August 6 2025; Luke 4:31-44

Daily Dose of Hope

August 6, 2025

Scripture - Luke 4:31-44

Prayer:  Holy God, We come before you today in humility and awe.  You are a good God.  You, who put the stars and planets in motion, also created us.  You care about the most minute details of our lives.  You have numbered the hairs on our head.  Thank you for loving us.  Thank you for caring so much.  Help us be put even a small reflection of your love toward those around us.  More of you and less of me, Jesus.  Amen.

Welcome to the Daily Dose of Hope, a deep dive into the Gospels and Acts.  Today is Recharge night in the Garage at 6:30pm.  Hope to see you there for fellowship, worship, prayer, and small community.

Today, we finish up Luke 4.  Jesus is now fully involved in his public ministry.  He is demonstrating the Kingdom of God with his teaching and healing.  In Capernaum, his chosen home, he heals a man possessed by an evil spirit.  He then heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and a whole slew of other people who come to him.  There were demons who Jesus casts out and they declare out loud that Jesus is the Son of God.  Jesus quickly rebukes them.  My guess is that it wasn’t yet time for people to know him as Messiah.  There was still so much to do.

I want us to notice something.  After Jesus does all this healing, he goes to a solitary place.  Jesus gives us this great pattern of doing work/ministry and then having solitude with his Father.  No matter how busy Jesus is, he still seeks time alone to pray.  The lesson here for us is that the busier we are, the more we need to seek the Father!  We need times of quiet with God.  Every single one of us.

At the bottom of chapter 4, Jesus reiterates his purpose.  He says this in verses 43-44, 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.  That is why he was sent.  We touched on this yesterday. 

I want to say once again that what Jesus was saying was radical.  He was saying that the Kingdom of God is here and he represented the Kingdom. He embodied the Kingdom.  He represented a new way of doing life, demonstrating the reign of God.  So everything he did–all his miracles, his teachings, all his parables---they were all intended to show what the Kingdom of God was like, what the new way of being human was all about.

Why did Jesus feed people? Because in God’s Kingdom, in the kind of world that God always intended for us to have, there is no hunger.  Thus, it was only natural for Jesus to feed people. In God’s Kingdom, there is no sickness, so Jesus healed people. In God’s Kingdom, there is no discrimination, so he elevated the status of those who were rejected by society. He ate with the people that everyone else hated–the tax collectors and the prostitutes–because in God’s Kingdom, every single human life has value.

In God’s Kingdom, there is justice, mercy, and love. Thus, Jesus offered acceptance. He offered LOVE in everything he did, ultimately giving up his life in the greatest act of love in the history of the world. In everything he did, from the time he sat on the steps and read the scroll from the prophet Isaiah to the cross through the resurrection, all of these give us a picture of the Kingdom of God, the world that God intended, a world in which there is reconciliation, healing, beauty, and wholeness.

I’m sorry to harp on this but I want everyone to see how Jesus’ ministry was not just about getting individuals right with God. That’s part of it, definitely, but the good news of the Kingdom is more than “you can go to heaven when you die.” It’s “you can be reconciled to God now. You can live under the reign of Christ and live life abundant.” Yes, Christ came to ensure individual salvation but it was one part of something much bigger. By dying on the cross and being raised from the dead, there was final victory over sin AND the barrier between heaven and earth was broken for good.  N.T. Wright writes, “The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s Kingdom...It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s Kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven.”

Okay, I’ve probably rambled enough for one day.  I can talk about the Kingdom for hours, fair warning for future devotionals.

Blessings to all of you,

Pastor Vicki