God’s Use of Unlikely Individuals: A Biblical Perspective
Here's a fresh look at one of the examples Jesus himself pointed to of God's generous kindness
Even aside from his miracles and moral perfection, something Jesus did that set him apart from others was challenging religious assumptions.
He had the highest possible view of God’s holiness, but really seemed to enjoy challenging the ridiculous rigid structures people built up around those moral absolutes.
You have heard it said, but I say was one way he did that. Another was to highlight God’s love for the outsiders that the super-serious religious folk of Jesus’ day would cross the street just to avoid interacting with.
He did it by eating with all the wrong people. He did it by talking tax collectors and hookers. He gave Romans, Syrians, and Syro-Phoenician women the time of day…
And he told stories about the goodness of God to foreigners in their very own scriptures.
How DARE he!
In Luke 4, Jesus drop-kicked the Devil on an empty stomach, he launched his ministry in hostile territory, and he made a point of highlighting God’s interest in extending His kingdom and authority far beyond the little limits of the land he promised to Abraham’s kids.
The message enraged them enough that it incited a murderous mob. Here’s what triggered them:
And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 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. But passing through their midst, he went away.
If Naaman the Syrian loomed large in Jesus mind and imagination on the launch date of his public ministry, his story must be worth a closer look.
That closer look is what today’s show is all about, and there’s a lot to pull out of that brief account.
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