GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 4:16-17
16 He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written…,
If you’ve never seen an entire scroll of Hebrew text, you might not be impressed that Jesus could open it and effortlessly find the verse he was looking for, but I’m telling you, I’m really impressed. Yet there’s something even more important here for us, even before we get to the verse the Savior was going to read, and so let’s stop right here. I want us to notice it, and I want us to make a great big deal out of it:
Jesus went to church, all the time.
It was his custom to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. This isn’t something our kids will suddenly decide to do on their own some day, like changing their haircut or buying a new car. This is something we model for them the whole time that they’ve got their feet at home and under our table. We get them to church, and not just moms, but dads, too. Members of our church in New Ulm just heard this on Sunday, but I want to share it with you, too: Reliable, long-standing studies show that children (both boys and girls) are almost 50% more likely to keep going to church when they grow up if one thing happens when they’re young: If Dad goes with them, regularly. The chances of them going are only about 2% better if Mom goes, but it jumps way up to just under 50% if Dad goes.
That doesn’t mean that we can hang all of Jesus’ spiritual insight and habits onto the one peg of Joseph getting into the synagogue with his boys. But I’m certain that he wasn’t the kind of Dad who pretended to be oh so busy while Mom and the kids went off to church on Saturday afternoon.
Jesus our Lord wants us to get into church, too. He didn’t call his disciples to stay by themselves, but to gather people into churches. Jesus Christ was the first person in recorded history to even use the word “church,” and when he did, he called it “my church” (Matthew 16:18). He said he was going to build it on Peter’s confession that he, Jesus, is the Christ. And he wants us in his church, the church of people who believe in him and who put their trust in him for eternal life. It isn’t our job to come up with new ways of talking about God. It’s our job to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.
Get into that church, and when your pastor finds the place in the Bible where it says…, give him your attention. He might be a pretty good speaker. He might be just so-so. But he has something few people have. He has a divine call from God himself to be exactly where he is, and to do exactly what he’s doing. He is supposed to be opening that Bible literally and figuratively, to teach us about our Savior Jesus. Listen to him. That Gospel is the key to everlasting life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota