Tag: redemption

Who Wanted to Throw Jesus Off a Cliff? What Provoked that Reaction, and What It Might Say about Us

Jesus provoked the response that is in all of our hearts

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In Luke four, Jesus announced his public ministry in his hometown synagogue with these words:

“The spirit is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

Good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, and freedom for the oppressed echoes Isaiah 61. “[T]he year of the Lord’s favor” echoes Leviticus 25, where Moses passed on the jubilee instructions given by the LORD to the LORD’s people.

Jesus was saying that these things foretold by Isaiah and the Jubilee instructions from Moses were fulfilled in him. Most of us are familiar with the way that many of the prophecies in Isaiah were fulfilled in Jesus, but we may not appreciate how Leviticus 25 takes on special significance – and controversy – in the life and ministry of Jesus.

Jesus announced his public ministry in a dramatic way in his hometown synagogue when he asked for the Isaiah scroll, opened it, read the words quoted above, and sat down. The people in the synagogue were initially “amazed at the gracious words” Jesus spoke. (Luke 4:22) By the end of the short exchange that occurred after that, the people wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff. (Luke 4:28-29) What happened?

The words of Jesus that provoked his hometown people to anger were these:

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘No prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.'”

Luke 4:24-27

Why did these two stories provoke the people to anger? Maybe the better question (the one we might not want to ask) is whether we are much different than they were?

The tension that played out in that Galilean synagogue when Jesus announced his ministry presages our modern reality 2000 years later. We still have a difficult time with the instructions, intentions and long-term plans that God announced when He told Abram that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through his descendants.

Today, I want to review some relevant provisions in Isaiah 61 and Leviticus 25 to explore why that reference did not sit well with God’s people. It wasn’t the references so much as the stories of Elijah and Elisha that he connected to them. Those stories – and what they suggest – may still not resonate well.

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Trusting God from Beginning to End in 2026

How do trust God in a world that is violent and corrupt?

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Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. (Revelation 1:8; 21:6; and 22:13) Jesus was in the beginning with God, the Father, and the universe and all that is in it was made through Jesus. (John 1:1-3)

At this time of year, we celebrate God descending to become man in Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem into a common family in a far flung place. Jesus was God in his very nature, but he deigned to shed himself of that glory and power to become man, to become a servant to his own creation, and to humble himself to the point of death at the hands of his own creation. (Philippians 2:5-8)

In the end, Jesus will be exalted to the “highest place” with a “name that is above every name.” (Phil. 2:9) Every knee in heaven and on earth will bow to him, and every tongue will acknowledge that “Jesus Christ is Lord,” to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:10-11)

From the garden of Eden to the new heavens and earth and the New Jerusalem in which God will dwell with His people, God has had a plan from the beginning to the end. God set eternity in the hearts of people, but not so that we would know the beginning from the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) We don’t know, but God knows. Do we trust Him?

That is the question in my mind on this 1st day of the New Year in 2026. That is the question with which I challenge myself. Will I trust Him with my life? With the world? With the insanity that seems to characterize the year that just ended in United States of America where I live?

Since God created the universe and populated it with people and animals, God ordained and allowed people to populate the Earth. God didn’t dictate how the history of His creation would unfold. He created Adam and Eve with the capacity to live in sync with God and the universe, but He also gave them the capacity to go their own ways. God had a plan from the beginning, but He allowed the universe and mankind, His crowning creation, to unfold as it would.

I am beginning a new year of reading through the Bible as I have done many years in the past. I have read through the first handful of chapters in Genesis, and my thoughts gather around the question: will I trust God better in the New Year?

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The Top 10 Most Read Articles in 2024

This blog has picked up some steam in the last year, and COVID era articles lead the way

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I have been blogging since 2012. I began in simple obedience to what I believed God was prompting me to do. I didn’t initially set out to write for anyone in particular. I endeavored only to be obedient to use the gifts God has given me. This blog began as a journey of faith for me, not just as a way to be obedient, but as a way of listening, seeking to understand, and working out what God was working in me.

This blog still is those things, but I soon realized that I wasn’t just writing for me, that I had an audience, albeit a very small one. The audience to whom I found myself writing in those early days was the seeker, the unbeliever, the curious, and the doubter.

Over the years I find have found myself writing often for a different audience. I still have a heart for the seeker, but I find myself writing more to the American church, the people who call themselves Christians, whether their claim is predominantly political, cultural, or spiritual.

I see a large segment of the church identifying uncritically with a political and cultural form of Christianity, as I once did, and missing the ever counter-cultural nature of the kingdom of God. My heart is to urge people to be faithful to Christ alone – not to a nation, a culture, a political party, or even a denomination.

These concerns prompted the article that had the highest views in 2024. With 6241 views, Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today? was the most read article on Navigating By Faith this year. Fitting it is, given the shift in my writing.

This article was a “Covid baby”, written in 2020, as I wrestled with the way some Christians, including some of my friends, embraced a mixture of unabashed support for Donald Trump and an appetite to follow crazy conspiracy trails down rabbit holes as we neared a presidential election in the throes of a worldwide pandemic.

Our nation was greatly polarized, and voices in American church were just as polarized as the world around us. Those tensions over politics, how we should respond to COVID, and how we should faithfully reflect God to the world around us drove me to reflect on the days when nation of Israel was torn between King Saul and David, the man after God’s heart.

These tensions continue today. We all want (or should want) to be people after God’s heart. We still need to know how to understand the times and how God would have us live in them, being faithful to His purpose in harmony with the kingdom of God, which is not a kingdom of this world. These concerns have not abated, which may be why this article has been the most read article each year since I wrote it.

