…everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.

– Luke 6:40b

What do these followers of Jesus look like? Would you recognize a disciple in a crowd?

When the Lord, Christ Jesus began His three-year teaching mission He called disciples and from them appointed twelve Apostles, an inner circle of leaders among many disciples to be sent out with the gospel.

Jesus immediately glorified as a teacher of Galilean Jews

Luke 4:¹⁴ And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. ¹⁵ And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

The gospel of Luke carefully records truth from eyewitness accounts of numerous historical citizens of the first century.

The following is a fictional representation of witness of one of Jesus’ first disciples. 

“I was in our synagogue the day our rabbi handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to Jesus. He read part of a passage so familiar to most of us:

Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Isaiah had prophesied even more of what we had prayed for through many generations:

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified. – Isaiah 61:3

How we all hoped that this radiant new rabbi before us would offer such hope.

Perhaps He would be the one to save us from our captivity by the Romans. And do you know what He said?

 “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

– Luke 4:21b

Yes! Of course this Jesus seems in every way to be our promised Messiah.

But then He said some things which were not too nice about Israel (our former country before we were defeated). Most everybody got angry. Some of them even tried to run him out of Nazareth where we all grew up with him. But not me… and not some of my friends.

No, we knew Jesus was much more than just a carpenter; really, we always saw that anytime we encountered Him. You could tell. Jesus was pleasantly unlike no other man, yet so much like us… like the men we wanted to be.

So Jesus of Nazareth (as the Judeans would later call Him out of disrespect) slipped out of town right through the middle of the crowd near me and my friends.

We looked at one another and right then decided we needed to hear more of Jesus’ teaching.

What did He mean when in the synagogue Jesus said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing?”

So some of us gathered our families together to follow this promised Teacher of Israel into the mountains to hear more and later into nearby towns like Capernaum. We just had to hear what Jesus had to say.

To be continued…