Luke #11: Hometown Hero? (4:14-30)
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Luke 4:14-30
N: Laser pointer
Welcome
Welcome
Bye, kids!
Good morning! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor here with Eastern Hills, and I’m blessed to be here this morning as this authentic family gathers together to worship the Lord and to reflect on His Word. I pray that this time is a blessing to you as well, but more than anything, I pray that our joining together today brings honor and glory to God, and points us to Him. I wanted to acknowledge and thank the ministry of our school, Eastern Hills Christian Academy, this morning. It provides a quality, Christ-focused education, and we’re proud of the fact that the school has been around for over 50 years. If you or someone you know is looking for a Christian school for your kids, come and check it out.
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Opening
Opening
We’re walking verse-by-verse through the book of Luke this year, and in our study of the end of Luke chapter 3 a couple of weeks ago, we saw the inauguration of Jesus’s ministry when He was baptized by John in the Jordan, followed immediately by Jesus’s forty days of temptation by the devil in the wilderness, which we saw in the first 13 verses of chapter 4 last week. The devil tried to tempt Jesus into going against the Father’s will for His life and ministry by tempting Him with provision, with power, with an “easier” plan, and with protection, and the point of the message was that because Jesus was tempted, we can run to Jesus when WE are tempted (and we WILL be tempted).
I apologize for the fact that our streaming system failed us last Sunday, and that sermon is just gone. We don’t have a recording of it, and it didn’t successfully stream. However, we do have the text of my sermon, if you’d like it. We have a few copies printed and available in the office following service, or if you’d like a digital version, you can request that we send you a PDF by sending an email to Liana Hill at liana@ehbc.org.
But this morning, we will see the very beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry, which took place in the towns and villages around the Sea of Galilee. So as you are able, please stand in honor of the reading of God’s holy Word, and turn in your Bibles or Bible apps to Luke 4, where I will be reading verses 14-30:
14 Then Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread throughout the entire vicinity. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, being praised by everyone. 16 He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written: 18 The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 20 He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.” 22 They were all speaking well of him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from his mouth; yet they said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” 23 Then he said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. What we’ve heard that took place in Capernaum, do here in your hometown also.’ ” 24 He also said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 But I say to you, there were certainly many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months while a great famine came over all the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 And in the prophet Elisha’s time, there were many in Israel who had leprosy, and yet not one of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was enraged. 29 They got up, drove him out of town, and brought him to the edge of the hill that their town was built on, intending to hurl him over the cliff. 30 But he passed right through the crowd and went on his way.
PRAYER
Three years ago, I had the privilege of visiting Israel through an initiative of Christians United for Israel called Israel Collective. My trip started in Galilee, and my hotel in Tiberias was literally right on the edge of the Sea. Here’s a picture (Wow has my hair gotten gray in the last three years...). Joe got to go with that group the next year, and we both agree that now when we read passages in the Gospel like this one, it’s a completely different experience. A friend of mine coined the phrase that I like to use: It’s like I read these passages of the Bible “in color.”
And so when I come to verses 14 and 15, I can see it, hear it, even smell it:
14 Then Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread throughout the entire vicinity. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, being praised by everyone.
One of the places that I was able to visit on the first full day of my trip to Israel was the ruins of a fishing town called Magdala (Mary Magdalene was from there), situated on the westernmost tip of the Sea, near the modern village of Migdal. The town was fairly large in the early first century, and one of the things that it boasted was a good-sized synagogue. The ruins of this synagogue are in surprisingly good shape, because it was discovered when they were breaking ground for a hotel nearly right on top of it, and the hotel then decided to build a cover for it to protect it (seeing an opportunity to drive some tourism their way, I’m sure). Here’s a picture. [Leave this picture up until the Matthew passage, please.]. I was on the opposite end from the entrance as I took this picture, and you can see the entryway.
Note the 1st century Roman mosaic on the floor, and the stepped blocks on the sides. The mosaic was where people would walk or stand if the room was too full, and the things that look like steps were not steps, however… they were seats. The Jewish men of Magdala would gather in this room, sitting on these stones. The big pillars in the corners held up the roof. The block in the center (this is a recreation, cast from the original that was unearthed at the site) would have had a wooden stand built onto the top of it, which was the synagogue’s “pulpit,” so to speak. In 1st century synagogue practice, the speaker would stand to read the Scriptures, then sit back down to preach or teach. This is what “church” was in Jesus’s day. Say what you like about whether or not attending corporate worship is necessary and good—Jesus made a point of attending corporate worship gatherings.
