Focus on the Kingdom
Luke 4:42-44
Jesus has been doing a lot of ministry. Think about a quick outline of what He has done in Capernaum.
• He has been teaching in synagogues
• He has been driving out demons
• He has been healing the sick
We like to think that people were moved by His compassion and His godliness. I don’t believe that is completely right. Doctors in the ancient world were very expensive. Only the rich could actually afford them. The reason so many people went to Jesus was twofold
• He was cheap
• He was effective
When someone showed up healing common people for free, it was only natural that people should flock to him.
Doctors still followed practices like blood letting and massage for cures. They prescribed hot baths (or cold) in pools (or rivers). Sometimes they used mud as a healing agent.
Other times they would encourage visitation of the Greek god of healing. People would sleep all night in the temple and hope for a vision. More often than not, the vision they got told them to do strange things like walk in winter without shoes.
Obviously, these treatments did not have much hope of curing a serious illness. Jesus, on the other hand,
• cured fevers
• made the blind see
• strengthened cripples
• cleared up leprosy
Visibly and immediately. He did it without mumbo jumbo. People could clearly see that He was not performing some special kind of magic because
• He just spoke a word
• or touched a person
• or they touched Him
and they were healed. Very rarely, Jesus used a little earth as a healing tool. He did all this without trying to draw attention to Himself. In fact, He often told people to keep quiet about what had happened.
I believe He did this, because He had a mission and it was not to heal the sick. I don’t believe this was a problem for Him, but He had teaching to do for an entire nation and He needed to get about the work. He had taught in this place and they had proven their resistance to His words.
At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. But he said, “I must preach 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.
Luke 4:42-44 (NIV)
Jesus needed time for Himself
The bottom line, is all this healing and delivery ministry made Him tired. The section of the gospel we are looking at probably represents about 9 months of ministry. He was working hard, and He needed time away. Sometimes He went away to pray, but sometimes, as in today’s passage, the Bible doesn’t say what He was doing, just getting away. He needed spiritual refreshment, and He needed rest.
The fact is, that the more people He healed, the more came. The more He told them to be quiet about it, the more they talked. The impression we get is that He worked from morning till night, and when He went away, they found Him and tried to keep Him working.
We would never say that Jesus was "just a man." But He was a man and men get tired. Another fact is that the more people perceive that they need another person, the more they will feed that need.
The people did not need Him as much as they thought they did
This had nothing to do with whether He loved the people. It had everything to do with physical limitations. Jesus just could not stay in one place and do all that people wanted Him to do.
Jesus was saying that He could leave. They didn’t need Him as much as they thought they did. They didn’t want Him to leave. They tried to get Him to stay, but He refused.
Jesus had other people to reach
Finally the reason He was leaving comes to light. He had to preach in other towns. He could stay and work with the sick forever, but that wasn’t why He had come. He had come to:
preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also
He said that was why He was sent. As much as this town thought they needed Him to heal their sicknesses, other towns needed Him more, so that they could learn about the kingdom.
And He left
Jesus, where are you going?
We need you
Hurting, suffering people are waiting
Don’t you love us?
It isn’t fair that you help some but not others
But notice the pattern. Jesus openly said in one of His messages that healing was part of His ministry, not its focus. He said that as long as the focus of ministry was misplaced, healings would not be very common.
The focus of ministry was the good news of the kingdom
In verses 20 – 30 Jesus made this clear. He made it clear that the meeting of earthly needs was incidental. It was not dispensable or unimportant. It was a crucial part of what He did. But it was not the focus.
When the people heard this, they were infuriated and wanted to throw Him over a cliff. So Jesus had to demonstrate His point by spending time healing. One day their hearts are hard and they want to kill Him, the next they overlook His religious ideas as long as He meets their physical needs. For Jesus that was not going to work.
The apostles followed Him as He left people behind whose needs had not been met. Instead, Jesus led them to places where they could preach the kingdom.
What did they learn?
That the preaching of the good news of the kingdom was multi-faceted. It included mercy on people’s earthly needs, but it did not settle there. The real focus is the good news of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus is clear time after time. We may not tell people the good news and ignore their needs. It does not demonstrate love but ignorance and apathy. Love apart from kindness is meaningless.
But kindness is not the end all of love either.
C.S. Lewis reminds us in The Problem of Pain of this truth:
He points out that people are kind to animals when they are suffering by killing them. Kindness alone does not care whether a person is good or bad, as long as they do not suffer.
God does not think like this. He often admits pain into our lives to refine us and make us good. Hebrews 12:8 says He punishes the child He loves, and that only an illegitimate child is neglected and uncorrected by his father. Hebrews reminds us that the pain we suffer in this life is sometimes like the experience of child who is being disciplined and primarily understands the immediate experience and is made unhappy and uncomfortable, while he is unaware of the long term benefits of his "suffering."
In short, God is more concerned with people’s spiritual well being than He is with their physical pain. He is not willing to ignore that pain, but He is willing to prioritize it. He may be willing to relieve people’s pain, but He is not willing to do so at the expense of their spirits.
The disciples needed to learn this lesson. They were about to enter a world that had not existed before. They were about to enter a world in which their beliefs would become not just suspect, but opposed. They would have to encourage people to endure suffering for the gospel.
Leaving people’s illnesses and injuries as they were was small potatoes in comparison.
