Vineyard Church | Weekly Update January 22nd, 2025
Jan 22, 2025
On Sunday, Luke presented us with the narrative of Jesus’ desert experience, His time of testing by the enemy of God, and how His victory over this testing reflects His mission to seek and save the lost. Jesus resisted the temptation to indulge His own will in the place of the will of God, a battle we all face every day as we walk out this discipleship path. Moving the words “not my will but your will be done” into intentional and desired action is our common work.
The results of this work are experienced immediately by Jesus, as Luke continues chapter four with a story about where the Holy Spirit led Him next, and what the Spirit led Jesus to do. Here it is:
14 Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region. 15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, 19 and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.” 20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. 21 Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” Luke 4:14-21 (NLT)
Our culture seems to love mic-drop moments, and this one is certainly in the running for the best in history. Jesus is quoting a message of salvation from the Prophet Isaiah that explains how God will accomplish the plan that He had been unfolding since creation. Before God appears in His full glory, salvation would be offered through the faithfulness and work of an Anointed One, a Messiah. Jesus is proclaiming Himself to be this Messiah and making this proclamation in His hometown… where he was “known.”
In many ways, we are all “known.” Being “known” and being known are not the same. Right after Jesus drops the mic by announcing that He is the Messiah, the question is asked, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” In other words, “Isn’t this the son of that carpenter? Who does he think he is, we have seen him grow up! We know his family; we know how messed up they are! Who does he think he is?!”
Being “known” is really more about the know-er than it is about the one being known. The filters, lenses, wounds, immaturities, and experiences of the know-er are applied to the perceived knowledge of the one being known. The resulting picture is less an accurate representation of the person being known and more a picture of the brokenness of the one doing the knowing.
The reality we face is that it is difficult to let people out of the boxes we have created for them. While we might want to be seen as able to change, mature, grow, and progress, it can be difficult to grant that the same might be true for others. We hold them where we first found them, and in this, we deny the reality that God is at work in everyone, all the time.
This dynamic has even infiltrated the church, both historic and present. As we work through the temptation to want mercy for ourselves and judgment for others, we are confronted with what we “know” about people being in conflict with what we can KNOW about people. Sometimes it is easier to see what people are trying to come out of rather than where they are headed. While understandable, this is also a grave error in that it robs people of their true identity in Jesus and ignores the work that God is doing.
As we prepare for launching our next Alpha, we can pause to discern how new and non-believers might have experienced this from Christians in the past. As we invite our friends and families to know Jesus, we are also inviting them to be known by us rather than be “known” by us. The freedom of this exercise is not just for them, it is for us as well. In the move from “know” to know, we see and experience the work of the Father, and grow in faith as we see Him work.
Adam Greenwell
Pastor
Billings Vineyard Chruch www.billingsvineyard.org
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