Luke 11.

10 "And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven."

Maybe i still need some time to understand this one fully. This verse wants to say something but i cant grasp it yet. Maybe when i am more awake^^. But to put it easy would be... do not do both

31 "But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well."

This one is now for me easier to understand. This is the thing we have to care about and the place where we can put our heart to.

Luke chapter 06 (a)

40 A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher. 

There is another verse alike in Matthew:

A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. (Mt 10.24)

These two verses refer to different meanings. The one in Matthew talks about the sufferings the disciples will face. Jesus encouraged the disciples that students' sufferings will not so painful above than their teacher's (Jesus's). So that they (and we) have no need to be afraid. 

However, the other one in Luke talks about respecting each other and the humbleness. It's the same as the parable of ver.39:

39 [...]Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?

That's to say that no one is better or stronger than others. Everyone has his own blindness and weakness. Students might be weaker than their teacher at the moment, but they eventually become as strong as teachers. So that we should respect each other, and humblely reflect ourselves all the time. As the teaching in Philippians:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. (Ph2.3)

Therefore, whenever we see others in a mockery or a condemnatory way, Jesus teach us to check ourselves first :

 41 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 

These parable led me to think of an interesting example of mine. One of my eye has once become ill of myiodesopsia(飛蚊症 or light flaking off of retina), so that for a long time, there was always one split in my eyesight. In this way, when I saw the world with this illed eye, everything seems unperfect and with a split. However, the problem did't happen on things but on me. In the same way, the speck in other's eye might come from the plank in our own eyesight. Therefore, the best way to take the speck off is to recognize the existence of our own plank, and then take it off.

Luke 6

Luke6:19 And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all.

This situation or scenario lets me think of Peter and Paul, who had similar great power to heal other people. In Luke the people had to touch him in order to be healed. Let's see what the people had to do, when Peter was around:

Acts5:15 so that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.

The people didn't have to touch Peter in order to be healed. His shadow was enough, to perform great miracles.
Paul's example is even more impressive:

Acts19:11 Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul,
Acts19:12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.

A handkerchief!!! (did Paul already use it or not?) God worked through Paul's handkerchief... impressive and interesting.....

Luke 11.

27 As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.
28 He replied, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.

These verses remind me about who important Mary is for the Catholics and what Jesus said once (a part we have discussed in RE). It is the section in which "He replied (to someone, that his) mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice" (Lk 8, 21). He wants to show the people that he has beside his blood related family the other family consisting of the people "who hear God´s word and put it into practice". So not only Mary is blessed but also everyone who comply with the given requirements. This makes Mary less special to any other believer. Physical support likewise Mary did can be done by giving this support to our brothers and sisters. Because what we do to them is also done to Jesus.
In both verses in Luke is emphasised how important it is to listen and obey to Gods word.

Luke Chapter 2

Luk 2:30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation
Luk 2:31 Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples,
Luk 2:32 A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, And the glory of Your people Israel."

When Simeon saw the Jesus Christ, he was filled with Holy Spirit and prophesied the happens in the future. Jesus is not only the light of Israel, also the light to the Gentiles. God became a fresh and came into the world. His coming is for salvation, which not only for certain people, but for all the people who believe Jesus is the true God and die for us. Believe our sins can be washed through his death and win the eternal life that he prepares for us. Let us not be a Gentile any more, instead of being God’s people and further being God’s son. The relationship between God and us is no more distant. Only believe him, we can call him Father. The Relationship can even closer then we image.

Luk 12:51 "Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division.

Becoming a God’s people may suffer a lot because of believing him. Our enemies could be our unbelieving family or close friends. Continue the topic of the just passed Europe convocation: The Fragrance of Christ. We should spread the fragrance of God’s knowledge in every place to lead us in triumph in Christ.

2Co 2:15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing

Luk 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

In hoping that our wisdom in Christ and the fragrance of Christ increase and the enemy eliminate.

Luke Chapter 1

God let Elizabeth bear a son in this chapter reminds me that God also did the same thing in Old Testament, which let Sarah have a son, who had passed the age of childbearing.

Luk 1:37 "For with God nothing will be impossible."

Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Joh 1:2 He was in the beginning with God.
Joh 1:3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

Yes, it is. With God’s will everything is possible. In the beginning God created the world just only through his word. God is the Word and also the power, truth and the life. His word can let people alive from death and can give people hope from hopeless. The whole bible is the words from God. Reading the bible can learn the wisdom from God and sometimes might solve our questions, which hiding in mind for long time. We cannot regardless the power of God’s word.

Luk 1:41 And it happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Luk 1:42 Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!

Jesus ever asked, who I am? Peter answered then, you are the Lord Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus said that Peter said that because the holy spirit revealed this to him, not his flesh body. Revealing by the holy spirit we can know the only one true God and understand the knowledge in the mystery of Christ. If one’s heart is filled with the holy spirit, then he will truly know that who he actually believes and praises the true Lord with his all heart.

Luke 5

Lk5:8 When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!”

