Christian Social Witness has increasingly become about SOCIAL MEDIA platforms & sharing live preaching & local Bible studies virtually. Stories in this category address 21st c. Christian issues of communication. Here’s where I need your help:
Would you email Roger@talkofJesus.com and tell us how, when & especially where you TALK to others online? Thanks for your COMMENTS & ideas. – Roger
Last time in Nazareth of Jesus – Rejected by your hometown (from a 2017 post) we mentioned a few prophets from the Old Testament. These men of God would have been familiar names in the hometown of Jesus Christ, but we are a little less familiar with many of these other prophets in this year of our Lord 2021.
Other Prophets before Jesus
The Lord reads from the scroll of Isaiah and tells Nazarenes of other Prophets they know well, like Elijah and Elisha.
I have written from the Old Testament Prophets many times before. Amos, in a recent series and from the Lamentations of Jerimiah provide connection to our contemporary challenges of ‘Christian’ life. We have also just read of Jesus’ testimony of ‘the sign of Jonah’ and those to who the LORD sent John in Nineveh [well to the east of this map].
In two posts we will summarize these Old Testament Prophets with a little more context.
Is it the Nazareth of Jesus? OR was this ‘Son of Man’ someone from an OTHER place?
Throughout the Gospels [GOOD NEWS] we hear the Lord Jesus called ‘JESUS OF NAZARETH.’ And of course we know from Scripture that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, taken to Egypt by Joseph and Mary and finally settled in Nazareth after Herod’s death. So here in his home church (synagogue) Jesus is welcomed at first, but then rejected after reading Scripture and applying its truth.
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your ears.”
Jesus Christ reading Isaiah in Nazareth
The crowds of Jews interspersed with gentiles had received Jesus well at first and initial reaction to the Lord at home seemed certain to confirm this local gaining fame throughout Galilee. So like the earlier prophets, Jesus preached with the authority of the Spirit of God.
From Nineveh to Nazareth
Last time we looked at the Prophet Jonah who was called to GO PREACH to the world of the gentiles in Nineveh. (Jonah would have loved to preach in his home church, but the LORD commanded him to preach repentance to those the Jews hated.)
Yes, centuries before, Jonah finally relented to the LORD’s will and preached to Nineveh. Then THEY REPENTED!
Here in first century Nazareth however, Jesus will not be accepted for obeying the LORD’s will as the Son of Man reads scripture of an earlier Prophet Isaiah to Jews who thought they knew him.
“No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! All the miracles that we heard were done in Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’”
But He said, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.
.. And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and brought Him to the crest of the hill on which their city had been built, so that they could throw Him down from the cliff..
What had been Jesus’ message to them?
REPENTANCE! The same preaching which the LORD commanded to Nineveh and here as Jesus points out, to Syria in the time of Elijah.
Remove your masks of hypocrisy, claimants of Christ. Let God’s enemy see your true face — that you DO NOT want them to be saved.
Nineveh initially didn’t even see the back of Jonah’s head as the man of God faced away from the will of the LORD.
Yet the LORD God wants to save sinners like us — Even other sinners not of us, that they too might come to know His love and grace.
(If you’re going to preach Jonah you probably ought to hear God’s message of repentance and obedience. You with ears to hear, hear the LORD — His will, before you just connect it to your missions or draw the picture for a Children’s Bible.)
HINT: It’s not about the whale.
Is Jonah and the Whale just a children’s Bible story to you?
Perhaps it is just an Old Testament parable predicting the resurrection?
NO. It is more than that.
For the LORD commands the Prophet Jonah to PREACH repentance to sinners. Yet this ‘religious man’ sails off on what he believes will be an easier journey. Jonah sails away from the troubles of others in favor of his own mission.
Who is this cruel enemy of Nineveh?
Even having read some ancient history background of the middle east at the time of Jonah, I again marveled at the contemporary look of those ancient people. Are we so different you might ask?
It was Sennacherib who made Nineveh a truly magnificent city (c. 700 BC). He laid out new streets and squares and built within it the South West Palace, or “palace without a rival”.. 80 rooms. A foundation of 3.5 million cubic yards with walls more than six stories high.
The stone carvings in the walls include many battle scenes, impalings and scenes showing Sennacherib’s men parading the spoils of war before him. .. he wrote of Babylon: “Its inhabitants, young and old, I did not spare, and with their corpses I filled the streets of the city.”
“And Hezekiah of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke…him I shut up in Jerusalem his royal city like a caged bird. Earthworks I threw up against him, and anyone coming out of his city gate I made pay for his crime. His cities which I had plundered I had cut off from his land.”
.. the total area of Nineveh (1,730 acres), and (15) great gates .. an elaborate system of (18) canals brought water from the hills to Nineveh..
The enclosed area had more than 100,000-150,000 inhabitants, about twice as many as Babylon at the time, placing it among the largest settlements worldwide.
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