Good Entrance

Luke 4:14-30

Good entrance

Why does everyone want to make a good entrance? Do we like getting the attention? Is that why we want to show up at prom fashionably late? So everyone can see how great we look? If we are honest, most of us really like getting the attention. Whether it is the new outfit, new car, the new haircut… we like to get noticed.

In this passage, Jesus had just come from being tempted by the devil. This moment in time was marking the beginning of His public ministry. This is the start, Jesus’ opportunity to let people know who He truly was and for people to notice Him. We can begin to imagine how we would start off; we would want to start with a bang.

On His first stop, Jesus did do some incredible things in Galilee, from healing the sick, to casting out demons (Matthew 4:23-25). But this is where the story shifts: Jesus decides to go home to his hometown, Nazareth.

The people in Nazareth were excited because they had heard all the rumblings about Jesus. They were expecting the same miracles to happen in their town.

Jesus shows up at church in Nazareth to speak to the crowd that had gathered. He read from Isaiah 61:1-2. This passage had long been considered to be prophesying about the coming Messiah. By reading this passage, Jesus was stating that the time of the Messiah had come and that He in fact was the Messiah they had been waiting for. Jesus stated that he had come to proclaim good news to the poor, to set the captives free, and to free those who were oppressed.

At first the people were amazed at Jesus, but then they started to remember, that He was the son of Joseph. Jesus went on to tell two stories about two prophets, Elijah and Elisha and how they didn’t minister to the church people or religious people but they ministered to the Gentiles the people that were “unchurched.” At this point the people were enraged at Jesus, to the point that they began to try to push him off a cliff.

Jesus is just starting off in ministry and He has already offended people to the point they are trying to kill Him? This isn’t how we would have told Jesus to start his ministry. We would have wanted him to build a huge following – “Just get a lot of people attending Church, Jesus!” Then, after He has a much bigger following, He could maybe start offending religious people. But we have to remember that Jesus didn’t come to appease the religious; He came to speak the Gospel to the poor, to the people who didn’t think they had God figured out.

The people of Nazareth had a certain image of God in their mind. This view of God was keeping them from seeing that God was right in front of them. They were making the assumption that because they were “religious” or “church going people” that they knew God. They didn’t realize that Jesus was getting ready to shatter their way of connecting to God.

It is a message of hope that Jesus came to save that which was lost. Many times in our lives we are dealt a bad hand. We feel like we haven’t been given a fair deal - Our parents got divorced, we don’t feel loved, we wished we looked different. But this is the message that Jesus is trying to communicate and this is why He came: to restore what has been broken and to bring life to what is dead.

Who was Jesus trying to please in this passage?

Do you have an incorrect view of God?

Have you lost hope?