Jesus the Galilean - Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Day 6

What does the Bible have to say about prejudice? What messages of love does God have for all the people and cultures He created? What opportunities does a diverse church of today have in a society still troubled by racism?

The two-week Fearfully and Wonderfully Made daily devotional—based on passages from the NKJV Modern Life Study Bible—will guide you through a series of Biblical excerpts focused on confronting ethnic prejudice. You'll walk through both the Old and New Testaments, discovering a tapestry of cultural connections throughout the historical richness of Scripture and learn about God's promises of love to those who face discrimination and prejudice. From the call of Abraham to the Samaritan woman at the well, find out how the God of Israel has shown himself to be the God of all tribes and nations.

Today’s reading is drawn from Mark 1:14, Luke 4:14-19, and John 7:52.

In New Testament times, there were two Galilees, upper and lower. Jesus grew up in the densely populated lower Galilee and carried out most of His ministry in its communities. As many as eleven of His twelve disciples also came from this region. (Judas Iscariot was the one obvious exception.)

Home to a culture that bridged the Hebraic and Graeco-Roman worlds, Galilee existed on the fringes of traditional Jewish life. As a result, Galileans were scorned by their Judean neighbors, who used the term Galilean as a synonym for fool, heathen, sinner, or worse.

Most significantly for Jesus, these neighbors were convinced that no prophet could come from Galilee (John 7:52). Yet from there a Prophet did arise. It was in Galilee that Jesus first outlined His message (Luke 4:14–19) and demonstrated its power. He performed at least thirty-three miracles in the region, and it was there that He told nineteen of His thirty-two recorded parables.

As Jesus traveled around the district, He demonstrated that His message was for everyone, including people excluded from acceptable society. His message did not start at the top and move down. It spread from the bottom up. However, there is little evidence that Jesus’ message took hold in Galilee after He left. The people largely rejected their Prophet and King, and His dire predictions about Capernaum, Chorazin, and other Galilean cities came true (Matt. 11:20–24).