I Appeal To Caesar!

Notice Luke 5:15 where the Pharisees are present, but so is the power of the Lord to heal!

P. 15 The Region of Galilee. Jesus was conceived in Nazareth of Galilee and spent most of his life working there in a carpenter shop. In his three to three and a half year ministry in Palestine, it appears that he performed his largest number of miracles and gave a great number of his parables around the Sea of Galilee. A. B. Bruce lists the following four reasons for Galilee’s success: 1. Prophecy had foretold Galilee “as the place of the dawn for a new era of hope (Matt. 4:116; Isa. 9:1, 2).” 2. “An area of mixed population” because it was a “border country, “so Jesus began his ministry in “a locality occupied by a motley multitude of people of various nationalities, Jewish, Syrian, and Greek.” 3. The great density of its population. “The cities here lie very thick, and the various numerous villages are full of people” (none less than 15,000 inhabitants). 4. “Finally, the very corruption of Galilee formed an element in the fitness and attractiveness of the region for Jesus, because. . . the greater their need of Him. Quoted by Wilbur Smith, Peloubet’s Select Notes, 1949, p. 42. Endnotes for Chapter 3, Confirmation Here is some background information about Pharisaism that can help us understand the conflict that Jesus had with the Pharisees and also understand how the young man Saul was sucked into such a radical departure from God’s intended way. “Pharisaism is the final and necessary result of that conception of religion which makes religion consist in conformity to the Law and the promises of God’s grace only to the doers of the Law. Religion becomes external. The disposition of the heart is less vital than the outward act. The interpretation of the Law and its application to the details of ordinary life accordingly became a matter of grave consequence .…” (emphasis added). H. S. Gehman, Peloubet’s Select Notes, 1949 , p. 8. “In interpreting Exodus 20:10, over three hundred different rules and regulations were developed by the Pharisees pertaining to the observance of the Sabbath Day, including thirty kinds of labor forbidden on that day.” Here are two examples of extreme interpretation that would rob the true spiritual significance of a divine law.