barely, nakedly supernatural beyond the absolute necessity. Christ comes; after that you and I have to see to it, and then you say, ‘Collections, collections, collections, it is always collections. This society and that society and the other society, there is no end of the appeals that are made. Charity sermons-men using the highest motives of the Gospel for no purpose but to get a shilling or two out of people’s pockets. I am tired of it.’ Very well; all I have to say is, first of all, ‘Ye have not resisted unto blood’; some people have had to pay a great deal more for their Gospel than you have. And another thing, a man that had lost a great deal more for his Master than ever you or I will have to do, said, ‘Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given, that I should preach amongst the heathen the unsearchable riches of Christ.’ Ah! a generous, chivalrous spirit, a spirit touched to fine issues by the fine touch of the Lord’s love, will feel that it is no burden; or if it be a burden, it is only a burden as a golden crown heavy with jewels may be a burden on brows that are ennobled by its pressure. This grace is given, and He has crowned us with the honour that we may serve Him and do something for Him.
Dear brethren! of all the gracious words that our Master has spoken to us, I know not that there is one more gracious than when He said, ‘Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature’; and of all the tender legacies that He has left His Church, though there be included amongst these His own peace and His own Spirit, I know not that there is any more tender or a greater sign of His love towards us and His confidence in us than when departing to the far country to receive a kingdom and to return, He gave authority to His servants, and to every man his work.’
And so, in the next place, let me ask you to look for a moment at the complement to this love that stoops to serve and delights to serve-the ministry or service of our love. Let me point to two things.
It seems to me that the simple narrative we have before us goes very deep into the heart of this matter. It gives us two things-the foundation of the service and the sphere of the service.
First there is the foundation-’Certain women which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities.’ Ah, there you come to it! The consciousness of redemption is the one master touch that evokes the gratitude which aches to breathe itself in service. There is no service except it be the expression of love. That is the one great Christian principle; and the other is that there is no love that does not rest on the consciousness of redemption; and from these two-that all service and obedience are the utterance and eloquence of love, and that all love has its root in the sense of redemption-you may elaborate all the distinct characteristics and peculiarities of Christian ethics, whereby duty becomes gladness. ‘I will,’ and ‘I ought’ overlap and cover each other like two of Euclid’s triangles; and whatsoever He commands that I spring to do; and so though the burden be heavy, considered in regard to its requirements, and though the yoke do often press, considered per se, yet because the cords that fasten the yoke to our neck are the cords of love, I can say, ‘My burden is light.’ One of the old psalms puts it thus; ‘O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds; and because Thou hast loosed, therefore O hear me; speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.’
So much then for the foundation-now for the sphere. ‘Ah,’ you say, ‘there is no parallel there, at any rate. These women served Him with personal ministration of their substance.’ Well, I think there is a parallel notwithstanding. If I had time I should like to dwell upon the side thoughts connected with that sphere of service, and remind you how very prosaic were their common domestic duties, looking after the comfort of Christ and the travel-stained Twelve who were with Him-let us put it into plain English-cooking their dinners for them, and how that became a religious act. Take the lesson out of it, you women in your households, and you men in your counting-houses and behind your counters, and you students at your dictionaries and lexicons. The commonest things done for the Master flash up into worship, or as good old George Herbert puts it-
‘A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy cause,
Makes that and th’ action fine.’
But then beyond that, is there any personal ministration to do? If any of you have ever been in St. Mark’s Convent at Florence, I dare say you will remember that in the Guest Chamber the saintly genius of Fra Angelico has painted, as an appropriate frontispiece, the two pilgrims on the road to Emmaus, praying the unknown man to come in and partake of their hospitality; and he has draped them in the habit of his order, and he has put Christ as the Representative of all the poor and wearied and wayworn travellers that might enter in there and receive hospitality, which is but the lesson, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.’
And there is another thing, dear friends. Do we not minister to Him best when we do the thing that is nearest His heart and help Him most in the purpose of His life and in His death? What would you think of a would-be helper of some great reformer who said: ‘I will give you all sorts of material support; but I have not a grain of sympathy with the cause to which you have devoted your life. I think it is madness and nonsense: I will feed you and house you and make you comfortable, but I do not care one rush for the object for which you are to be housed and fed and made comfortable.’ Jesus Christ let these poor women help Him that He might live to bear the Cross; He lets you and me help Him for that for which on the Cross He died; ‘This honour have all the saints’; The foundation of our service is the consciousness of redemption; its sphere is ministering to Him in that which is nearest His heart.
