Amy C Walters

Jesus Heals Many – Luke 4:31-44

The people of Capernaum welcome Jesus and bring those who are sick to him to be healed. After spending all night healing many, Jesus goes off to be alone but the people of Capernaum come and beg him to stay. Jesus’ response reveals to them his purpose: preaching the good news of the kingdom of God.

In Luke 4:16-30, Jesus was in his hometown of Nazareth. The people there were initially amazed at his teaching, but then ultimately ended up running him out of town, threatening to throw him off the cliff. Not a great reception! So we come to this story with the people in Capernaum, and we’re left to wonder, how will they respond to Jesus?

Luke mentions several times the people’s amazement at Jesus’ teaching authority and power.  We know too that after people saw what Jesus did to the man at the synagogue and Simon’s mother-in-law, they brought the sick to Jesus to be healed. “Moreover, many demons came out of people shouting, ‘You are the Son of God,’ but Jesus rebuked them and would not allow them to speak because they knew he was the Christ.” 

So Jesus spends all night healing them. Luke tells us that “at daybreak, Jesus went to a solitary place.” 

What does all of this tell us about Jesus? We see his compassion for hurting people, that he’s willing to spend all night placing his hands on them and healing them, restoring them, setting them free.

But we also see him taking time to be alone for a bit. In fact, this is a pattern that we are going to see over and over again throughout Jesus’ ministry, that he regularly takes time to go off by himself to a solitary place, and we’ll dive deeper into that in a future post. 

Jesus is not alone for long. We are told that “the people were looking for him, and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep Jesus from leaving them.” 

Why do you think the people of Capernaum tried to keep Jesus there with them?

Maybe they were thinking, “Wow, look at how Jesus has healed everyone here! If he stays with us, we could never be sick again. Jesus would always be here to heal us and take away our pain immediately. 

We need to keep him around. We want this healing here at our disposal at all times!” 

You see, our tendency as human beings is trying to keep blessings to ourselves. When we find something good, we want that to be a best kept secret, like a vacation spot that is just perfect and you don’t want others to find out about it because it’s going to get too crowded.

The people of Capernaum wanted Jesus and the benefits of his ministry and his teaching and his healing for themselves. And while this is an understandable response, Jesus tells them, “I must go and preach the good news of the kingdom of God in other towns also because that is why I was sent.” 

Jesus has a very clear sense of purpose. “That is why I was sent.” And what was he sent for? Was it healing? Was it casting out demons?

Jesus’ ministry will certainly involve all of that, but what he says is that he was sent “to preach the good news of the kingdom of God.”

We have to keep reminding ourselves that preaching the good news of the kingdom of God is what Jesus was about. Because we can easily get confused as well and think about just the healings.

But we’re going to see a pattern in Jesus’ ministry: entering a town on the Sabbath and teaching in the synagogue. That’s even how this story ends, with Jesus continuing to preach in Judea. 

Jesus also reveals the content of his preaching: the good news of the kingdom of God. But what does that mean? I think the passage Jesus reads from in Isaiah 61:1-2a gives us a glimpse. It says that Jesus was sent to proclaim freedom to the prisoner, recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

That is the good news of the kingdom of God. That spiritual freedom and sight and release are available! That God’s favor in the form of his Son is here! 

And Jesus is not meant to stay in one place with that information. He was sent to spread it to other towns also. So even with the townspeople begging him to stay, Jesus says, “No, my purpose is to spread this message.”

Our key truth for today is that Jesus’ message is meant to be shared. He himself takes it to other towns, traveling and preaching. 

And Jesus passes on that responsibility to his followers. After his death and resurrection, Jesus tells his disciples that the Holy Spirit would come upon them and they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Jesus’ message is meant to be shared not just in Jesus’ day, but in the days of Acts, and in our day as well. It is meant to go to the far reaches of the earth.

Just as the people of Capernaum were not meant to hoard Jesus and his blessings to themselves, so we and our churches are not meant to hoard Jesus to ourselves. We are meant to share him, to share him in our neighborhoods and schools and workplaces, in the groups that we are a part of, in our families, and even beyond that. 

Do you know there are billions of people in this world who don’t know that good news of the kingdom of God? It hasn’t reached them yet. We have the responsibility to get that to them, either to go ourselves carrying that gospel to them or to send others by supporting them financially, by praying for them, by encouraging them.