The Pneuma Project

First some thoughts on the last set of verses. It’s so interesting to note that whenever Jesus speaks of judgment he is referring to either 1) a future judgment done by God on all that has been distorted from what God created His creation to be, or 2) a different kind of judgment referring specifically to religious leaders and institutions who claim to represent God but who have allowed their personal holiness and interpretation of Scripture to take them away from the people God loves (ie. sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors). This type of judgment is usually laid out on the religious establishment because they have become more concerned with looking and feeling righteous than with grace and forgiveness of God. In last weeks account the religious leaders refused to see the act of healing the blind man as God’s work and eventually threw him out of their presence (removed him from fellowship in the Jewish religious community). But Jesus responds by not only seeking and comforting the man with new sight, but declaring judgment on the “blind” religious elite.

Sometimes I wonder how far we are from this today. Are we, by our attitudes, pride, and methods keeping people from experiencing the grace of God? How would Jesus respond to us and our religiosity? And how would we respond to Jesus (or do we respond to the Spirit) when/if He does something that makes us feel uncomfortable? Those are really hard questions, and it’s so easy to throw stones at others. But I need to ask them about myself, and continually allow Jesus to shake me from my  comfortable spot on understanding, safety, and security.

So enough of that on to something fresh. We going to spend the next couple months looking at the words of Jesus in the gospel of Luke. Hopefully this will not only allow Him to shake us up, but provide a sense of connection and context to all we are learning. We’ll start at what has been describes as the crux of Luke’s message, a statement by Jesus about who He is and what He has come to do: Luke 4.

Luke 4:1-30
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.”
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”
The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written:
” ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully;
they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners  and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ “
“I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

A couple things that stood out to me that I need to think about this week.
First, who led Jesus out to be tempted and who led Him back? How does that match up with how I understand the rest of Scripture?
Second, if Jesus sums up His own mission from that portion of Isaiah 61. What does that mean for us as His followers? Is that the kind of message I am living? And why didn’t Luke write down what else He spoke about that had all the people “amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips”?
I’m sure that only begins to scratch the surface of this passage and I’m equally sure that the Spirit will reveal different layers to all of us who spend time with this. I’d love to hear your answers to those questions and any other comments, questions, or insights you might have.

Here are a few other verses that seem to connect with these dots.

Isaiah 61:1-3
Matthew 6:9-13