Emphasis Preaching Journal

Most preachers have had the experience of going to the congregation where they grew up and preaching for those people. This is usually received as sort of cute, and one is told what a wonderful person you have become when, of course, no one had much hope for you when you were a cut-up in second grade Sunday church school. It is extremely difficult to bring the strong Word of God into a community that has known you from infancy. This was, of course, Jesus' problem in Nazareth. His Word from God was in his very person, and that was hard to take. That is why Luke's task is the easier one.