When the priests and Levites traveled out into the desert they wanted a name. But John the Baptist was emphatic…”No, I’m not the Messiah and neither am I Elijah.” This shows up again in Acts 14:12 when Paul and Barnabus healed a crippled man in Lystra…and suddenly the crowd wanted to give them names in order to make sacrifices to them. The caution here is that as humans we want to idolize the person, not the events surrounding them. Time after time in the Gospels Jesus had encounters with nameless people…the woman with the issue of blood, the demon-possessed man, the woman at the well, the leper. The Gospels are written this way so that each one of these anonymous people could be you or me, only in a different time and place. That’s because each one of these unknown, nameless people were sinners needing Jesus in their life, and we don’t need their name to appreciate the teaching.
Safetypinlove 