What is your ministry focus?
Do you minister to other people? Do you reach out with the good news of the coming of Christ and all He spiritually has for us?
As we minister to people we will run into all kinds of roadblocks to the gospel.
• They will be sick
• They will be hungry
• They will be poor
• They will be in emotional turmoil
And just as Jesus did, we must reach out to meet these needs. We must exercise kindness and compassion on people, knowing that people’s pain is important to God. We must not expect them to be able to hear the gospel of Christ above the growling of their stomachs or the chattering of their teeth.
But it is important to remember, that people will accept help for their felt needs wherever that help comes from. If the help we deliver does not have an element of the telling of the good news and making disciples for Jesus, we have lost focus. There are different ways to maintain focus.
The most biblical way is to team up
The Bible tells about the beginning of the Church. Way back when things were first starting, the Apostles started getting word that the benevolent distribution of food was not being done evenly. They did not want to be distracted from praying and preaching, so they said to choose 7 men whose duty it would be to make sure that people’s physical needs were met, while they were freed up to meet people’s spiritual needs. And deacons were invented.
In many cases there is nothing about people’s needs or their spiritual condition that one person cannot address. Sometimes though, we all need help. Some people are gifted in ministries of mercy, others are gifted in evangelism or teaching. There are all kinds of things that the Holy Spirit empowers people for, and no one person has all the power. Some of you will be good at one thing, others will be good at other things.
So if you are good at meeting people’s physical needs, you may also be good at speaking with them about spiritual things, but maybe not. On the other hand, you may be good at sharing the gospel, but not so good at getting past the physical needs of people. Maybe you are good at both, but often people are not.
Whichever you are good at, you must be sure not to neglect the other. If you cannot do it yourself, make sure you work with others who can.
Jesus did both brilliantly, but you aren’t Jesus. Be willing to admit your limitations and get help.
If you don’t you are in danger of missing an important element of sharing the good news of the kingdom:
• Either you will try to share it with someone you are not making an honest effort to love
• Or you will be trying to be kind to someone without addressing God’s most pressing issues
So ask yourself:
Have I been trying to evanglize without love? This is not a more normal problem. Most of us are too frightened about sharing the good news to do it at all, let alone without loving the person.
Mennonites are more prone to the opposite problem:
Am I trying to be kind, but never getting around to sharing the good news of the kingdom?
If you have either of these limitations, don’t beat yourself up. Look around the room and find someone who makes up for your weaknesses. It isn’t a sin to admit that we can’t do everything. It is a sin to ignore our limitations and refuse to focus on the things God is focused on.
So, you might say, I would rather visit with people and meet their needs than anything else in the world. That is great. God wired you that way. Do the work and keep it up.
However, do look around for a person who is skilled with evangelism and get them to go with you sometimes so that the person you are helping can hear the gospel too.
Maybe you are an evangelist and you wind up focusing on people who don’t need help because you wouldn’t know how to help a person if they gave you instructions and the money to do it. That’s ok. God made you who you are and the Holy Spirit gifted you to tell the good news. Look around for someone who can help you meet the needs of the people God brings into your life. Demonstrate your love for people by reaching beyond your own grasp.
Also, like Jesus, don’t wear yourself out
Even Jesus needed to get away.
The story is told about a pastor who would not take a vacation.
"There’s too much work to do," he says.
"But you need a rest," says his Bishop.
"The Devil doesn’t take a vacation," the pastor argued.
So the Bishop says, "No kidding, is he your new mentor?"
You need a break or you will burn out. You need to cultivate your own spiritual garden or your fruit will wilt on the vine. You can’t fill another person’s glass from your own empty pitcher.
Finally, move on
This is difficult. Jesus had demonstrated that Capernaum as a town was not willing to hear the good news. They were willing to take all the help they could get, but they wanted none of His kingdom. They would take all of Him they could get, as long as He didn’t challenge them spiritually.
So Jesus moved on to give the good news of the kingdom to others.
He did not completely abandon Capernaum. He went back from time to time, but He did not camp out there and stay. He took His ministry to others who would respond.
There are too many people who need to hear the Gospel for us to settle with people who don’t care or won’t hear.
We can help till our loving arms fall off, but if they don’t want to accept the God who moves us to compassion, then we should be like Jesus and move on.
• There may be more help to be given
• There always will be
• They may love us and want us to stay
• That isn’t surprising if you are truly helping
• You may have more you can give
• Jesus certainly did
But He had to move on and give the good news to others.
• You should continue to pray for people
• You need not cut all contact
• You make sure you are not just running away
But in the end, you should move on, if you have done all you can to demonstrate God’s love and to give the good news and no response is happening.
A few touchstones to help you:
• Have you been working with this person for a long, long time?
• Does it seem the more you do, the more there is to do?
• Do spiritual topics get put out quickly?
• Has the person told you to not talk about God?
If this is true, they may be resisting the very reason for which you are working. It may be time to refocus. It may not be easy to do, but it may be necessary.
Discipleship is a "going" proposition. We are called to go and to share the good news as we go. When the peace of the kingdom is welcomed we should stay and share that peace. But when it is rejected, we should keep looking for the people out there who will respond to it.
• It may be tedious
• It may feel heartless
• It may even be discouraging
But it is the way Jesus did things, and it is the way He trained His disciples. We cannot say that we know better than He does.