Luke records that Jesus returned “in the power of the Spirit,” which He has been walking in since His baptism, as we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks. I suppose that in modern terms, Jesus’s teaching went “viral,” because all around the Galilee, people were talking about Him. Why? In part because He was teaching in the synagogues, and teaching with authority (which we’ll see next Sunday).
Now don’t miss this: He was teaching in the synagogues around Galilee. Synagogues not just like the one we see in this picture. But literally IN the one we see in this picture. Given Magdala’s size and location, it is nearly certain that Jesus stood about where that pulpit stone is, read the Scriptures, and then sat down on one of those lowest-level seat stones and preached in the early part of His ministry—the part we’re reading about this morning.
Jesus was initially received with great excitement, because His ministry wasn’t just a teaching or preaching ministry, but we see in the other Gospels that Jesus performed healings around Galilee prior to His trip to Nazareth, such as recorded in Matthew 4:23-24
23 Now Jesus began to go all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. 24 Then the news about him spread throughout Syria. So they brought to him all those who were afflicted, those suffering from various diseases and intense pains, the demon-possessed, the epileptics, and the paralytics. And he healed them.
For our focus this morning, however, we see that when Jesus came and ministered in Nazareth, His ministry was not as well received, though He was initially the hometown hero:
1: The Hometown Hero
1: The Hometown Hero
A town, or State’s, “favorite son” or “daughter” is someone who grew up there and then went off to become famous or influential in some way, perhaps through politics, sports, or performing, and the town then recognizes that accomplishment. I suppose you could say that Jesus was (up to this point) a “favorite son” of Nazareth, even though according to Matthew, at that point He lived in Capernaum (4:12). When He visited the synagogue in Nazareth, He was given the pulpit, and the opportunity to preach from the prophet Isaiah:
16 He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written: 18 The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 20 He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him.
It was common practice to allow a visiting rabbi to speak in the synagogue meeting, so this isn’t shocking. Paul had a similar experience in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13. So Jesus stands to read the Scripture, and takes the scroll. The passage that He reads is found in Isaiah Chapter 61, verse 1 and the first part of verse 2.
Imagine the scene for a moment: Jesus unrolls the scroll (the largest of them), and goes almost all the way to the end. The passage that He reads has always been considered a messianic prophecy, and those in the room likely knew it within the first word or two. Everyone in the region has been talking about Jesus’s Spirit-empowered ministry for some time, and the message that Jesus has been proclaiming wherever He went was, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17)
One of the interesting things about the passage that Jesus read is that it has a spiritual aspect as well as a social one. The spiritual aspect dominates, given His mission to save us from our sins. But there was a very real social element to Jesus’s ministry as well. He didn’t just proclaim hope: He had a practical impact on the lives of those He touched.
He declared the hope of salvation—the Gospel—to the poor in spirit, and brought physical healing to those poor in health. He proclaimed freedom for those held captive by sin, and good news of a new kingdom coming to those who were captive to Rome. He gave sight to the spiritually blind, as well as to the physically blind. To those who were oppressed by their guilt and shame, He offered forgiveness so they could be set free, and to those who felt under the thumb of an oppressive government, He proclaimed the coming time of the Lord’s favor. It’s interesting to note that Luke doesn’t record that Jesus read all of what we call Isaiah 61:2. The next phrase in that verse is: “and the day of our God’s vengeance.” This was not the time for declaring God’s wrath. It was the time for declaring that God Himself had come to rescue His people.
And after He reads those words, He simply hands back the scroll and sits down. What would He preach from that passage? How would He explain it, expound it, expand it? I bet you could hear a pin drop as everyone stared at Him, waiting.
And then He preaches the first sermon recorded in the book of Luke, starting with:
21 He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.”
Now, since Luke says that Jesus “began” with this, then He must have said some other things. But this opening sentence was HUGE. He said, without question, that He is the long-awaited Messiah! And His ministry and His declaration still have not changed.
Jesus came to bring good news—the Gospel. Without Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, there is no good news—only bad. The Bible tells us that we are all spiritually bankrupt because of our sin. We deserve the wrath of God because of it how we resist Him, reject Him, rebel against Him, even though He made us and loves us. So God sent His Son, Jesus, as a man, and He lived a sinless life so that He could die instead of us, taking the punishment that we deserve because of our sin. When we believe the Gospel, we who were once chained to our sins are released:
1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, 2 because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.
When we believe the Gospel, we who were once blind to our desperate spiritual state can see it clearly for what it is:
4 In their case, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
When we believe the Gospel, dying to ourselves and being made alive to God through faith, we who were oppressed under the yoke of sin’s slavery are set free:
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin, 7 since a person who has died is freed from sin.
