On the precipice.

Listen here:  https://www.pastorwoman.net/podcast/episode/1c07e1a9/on-the-precipi...

'Excited to be launching into the three+ years of Jesus’ ministry! You and I must never take for granted the eye witness accounts of the Son of God who came to live and love amongst us. I love picturing myself as a face in the crowd listening to his words, watching what he does, seeing how he loves.  O, that God would reveal new things to us from the study of Luke's gospel. Come with me as the good doctor takes us back to Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. 

We find Jesus teaching in the synagogue, the gathering place for Jewish learning, schools for boys during the week (yeshivas).  Any town with at least 10 Jewish families could have a synagogue.  Often the leader of the synagogue would invite a visiting rabbi to read the scriptures and teach.  Such was the case on this day when Jesus enters the synagogue in Nazareth.

Imagine for a moment that you are seated, ready to learn from the young rabbi when suddenly you recognize him as someone you have grown up with. You nudge the person next to you, 'isn't that Jesus-- you know Joseph and Mary's son? Huh... what is he up to? Listen...'

Jesus moves to the front, is handed the scroll, unrolls it carefully and begins to read from the writing of the prophet Isaiah.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free,

    and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come. . . The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”1

Jesus is not surprised in the least to get a skeptical reaction from the hometown crowd and presses on. “You will undoubtedly quote me this proverb: ‘Physician, heal yourself’—meaning, ‘Do miracles here in your hometown like those you did in Capernaum.’  But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.”²

Jesus goes on to compare himself with Elijah and Elisha, and the period of famine that had come on Israel because of their unfaithfulness to God.  Jesus is announcing himself as similarly sent by God, a messenger to them and to the Gentiles, who you must always bear in mind, the Jews looked down upon.3 

Jesus presses in with his next remarks: “Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine devastated the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a foreigner—a widow of Zarephath in the land of Sidon. [modern day Lebanon] And many in Israel had leprosy in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only one healed was Naaman, a Syrian.”4

Remember – the Jews are awaiting a Messiah to come and rescue them, God’s chosen people, and establish his kingdom on earth.  At once, the listeners go from being amazed to skeptical to furious.  Why, Jesus is accusing them of being wicked, like the people of Elijah’s day!

They will not stand for it.  They grab ahold of Jesus, drag him out of the synagogue to the edge of a cliff to throw him over . . . but it does not happen, which is mysterious.  The Bible does not tell us how Jesus slips away, only that “he passed right through the crowd and went on his way.”⁵

Jesus uses the familiar scripture to announce that He is the fulfillment of the prophecy they know well.  But how audacious - Jesus, the very one some had known since he was a boy, claims to be the fulfillment of Isaiah's well known prophecy, he claims to be the One for whom they had waited, the Messiah!

But do not miss this point - what Jesus offered that day in Nazareth,

He offers to us today:

the lifesaving, life-giving gospel,

healing for our broken hearts, minds and bodies,

freedom for those of us who are bound . . .

As Jesus pressed in that Nazareth day so long ago,

I pray you will press in to him today.

Luke wrote so that we may know…

and I write so that you may know and believe,

Christine -->Listen: be blessed "My Redeemer"-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RindQ29G3JU

Luke #16

1 – Luke 4.18-19,21 quoting Isaiah 61.1-2

2 – Luke 4.23-24

3 – Luke 4.21

4 – Luke 4.25-27

5 - Luke 4.30