In Luke 4:16-21, Jesus presented Himself to His hometown in Nazareth. He read from Isaiah 61:1-2 and then stated, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” As far as the text is concerned, Jesus did not elaborate on that text any further, but He did expect His audience to understand the text, its context, and its application to Jesus. He gave them something to anticipate as they saw and listened to His ministry unfold.
When the wise men came to Jerusalem to seek the King of the Jews, the priests and scribes correctly identified and applied the prophecy from Micah 5:2 to the Messiah. There was not hesitation in assuming the text could be understood and fulfilled.
Jesus denounces the religious leaders, specifically the Pharisees, for their hypocritical traditions in Matthew 15:4-6. What they were obviously doing was invalidating the commandment to “honor father and mother” and Jesus expected them to see their obvious distortion. And He expected them to change their distortion!
In the heart of His ministry, Jesus rebuked the Jewish leaders for not allowing the Scriptures to lead them to Him: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). Of course, the weakness was in the will not the ability or inability to understand the Scriptures.
In Acts 2, Peter and the other apostles preached the first gospel sermon after the ascension of Jesus Christ. They applied Joel 2 to the day’s events as well as explained the application of Psalm 16. Three thousand Jews understood that message, grasped the application of the Old Testament texts, and responded with repentance and baptism.
In Acts 8, we have a treasurer coming from Ethiopia to Jerusalem who was reading Isaiah 53. He needed to be taught that Isaiah was not talking about himself but about the Messiah. When Philip explained to him that Isaiah was predicting the vicarious sacrifice of the Messiah, the treasure understood the message with faith, confession, and baptism.
In 2 Corinthians 2:5-11, Paul commends the Christians for understanding what he wrote in 1 Corinthians and for obeying what he wrote at that time! He did not allow them to continue believing and practicing error!
Lots of passages in God’s word give principles that are specific and their meaning is obvious: Ephesians 4:28 & Galatians 5:19.
What are we trying to say? As if you could not draw the proper conclusion: the meaning of God’s word is often very obvious and we should seek to understand the clear truth that the Holy Spirit is teaching us and sometimes a deeper analysis is not necessary.
Paul Holland
