Luke 12:49 tells us, in Jesus’s own words, talked about how He is destined to bring fire to the earth and how He knows what lies ahead for Him in the way of sacrifice on the cross and how He was burdened by the responsibility of His future physical suffering. Without a doubt, most of us miss the true human condition of Christ. If He remained God disguised as a human being, He would have had no fear or anticipation because, as God, He could not be hurt. Instead, we must realize that God, fully became a man and left Himself exposed to the ugliness of this physical world.
He did such a good job at being human that the devil never picked up on the truth (Luke chapter 4: 1-14) and most likely discounted Jesus as one more false prophet and ignored Him. I come to this conclusion based on the fact that if the devil knew that Jesus was God incarnate, He would have done everything in his power to stop Jesus from fulfilling His rescue mission on the cross.
While He allowed Himself to be exposed to the ugly side of life, He participated in the good part of life from the standpoint of enjoying friendship with those around Him. Proof of this is the many accounts in the new testament of Jesus attending dinners, weddings and other social events. Jesus laughed with others, cooked for His friends, engaged friend and foe alike in serious debate and conversation and ate food and drank wine with His friends and family.
As we move on to verse 53, Jesus tells us that families will be split apart because of Him. This happens when one family member is filled by the Holy Spirit, accepts Christ as their personal Savior and goes forward to share the word of God with the world. It can cause a tear in the relationships with those closest to us because your walk in faith may require that your friends and family take a hard look at their positions regarding faith. This situation is magnified when the family member who accepts Jesus is the same family member who has the lowest stature because of past mistakes and failures.
I helped a man to be in a position to accept Jesus as his personal savior. This man went forward during an altar call at my church and I watched years of failure to be removed from his face and his life. He went to work, contacted the authorities who were seeking him for back child support, made financial arrangements to make payments and made moves to allow him to be back in the lives of his children. He apologized to the mother of his children and in turn forgave her for the wrongs done to him. The Department of Motor Vehicles was in the process of giving him his license back and my wife and I were set to give him one of our vehicles. We would pick him up for church and go to breakfast afterwards and as a result of faith, this man was going through a positive life changing experience.
One day, his uncle was standing around with other family members, having a beer in the garage. My friend was there with his family, drinking a soda because he had given up drinking alcohol he was taking a ribbing from other family members about his new found walk in faith when the uncle blurted out the fact that family members had a betting pool, designed around the fact that this young man would fail in his walk with God and he offered to split the pot with him if he could give his uncle the date of his failure ahead of time.
The really sad part of this whole story is that this family is a mess. Ravaged by alcohol, drugs, infidelity and abuse. You would think that the family would be happy to see one of their own move forward to an improved life. The truth is that they didn’t want this man to be better off and cruelly did everything they could to deter him and in the end they succeeded. I haven’t heard from him again and the entire family situation has only gotten worse.
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