How would the story go on, if Jesus would do what Peter asked him to do: to depart from him. If Jesus departed from him.... I'm not sure, if Peter would have become Jesus disciple, following him. Then the stories in the bible might have been totally different.
Of course for God it is not difficult to find another disciple, replacing Peter (We know that God would still fulfill his will somehow).
But for Peter it would have been a pity, if he couldn't follow Jesus. He might not get this chance again, to follow Jesus, to walk on the path of righteousness and truth. He might have continued in sinning.
However, Jesus wanted to choose him as one of his disciples and so he told him:
Luke5:10“Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men.” (Lucky Peter...)

For us it is similar. Often God does not answer our prayers or he does not act in the way we want him to act.
But thanks to God, that it is like that. Because if he would answer our prayers immediately in the way we want him to answer, then I don't know, if that was good or bad for us.
For whatever God does, it is to help us but not to harm us. Writing this I think of a very famous verse in Romans:

Rom.8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Luke 10.

5 "When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house."'

is this common to do this in tjc? i never heard someone saying this. But maybe these instructions are for the ones who went out to preach the gospel. But maybe everyone can say it another nice greeting would be the one Boaz used to greet his workers on the field
ruth2.4 "Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, The LORD be with you! The LORD bless you! they called back."
That is pretty nice i think. But today greetings like these are not commonly used.

16 "He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me"

I just have to imagine that I sometimes fall into the trap and become hard hearted when a person who i personally do not appreciate is giving a sermon. Because when you look at the person and see only some bad sides of him you forget to hear the words he speaks which are maybe just rebuking you or trying to help you. So as long as a person speaks in the name of our Lord Jesus and what he says is according to the truth we know from the bible than we are not listeners of this person but of Jesus.


21 "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit"

hope that we can often feel the same joy ... together and alone!

Luke chapter 05

 21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?

It's rediculous that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law themselves have already said the answer of the resource of Jesus's power-- who can forgive sins but God alone. But their hard hearts made them see the truth but still unbelievable. I think that it must be the respects from people, their self idenities, their considerings of political position and interests and so on, made them refuse to accept what they should have known. By contrast, the paralytic who has nothing worthy to lose received the bless much more easily. And the other witness also simply recognised that what Jesus did was God's work and gave praise to God.

26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, We have seen remarkable things today. 

So, how to receive God's garace? Just put away all those considerings mentioned above, and learn from Simon, James, John and Levi who "got up, left every thing and followed him".

Luke 22

31 And the Lord said,[c] “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.”


Peter is so blessed. I'm actually quite jealous. What would have happened if Jesus did not pray for him? Would he have denied Jesus and not wept at all and that would've been the end of Peter's legacy? How did Peter seek such favor in Jesus that Jesus especially prayed for him? Not only that, we know that Jesus gave him a great task at the end of gospel John as well, perhaps the same as is briefly mentioned here, to strengthen his brethren. How come Peter is treated so differently from rest of the disciples? I think in our hearts we all know some of the reasons why, and how Peter stood out from the rest of the disciples. Perhaps it's because of Peter's difference in his attitude towards Jesus that made him special. Either way, hopefully Jesus is praying for each of us so that Satan will have no hold of us and that our faith would not fail, so that we can return and strengthen our brethren.

Back to being IN

alright everybody, this is a little Pep Rally for us to get back to being IN (a.k.a. being popular). in this case of course, it's to be popular with God again. i know i know, we've all fallen off the chart, but i'm glad some of you realized that in yesterday's class and brought it up and encouraged us to get back into the non-Game.

let's continue to edify one another through our studies of God's Word. as we mentioned yesterday, perhaps it is easier to keep this longterm if we just mention our verse for the day and write reflections once a week as discussed during my first class. that way, we still read everyday, but also have time for other things. it will probably be easier to keep up with it this way. biblical sharing should not become a burden :) but if something touches you, you can definitely share anytime :) ADD OIL! (jia yo)

Luke chapter 04

2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. 

We're often taught that Jesue was tempted by Satan for three times, but actually it should be much more than that. Here we saw that Jesus was continuously tempted during forty days, and the three temptation we are familir with are actually the last three. I believe that they are also the strongest ones for that moment. As the bible said, the first of the last three temptation came from Jesus's hungry. Actually, hungry is a very natural physical reaction to a forty-days fasting, and it happens after the "40th" day which seems like a perfect number so should be a complete ending of the temptation. I don't know if Jesus was getting relax or easy in mind, which brought him hungry, but what reminds me is that we should always keep warning and never presume that the temptation is over, especially after a long-term or a big suffering. Whenever we become relax, the bigger temptation will come, on the basis of our natural weakness.

Luke 9.

13 He replied, You give them something to eat.

The situation before was that the Apostle came back after Jesus send them out to preach. Before hand the power over evil spirits and to heal sicknesses were given to them. In verse 10 it is described that they start to tell Jesus about all they have done. It seems that Jesus did not reply them but withdraw them with him and went alone(try to) to a city.
Before the disciples made themselves available for others but in this situation they forgot and wanted to send the crowd away.
Jesus maybe wanted to see how the disciples would react when they face a problem they did not face before. Maybe they were very happy about the work they have done and succeeded in carrying out the mission. Jesus knew that they have nothing to give the crowd but they should have the knowledge and ability to make this problem be solved through God.

