Hello
and welcome to the Women’s Weekly Bible Challenge! I’m Lisa Ann Spencer.
Today we continue in the book of Luke for Part 6
of our series on When Jesus Speaks to Women.
Luke
Chapter 13
Before we look at the next occurrence of Jesus
speaking to a woman, I want to cover a very important parable in this chapter:
For Context: This chapter begins with Jesus
urging the nation of Israel to ‘repent’.
Repent in the Bible does not mean to stop sinning; it does not even mean
to feel sorry for your sins. Repent in
scripture means to change your mind. The
first time the word is used in the Bible is Genesis 6:6 and it is the LORD who is repenting. The LORD has no sin to turn from or to feel
sorry for.
Jesus uses the word ‘YE’ in verses 3 and 5 when
He urges repentance, because YE is plural and refers to the entire nation. The
nation as a whole had to change their mind, acknowledge Jesus
as Messiah, be water baptized and keep the law.
In the Parable we just read, Jesus gave Israel a
timeline to indicate how long they had until the Nation of Israel would be cut
off for not repenting.
CONSIDER THE PARABLE
Verse 6 - Jesus is the man who came to His fig tree
for three years seeking for fruit.
The vineyard is the land of Israel; the Fig Tree is the people or the
nation of Israel.
📔NOTE: You
might like to use your concordance to study the Fig Tree. Israel is also referred to as an Olive Tree,
A Vine Tree and a Bramble. Each of these
have a particular meaning, and it is a worthwhile study to gain more insight
into the nation of Israel and their special relationship with God.
Verse 7 - He tells the dresser of the vineyard that
since He has not found any fruit, cut the tree down. It is using up the blessings of fresh air,
sunshine and fertile soil without giving anything back.
The fruit He is seeking is FAITH. Let’s look at
the second half of Luke 18:8.
Luke
18:8 …Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on
the earth? (Cf. Proverbs 20:6)
Verse 8 - The dresser tells him to let it alone for ONE YEAR while He digs and dungs it. This means to cultivate and fertilize it – to give the Fig Tree special attention.
The dresser of the vineyard is the Holy
Ghost. To dig and to dung means to
fertilize and give extra attention that it may produce fruit.
The Holy Ghost would fill the men of Israel and make them able to have
faith and produce fruit.
Ezekiel
36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my
statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
Verse 9 - The expectation is that the Fig Tree will bear fruit,
but if not, then cut it down.
The timeline to Israel’s judgment is ONE
YEAR. After Jesus’s resurrection He sent
the Holy Ghost to Israel, and His apostles and evangelists offered the nation
of Israel another opportunity to repent.
Acts
chapters 1-7 covers this ONE YEAR GRACE PERIOD.
ACTS CHAPTER TWO
Peter addresses “ye men of Judea” (Acts 2:14), “ye
men of Israel” (Acts 2:22) and “all
the house of Israel” (Acts 2:36) after they were filled with the Holy
Ghost.
Acts 3:19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted,
that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from
the presence of the Lord; 20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was
preached unto you: 21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of
restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy
prophets since the world began.
📔NOTE: Roman 16:25
We read in Acts 2:41 that three thousand men of
Israel believed that day, and in Acts 4:4, another five thousand men believed,
BUT there were millions of the nation of Israel that rejected Jesus as their
resurrected Messiah.
The year of grace extended to Israel ended when
they stoned Stephen, a man full of the Holy Ghost (Acts 6:5,8)..
This is the reason God saved Saul! God cut off the fig tree (temporarily). Israel
lost their “peculiar people” status
(Deuteronomy 14:2) and God “concluded
them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all” (Romans 11:32).
The reason Jesus did not come back to judge
Israel when He said He would was because of this Dispensation of Grace that was
given to the Apostle Paul; called, the Mystery, which God had kept secret since
the world began. (Ephesians 3:1-8; Romans 16:25).
I hope this helps you understand the times in
which we are now living. It is a time of
GRACE wherein God is not judging anyone for their sins, but instead offering
reconciliation to anyone who will trust that Jesus’s work on the cross and His
resurrection from the dead is sufficient to pay for our sins.
Now let’s consider another occurrence of Jesus
speaking to a woman in the book of Luke.
A WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY 18 YEARS
Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath day.
Luke
13:12 And when Jesus saw her, he called her
to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.
She had been bound; now she is loosed.
Q: Who bound her?
A: Satan (v. 16)
Another search you might do for yourself is the word ‘CAPTIVE’. There are 55 results in the KJB, most of
which pertain to the nation of Israel in her rebellion being removed from the land and led into captivity to foreign lands. However, the Apostle
Paul makes it clear that we can also be taken captive spiritually today by false
doctrine.
Here are two specific references to Israel being captive eighteen
years as was this woman:
- Judges 3:14 So the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years
- Judges 10:8 And that year they vexed and oppressed the children of Israel: eighteen years, in the land of the Amorites.
At the time of Jesus’s earthly ministry, Satan was the
nation of Israel’s adversary because Jesus had come to set them free from
captivity.
Satan does not work that way in this dispensation of grace. The way he works today is what the Apostle Paul calls, the mystery of iniquity.
2 Thessalonians 2:7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
📓NOTE: The modern versions corrupt this phrase and say “the
mystery of lawlessness”. That is a false
doctrine. The mystery of iniquity is
actually teaching the law – i.e. putting those who are saved under a set of laws
that no longer apply to us, which we cannot keep and put us in doubt of our
salvation. For example, you must tithe
or you will be cursed, you must be water baptized or you’re not saved, you must take communion or you are not a part of the body, you must not eat unclean foods or
you will be unclean, you must speak in an unknown tongue…. Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Satan is in the pulpit of modern churches masquerading as a minister of
light, when in actuality he is a deceiver teaching false doctrine. The only way to be free from Satan’s captivity
today is to know the word of God, so that you won’t be fooled by his
counterfeit. This is the reason why the
apostle Paul’s letters focus on learning
sound doctrine. To be ignorant of
doctrine today is to be deceived by Satan’s mystery of iniquity.
JESUS SPEAKS TO THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM
On His way to Calvary, with the beam of his cross on His
back, Jesus passes a group of women from Jerusalem. It is important for you to know that these
women are not His followers;
Jerusalem has a history of
wickedness and rejection of truth. These
women are more like professional mourners.
We know this because the women who were His devoted followers are referenced in verses 49 and 55,
the women from Galilee.
The title, Daughters
of Jerusalem, is found 8 times in the King James Bible; once here and 7
times in the Song of Solomon. The Daughters of Jerusalem are those women
who are deceived by Solomon, who represents Satan. These women fail to
recognize their true Messiah, the shepherd of Israel, and instead will be
deceived into worshiping the antichrist, believing that he is their messiah.
Jesus’s comment regarding ‘blessed are the barren’ means that
these women of Jerusalem will wish they and their children had never been born due to the
punishment that God will pour out on them. That is a sobering truth.
Even though God has postponed the judgment of Israel and the
world, the cutting off of the Fig Tree is TEMPORARY. After the mystery church is raptured out of
this world, God will continue where He left off with Israel and keep all of His
word.
The time to be saved is TODAY!
That completes the book of Luke. Next week we will begin in
the book of John. I encourage you to
read through it this week, as we continue to consider When Jesus Speaks to
Women.
The material covered in this Blog can be viewed here:
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