Category: Luke 4

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Recharging, refocusing

When Jesus started his ministry, he went all out, touching as many people as he could, spending the whole day doing his Father’s will.

But one thing that he never did was burn out. I’ve been through burnout in ministry before, and it wasn’t fun. Jesus never did.

Considering how much time he spent ministering not only to the crowds, but to his disciples, it would have been easy to do. Why didn’t he?

I think one of his secrets is found in these passages. Mark writes,

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)

Jesus didn’t live life in his own strength and his own wisdom. Rather, he lived in total dependence on the Father.

And during those times away from the crowds, he was able to recharge and refocus.

He was able to remember the love the Father had for him. And just as importantly, he was able to remember exactly what the Father wanted him to be doing.

People were always trying to press on Jesus’ time. Luke tells us,

The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. (Luke 4:42)

But Jesus didn’t simply give in to everyone’s demands. Rather, he listened to what his Father wanted him to do and he did it. He told the people,

I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent. (Luke 4:43)

There are two reasons people often burn out from ministry.

One is that they’re always giving and never receiving. Most importantly, they’re not receiving from the Father.

They are not receiving love from him, not because he doesn’t want to give it, but because they fail to seek it, and spend time with Him.

Because of that, they start running on fumes, instead of the love that God wants to pour into their lives.

That’s why when things start to go rough in ministry (as they inevitably do), people start to wear down and get discouraged. They’re trying to get their energy from the ministry itself rather than from God.

And when the ministry fails to provide that, they burn out.

The other reason people burn out is that they start doing more than God is telling them to do. They’re trying to please everyone and can’t say no.

Or they put burdens on themselves that God is not putting there. And eventually, they fall beneath the overload.

That’s why it’s so important to spend time with God every day. To recharge and refocus. To plug yourself into God, and the love and energy he wants to pour into you.

And to refocus on exactly what he wants you to do so that you filter out all the other demands people try to put on your time.

Failing to do this will lead to burnout.

How about you? Are you recharging and refocusing every day?

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Luke Luke 4 Mark Mark1 Matthew Matthew 8

The One who heals

The gospels

Here we catch a glimpse of the healing ministry of Jesus as it kicks into full gear.

It starts with Jesus visiting Peter’s home, and healing Peter’s mother-in-law. It strikes me here that this was the first time Jesus healed on the Sabbath, although it was in a private setting, so he caught no flack for it.

Looking back, I kind of wonder about the casting out of the demon back in the synagogue. Would the Pharisees and teachers of the law considered that “work” and criticized Jesus for that too had they been there?

I can just imagine them saying, “Hey, what are you doing? Cast out demons some other day. It’s the Sabbath!”

Jesus would soon get into trouble for healing on the Sabbath, but not on this day. After the Sabbath was over, people flocked to Peter’s house to ask Jesus for healing, and Jesus healed each one.

Matthew says of this,

This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.” (Matthew 8:17)

It should be pointed out that Matthew clearly states that this prophesy was fulfilled in the healing ministry of Christ while he was on earth. There is no guarantee of healing now.

Jesus, of course, can and does still heal. But unlike what some preachers teach, it is not guaranteed.

Anyway, what can we take from this passage? First, the compassion of Jesus. He not only cares about the crowds, he cares about the individual.

Here was a woman in Peter’s mother-in-law, who is otherwise nameless. And yet Jesus took her by the hand and healed her.

You may be nameless in this world. People may not know who you are. But Jesus knows. And when you’re hurting physically or emotionally, he sees and he cares.

Like I said, there is no guarantee for physical healing. Sometimes God has plans that we can’t see that don’t involve the physical healing of our bodies, but Jesus does tell us to ask, and we should.

But where there are emotional hurts or scars, Jesus will definitely bring healing to those if we will just come to him.

While I’ve seen Jesus use physical ailments for his glory, I don’t believe there would be any reason that Jesus would desire you to carry those emotional hurts throughout your life. So bring them to him. And he will heal you.

