Luke 11

http://www.esvbible.org/Luke+11/

One day, while Jesus prayed, as He often did and as we should often do, Him disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray, and this is where the Lord's prayer comes from. This can be used as a good template on how to pray. Give praise and thanks to God, then ask Him for what you NEED inb the Spirit, seek renewed forgiveness because we all know how much we always struggle with sin. Even as Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, He teaches them to forgive. God's forgiveness to us is not contingent on our forgiveness to others, but why should God cover us in the blood of His Son to forgive us and redeem us from death if we will not forgive other people when they sin against us? Jesus then moves on saying that if you went to a friend and asked him for bread at midnight because you have a visitor and nothing to feed him, your friend will surely get up and give you what you need because you have asked. What is unspoken here is the other side of that--if you do not ask, your friend cannot give to you because he does not know that you are in need. Even though God knows all, He still waits for us to ask for what we need. Then, Jesus asks the disciples if they had a son who asked for a fish, if they would give him a snake. And if we, as inherently evil people since the fall, can provide for our children the things of this world that they need, how much more can the Father provide for us? Jesus says aks and it will be given, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. You have to put forth the effort, but God will richly provide for you once you do. We expect God to provide for us without communicating our needs to Him.

In the next story, Jesus drives a demon out of a mute man and says some pretty ridiculously crazy things when He's accused of being Beelzebul, or Satan. Jesus starts by poking holes in their logic--why would Satan drive out his own demons? Jesus uses their disbelief to encourage them because, as He says, if He drives demons out by the power of God then that means the presence of God is with the people. Jesus' example is that of the Devil, who truly is quite strong, can grasp control of the hearts of unbelievers and hold down their hearts, but someone stronger, Jesus, can come along and usurp the Devil from hearts and turn those hearts to Himself. Then, Jesus makes a very bold statement: whoever is not with Jesus is against Him. There is no middle ground. Your heart is either filled with the Holy Spirit of God or with a demon from Satan. You either have obtained your salvation or you will go to hell. Jesus then tells of what happens to a demon He expels from a person. It seeks a place in the desert, but it cannot find rest there, so it returns to the place it once called home. If it finds the place merely swept clean, meaning only some of the outward sins have ceased, but the Spirit does not dwell there to truly clean up the mess in the person's heart to change them for the better, then the demon will return with other, even stronger demons to reclaim its home, and the person is worse off than at the start. Let me rephrase: if Jesus stirs you in your heart towards Himself, but you refuse to move and repent to accept your Salvation, then there's nothing more He can do, and the devil, who claimed you before, will return to reclaim you with an even stronger grip. Jesus will reach out to you with your Salvation in your reach, but you have to receive it and accept it and use it, or nothing will improve. A woman in the crowd cries out blessed is the woman who birthed Jesus, and Jesus replies that instead, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and obey it.

Jesus condemns those who hear and do not listen. He says those are from a wicked generation. They require signs to believe. So many people up to today ask for signs that Jesus really is Lord. Jesus says they will receive the sign of Jonah because Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites. He was spit up on their shores by a great whale telling the people that they needed to repent or God would destroy the city, and they did so then and there. The next example Jesus gives is the Queen form the East who went to hear the wisdom that Solomon obtained from the Lord. Now, we have heard even greater wisdom. Then, looking back at Nineveh--if they repented because of what Jonah preached, shouldn't more people be more likely to repent with the Son of God preaching?

Jesus compares the eye to a lamp in a house, but for modern technology's sake, let's say a lightbulb. You don't screw in a lightbulb and put the fixture in a cabinet. Instead, you put it out where the light will fill the room. In the same way, the eye is like a lamp to our hearts. When your eyes are healthy, the body is full of light, and you can see clearly to fix your eyes upon Jesus. If your vision, however, is cloudy, like dirty windows, your heart will be full of darkness. Certain sins can distort our Spiritual vision such as jealousy and hatred because then your eyes are fixed on something other than Jesus, and outside of Jesus, who is the light, there is only darkness.

In the last story in this chapter, Jesus makes some powerful religious leaders quite angry with what He says. He goes to eat with a Pharisee who is surprised that Jesus did not wash up before the meal. Jesus begins condemning the Pharisees because they are so concerned with their outward appearances and how they look to others that they let their hearts harden, leading to evil and wickedness. These were the top religious leaders in Jesus' time. Jesus condemns them for giving for all the wrong reasons. The heart and should be generous when giving not hungry for attention. Finally, an expert of the Law speaks up and says that by insulting the Pharisees, Jesus is insulting the experts of the Law as well, so Jesus turns His attention to the experts of the Law. He condemns them for needlessly laying burdens on the people but offering no help on howe to lighten the load. He condemns them because they build tombs to the prophets for being such great speakers of what God spoke, yet they ho9nor their ancestors who killed the prophets. Jesus says that this generation will be responsible for the deaths of all of the prophets because when all the prophecies came true, the people refuse to believe it even to this day. This responsibility starts all the way back with the murder of Abel. He condemns the experts of the Law for learning what it takes to enter the kingdom of God and not only ignoring what they need to do but keeping other people from doing it as well. When Jesus finished saying all of this, He left, and the Pharisees along with the experts of the Law followed Him trying to trap Him in what He said, but they could not for two reasons. First, everything Jesus said was true because he knows the true state of every person's heart. Second, it was not time for JEsus to die yet, so the Pharisees could not kill Him.