And when we believe the Gospel, we who were once God’s enemies are reconciled to Him:
10 For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.
Jesus told them, and tells us, that He is the Messiah. He came to save.
But as I said, there is a social aspect to this as well. Yes, Jesus’s work was to rescue us spiritually, but we cannot escape the fact that His ministry on Earth was also physically practical in many ways as well. And to be honest, if we’re going to be like Jesus, our ministry—both our collective ministry as a church body and our individual ministries as representatives of Christ—should also have a practical impact in the lives of our neighbors wherever we find them.
Who are your neighbors? Who do you live near, work with, hang out with? Who do you know who doesn’t know Jesus? How can you be His hands and feet in their lives this week? These are questions we have to ask ourselves, because we are called to be people helping people live out the unexpected love of Jesus every day. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation, and as such, we are Christ’s ambassadors, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5. Let’s look for opportunities to connect and reach and help.
Often, the issue with serving others is that we get so familiar with those we see every day, with the routine of life, that we no longer see the people, or at least that we no longer see them as being in need of Jesus. The interesting thing about the people of Nazareth is that it was their familiarity with Jesus Himself that prevented them from seeing Him rightly and responding to His message in faith. He became the Familiar Hero.
2: The Familiar Hero
2: The Familiar Hero
There’s an old adage that “familiarity breeds contempt.” The meaning of this saying is that the more you know about something, the more comfortable you are with it, the less respect you have for it. This is especially true with people: generally, the longer or the better you know someone, the less respect you tend to extend to them, because you see more of their faults and flaws. While Jesus didn’t have any faults and flaws, the adage held true for Him as well, simply because they knew His earthly family:
22 They were all speaking well of him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from his mouth; yet they said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” 23 Then he said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. What we’ve heard that took place in Capernaum, do here in your hometown also.’ ”
It appears that they approved of His sermon (they were all speaking well of Him), and that they were all “amazed” by His words. I find that interesting that they were amazed. It’s like they were shocked that He could preach. And it’s here that they go off kilter. They can’t reconcile in their minds the fact that Jesus is preaching like this, while He is at the same time just a regular guy from this little agricultural village west the Sea of Galilee, the son of the carpenter named Joseph (who was certainly dead by this time). Matthew recorded their response in more detail:
54 He went to his hometown and began to teach them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? 55 Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? 56 And his sisters, aren’t they all with us? So where does he get all these things?” 57a And they were offended by him.
They had known His dad (or so they thought). They knew His mom. They knew His brothers and His sisters (according to this, Jesus had at least 6 half siblings). “So who does He think He is to come and preach? And while we’re on the subject, what about the cool things He did in Capernaum? Preaching is all well and good, but we want to see some miracles. You say you’re the Messiah? Prove it.” That’s the meaning of the proverb that Jesus quotes.
This sets up His condemnation of them, because HE is familiar with THEM, not just the other way around (or so they think). They thought they were offended by the truth before...
24 He also said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 But I say to you, there were certainly many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months while a great famine came over all the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 And in the prophet Elisha’s time, there were many in Israel who had leprosy, and yet not one of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
When Jesus says, “Truly I tell you,” He’s saying one word: “Amen.” The word literally means in this use, “Here’s the truth.” It is used either singly or doubly over 70 times in the Gospels, and always and only by Jesus. He speaks the truth because He is the truth. He even calls Himself “the Amen” in Revelation 3:14. And in this case, the truth He speaks is that the familiarity that the Nazarenes have with Him and His family has given birth to their contempt. It is precisely because He is in His hometown that they don’t believe Him.
Then He gives two Old Testament examples of prophets who were called to serve not just Gentiles, but far away Gentiles because of the unbelief of their own people, the Jews. Elijah had been the one to predict the drought and subsequent famine, and as a result was hated and hunted by King Ahab. So God sent him off to Zarephath, which was about 50 miles north of the northern border of Israel in Phoenicia, to serve a widow and her son, effectively removing the message of God from Israel while he was away. This is found in 1 Kings 17.
The example that Jesus refers to from the life of Elisha is found in 2 Kings 5:1-14. Naaman the Syrian general was the only leper who was healed, even though there were other lepers in Israel.
