Jesus and the Healing of the World

What was Jesus  really all about during his public ministry? Have you ever thought of that? I know by looking at the response Jesus had when he began his public ministry, I would have had different priorities than he did. Here is what I mean. Jesus always made a big splash, he got big crowds—always, he was popular and yet, he didn’t spend most of his time doing the things that would go viral on social media if he lived today. And it must be said that Jesus was the most intentional man that has ever lived. He lived a real life of 24 hour days and his time showed he had a strategy of how he was going to bring about his intended purpose in coming—to heal all the brokenness of the world—and you know was it was-discipleship. Jesus put his time not in what looked successful to the masses, but he invested everything in a few, who would really be his disciples and then told them they were to make disciples.Now I want you to think about this. If you were on Jesus’ church planting team, one of the twelve, you watch encounter after encounter with people, huge crowds, I mean Jesus could get a crowd. Wouldn’t you think the strategy sessions would go something like this: “We could do that feeding thing again, we had 5,000 people show up.” Or, “what about the time on the plain where you delivered that sermon, people came from everywhere, we could do that again.” Someone would then suggest, “Let’s let people know you will be at such and such a place and there will be a healing service.” If I would have been there, I would have suggested we show up at another wedding feast and have Jesus play bartender again. You see what I mean. And yet Jesus didn't do that. Jesus had one over arching value that made him forgo some good things, popular things, for what he thought was most essential in his three years on the earth and it dominates the Gospels. He spend his time in the most unglamorous manner—apart from the noise of success, far from the doing the things that got him popularity and notoriety, he intentionally said, the way I am going to change the world, is to pour my life into these 12 guys—Discipleship. We will talk about it this Sunday!