You might understand The LORD’s Favor as a statement. However, to understand it as Jesus did is a completely different thing. And it didn’t go so well when he tried to explain it. I was twenty-five when I gave my first sermon. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Fortunately, my hometown audience was understanding and gracious. Jesus wasn’t so fortunate. In his first recorded synagogue sermon, He gave the crowd a prophecy fulfilling message on The LORD’s Favor, and his hometown audience wanted to kill him. It’s one of the most explosive and stunning stories in Jesus’s life, and yet most people completely miss what he was doing because they don’t have the background information. That’s what this teaching provides. And in doing so, we see that Jesus’s life and calling was to inhabit The LORD’s Favor – to extend God’s mercy, compassion, and blessing to all people. It’s a message Jesus’s religious audience didn’t want to hear. May that not be true of us.

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