Luke 4

Luke4: 1 Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into^[a] the wilderness,

Being filled with the Holy Spirit and to be led by the Spirit is something great. To be led by the Spirit means no worries(because it is God guiding us- we don't have to worry o'er the future) and to act out the will of God (=to walk on the path of righteousness). That sounds great. But in actual fact this is not that easy.
We have to pray and read the bible every day in order to keep up and grow in our spiritual life. But sometimes not even this can grant us a perfect faith. Being human we are weak. We often forget how unperfect and sinful we are. So we might think, that our faith is good(and so we don't pray that hard and we don't read the bible that concentrated anymore), but in fact our faith is declining day by day.
So I think that it cannot be repeated often enough that we should watch and pray. Not just thinking that we have done enough in the past few years/months/weeks/or even days(?).
If we keep up our spiritual level and even grow in our faith, then we will be filled and led by the Holy Spirit constantly.

Luke chapter 03

the meaning and the importance of works of John the baptist

In this chapter, we see more details of the work of John the Baptist than the records in Matthew and in Mark, so let us think about it. Here we find that the area he worked is all the country around the Jordan(3.3), his task is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins(3.3), and the result of his work is that all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River.(Mk 1.5) 

As what we often call John as "the pioneer of Jesus", he brought the baptism as a new form of alliance with God, replacing the Circumcision. While the Circumcision is as a stabe symbol of belonging to God, the baptism is moreover meangling with conscious reflections of recognizing someone's own sins and an active action of being baptised. Therefore, the teaching of this ritual is not only recognising sins, but also actively doing something: Produce fruit in keeping with repentance(3.8). The main ideas of John's preaching are individual practices of love which is actually the essence of God's law. His arguements thus changed people's religious habit in two aspects, one the one hand, from satisfing with themwelves to recognising the exsistence of their sins, and on the other, to push the laws from a docrine level to a spiritual and also pratical level. So that he prepare an available condition for Jesus's teaching.

Luke 8.

31 „And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep.”

At first it seems strange that the Legion of evil spirits first begged Jesus not command them to go out into the deep and than after Jesus casted those onto the pigs they made the pigs went down a step place so they died in the lake. So I looked this word up and its original meaning is a deep, bottomless pit(something negative). The same word is used in Rom10,7 where it is used as the place for the opposite of the heaven. So I think that we can assume that with this deep is not been a geographical deeper place meant but the hell which can be the deepest place.
Sometimes it seems that the devil is much cleverer and sees things clearer than us. We already can see in verse 28 that these evil spirits recognize Jesus as the son of God. And in this verse 31 we can see that they really do not want to go to hell. We human often forget who Jesus is and many people in the world do not acknowledge Jesus as the son of God. There are also many people who are not afraid of going to hell (There are some groups who worship the devil and whose aim is to enter the hell) and even want to go there. (This so called Satanism and there is also a “church” for them that’s really perverted)
So we are often blinded so that we do not see the good but want to do the evil and things that will hurt us.

Luke 3

Luke2:38 the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

Actually I like the German translation more than the English translation. In the English version it says, that Adam was the son of God. But in the German version the translation is a bit different:

Luke2:38der war ein Sohn des Enos, der war ein Sohn Seths, der war ein Sohn Adams, der war Gottes.

That's the German translation, which says that Adam was God's ("der war Gottes"). He was from God. He belonged to God. He was God's.

And because Adam was God's, all the people listed up in the genealogy of Jesus are God's (including himself- but actually this genealogy is Joseph's, and Jesus is not the son of Joseph but the son of God...). That's also a reason, why all human beings are God's! But "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus"(Romans3:23+24). After the fall of men, men were not God's anymore. But they were born into the world, which was ruled by sin. So we know, that we can only be justified by the grace of God- by Jesus' death.

Luke 2

Luke2:40 And the Child grew and became strong in spirit,^[k] filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.

Luke2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

As we always say, that we should learn from Jesus... this here is another excellent example. What can be better for a child than growing up, becoming strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom and being in favor with God and men. I think that if a child is granted these things, it will surely become a useful servant for God! A loyal and faithful servant, filled with wisdom and being strong in spirit.
So: let's take Jesus as our example... when he was just 12 years old, he was already learning God's will and words - really impressive!!! (his parents and neighbours must have thought:"how will this child be, when it has grown up?")

Luke 21

"5 Then, as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, He said, 6 “These things which you see—the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down."

I wonder if this is also a prophesy of the true church becoming non-existent for a period of time before it was reestablished in present day.

Luke 20

"35 But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; 36 nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. "

^_^ So nice for those who are worthy after the resurrection. Right now we are a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:4,5), but we will be exhalted to be equal to angels :) Yay :) upgraded.


"1 Now it happened on one of those days, as He taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel, that the chief priests and the scribes, together with the elders, confronted Him 2 and spoke to Him, saying, “Tell us, by what authority are You doing these things? Or who is he who gave You this authority?"

This futher affirms what was posted for Luke 19 concerning the jealousy of those high officials. They were feeling threatened by the authority Jesus possess in their temple.