Luke in the Land: Walking With Jesus in His First-Century WorldSample

Advent is my absolute favorite time of year. It’s the first season of the Christian calendar and covers the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day. Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “arrival” or “coming.”21 It remembers and celebrates Jesus’s first advent (birth), and it anticipates His second advent, the second coming of Christ.

As part of the New Testament church, we hold the privilege of all people in human history to live sandwiched between Jesus’s two comings. We have the testimony of the four Gospels behind us as we look to the promised second coming in front of us. The Gospels of both Matthew and Luke include Advent—the birth story of Jesus and accounts of His earthly parents, Mary and Joseph.

Jesus’s advent was different from the arrival of other kings throughout human history. Kings typically came and conquered. They entered cities with swords and armies. They brought imprisonment, subjugation, harsh taxation, and ruled with heavy hands and fists. They ruled from the top down, with power centralized at the top and everyone below used up for imperial expansion and progression.

Jesus’s advent brought the beginning of a new way to order the world. His arrival ignited a gospel (good news) that would indeed be good news for ALL people. Jesus’s advent ushered into the world the beginnings of a true peace, an ancient shalom that was prophesied by the prophet Isaiah.

This child was indeed born in Bethlehem in Judea, was raised in Nazareth, and lived as a grown man and rabbi of Israel in Capernaum, in the district of Galilee. But what did Jesus advent into the world to do? He answered this question in both word and deed throughout the four Gospels—with the Gospel of Luke being our focus in this biblical feast.

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

Jesus came for lost humanity—to save us and bring us home. Have you ever been lost? The only thing worse than being lost is being lost and knowing that no one is coming for you.

Cell phones came out when I was a sophomore in college. My first “cell phone” was a bag phone that stayed in my car; I plugged it into the cigarette lighter and it was only used in the case of an emergency. It was the first time I ever felt I could reach out for help if I got lost on my way somewhere. Before the cell phone, if my car broke down and I was alone, I simply had to sit on the side of the road in rural Mississippi and hope for someone to drive by, stop, and help me. I can remember that gnawing feeling in my stomach of not knowing if anyone would come by to offer help.

As far back as Genesis 3, God has been about seeking and saving the lost.

Questions in the Bible are meaningful and often convey much more meaning than we interpret at first glance. They often answer things in a Near Eastern, Jewish way. Notice how many times Jesus answered a question with a question. In many gospel moments, His question was answering the question asked, and it ended the conversation (more on this later).

The first question the Lord ever asked in the Bible was in the garden of Eden after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Cloaked in shame, they had hidden themselves among the trees when they heard the Lord walking through the garden in the cool of the day. In Genesis 3:8-10, we see God ask them a question: “where are you?”

These three words in English are one word in Hebrew—ayeka.22

I often imagine God’s voice in this moment sounding something like a mixture of sadness and hope all at once. Sad because they had broken shalom. Hopeful because He knew He could cover their shame (and He did, with animal skins). He was looking for them—not to kill them, but to save them. The Lord was looking to enter into their heartbreak so that He could begin the work of restoration.

The prophet Isaiah gave us this jewel about the living God’s posture and movement toward us as lost humanity:

“Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.” Isaiah 30:18a

What makes the living God rise up? What makes Him come close?

The word compassion is a fusion of two words—com (with) and pathos (pain). Compassion is not so much an emotion that we feel. Compassion is a location—we are compassionate when we locate ourselves with someone in his or her pain. The Lord looked for Adam and Eve in the garden to meet them in their pain. Most of all, I imagine ayeka with a tone of compassion.

Throughout the Gospel of Luke, we will see Jesus practicing compassion—locating Himself with people right in the middle of their pain. He sought out and found the lost and offered to bring them home. He does the same today. Jesus is not afraid of our sin or our pain; He meets us there and offers to bring us home.

We may feel lost from time to time, but we are never lost with no one coming for us. Rather, the living God still asks, ayeka, “Where are you?” We can afford to cry out, to wait on the Lord, to endure the present pain and trial. He is the one who advents, or comes, for us. Let us be found by Him anew today, right where we are.

Endnotes:

21. “Advent,” Encyclopedia Britannica, March 6, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Advent.

22. “The Lord’s Most Tender Inquiry,” Israel Institute of Biblical Studies, accessed March 22, 2024, https://lp.israelbiblicalstudies.com/lp-iibs-biblical-hebrew-knowing-an-hebrew-verse-en.html.