The other thing that strikes me from this passage is Peter’s mother-in-law’s response to her healing. She immediately started serving Jesus.

We should do the same. When Jesus heals us, whether from physical ailments or from emotional ones, or from the scars that come from sin, our response should be to serve him out of our gratitude and love for him.

Not because we have to, but because we want to.

And in many cases, he asks us to help others who are in the very same kind of trouble we were in.

Jesus doesn’t just heal us so that we will be healed, but so that we can bring his healing to others as well.

Are you bringing the healing of Jesus to those around you?

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Authority

The gospels

What makes Jesus different from all the other great religious leaders that started major religions?

There are many things, of course, first and foremost the fact that Jesus is God, and that he rose from the dead. All the others have this one thing in common: they’re all dead. Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they weren’t God.

But as we look at this passage, we see another difference between Jesus and them: authority.

It was the thing that struck the Jews immediately when they started listening to him teach from God’s word.

All the other teachers they heard would preface their remarks with phrases like, “So-and-so said this about this passage.”

Or “According to so-and-so, this passage means…”

Jesus never said that. Instead, he would repeatedly tell them, “I say to you…” or “I tell you the truth…”

The people marveled at this. “This man speaks with authority. It sounds like he actually knows and is confident about what he is teaching.”

As a teacher myself, I think I would marvel myself. While I of course do my own studies and ask God for insight, nevertheless, I wouldn’t pretend to have a fraction of the authority that Jesus Christ has. It must have been marvelous to hear him speak.

He then backed it up with his works, casting out a demon from a man in the synagogue. Is it any wonder that word about him spread like wildfire throughout Israel?

But what does it mean for us?

I suppose the question you need to ask yourself is, “Do I accept the fact that Jesus does indeed speak with authority? Or do I just think he was giving his own opinion, and my opinion is as good as his?”

Too often, though we may give lip service to Christ’s authority, nevertheless we do not obey him. Either because we think it’s too “pie-in-the-sky,” the ideals of a man who didn’t have a grasp of “real life,” or because we simply don’t want to do what he has said.

But if we claim Jesus as our Lord, we can’t think this way. And we certainly can’t live that way. Jesus said,

Why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but don’t do what I tell you? (Luke 6:46)

If there are two words that are oxymoronic, they are “No” and “Lord.”

How about you? Do you accept Christ’s authority in your life?

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Luke Luke 4

To all who receive him

Luke

As I read this passage, I can’t help but think about John 1:11-12, where it says,

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

In this passage, Jesus literally came to the people that he had grown up with all his life in the town of Nazareth. They knew him and his family well. He had undoubtedly visited this very synagogue hundreds of times.

And yet when he preached to them, they did not receive him. Instead, they rejected him and tried to kill him.

But Jesus makes clear here that to any who received him, they would receive the right to become children of God.

The passage in Isaiah he quotes (Isaiah 61) goes on to talk about God’s vengeance against Israel’s enemies and all those who would oppose him.

But Jesus pointed out that until that time, God’s grace extends to any who believe, even the Gentiles like the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian.

And to those who believe in him, he brings good news to those who are poor and in need.

This, of course, is true in the physical sense, but also in the spiritual sense. That to those who are poor in spirit, and realize their need for God, Jesus brings news of a new relationship with God based on grace.

He brings freedom and forgiveness to those enchained to their sins. To those chained to the hurts of their past, he also brings healing.

Jesus healed the physically blind, but also gives sight to those Satan has blinded spiritually, that they might see the light of the gospel, and the hope that Jesus brings.

Jesus releases those oppressed by Satan and his demons. Through his blood, he brings us not only victory, but overwhelming victory.

More than that, he proclaims the Lord’s favor here and now.

This was perhaps a reference to the time of Jubilee in the Old Testament, a time when slaves were set free, debts were forgiven, and land that was sold to pay off debts were returned to their original owners. In short, people were given a new start.

That’s what Jesus came to bring. A new start. A new relationship with God.