And then, brethren, there is another thing that does not so immediately belong to the incident before us, but which suggests itself to me in connection with it. We have tried to show the motive and the pattern, the foundation and the sphere, of the service: let me add a last thought-the remembrance and the record of it.
How strange that is, that just as a beam of light coming into a room would enable us to see all the motes dancing up and down that lay in its path, so the beam from Christ’s life shoots athwart the society of His age, and all those little insignificant people come for a moment into the full lustre of the light. Years before and years afterward they lived, and we do not know anything about them; but for an instant they crossed the illuminated track and there they blazed. How strange Pharisees, officials, and bookmen of all sorts would have felt if anybody had said to them: ‘Do you see that handful of travel-stained Galileans there, those poor women you have just passed by the way? Well, do you know that these three women’s names will never perish as long as the world lasts?’ So we may learn the eternity of work done for Him. Ah, a great deal of it may be forgotten and unrecorded! How many deeds of faithful love and noble devotion are all compressed into those words, ‘which ministered unto Him’! It is the old story of how life shrinks, and shrinks, and shrinks in the record. How many acres of green forest ferns in the long ago time went to make up a seam of coal as thick as a sixpence? But still there is the record, compressed indeed, but existent.
And how many names may drop out and not be associated with the work which they did? Do you not think that these anonymous ‘many others which ministered’ were just as dear to Jesus Christ as Mary and Joanna and Susannah? A great many people helped Him whose deeds are related in the Gospel, but whose names are not recorded. But what does it matter about that? With many ‘others of my fellow-labourers also,’ says St. Paul; ‘whose names’-well, I have forgotten them; but that is of little consequence; they ‘are in the Lamb’s book of life.’ And so the work is eternal, and will last on in our blessed consciousness and in His remembrance who will never forget any of it, and we shall self-enfold the large results, even if the rays of dying fame may fade.
And there is one other thought on this matter of the eternity of the work on which I would just touch for an instant.
How strange it must be to these women now! If, as I suppose, you and I believe, they are living with Christ, they will look up to Him and think, ‘Ah! we remember when we used to find your food and prepare for your household comforts, and there Thou art on the throne! How strange and how great our earthly service seems to us now!’ So it will be to us all when we get up yonder. We shall have to say, ‘Lord, when saw I Thee?’ He will put a meaning into our work and a majesty into it that we know nothing about at present. So, brethren, account the name of His slaves your highest honour, and the task that love gives you your greatest joy. When we have in our poor love poorly ministered unto Him who in His great love greatly died for us, then, at the last, the wonderful word will be fulfilled: ‘Verily I say unto you, He shall gird Himself and make them to sit down to meat and will come forth and serve them.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Parable of the Sower. The Demoniac of Gadara
Parable of the Sower. The Demoniac of Gadara
1-3. Tours through Galilee. The ministering women (peculiar to Lk).
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2. Mary called Magdalene] see on Mat_27:56.
Seven devils] Mar_16:9. The 'seven' indicates the greatness of her disease, not of her previous wickedness. There is no evidence that the persons possessed with devils in the NT. were specially wicked, or that Mary Magdalene had ever been a woman of evil life.
3. Joanna] see Luk_24:10. Our Lord did not, like the Pharisees,' devour widows' houses.' Those who contributed to His support were women of wealth and position. Chuza] probably the steward of Herod Antipas, who as such managed his house and estates. From Joanna St. Luke probably obtained much of his special information. Susanna] Of her nothing is known.
Ministered unto him] This illustrates our Lord's precept (1Co_9:14) that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.
4-15. Parable of the Sower (Mat_13:1; Mar_4:1). See on Mt.
16-18. Further remarks on teaching by parables (Mar_4:21-25). See on Mk.
19-21. His mother and brethren (Mat_12:46; Mar_3:31). See on Mt.
22-25. Stilling the storm (Mat_8:28; Mar_4:35). See on Mt, Mk.
26-39. The demoniac in the country of the Gadarenes (RV 'Gerasenes') (Mat_8:28; Mar_5:1). See on Mt, Mk.
40-56. Jairus' daughter. The woman with an issue (Mat_9:18; Mar_5:21). See on Mt.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 19, 22, 26, 41 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [XLVII. Journeying About…
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [XLVII. Journeying About Galilee].
