Read Luke 11 at Bible Gateway.
When we pray, pray the Lord’s Prayer! Jesus had a reason for giving it to us as a model to follow!
Persistence breaks down resistance.
Do we need something? Ask, and keep on asking, knock, and keep on knocking, seek, and keep on seeking. The verb tense in Greek is the continual tense. In other words, ask as a continual action. Don’t stop asking until we have received whatever it is that we have asked for. Seek as a continual action. Don’t stop seeking until we have found what we were looking for. Knock as a continual action. Don’t stop knocking until the door that we were wanting opened has been opened. Do not give up and lose heart, because our heavenly Father, who is good, loves us and is seeking to do us good!
A house divided against itself cannot stand. Women, we especially need to seek to be uniters and not dividers. When we find ourselves in conflict within our house, it does not matter what the conflict is about, we must seek for the way to show respect, to love, and to be unified with our husbands. This does not mean disobey God. It means obey God in all things – in heart attitudes as well as outward actions.
Men, we need to seek to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, so that our family can be united with us.
The eye is the lamp of the body. In Hebrew culture, the eye was symbolic for generosity or coveteousness. Think about it. If someone lusts after something, it is the eye that is the body part involved. If the heart is coveteous, the eye will look on whatever it is with longing. But if the heart is free, the eye will be free and full of light. This passage is really dealing with having a free, cheerful and giving heart rather than a greedy or covetous one.
Jesus specifically rebuked the lawyers for taking away the key of knowledge. A lawyer in Jesus’ day was not the same as a lawyer in our day. A lawyer then was an expert in the Law of Moses. They knew it inside and out. So how did they take away the key of knowledge? I think they took away the plain understanding of the Law, and convoluted it so much with addendums and caveats, that it became unintelligible to the regular person. Sort of like today after all. Here Jesus calls the Law of Moses the key of knowledge!
For further reading:
luke 11, clean and unclean food (2009)
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