Forever Home in the Eternal Family of God

Daily Encouragement for the Family of God by Kenton Cheek

27 March 2025

Reading From Luke 4:1-30

“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.”

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.”

—Luke 4:24-30

     It is amazing that when Jesus read from the Isaiah scroll and declared that He was the fulfillment of those prophecies, His listeners in the synagogue “spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips,” but when He began to speak of Yahweh historically extending grace and mercy to Gentiles, He made them angry.  They did not challenge His claim to fulfill Messianic prophecies as blasphemous, it was His challenge to their Jewish ethnocentric views that inflamed them.  We must allow God to challenge the prejudices that come with our sinful nature.

     It has always been God’s intention to bless all people through His chosen people, the descendants of Abraham.  Unfortunately there were many Jews who thought God’s favor began and ended with them, but that was never His idea behind having a chosen people.  He had to choose someone and He chose them, but all throughout the Word of God we see Him wanting to bless all the peoples of the world through them.  He does not want blessings to flow into a stagnant pond, but rather to flow and spill over washing the whole world with goodness. 

     The same applies to His people today.  The Father made a way by grace through faith in the Son and His atonement to be reconciled with Himself and to become His dwelling place.  He fills the hearts of His children to overflowing with His love and the power of His Spirit in order that they would share the spiritual and temporal blessings He gives them with others.  In sharing His truth in love, we partner with Him in expanding His Kingdom and bringing light, liberty and love to people all over Planet Earth. 

“Lord, thank You for grafting us into You, the True Vine.  You are the Vine and we are the branches.  We are so grateful for Your love.  Inspire us to share Your love with others, that they might also know Your bountiful, undeserved favor.  Bring contagious joy to our hearts.  We love You Lord Jesus and it is our desire to honor You in thought, word and deed.  In the loving and powerful Name of Jesus Christ I pray these things.  Amen.”

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

—Ephesians 2:14-18

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

—Habakkuk 2:14