The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing,
majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of
him and what came to my mind and heart in Luke 13:17,
"When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people
were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing."
Here is Luke's observation of how Jesus impacted the synagogue
worshipers when the ruler attempted to "dress down" Jesus for healing
a woman on the Sabbath. Regardless of what state of mind these folks
walked into synagogue with on that Saturday, we are told when Jesus
finished there were some who were humiliated and some who were
delighted. Humiliation and delight.
I've always admired the Lord for the way he pointed out the
contradictions, mistakes and faulty thinking of the elites of the day.
Here his opponents, which included the synagogue ruler, were
humiliated. We are told the folks were "delighted with all the
wonderful things he was doing." I think most of us are "delighted"
when we see the established mindset, the current "meme", turned upside
down when it is misinformed, misguided or misdirected. Particularly
when the proponents of a current mindset are those who tell the rest
of us how things are, or are to be done.
However, I suspect there is much more going on here in this account,
taken together with many of the other accounts we have of Jesus'
interaction with the folks of the day. As the Son of God, Jesus
certainly had the ability to impact folks in many different ways.
Although we see the Lord humiliating some while delighting others in
this account, he never presented his purpose as such. In Luke 19:10 he
stated very simply and clearly, "The Son of Man came to seek and to
save what was lost." Jesus told Nicodemus, "For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall
not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16.
What I suspect is going on in Luke 13, as well as many other passages
in the gospels, is that the Lord is disrupting and destroying the
entrenched mindset that folks ordered their lives by. The purpose of
which would be to get them to begin to look beyond what they knew,
what they assumed, what they clung to according to their history and
culture. We all tend to view things from a singular perspective and at
times the new or different struggles to overcome the old, fixed,
encrusted and entrenched mindset we have. Jesus came with a new
covenant in hand. He brought good news of an invitation to join his
kingdom - something many folks struggled to comprehend. Most saw the
messiah to come to Israel as a great military figure that would secure
Israel from foreign domination. Few saw their own personal need to be
be freed from their sins to secure God's forgiveness for themselves.
Jesus brought disruption to the entrenched thinking of the day to pave
the way for the gospel message.
I don't know about you, but I know I have to maintain a constant vigil
to ensure my own limited perspective on anything be yielded to broader
and clearer horizons the Lord might lead me to. Knowing I haven't
"arrived" and not wanting to miss anything I am certain the Lord has
much more for me to know of him and the things that are his -
requiring me to be stretched, requiring me to see things much
differently at times.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share
what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to
hear from you!
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment