Questions about Luke

[dbrace]

Hey all. I just finished reading Luke and I had some questions. The first question is, when Jesus heals people who are taken by the evil spirit, he tells the newly saved not to tell anyone about this happening. My question is if he didn't want anyone to tell of this revelation, why did he continue to heal people? Was it because He wanted to spread the word of the Lord through Himself and not through other people?

[Mograce2U]

Hi dbrace,
Would you mind putting the passage you are referring to so we don't have to search it out? Here in Bible Chat, that is the best way to get others to respond to your post.

Blessings,

[Literalist-Luke]

Hey all. I just finished reading Luke and I had some questions.

About me? I'm here!

[Literalist-Luke]

Seriously folks, the reason Jesus tried to keep it quiet about the miracles is because He knew that if He allowed things to get out of hand, a lot of Jews would revolt against Rome (like they in fact did several years later) and install Jesus as their king. The timing wasn't right for that, so He had to keep some things under wraps.

Hope this helps.

[graceforme]

My study Bible makes reference from Luke 5 back to Matthew 8:1-4 with this note:

"Publicity over such miracles might hinder Christ's mission and divert public attention from His message. Mark records that this is precisely what happened. In this man's exuberance over the miracle, he disobeyed; as a result, Christ had to move His ministry away from the city and into the desert regions." If you look at Mark 1:40-45, you can find the comparative Scripture.

Dbrace has raised an interesting question, though. In many other instances, Jesus healed people in the presence of great crowds. In Luke, there are several examples: He healed in the synagogue, He healed the Centurion's servant, He healed the widow's son, He healed the woman with the issue of blood. He also cast demons out of a young man and into a herd of swine. There were witnesses to each of these healings. And there were many witnesses when He raised Lazarus from the dead.

I wonder why He healed some and told them not to tell anyone, but there were others that were healed in the presence of witnesses.

God Bless.

[BroRog]

I agree; It would be helpful to the discussion if we had specific passages in front of us.

[dbrace]

Theres a lot. Its just more of an overall question about His story through the eyes of the Gospels. Just wondering?

[crawfish]

Seriously folks, the reason Jesus tried to keep it quiet about the miracles is because He knew that if He allowed things to get out of hand, a lot of Jews would revolt against Rome (like they in fact did several years later) and install Jesus as their king. The timing wasn't right for that, so He had to keep some things under wraps.

Hope this helps.

Errr...no, that was never his intention.

My opinion is that he didn't want to reveal himself fully to the Jews yet. Prophecy had predicted certain miracles to be a sign of the coming Messiah; by making them too public it might encourage the ruling Jews to move against him before his work on earth was done.

I sent an e-mail on this to one of our church elders a year ago. Here is a portion of that letter minus the context, I'm leaving in a few minutes and don't have time to edit it.

This prompted some study for me yesterday. My original answer had sprung from Matthew 11:2-6, where John the Baptist is in custody and knows he is to be killed. He is having some internal doubts, and asks his disciples to go to Jesus to verify that, in fact, Jesus is who he thinks he is. Perhaps it's just John facing death and wanting to be sure, or perhaps he's heard stories like that mentioned in Matt 11:18-19; Jesus just does not match expectations. Either way, Jesus sends a reply as follows:

Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me."

Both Jesus and John knew the scriptures well. This message ties to the prophesy of Isaiah Ch. 35:1-6 and 61:1. In essense, he's pointing to his miracles as proof of his Messiahship. It is not a message that would be interpreted by another other than a scholar, one who knew the scripture well, so John could be told without Herod or his guards becoming suspicious.

So, why did Jesus want to keep his true identity secret for so long? Simply, he was not ready to reveal that he was the coming Messiah to the world. He knew there would be a price to pay for making that assertion publicly; when he finally entered Jerusalem in Mark 11, he was prepared for the consequences. He was not ready yet, and so for those events that would be a signal he asked that they be kept quiet. He was not trying to keep these things from the crowd, but from the teachers of the law that might move against him prematurely.

What I didn't know was how this idea stacked up against other miracles in Mark. To check it, I looked at the occurrences of healing miracles in Mark that happened before he went public. There are five instances where Jesus commands silence; all fall in the category of the prophecy above (blind, lame, leprosy, deaf, and dead). There are 11 instances of healing that did not have the command written. Nine of those are for things not prophesied against (fever, demon possession, sickness, bleeding), but two DID fall into the prophesied category.

The first of those two instances was where Jesus healed a paralytic in Mk 1:40-45. However, he healed this paralytic IN FRONT of teachers of the law; why command silence when those you wanted to be silent from already knew? The second was where Jesus healed a blind man in Mk 10 46-52. In this case, Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem; there would have been little need to silence the man since he would soon reveal himself anyway.

[Ethnikos]

My question is if he didn't want anyone to tell of this revelation, why did he continue to heal people?

I do not think it had anything to do with Jesus, but about society at his time. People who had anything wrong with them were considered cursed by God for their sins. Unhealthy people were cast out of the Temple and other places of worship. Jesus wanted to allow access to God, to everyone. Also he would tell people their sins were forgiven, just in case they felt like that was why they were sick or whatever.
Most likely, if you walked up to the doctor who guarded the door to the Temple, that you were just healed, he would not allow you admission. Jesus' advice was to get inspected first, and once given a clean bill of health, then try to go give a offering. Once you were in there and did your service, you could go ahead and proclaim the name of Jesus, inside the Temple.

[BroRog]

Theres a lot. Its just more of an overall question about His story through the eyes of the Gospels. Just wondering?

The problem is, we can't know if we agree with the premise of your question until we can examine the source of your question in context.