Category Archives: Luke 4

Luke 4:1-13

Excerpted from The Testimony of Luke, by S. Kent Brown, pp. 221-36, a volume of the BYU New Testament Commentary. The commentary can be purchased at BYU Studies. 

New Rendition

1 And Jesus, full of the Holy Ghost, turned back from the Jordan, and was led in the wilderness by the spirit 2 for forty days to be tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days, and when they were ended, he was hungry.

3 And the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, say to this stone that it become bread.” 4 And Jesus replied to him, “It is written that man shall not live by bread alone [but by every word of God].” Continue reading

Healing Women

By Eric D. Huntsman. Cross-posted at New Testament Thoughts

In a culture and time period that were so male-centric, the attention that Jesus paid to women was noteworthy.  All four of the gospels, and especially Luke, contain stories of Jesus healing women, teaching them, including them in his parables, and even allowing them to become part of his ministry.  In addition to three individual stories about Jesus healing women, Luke also includes a summary that notes how Jesus was accompanied in his Galilean ministry by a group of women “which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities,” including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, “and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance” (Luke 8:2–3).  All this is particularly striking in the cultural context of the gospels, in which Jewish men would be wary of interaction and especially any kind of physical contact with women to whom they were not related.[1]  The fact that none of these women are directly named allows them to serve as types of all women whom Jesus invites to come to him and be healed.  Continue reading

Call of the Twelve and the Mission Sermon

By Eric D. Huntsman. This post is also posted at http://huntsmannewtestament.blogspot.com/.

This week’s assigned lesson is Luke 4:14–32; 5; 6:12–16; and Matthew 10. With the exception of Matthew 10, the Mission Sermon, the decision to use passages from Luke makes sense inasmuch as Luke uses the term “apostle” six times as often as the other Gospels and perhaps with Acts, his next volume on the history of the apostolic church in mind, he is in many ways more sensitive to the calling and position of apostolos. Continue reading