When someone is getting himself started in the public eye, the first thing he is always taught he must do is win the crowd with a good first impression. Every speaker knows this. Every author knows this. If you want any audience to buy into what you are offering, that first impression is a must. But Jesus does not follow the advice of men and is not concerned about His platform nor the public view of Him. He is concerned with the job assigned by His Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit. What we see Jesus do from the outside is set Himself up for rejection; He does so by going home.
In Luke’s account, when Jesus returns from the wilderness, empowered by the Holy Spirit, one of the first stops He makes is Nazareth. And in Nazareth, Jesus does what no one who wants a platform would ever do: cut Himself off from His homeland. We don’t exactly know if Jesus started doing some healings and teachings before this stop in Nazareth as Mark 1 would indicate, but one thing is clear: Jesus was known and respected enough to be given the privilege to teach that Sabbath when the regular rabbi would normally do the job. And what did Jesus do? Jesus quoted a passage from Isaiah 61 and basically said, “I am the one this is talking about.”
The response was initially met with awe because Jesus spoke with an authority that no one alive had ever heard before. I am certain that what is given in the text is not the whole dialogue that took place, but the tone soon changed very quickly. Jesus grew up with these people. They knew Him in His childhood and those very awkward teenage years. Jesus was without sin but never one of those over-pious “goody two shoes.” He had respect among the community, despite being known as an illegitimate child, and now He started proclaiming to be the fulfilment of a passage that for at least decades the people thought was going to be about the deliverance from Rome. I’m sure Jesus’ own friends and family began to wonder, “Who does this guy think He is?” And then Jesus lowered the boom, declared their reaction to Him, and basically insulted them by saying their rejection of His gift of salvation would lead to that gift being given out to those they deemed lesser than them. This led to Jesus’ own friends seeking to throw Him off a nearby cliff for blasphemy. There is no record of Jesus ever returning to Nazareth after this.
In one of Jesus’ first opportunities to get a following, He sets the standard of what He was about: seeking true and genuine followers and pushing away any who had no real intention of following Him and doing things His way. This is a charge frequently made by those who stand on the single message of Scripture. As a young earth creationist, I often get charged with chasing people away from the faith because we draw a hard line that there is no justification for being a Christian and holding hands with worldly thinking of “millions of years.” We get accused often of being un-Christ-like yet here we have Jesus chasing people away by driving home a point about the exclusive truth. Jesus does not care about numbers. He cares about true and genuine faith. He does care when those reject Him, and it grieves Him that they will be lost, not knowing what they are rejecting, but He is not going to change His message so that He could have a superfluous following. Jesus was going after the true follower, and He would give many different teachings and descriptions on what that would mean and entail.
This was not the only time Jesus would intentionally chase away people who had little interest in following Him anyway. In John’s gospel, there are two major instances when Jesus confronted the very crowds He had just been ministering to. In John 6, Jesus had just fed the 5000, sent the disciples across the sea, walked on water, and the crowd followed Him around the sea and met Him there. Jesus refused to give them another bite and instead offered the true Bread of Life – Himself. He told the people that to get eternal life, we are to eat His flesh and drink His blood. About 20,000 people, assuming it was the same crowd from the day before, left. Then in John 8, Jesus confronted another group of people who professed to believe Him. Jesus flat out called them children of the devil, haters of God, murderers, and sealed the deal by declaring Himself to be the “I AM.”
Again, Jesus refused to play the crowd. Every time He sensed there were half-hearted followers, He raised the stakes to make sure there were no hesitations. Jesus did not want any fair-weather fans. He wanted genuine disciples who would pursue and chase after Him no matter what their circumstances were. Jesus set the bar so high that He would take precedence over family, over jobs, over the comfort of a home, over an income, over absolutely anything that would enable someone to rely on their flesh. Jesus never lowered the bar for anyone. He gave messages so hard that it would be literally impossible for any person to be able to carry them out. And that was the point.
Christianity is not like any other religion that has man seeking and pursuing God. It is a religion and a faith (among much more) that requires that man cease trusting in themselves and only depend upon the mercy of God. While Jesus did give teachings about how we should live, He also made clear that following Him will not happen by one’s own ability. The Christian lifestyle is only livable, and even attemptable, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus shut down any low-level thinking about the Christian faith, and He was not going to tolerate any attempt to use Him for any personal gain or in any following of Him just for what He could offer. He knew the hearts of these people; the moment anything would turn rough, which would happen quickly and frequently to those who did follow Him, they would turn on Him and walk away. So Jesus, just like with the fig tree He cursed, simply showcased the inevitable quicker and did not let anyone get disillusioned with false hopes. He set the expectations excessively clearly so anyone who did choose to follow Him knew what they were leaving behind and what they were going into.
The life that Jesus calls us into is one where we do not have control; He does, and we walk in implicit trust that He will lead us to and through the very things we were designed for. Next week, we’ll look at what kind of people Jesus chose to be His apostles.
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