Tuesday Devotion: Luke 4
Preaching Up a Storm
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Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[f]
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. 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.
“Truly I tell you,” 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[g] 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 off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
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In my 38 years as a pastor, I've preached some TERRIBLE sermons.
But I don't think I've ever preached anything so bad that it started a riot.
By the end of Jesus' first hometown sermon he made the crowd so mad that they stormed the Savior.
The mob wanted to kill him on the spot.
It's good to get a response from your sermon but that's not usually the one we're seeking.
It's hard to believe but when everyone around you is angry and rioting, the Peace of Christ is right there with you.
Don't try to preach sense into the crowd.
Just wrap that Peace around you and walk through it.
The same Christ who shows you the way through the valley of the shadow of death, will show you the way to walk through the storm.