Thursday 17 Dec 2020

December 17: Luke 7:18-23
 
Key Verse: Luke 7:22
So he replied to the messengers, ‘Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.
 
Devotion:
Yesterday we had this passage at the beginning of our estates meeting. What is the first thing you get out of this passage? Is it the importance of John and Jesus getting introduced? Is it the miracles Jesus was performing: healing the sick, releasing people from evil spirits, giving the blind sight, allowing the lame to walk, giving hearing to the deaf, even raising the dead! Or is it the giving of the good news to the poor?
 
Jesus was doing so many things which were catching the attention of the priests, the scribe and the pharisees. It wasn’t as if He was going out of His way to upset them, but what He was doing was certainly getting their attention. The people were getting used to a hierarchy of religion which was becoming more important than the telling of the gospel. It seemed like people did not want to upset others and keeping to this hierarchical structure helped them to do that!
 
But, in amongst all the miracles Jesus was listing for the two disciples to go back to John with, was the giving of the good news to the poor. Those people who maybe did not feel worthy to be able to enter the temple. Those people who had been marginalised and missed out of the religious circles. These are the people Jesus was reaching out to because they were the people who needed to hear the gospel most of all!
 
We have seen people rebelling against hierarchical structures in society lately, what with the Black Lives Matter movement, equal rights and pay structures between sexes and races – we are beginning to see people take notice of the age-old structures in society which were placed there by the privileged few. Let us take the gospel, the good news, and tell it to the people who have been left out of society just because they don’t fit the normal!
 
Points to Ponder:
Who did you get to hear the gospel from?
 
Why did they pick you to give the good news to?