Tidings for Tuesday
And rose up and thrust Him out of the city, and led Him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong. Luke 4:29
A large company in need of a good supply of metal parts for one of the machines they produced entered into negotiations with a private company with a small fabrication shop in a small town. The owner of the small shop was looking forward to what would be an excellent piece of business that would enable him to hire a few more workers. However, someone in the town heard rumours of the deal, except that the rumours falsely said the shop would be building materials for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas. This was at a time when fracking was a highly controversial and inflammatory issue in the area. In response to the rumours, some of the people in the town assembled a mob that went to the shop and set fire to it, causing extensive damage. The owner of the shop was broken hearted, not only at the loss and damage, but at the savage way that people he considered neighbours had turned against him. Despite the people’s attempts to apologize for their mistake, the man moved his business to a different town, vowing never to return. He had been treated much like the Lord Jesus in our text today.
How it must have grieved the Lord Jesus to have been so misunderstood and so violently rejected in the town where He had been raised! These folks were his former neighbours, people He had grown up among and worked among as a carpenter. With most of them He would have been on a first-name basis. But when He presented His claim to be the Messiah, they turned against Him in rejection and anger. They even attempted to kill Him in their unreasonable rage. We don’t read of Him ever returning to Nazareth again, although He would never retaliate against those people for their behaviour. He had offered them an opportunity to receive Him and they rejected Him. That was their punishment. And it was a great punishment, as they would later learn, just as those who reject the Gospel today and who attack those who preach it will also learn.
No Christian has the right to deprive anyone else of the opportunity to hear the Gospel, just as the Lord Jesus would not deprive the folks in Nazareth of the opportunity to accept Him. Within reason, we should witness to everyone and anyone. Some Christians have even taken great abuse from those they were trying to reach, and sometimes their willingness to take the abuse has helped to win over their tormentors. But that is the exception. We need to accept as the Lord Jesus did that those who reject the Gospel are often making their final decision for eternity. Sadly, we must leave them with the Lord.
It should cause us grief to see those around us turning against God and His Gospel. But we should not take it personally; it is against God they are acting, and unto God they will have to answer. – Jim MacIntosh