XLVII. FURTHER JOURNEYING ABOUT GALILEE. cLUKE VIII. 1-3.
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c1 And it came to pass soon afterwards [i. e.,. soon after his visit to the Pharisee], that he went about through cities and villages [thus making a thorough circuit of the region of Galilee], preaching and bringing the good tidings of the kingdom of God [John had preached repentance as a preparation for the kingdom; but Jesus now appears to have preached the kingdom itself, which was indeed to bring good tidings-- Rom_14:17], and with him the twelve [We here get a glimpse of the tireless activities of the ministry of Christ. Journeying from place to place, he was constantly preaching the gospel publicly to the people, and as ceaselessly instructing his disciples privately. The twelve [296] were now serving an apprenticeship in that work on which he would soon send them forth alone. From this time forth we can hardly look upon Capernaum as the home of Jesus. From now to the end of his ministry his life was a wandering journey, and he and his apostles sustained by the offerings of friends. The circuit of Galilee here mentioned is peculiar to Luke], 2 and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary that was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out [What a change of service, from demoniac bondage to the freedom of Christ!], 3 and Joanna the wife of Chuzas Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered unto them of their substance. [As to the vile slanders with which commentators have stained the good name of Mary Magdalene, see Joh_19:25, Mar_15:47, Mar_16:1, Mar_16:9, Joh_20:11-18. Mary's name indicates that she was a native of Magdala (Hebrew, Migdol, i. e., watch-tower). Of all the towns which dotted the shores of Galilee in Christ's day, but this and Tiberias remain. It is on the west shore of the lake, at the southeast corner of the plain of Gennesaret, and is to-day a small collection of mud hovels. It still bears the name el-Mejdel, which is probably received from the adjoining watch-tower that guarded the entrance to the plain, the ruins of which are still to be seen. We should note that Mary Magdalene is not classed with restored profligates, but with those who were healed of infirmities. Joanna is mentioned again at Luk_24:10; of Susanna there is no other record, this being enough to immortalize her. Of Chuzas we know nothing more than what is stated here. There are two Greek words for steward, epitropos and oikonomos. The first may be translated administrator, superintendent or governor. It conveys the impression of an officer of high rank. The Jewish rabbis called Obadiah the epitropos of Ahab. This was the office held by Chuzas, and its translated treasurer in the Arabic version. The second word may be translated housekeeper, or domestic manager. It was an office usually held by some [297] trusted slave as a reward for his fidelity. Chuzas was no doubt a man of means and influence. As there was no order of nobility in Galilee, and as such an officer might be nevertheless styled a nobleman, this Chuzas was very likely the nobleman of Joh_4:46. If so, the second miracle at Cana explains the devotion of Joanna to Jesus. Herod's capital was at Sephoris, on an elevated tableland not far from Capernaum. The ministration of these women shows the poverty of Christ and his apostles, and explains how they were able to give themselves so unremittingly to the work. Some of the apostles also may have had means enough to contribute somewhat to the support of the company, but in any event the support was meager enough, for Jesus was among the poorest of earth ( Luk_9:58, Mat_17:24, 2Co_8:9). His reaping of carnal things was as scanty as his sowing of spiritual things was abundant ( 1Co_9:11). We should note how Jesus began to remove the fetters of custom which bound women, and to bring about a condition of universal freedom ( Gal_3:28).]
[FFG 296-298]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv3, 10, 12, 37 See margin ref., (See Scofield "Mat 14:1").
Herod
See margin ref., (See Scofield "Mat 14:1").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 1. The Ministering Company (Luk 8:1-3.)
CHAPTER 8
1. The Ministering Company (Luk 8:1-3.)
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2. The Parable of the Sower. (Luk 8:4-15.)
3. The Parable of the Lighted Candle. (Luk 8:16-18)
4. The Declaration of a New Relationship. (Luk 8:19-21.)
5. The Storm on the Lake. (Luk 8:22-25)
6. In the Country of the Gadarenes; the Maniac Healed. (Luk 8:26-36)
7. His Rejection by the Gadarenes. (Luk 8:37-40.)
8. The Woman With the Issue of Blood Healed. (Luk 8:41-48.)
9. The Daughter of Jairus Raised. (Luk 8:49-56.)
Luk 8:1-3
This also is reported exclusively by Luke. What wonderful preaching it must have been when He with the Apostles went about preaching! And the trophies of His power and grace were also with Him. Here we read that women ministered unto Him of their substance. What privilege was theirs to minister to Him!
