Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jeff Parrott.

In the great 17th century novel Don Quixote, the witty squire, Sancho Panza, has this line that's been ingrained into the psyche of modern people.

He said, there are but two families in the world, the haves and the have-nots.

That line of dialogue written by Servantes established a line of division between people all around the world and across world history.

There are the haves, those who seem to possess it all, all the money, all the time, all the pleasure.

And then there are the have-nots, those who seem to possess nothing but a desire to be counted

among the halves. As we swim in the modern waters of consumerism,

it's certainly tempting to divide the world into those two categories from Servantes.

It can feel like that tension between the haves and the have-nots drives everything.

Like the thing that matters most is figuring out which side you're on, as if being a have is to have everything. Like the thing that matters most is figuring out which side you're on, as if being a

have is to have everything, and to be a have not is to have nothing at all. But what if there's a

different kind of dividing line that is deeper, truer, and far more significant than the line

between the haves and the have-nots. What if the most

fundamental distinction between people has nothing to do with how much stuff they possess,

but how much they sense their need? That's the driving question underneath our passage today

in Luke chapter 4. These verses are soaring in

their exposition of who Jesus is and what he came to do. And at the same time, they press every one of us

to reconsider how his mission reaches into our lives today. Now, as we approach God's word together,

let's slow down and ask for His grace to move through our time.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gracious gift of life and breath and for the gift of your word.

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