Mtthew 4:23-25

At the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus goes to His home region and begins recruiting a small group of disciples.  It tells us here in verse 23 that He went throughout all Galilee teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the Gospel (good news) of the Kingdom, and healing the sick and delivering people from demonic oppression.  We know because the book of Luke chapter 4 tells us that at this time Jesus actually stopped and taught in the synagogue in Nazareth, His home town, where He read to them a Messianic prophecy from Isaiah 61.  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And then Jesus told His hometown crowd that this Messianic prophecy was fulfilled in Him.


As I read this section from Matthew saying how Jesus was preaching the Kingdom and healing the sick and ministering to the oppressed and how great crowds of people were coming to Him to be whole and right with God, it strikes me that Jesus wasn't just speaking words; He wasn't just talking, He was doing.  He didn't just preach and teach the Kingdom, He lived the Kingdom and He demonstrated the Kingdom in very real, very practical, very tangible ways.  His message was compelling because He backed words with actions.

I wonder how much more compelling our teaching of the Gospel would be today if we who are followers of Jesus got out of our churches and into our neighborhoods, into the streets, into the lives of people who don't actually know the Good News.  And instead of just talking about Jesus, lived Jesus and demonstrated Jesus by confronting the kingdom of darkness head-on.  What if we actually confronted the ravaging effects of sin and sickness and evil and demonic oppression?  What might happen?

Somehow in our modern evolution of following Jesus we have decided that all that is actually required or even expected is that we set aside an hour or two one day a week to go to building and sing a few songs together and listen to a preacher tell us what he has been studying in the Bible for the past week.

We say that we are followers of Jesus, but that is not what Jesus did -or at least it is not all that He did or even most of what He did.  Something is wrong with our picture of what it means to follow Jesus.

Can we, with real honesty and integrity, say that we are followers of Jesus if we aren't going to the places He goes or saying the things He says or doing the things that He does?  Just wondering.