Luke 4:1-30

TheThe unique Jesus: One in sixty billion

We have already seen Jesus' identity confirmed through His baptism and tested in the wilderness.

Jesus proved through His temptations that He was to live a real human life, with hunger, thirst. He proved He was willing to humble Himself to His eventual death on a cross.

We are likely to be tested in a similar way. We will be tested to cling to the material, to turn from God and try to prove ourselves alone. We will be tested as to our identity before God - to only feel close to Him when He catches our fall.

We must be careful to not fall for the devil. Jesus' response in this instance is a great example of how to resist temptation.

Finally, Jesus' identity was rejected in the worship in the synagogue.

Jesus was trying to explain His identity to the congregation. His claim was to have a direct relationship with the Spirit of God. He was the promised Messiah, the anointed one.

What's more, Jesus was promising freedom to those who would normally not be welcomed into the synagogue. The poor, prisoners, and oppressed.

Yet His message is for a much wider demographic than that. His actions towards the people He will meet in the rest of the gospel of Luke show that Jesus' message was for everyone from the greatest to the least.

This was not what Jesus' listeners wanted to hear. They thought Jesus' identity would bring judgement to their physical oppressors - the Romans.

Yet Jesus only spoke of freedom to the poor - they did not realise Jesus meant them!

They did not really take Jesus seriously because of His history with the town. They wanted proof like they had heard in order to believe.

Jesus uses the examples of Elijah and Elisha to tell the people that the freedom He spoke of was for others too. That there were others - gentiles - who would take Him seriously and respond with faith rather than demand miracles.

We do not need to live in the region or time of Jesus to receive that message. We only need to acknowledge our poverty and oppression from sin.
We must remember that the gospel of Jesus is for everyone. Churches must exist in hard places and in high places. We change this world by changing people. We are a community where the weak and powerless find their place beside the same table as those in positions of power. The identity of Jesus can be our identity too, should we accept it.