Jesus of Nazareth?

Luke 4:14…

Now we begin to see the WORKS of the Messiah, exactly as they had been prophesied to be in the Old Testament.

From His time in the wilderness, having proven Himself through temptation, (NOT by avoiding it,) Jesus headed immediately to His home region of the Galilee in the power of the Spirit.

This lets us know His direction was not a whim but a leading. Perhaps we might think to first establish ourselves in the region of our greatest familiarity, and this is what Jesus was led to as well, only by the Holy Spirit and not of His own thought.

And He taught in all their synagogues. He was not a rabble-rouser seeking some new thing outside the “church” but was a reformer seeking to work within the religious system, no matter how corrupt. He was, after all, a very Jewish Messiah.

But His ministry would be to remind the people, (or to announce to the people,) that while He was in fact Jewish through-and-through, they were Jewish in name only.

Their ‘religion’ had them trapped hopelessly in a system of laws and burdens that God had never imagined or desired. Men had replaced God, and sought to be served rather than to serve.

Jesus would turn this on its head – by serving.

So He taught in all their synagogues as One having authority, because He did. He would reform the “faith” they practiced into a faith of belief, but only if they would allow it. As hardened, brittle, systematic practitioners of a religious system rather than loving the grace of God, Jesus would first cut them to the quick by words of conviction which would serve as a mirror to show them their true condition before God.

This would lead to His rejection in His own home town. Nazareth was the first place to literally attempt to kill Jesus. They would have thrown Him of the cliff at the edge of town to the rocks below. Strange then, isn’t it, that He is referred to as Jesus of Nazareth?

-Pastor Bill