And as John said, it’s available to all who will put their faith in Christ.

How about you? Will you put your faith in him today?

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A light in the darkness

The gospels

I mentioned yesterday the question of why God allowed John the Baptist to go to prison. We don’t know for sure, but perhaps one reason was to get people’s eyes off of John and solely on to Jesus.

For right after John went into prison, it says that Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his formal ministry. In doing so, Matthew tells us he fulfilled the words of Isaiah who wrote,

Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles– the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (Matthew 4:15-16)

It’s amazing that the Pharisees totally missed this passage as they disparaged Jesus’ background. (John 7:52)

But here we see one of the reasons Jesus came. We were living in darkness, separated from God by our sin, condemned to death. But in Jesus, a light dawned.

Hope sprang anew as he showed the way to the Father. He declared to the people,

“The time has come…The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

That is our message to this day. The King has come. His kingdom is near. Both in the fact that it is working in the hearts of all who believe in him, and in the fact that Jesus will come again to establish his kingdom here on earth forever.

And so we are called to repent. To repent is to turn around. To change our way of thinking. To stop living for ourselves and start living for God. To put aside our distrust of God and to follow him wholeheartedly.

A big part of that, of course, is to believe in the good news of Jesus Christ.

That God became man, becoming one of us. That he died on a cross to take the punishment for our sins, and that he rose again. And that if we will only put our faith in him, trusting in him as our Lord and Savior, we will be saved from eternal hell.

That’s the message Jesus came to bring.

Now there are two questions we all must ask.

First, have you put your faith in Christ? And if you have, are you continuing to pass on the message Jesus came to give?

How about you? Can you say yes to both questions?

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Following the Father

The gospels

Happy New Year all!

I suppose there’s no better way to start the year then remembering who we are to follow heading into the New Year. It’s the person whom Jesus followed while he walked this earth, and you see it clearly in these passages.

This is one of the most famous passages in scripture in which Jesus gets tempted in the desert.

But as I read it this time, and looked at the scripture that Jesus quoted in fighting the temptations thrown at him by Satan, one thing struck me: Just how much trust he put in his Father.

Filled with and led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus went out into the desert after his baptism, and stayed out there for 40 days.

It seems only fitting, then, that the scriptures he quoted came from Deuteronomy after the Israelites had been wandering around in the desert for 40 years. Because what Moses told the Israelites right after that, Jesus lived out in his life.

What did Moses say?

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)

Just as the Father led the Israelites through the desert to test them, so he led Jesus out into the desert to be tested. Like the Israelites, Jesus was humbled, being caused to become hungry.

But unlike the Israelites, he refused to complain against his Father during that time. Rather, he trusted that his Father would provide what he needed, when he needed it.

Satan tried to get Jesus to rely on himself and his own powers to meet his needs by turning stones into bread. But Jesus refused, and relied solely on his Father in heaven to provide what he needed.

When Satan tempted Jesus to throw himself down from the temple and let the angels catch him, even quoting scripture to do so (which shows how important it is to understand context when we’re reading scripture), Jesus pointed to Deuteronomy 6, where Moses told the people,

Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah. (Deuteronomy 6:16)

What happened at Massah? The Israelites again showed a lack of trust in God, this time because they had no water, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7)

Sometimes, we question God in the same way. We go through struggles, and say, “Is God really with me or not?”

Satan was basically tempting Jesus to question God in that way too. He was saying, “Is your Father really with you? If you’re going to serve him, you’d better find out by jumping off the temple. If he’s really with you, he’ll catch you.”

But Jesus refused to do so, fully believing that his Father was with him, though he couldn’t see him.

Finally, Satan tempted Jesus to worship him in order to gain the kingdoms of the world. But again Jesus refused. He would not let anything or anyone deter him from following his Father saying,

Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ (Matthew 4:10)

How about you? Who are you following as you head into this new year? Are you following the Father?

Are you trusting that he is with you and will meet your needs? Are you making following him your first priority, above your job, your family, your friends, and everything else?

Who are you following?