At a routine medical examination in 1992, Christine Maggiore tested positive for the HIV-virus. Initially, she accepted her condition, even participating with AIDS charities, including The AIDS Project and Women At Risk. 

But in 1994 she met a controversial Biologist who convinced her that she did not have HIV, and she believed him. She even became an HIV denial activist, founding Alive and Well and boasting of her supposed good health, in spite of tests that confirmed her sickness. She denounced research about her condition and refused to take medication. 

She eventually gave birth to two children, but declined the drugs for at-risk-mothers. She even breastfed. When her 3-year-old daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia, she protested the findings and sued the county. 

Christine died from HIV complications at 52. In both her daughter’s case, and her own, she refused medicine that would have saved and prolonged her life. 

The greater tragedy is that Christine Maggiore spent almost 15 years persuading other people with a deadly virus that they were fine. She was living in denial. But beyond that, she was living in defiance. One article that came out after her death started like this: “Until the end, Christine Maggiore remained defiant.” 

A lot of people are living in a parallel universe spiritually—denial and defiance. This is nothing new. What’s shocking is where we sometimes find those people: in church! Religion may be the most subtle path for people to run and hide from God.  

In Luke chapter 4, Jesus preached his first sermon to a packed-out synagogue full of religious hypocrites who were living in denial and defiance. It was his hometown village of Nazareth. These were the people he played with, worked with, and worshipped with.

Within seconds of his sermon introduction, the congregation stood to their feet in anger. Not to clap, but to curse! They grabbed hold of Jesus, took him to the edge of their town where an 80 foot cliff loomed over the valley, and tried to throw him off.  

What in the world just happened? What would provoke church-goers to take the guest preacher to a cliff and try to kill him? If you know the story of Jesus, you know that was quite normal. He was a controversial figure and always provoked that kind of response from morally upstanding people. The religious crowd had the hardest time receiving his message. It was outrageously offensive to them. Still is. What did he say? 

He preached the Gospel to them—the good news about the coming Messiah who would rescue his people, judge the wicked, and put things right. His passage was Isaiah 61: 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Luke 4:18–19

What a tremendous promise! Spectacular good news! But as you can see, that good news contained at least two elements that were extremely offensive. Here they are:      

Jesus came to rescue the Broken: Look at the target audience in that list. The poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed. Notice a theme? Need. Weakness. Desperation. Helplessness. Brokenness. That’s a hard pill for religious, hard-working, morally upstanding people to swallow. 

The people who had the hardest time with Jesus were those who, on the outside, looked clean, upright, moral, and strong. But underneath the surface of that religious veneer lay an attitude of pride and resentment that said:

“We don’t’ need to be saved. We’re God’s people. We just need to be affirmed. A simple “Thank You,” would have been fine. How dare you call me poor, imprisoned, blind and oppressed. Who do you think you are?” They thought God was indebted to them.  

Jesus came for broken, messed-up people. So when the proud and self-sufficient encounter the message of the Gospel it’s unbearable. It’s offensive and scandalous.     

There’s a reason why common, non-religious people heard Jesus gladly. Children, outsiders, and hard care sinners welcomed his company. They were the broken people in Israel. They knew their spiritual bank account was empty. Jesus came for the broken. 

Jesus came to reach the Outsiders: Jesus sensed the tension and rejection in the room. He could read minds and hearts. So he reminded the people what happens when they reject God’s prophet: he goes to the outsiders. It’s happened before.  

Then Jesus gave a painful history lesson about two prophets in the Old Testament who were sent to a pagan widow Baal worshiper and a pagan Syrian Terrorist with Leprosy. 

There were plenty of insiders for God to send His prophets to in the days of Elijah and Elisha. But there was so much rampant unbelief and rejection of God’s messengers in Israel, God sent His help to the outsiders—and only to the outsiders. Ouch! 

It was too much for Jesus’ audience to swallow. So they rejected it completely. We must give them credit here. They understood exactly what Jesus was saying. He was announcing that they were no better than sick, hostile, pagan Gentiles. 

There is no such thing as spiritually elite. There is no squeaky clean sinners. We’ve all fallen short of God’s standard. None of us deserves God’s grace. We deserve His judgment. We’re all broken outsiders. The people who own it, are open to Jesus.   

There’s one more thing that probably annoyed the crowd that day. When Jesus read this passage of Scripture from Isaiah, He deliberately stopped in the middle of a sentence. He read “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” but left out “and the day of vengeance of our God.” He didn’t announce God’s judgment on the wicked. Why not? 

That part of the passage would have thrilled an Israelite. They loved the thought of the Messiah coming to bring judgment on God’s enemies. That excited them. That’s what they were waiting for. 

We tend to believe that the sin that surrounds us is more dangerous than the sin that lurks inside us. We think that the culture is toxic, and we are clean. 

But Jesus didn’t come to bring judgment the first time. “I did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” They wanted Jesus to call down fire from heaven on His enemies. Instead, Jesus took their place. He went outside the city and let his body be broken for them. He didn’t come to send judgment, but to receive it. He didn’t come with a sword in his hands, but with nails through them. 

None of us wants to think we’re as bad off as the gospel says we are. We’re so sinful, Jesus had to die. But he’s so loving, he was glad to. 

God offers nothing to people who are content with their own condition.

To me, the saddest words in this entire story are the last three. “He went away.” That’s tragic, but that’s where unbelief leads.

Are you broken? Are you an outsider? Can you own your condition, confess your sins, and open yourself up to God? Then there’s plenty of grace for you, friend. The alternative is to continue to live in defiance and denial.