January 26, 2000
GREAT QUESTIONS OF THE BIBLE:
""Isn't this Joseph's Son?"
Luke 4:22
___The story is told that Vice President Thomas Jefferson once stopped for the night at a hotel in Baltimore. The clerk curtly told the weary, dirt-stained traveler no rooms were available.
DARREL RAINS
Pastor, Casa View Baptist Church, Dallas
___ But informed of Jefferson's identity, the clerk stammered his apology and offered the vice president lodging.
___ "No," Jefferson responded. "If you don't have room for an ordinary traveler, you don't have room for the vice president of the United States."
___ Assuming we know someone can lead us into trouble. Consider the men who were in the synagogue at Nazareth the Sabbath day Jesus came home to visit. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked. They should have known. The men asking that question in the synagogue at Nazareth had known Jesus for 30 years. They had watched as he apprenticed at his father's carpenter shop. They had observed him often in the synagogue, since it was his custom to attend. But their question, found in Luke 4:22, illustrates a danger to Jesus' contemporaries and to us today.
___ At the age of 30, Jesus had left Nazareth for Jerusalem and Judea. Now that he returned, there were astounding records of what he did there. All the listeners sat in stunned amazement at his teaching this particular day. Jesus had been gone from them only a short time, but so much had changed. This fellow Nazarene was not only teaching with authority, he was identifying himself as the Messiah.
___ The answer to their question was not all that perplexing. The real wonder is why they asked it.
___ These hearers nodded in agreement that the Scriptures read that Sabbath, from Isaiah 61:1-2, referred to the Messiah. But who was Jesus to claim they spoke of him? That disturbed them.
___ These worshipers in Nazareth were plagued with familiarity. Familiarity can breed either contempt or contemplation. You must choose to look deeper. Nietzsche said, "Familiarity in one's superiors causes bitterness, for it may not be returned." Accepting this homegrown lad, this carpenter's son, one just like them, accepting him as the Messiah was incredulous. Their refusal to look beyond the familiar could have been bred of envy, fear or self-centeredness. After all, Jesus was no better than they. They knew him too well, and yet they did not really know him at all.
___ Could we suffer the same fate as these Nazarenes? Their problem was that their own ideas about Jesus closed their minds to greater revelation. They preferred the Jesus who was comfortable to them.
___ Ours is a day filled with knowledge about Jesus. There is a proliferation of Bible studies. Worship attendance is astoundingly high. Many people accept the morals, the values and the teachings of Jesus. These are still highly honored.
___ However, there is an absence of knowledge of him. Churches are filled with people who prefer their "comfortable Christ." We today have heard so much about Jesus, but we have learned so little of him. He is received as Savior, but he is not acknowledged as Lord. The surroundings of our religious life, worship, Sunday School, have inoculated us with religious experience when Jesus is calling for a spiritual experience. Christians easily shut up God in the church buildings when Jesus is wanting us to encounter him in every moment of daily life.
___ Familiarity is still a dangerous thing. Like Jesus' contemporaries, we can have all the right answers but fail to ask the right questions. "Isn't this God's Son?" is the right one!
Previous Columns: 7/14, 7/21, 7/28, 8/4, 8/11, 8/18, 8/25, 9/1, 9/8, 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, 10/6, 10/13, 10/20 10/27, 11/17, 11/24, 12/1,12/15, 12/1,1/5, 1/12. 1/19.
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