Saturday, July 30, 2016

Jesus angered the temple leadership by His readingof Isaiah 61 and followup comments 519-2 - 22 - 6

Jesus stood to read from Isaiah 61, Luke 4:18-19, “18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Jesus then sat down as in a teacher’s roll and said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Here Jesus was claiming to be the long sought Messiah. However, by stopping at a comma just before, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God” Jesus was declaring that he came first as the suffering Messiah and will return as the Lion of Judah.
The temple leaders put Jesus down by saying, “Is not this Joseph's son?” Jesus’ made the very famous reply, Luke 4:24, “And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.”
Not being very PC, Jesus further inflamed those in the temple by mentioning Gentiles who were helped by Old Testament prophets. One gentile was the widow of Sarepta, a city of Sidon to whom Elias provided a seemingly endless supply of oil both for her use and to sell. The other was Naaman the Syrian whom Elisha sent to wash in the Jordan seven times to effect a cure for leprosy.
Outraged, the temple elite tried to cast Jesus off the cliff at Nazareth, however, Luke 4:30, “But he passing through the midst of them went his way.”
As an aside, Jesus healed Gentiles even on the Sabbath, a double no, no, Gentiles and on the Sabbath!
Jesus was on his way to heal a child when a woman touched the border of his garment. The hem of the garment was considered of great importance and whether this Gentile woman knew that or just was reaching out in desperation is unknown. What is known is that she was immediately healed of an issue of blood.
Luke 8:43-44, “And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.”
Jesus had an interesting conversation with another Gentile woman seeking a healing for her daughter. Matthew 15:26-28, “26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. 27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. 28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.”
Often Gentiles were more respective to Jesus’ divinity than were His brethren the Jews.

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