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Luke 4:42-44  At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place.  The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them.  But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.”  And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

There are three things that challenge me in this short passage.  

The first is, the importance Jesus placed on private prayer as he set about the work God the Father had sent him to do.  I can become so ‘busy’ doing God’s ‘work’ that I find it hard to make time to spend with him in private prayer.  Last Lord’s Day I sat under the challenging preaching on Jesus’ Parable of the Vine in John 15.  It was made clear that the central, essential thing in being fruitful in the work I have been called to do for my Lord and Saviour is abiding in him, which I do through prayer and the reading of his Word.  I took special note of Jesus’ claim, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” (verse 5)

The second thing that challenges me is Jesus’ exposing of the selfishness of my wanting to keep the wonderful news of this new life to myself, instead of getting the message out to others who so desperately need it in our culture today.  “They tried to keep him from leaving them.  But he said, ‘I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.’”  In 68 years of being a Christian, of which more than 50 have been as an ordained minister of the Gospel, the hardest thing I have found and felt confident about, is deliberate, targeted, personal evangelism.  (Strangely, the pulpit can be a refuge from this God-given responsibility!  My secret fear on the Day of Judgement, is having to eye-ball people I have know well and having to hear them say, “Why didn’t you tell us about the importance of trusting in Jesus while we were back on Earth?”)

The third one is the primacy Jesus gave to reaching the Jewish people with the Good News.  “And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.”  Jewish evangelism can be had work. I spent nearly 30 years of my ministry in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, and have served for the last 35 on the Council of ‘International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP, formerly CWI) in Australia’ and have experienced the reality and truth behind God’s (less-than encouraging) word commissioning Isaiah: “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’  Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” (Isaiah 6:9-10)  This was also the experience of ‘Yeshua’, their ‘Moshiac’, but still he “kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea”.  Praise God for every Jewish person in Jesus’ day, who became a ‘believer’ – especially the apostle Paul and all the other apostles, and the many, many Jewish believers today, through the various faithful and persistent, forms of outreach to persecuted Jewish people!  Let’s support them in prayer.  Paul was taking his lead from Jesus’ example in Judea when he wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” (Romans 1:17)

– Bruce Christian