C. A preaching tour (4:42–44)
C. A preaching tour (4:42–44)
Next morning Jesus went into a lonely place (interestingly Mark, not Luke, tells us it was to pray). But clearly the people had been impressed by the happenings just recounted and they did not want to lose Jesus. However, when they found him (Mark tells us that Peter took the lead in this) Jesus refused to stay with them. He said he must preach the gospel elsewhere (about a quarter of Luke’s references to the kingdom of God speak of preaching it, Maddox, p. 133). Notice the compelling necessity. This is Luke’s first mention of the kingdom of God, which was the favourite theme in Jesus’ teaching. It is a very large subject. Here it must suffice to say that it is God’s rule in action. The Jews looked forward to a time when God would assert himself as King over the nations. Jesus taught that God’s kingdom had already come in him, in the authority with which he combated evil. In a sense the kingdom was a present reality. In another sense it was yet to come in all its fullness. There is a further note of purpose in Jesus’ words, I was sent for this purpose (for the idea of Jesus being sent cf. 9:48; 10:16). There is a problem about the synagogues of Judea, for the Synoptists say nothing elsewhere of such a tour. AV has ‘the synagogues of Galilee’, but this has inferior attestation and RSV is to be accepted. We should perhaps understand Judea here in the broad sense of ‘Palestine’, which would include Galilee (as it does in 23:5, etc.; Luke, however, sometimes uses the term of Judea proper, e.g. 2:4). Or Luke may be speaking, as he often does, of something we find in John. John makes it clear that Jesus had an extensive ministry in Judea.