Being Christlike - The Priority of the Message

Luke 4:43 - but he (Jesus) said to them, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose."

Throughout the last couple of posts, I have been looking at the life of Christ and examining how he lived here on earth. People state that we are to be like Christ, but what exactly does that mean? So far, we have looked at Jesus' priority to the Father, his priority to the ministry, and today, we are going to look at his priority to the message.

Jesus was out in a deserted place and a crowd came and found him. They tried to keep him from leaving them. I can imagine this as a scene of the people repeatedly trying to hold him back by making up continued excuses or asking more and more questions of him, doing everything they could to try to keep Jesus to stay in their presence. However, Jesus finally tells them that it is absolutely necessary for him to go to other cities in order to preach the good news. Jesus knew that it he was to be the one to go, with no substitute and he did not allow the flattery of the crowd to keep him from going where he knew God was leading him.

Jesus knew that part of his purpose was to proclaim the kingdom of God. As believers, Christ has handed over that commission to us. However, do we make it the same priority that Jesus did? Do we claim our sense of purpose to preach the good news every day?

Jesus could have surrendered to the crowd and delayed the message. However, he held the message in priority. It was held in such high esteem because he knew that he was personally called to carry it out. God sent Jesus to proclaim the message of the Kingdom of God. In the same way, Christ sends you (Matthew 28:19-20). The challenge today is to make the message of God a priority in our lives. Let us stop letting others dictate our plans about whether we tell them about Christ. Yes, sometimes it may be intimidating, but hearing God say, "Well done faithful servant," is much more rewarding than a little bit of whisperings amongst the crowd.