Jesus was also… Tough, courageous, assertive, confrontational, angry, bightingly sarcastic, intimidating, passionate, resourceful, practical, dangerous, argumentative, cunning, shrewd, brutally honest, rude, opinionated, disrupts order, disregards convention, inappropriate…

Luke 4:16-19 (NLT) - When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. The scroll containing the messages of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him, and he unrolled the scroll to the place where it says:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

Isaiah 61:8-9 (NLT) - “For I, the LORD, love justice. I hate robbery and wrongdoing. I will faithfully reward my people for their suffering and make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants will be known and honored among the nations. Everyone will realize that they are a people the LORD has blessed.”

Luke 4:20-22 (NLT) - He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. Everyone in the synagogue stared at him intently. Then he said, “This Scripture has come true today before your very eyes. All who were there spoke well of him and were amazed by the gracious words that fell from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

Luke 4:23-24 (NLT) - Then he said, “Probably you will quote me that proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself’ - meaning, ‘Why don’t you do miracles here in your hometown like those you did in Capernaum?’ But the truth is, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.

Luke 4:25-30 (NLT) - “Certainly there were many widows in Israel who needed help in Elijah’s time, when there was no rain for three and a half years and hunger stalked the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a widow of Zarephath - a foreigner in the land of Sidon. Or think of the prophet Elisha,

who healed Naaman, a Syrian, rather than the many lepers in Israel who needed help.” When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. Jumping up, they mobbed him and took him to the edge of the hill on which the city was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, 30but he slipped away through the crowd and left them.

Jesus is sticking up for you. Maybe he’s also picking a fight with you.