Luk 8:4-18
The parables which follow are known to us from the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The parable of the Sower is here not in the dispensational setting in which it appears in Matthew (Chapter 13). The parables of the mustard seed and the leaven are reported later by Luke. The parable of the Sower is linked here with the preaching of the Word in Luk 8:1-3.
Luk 8:19-56
The events which follow are also found in the Synoptics. The Storm on the Lake shows His true humanity. He is asleep. But in the threatening danger, when the helpless vessel fills with water, He knows no fear. They have to wake Him. The wind and waves obey His Word. And blessed be His Name! He is still the same. Then there is the man in his fallen pitiful condition, under the complete dominion of Satan, both in body and in soul. And once more the Son of Man shows His absolute power over Satan. The sufferer is completely healed. What a transformation took place! “The ‘many devils’ by whom he had been possessed were compelled to leave him. Nor is this all. Cast forth from their abode in the man’s heart, we see these malignant spirits beseeching our Lord that He would ‘not torment’ them, or ‘command them to go out into the deep,’ and so confessing His supremacy over them. Mighty as they were, they plainly felt themselves in the presence of One mightier than themselves. Full of malice as they were, they could not even hurt the ‘swine’ of the Gadarenes until our Lord granted them permission.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 9, 16, 19, 22, 26, 30, 34, 40, 43, 49 Teaching in Parables.
Teaching in Parables.
Women minister unto Christ:
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v. 1. And it came to pass afterward that He went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God; and the Twelve were with Him,
v. 2. and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils,
v. 3. and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto Him of their substance.
As usual, Luke is not concerned about the exact sequence of events that happened at about the same time, in this case during the ministry of Jesus in Galilee. Sometime afterward, while the Lord was still in Galilee, He passed along through, He made a tour of the cities and towns of, that part of Palestine. His chief work is again brought into the foreground, proclaiming and gospeling the kingdom of God, preaching the good news of the salvation of mankind. This fact cannot be emphasized often enough, especially in these days of the perversion of the doctrine of redemption. The twelve apostles were with the Lord on this tour; they were the theological students, receiving both theoretical and practical training in the school of Jesus. But there were also others with Him, certain women whom Luke mentions by name, a feature of his gospel. Mary, who was called Magdalene, had been healed by Jesus when He drove seven demons out of her. Johanna, or Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the administrator, or steward, of Herod, and Susanna, and many others, Mat 27:55, had also received special favors at the hand of Jesus, as being healed of evil spirits and sicknesses. These were bound to Jesus by the bonds of gratitude, and they were glad and proud to be of service to Him with their goods, for some of them were well-to-do. Christian women have at all times counted it an honor to be able to serve their Master with their substance and with their service. We see here an emancipation of woman in the noblest sense of the word, and the beginning of the service of women in the Church of Christ, and at the same time a decided triumph of the evangelical spirit over the limitation of Jewish rabbinism.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 19, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 54 General Information:
General Information:
These verses give background information about Jesus' preaching while traveling.
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It happened
This phrase is used here to mark a new part of the story. (See: Introduction of a New Event)
who had been healed of evil spirits and diseases
This can be stated in active form. AT: "whom Jesus had set free from evil spirits and healed of diseases" (See: Active or Passive)
Mary ... Susanna
Three of the women are listed: Mary, Joanna, and Susanna. (See: How to Translate Names)
Mary who was called Magdalene ... seven demons had been driven out
This can be stated in active form. AT: "Mary, whom people called Magdalene ... Jesus had driven out seven demons" (See: Active or Passive)
Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's manager
Joanna was Chuza's wife, and Chuza was Herod's manager. "Joanna, the wife of Herod's manager, Chuza" (See: How to Translate Names)
provided for their needs
"financially supported Jesus and his twelve disciples"
translationWords
Jesus
preach
preach
good news
kingdom of God
the twelve
cure
demon
Mary Magdalene
cast out
Herod Antipas
manager
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 37, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 48, 51, 52, 55, 56 8:2-3 along with some women: Rabbis of Jesus’ day…
8:2-3 along with some women: Rabbis of Jesus’ day did not have women disciples, so this was unusual. Some of these women, like Joanna, were from wealthy families and contributed financially to Jesus’ ministry.
8:2 Magdalene means “from Magdala,” a village north of Tiberias on the western side of the Sea of Galilee. Mary figures prominently in the burial and resurrection accounts (24:10; Mark 15:40, 47; John 19:25; 20:1, 18). Some have said that Mary Magdalene was the woman of Luke 7:36-38, leading to the belief that she was a former prostitute. There is no basis for this speculation.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.