Friday, April 20, 2012

What drives the religious mad

30 Days with Jesus

Day 5 - Luke 4 v 14 - 30

When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. v 28 - 29

Jesus returns home from a ministry trip that proved very "successful" to then take up a preaching engagement in his home synagogue. It starts out well with Jesus reading some great promises from one of their old prophets. Good news to the poor, sight for the blind etc. etc. No one could have a problem with that.

But then it took at turn for the worse. Jesus then told them that this prophecy was no longer something to look forward to, to dream about. He, Marys son, was the fulfilment. They found this difficult but the next revelation was even more unpalatable for these religious people.

Jesus makes it clear that this message was not just for their select few but for the world at large. Using the examples of how God intervened in the lives of "non religious", a widow and Naaman through their prophet Elijah he wanted them to understand that God didn't want to be contained.

Religious people seem to think that God exists for them. Somehow they deserve God more than others. Jesus took this idea and kicked it into touch. He made it about His performance and not ours.

Grace seems to make religious people mad.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very true. The things that seemed to wind the religious people up were always good things done in the 'wrong' way or to the 'wrong' people. They could never catch Jesus sinning, only doing things differently to how they expected.

It's a message to those of us that have been in the Church for years - Jesus doesn't fit in with our way of doing things and we always need to be open to change our fixed ideas.

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