GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 4:42-44
42 When it was day, Jesus went out to a lonely place. The crowds were looking for him, and when they came to him they started trying to prevent him from leaving them.
It’s doubtful that Jesus was healing the good people of Capernaum all night long. At some point, it would have been too late for too many more to arrive, although there might have been a few late night knocks on the door. Doubtless Jesus simply attended to them, but at last it was time to get some sleep. Then, Luke tells us, the next day came. Mark says it was “very early in the morning.” Jesus needed to get away by himself to pray. He went to “a lonely place,” a deserted or solitary place, an erermon topon (ἔρημον τόπον), “a desert place.” That doesn’t mean sand dunes and scrub grass, but just a place without any houses, farms, or people. Surely in the rolling hills on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, he was easily able to find a little spot to himself.
Besides his High Priestly Prayer (John 17:1-26) and the prayer in Gethsemane (Mark 14:35; Luke 22:42), not many of Jesus’ prayers are recorded:
• He prayed about Peter’s faith (Luke 22:32).
• He praised his Father for hiding certain things from the wise and learned by revealing them to little children (Matthew 11:25-26).
• He prayed at the grave of Lazarus about the people there who witnessed the miracle (John 11:41-42).
• He prayed during Holy Week when the disciples brought the Gentiles to see him (John 12:27-28).
• And of course, three of his prayers (the first, middle, and final words from the cross) were prayers: “Father forgive them,” “My God, my God…,” and “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Apart from the cross, the prayer in the Upper Room and the one in Gethsemane (all very private moments about his sacrifice for mankind), all of these prayers were about Jesus’ followers. He prayed for us, for our sakes, and for the faith and even the childlike faith of those who put their trust in him.
Here, his prayer is not recorded for us, but it’s not difficult to imagine Jesus praying for the success of his preaching the gospel. That’s the very thing he spoke about when the people found him.
43 He said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns too, because that is why I was sent.” 44 And he kept preaching in the synagogues in the land of the Jews.
What does it mean, to “preach the good news (Gospel) of the kingdom of God” (εὐαγγελίσασθαί…τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ)? It means to proclaim the divine message of salvation. The verb “preach” is only rarely used without the fuller expression, “about the kingdom of God” or something like it.
But what is meant by “the kingdom of God”? The kingdom of God is not the territory of God’s kingdom, nor a description of his subjects, but rather the way people enter into his kingdom (and sometimes, how straying sheep are brought back into it). Otherwise, it would not be good news at all. It would be a crushing blow to anyone who heard it, because those who belong in the kingdom of God are those who are righteous, holy, and without sin of any kind. This is what tore Luther apart in the long and lonely years before he read that the righteousness God demands of us is the righteousness that comes from God as a gift. Before he learned that, he was one of the teachers who created despair in God’s people. Luther said, “We ourselves taught in the Papacy,” (that is, when he was still a Catholic priest), “that whoever would rid himself of sin would have to perform this or that work” (St. L. XIII,2495). Christ was not sent to be a new lawgiver. He was sent to free us from our sins, to show us that forgiveness comes apart even from the works of the law, and by the grace of God alone.
The preaching of this good news, the very best news, is what Jesus set out to do all throughout Galilee. It’s what he has given you and me to do privately for our children and the people we love. It’s what he has given the church to do through its called ministers publicly throughout the world. Support the preaching of the gospel in your church. Share in the preaching of the gospel in your home. Treasure the gospel that is preached in your heart, and don’t trade it for anything, ever.
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