Another, more personal and timeless reflection was the subject of the second most read article in 2024: The Redemption of Korah: the Sons of Korah. Also written during COVID in 2020, this article was viewed 3580 times this year. It has been the second most read article on this blog each year since I wrote it in 2020.

The Redemption of the Sons of Korah speaks to the redemptive work of God despite our worst tendencies. The article followed some research I did about the sons of Korah. Korah led his tribe in rebellion against God’s man, Moses, and they were all swallowed up by the earth.

That seemed to be the end of the story, but something in the text caught me attention, and began to search the rest of Scripture to find out whether any descendants of Korah survived and what became of them. What I found is one of the most poignant, but beautiful, redemption stories in the Bible.

One other article topped 3000 views in 2024, but before I get to it, I pause to reflect on the fact that I previously measured the most read articles of each year in the hundreds. In some years, I could not find ten articles with even 100 views. By 2019, the total viewership had risen to just over 10,000.  It jumped to 20,000 in 2020, the year of COVID. The next three years topped out around 30,000, but this year viewership has jumped above 61,000!

I have no idea what accounts for the change. It isn’t that I have written more articles. I have written double the number and triple the number of articles in previous years. I don’t know what the explanation is for the increase. I don’t monetize this sight, and I only post the articles on my Facebook group, typically. Sometimes, I post to my public Facebook feed, and I post to LinkedIn even more rarely.

I don’t spend much effort to be found, but people seem to find me. In fact, 114,190 people found Navigating By Faith on search engines this year according to WordPress. This compares to 5272 people finding the blog on Facebook where I post all of the articles. Go figure.

Any way, rounding out the top 3 articles is God Meets Us Where We Are, with well over 3000 views. The three most read articles in 2024, including this one, were all written in 2020, during the “COVID era”. During that time, we were all home more, reading more, and reflecting more on the state of the world and our lives.

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Comments on Why God Became Incarnate and Died for Our Sins

kevingdrendel3 Comments

Daniel Mann does a good job of explaining Why Christ, as God Incarnate, Had to Die for Our Sins. In reading his explanation, my mind goes to statements like God’s “transcendent love” and “total abhorrence for sin”, God’s “righteousness” and “divine forbearance” for sin, and the price that had to be paid “to satisfy God’s righteous character”.

Daniel describes his own reaction to these concepts formerly, as a non-Christian. He felt God was a “deceiving sadist” until one day he realized that Jesus was God incarnate, that God did not merely sacrifice a created being – God sacrificed Himself in human form!

Indeed, that is the central point of Christian belief, which is described beautifully and poignantly in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:5-8):

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature [form of] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature [form] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

These things would be small consolation, also, if not for the victory on the other side of the cross (Phil. 2:9-11)

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

That Jesus was fully man and fully God incarnated into a man is key to the understanding of Christianity. That God is three “persons” in one is also key, as it provides some explanation how God can incarnate Himself into the form of a man and die (in human flesh), though God remains self-existent and eternal, the Creator (and not a created being).

Not that there is no mystery in this. I concede this is hard for creatures who are limited dimensionally to wrap our heads around these ideas.

Finally, it explains how (and why) death to Jesus in the flesh had no power over him. As God incarnate, death “could not hold him”. (Acts 2:24)

But, I am not writing to clarify these aspects of Christian doctrine. I want to focus on Daniel Mann’s personal revelation that Jesus was God incarnate, and his death was voluntary – God sacrificing Himself, and not God sacrificing some created being.

This realization made all the difference for him. When he really understood this distinction, he began to see the love of God that was demonstrated in that act of self-sacrifice – something God did not have to to, but He did it for us because He loves us.

Other people, I know, are not convinced. Indeed, if a person understands Jesus to be human only, and not God incarnate, the story makes no sense.

Another stumbling block is God’s “abhorrence for sin” and the need to satiate a “righteous” God. These Christian concepts are foreign territory for many people. Why, if God is so loving, does He demand sacrifices for sin?

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What Are We Missing in the Story of the Garden of Eden?

Why did God place the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden and forbid Adam to eat it?

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Once again, I am reading the epic of Eden by Sandra Richter. She takes the orthodox, traditional position that Eden was perfect, man fell, bringing God’s creation down with him, and God is redeeming man with creation so that man will live forever in perfection, again, after redemption is complete. I am indebted to her and other scholars, and I greatly appreciated her book.

I wrote recently, on the question, Was the Garden of Eden Really Perfect? With due respect to Sandra Richter, I am leaning in the direction of no, the Garden of Eden wasn’t perfect. I explain my thinking in the article linked in this paragraph, and today I want to explore something that may be missing from the traditional narrative (at least as I understand it).

Today, I am posing some questions that occur to me as I continue to read through Sandra Richter’s fine book. Why did God place the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden? Did God know men would eat from it? What is the point of the fall and the long road back to redemption?

I don’t claim to have all the answers, or at least not all the right answers. We may not know, and may never know, the answers in their nuanced details. I think that is ok, though we should strive to know as best as we can.

Maybe some things are not meant for us to know; or at least we are not meant to know that we know. We have a strong tendency to become proud and self-righteous and to start relying on our own understanding, rather than remaining humble before God and our fellow man.

Yet, I think God wants us to seek to understand. “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” (Proverbs 25:2) Thus, my article today is an attempt at better understanding God’s redemption story and searching out these things.

Surely, God had purpose in placing that tree in the garden, right? God is sovereign and all-knowing, right? Thus, I think the questions I pose today are good for us to consider.

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