As we have seen, Jesus and the disciples are now being persecuted by the Jews. The fun and games are now over. It’s down to “Who’s following and who’s not.”

The Jews worked all week to rest on the final and 7th day, the Sabbath. That was a picture of their spiritual journey. They were looking for a Messiah in whom they could rest. Christians rest on Sunday, the 1st day of the week, and then work/live out of that rest. This is a picture of our spiritual journey. We have a Messiah in whom

we do rest.

Gospel fidelity requires that the church take Jesus’s John 14:6 statement – “I am the way, the truth and the life” seriously and proclaim Jesus as the only way to Heaven.

When Jesus calls sinners, He is calling all of us. There is a cure for your pride, lust, greed, unhappiness, depression, isolation, for whatever is making you sick of life and yourself. It’s Jesus.

At the end of Luke’s Gospel, two disciples are walking with a man whom they have yet to identify as Jesus and note that he was “a man, a prophet powerful in deed and word before God and all the people” (24:19). This, and more, is Luke’s aim in writing to Theophilus; to present Jesus as the man-God through the stories he tells about Jesus.

In this account, Jesus touches the untouchable. Leprosy is communicable. Above all other diseases, it most represents sin to Israelites. Normally, when something clean touches something unclean, the clean becomes unclean. And yet when Jesus touches the man, he is not infected, but the man is cleansed.

Peter and his friends had been watching Jesus. They had seen him heal Peter’s mother-in-law and had heard about his miracles throughout Galilee and Judea. Now, confronted by his personal call, they abandon everything but him.