GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 4:25-27
25 “But truly I tell you: There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut for three years and six months, and there was a terrible famine all through the land. 26 But Elijah was not sent to any of them. Instead he was sent to a widow of Zarephath, in Sidon. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was healed except Naaman the Syrian.”
The “but” (δὲ) in verse 25 is stinging. Jesus is saying: You Galileans should remember your own past! Most of the story of Elijah happened up here in the north country—like when there was a famine for three and a half years, and who did Elijah go to? The king in Samaria? You folks in Nazareth? Not at all. God sent the prophet outside Galilee altogether, up beyond the tribe of Asher, way up the coast to the village of Zarephath between Tyre and Sidon, and he helped her (1 Kings 17:8-16).
And what about Elisha and the leper who was healed? Jesus is saying: Weren’t there plenty of lepers here in Galilee? But did Elisha cure any of them? The answer is No, and not because of any unwillingness on Elisha’s part. The truth is, nobody asked him. It took the faith of a Hebrew slave girl owned by the wife of a foreign general to tell her master that he could be healed of his disease by the prophet. Naaman went, and Elisha didn’t even leave his house, but sent him word to bathe seven times in the Jordan river. Elisha wanted this foreign soldier to know that it was the power of God, not anything special in the actions or personality of his prophet, that did all the work (2 Kings 5:1-19).
By saying these things, Jesus was telling his townspeople that God’s promise to send a Savior through the family of Abraham and through the line of King David was now fulfilled. That didn’t mean that the Messiah would only reach out to Israelites, whether common or royal. No—the Lord could now take his gospel elsewhere. If Galilee turned him away, he could always go to Samaria.
Jesus cannot offer one part of God’s message without everything else being there, too. Imagine being asked to bake a chocolate cake, and thinking, “All I need is chocolate.” That’s not a cake. A cake is also flour, sugar, eggs, baking soda, baking powder, and sometimes salt, butter, and even vanilla. These things need to be measured correctly, and baked just so, and then you have a chocolate cake. So it is with the Word of God. There is both law and gospel, the promise of heaven and the threat and condemnation of hell. To reject Christ is not to circumvent him. He is the only way to heaven. Nazareth had to be told: Jesus is the only way to heaven. Our society needs to know it, too. Heaven is not the place I go to because I’m nice, or happy, or because my Facebook page has the most Likes. Heaven is my home because Jesus Christ died to pay the price for my sins, and I trust in him. The message can and does go everywhere. Trust it. Trust him.
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