Jesus’s point is that God wasn’t required to bless Israelites during those times that their familiarity with Him had bred contempt of His covenant with Israel as His chosen people, and Jesus wasn’t required to bless the people of Nazareth with miraculous signs and wonders because of their contempt for Him due to their familiarity. In essence, Jesus is saying that the Nazarenes are worse than a Sidonian widow and a Syrian general, and are repeating Israel’s historical blunders of unbelief. As such, they are in danger of missing out on the blessings of God if they persist in their attitude of disdain.
The application that I want to bring to this isn’t the warning, and I’ve already spoken briefly about no longer seeing our neighbors because of familiarity with them. The thing I want to warn us all about is losing respect for the Gospel because we are so familiar with it. Every week, I strive to clearly share the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my message. This is because if I’m not preaching the Gospel, what’s the point of preaching? So let’s just say that you’ve been here for the entire seven years that I’ve been the senior pastor. If I’ve preached somewhere around 46 times per year, and you’ve been here for all of those, then you’ve heard me share the Gospel in approximately the same basic ways something like 330 times.
We should be enthralled by the wonder and the beauty of the Gospel message every time we hear it, because it’s by Christ that we’ve been saved, it’s in Christ that we are saved, and it’s through Christ that we will be saved! Church: We’ve been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, and we are no longer dead, but alive to God because of what He’s done! This is an incredible message… a powerful truth… something to celebrate every time we hear it! And it’s something that we should be proclaiming because of how amazing it is! Don’t let your familiarity with the Gospel start to diminish your respect for it.
In another way, familiarity is why many people don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah. They’ve had just enough Bible to make them think that they know, so they’re not looking any deeper. Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile wrote in his commentary on this passage:
I think Jesus’s sermon is aimed at nominal believers, at people who assume they are God’s people but have no living, saving knowledge of Jesus Christ… Perhaps you have not thought of Jesus as necessary for your salvation and forgiveness with God. You have not thought of Him as one who provides you righteousness and pays the penalty for your sin. Today is the day of salvation. Today this salvation is preached in your hearing, just as it was then. Believe on Jesus. Trust Him. Repent of sin, come to Him in faith, and you will be saved. Do not miss the salvation He brings.
—Thabiti Anyabwile, Exalting Jesus in Luke
This reminds me of a verse in 2 Corinthians 6:
2 For he says: At an acceptable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. See, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation!
You can surrender to Jesus right now, right where you are. You don’t have to wait for a special part of the service. You don’t need the band to be playing, or for the congregation to be standing. Surrender to Jesus even right now.
Maybe you’re here today, and you’ve never actually believed the Gospel, even though you’ve heard it a couple of hundred times. In fact, you’re kind of sick of hearing it. You’re where the Nazarenes were: they were consciously, willfully, aggressively rejecting Jesus.
3: The Rejected Hero
3: The Rejected Hero
Jesus’s warning to the folks of Nazareth was meant to create a response. Certainly, the people had a choice in the matter. And they proved Him right by responding not with curiosity or self-reflection, but with rage, judgment, and condemnation:
28 When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was enraged. 29 They got up, drove him out of town, and brought him to the edge of the hill that their town was built on, intending to hurl him over the cliff.
We probably look at this and think, “Wow, what a severe reaction!” But for them, Jesus had said that those that they believed were rejected by God were actually in a better position before God than they were. To feel that they had been called “worse than the Gentiles” was more than they could take.
It’s ironic, actually. They are offended that Jesus is insinuating that they are spiritually worse than the Gentiles, but their actions show that they are actually worse than even that. Last week, didn’t we just see someone suggest that Jesus take a flying leap off of the highest point of the Temple in order to force the Father to prove He would protect Him?
9 So he took him to Jerusalem, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.
We did, and that person was Satan. The Jews are so furious, they’re planning on helping Jesus take the leap. Quite the turnaround from all of them, “speaking well of Him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from His mouth.” (v22).
And interestingly, they asked for a miracle, and I like to think they got one.
30 But he passed right through the crowd and went on his way.
Some commentators suggest that this wasn’t miraculous: that the force of Jesus’s charisma prompted them to just let Him walk away. But most agree with me that the best way to take this is that they simply could not force Him to do anything that He didn’t want to do. They couldn’t touch Him. I believe that it was more along the lines of what happened at Jesus’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, as recorded by John:
4 Then Jesus, knowing everything that was about to happen to him, went out and said to them, “Who is it that you’re seeking?” 5 “Jesus of Nazareth,” they answered. “I am he,” Jesus told them. Judas, who betrayed him, was also standing with them. 6 When Jesus told them, “I am he,” they stepped back and fell to the ground.
But in the case of His arrest, it was the right time. Jesus was going to finish what He started back in Galilee—the reason that He had come: To seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). It meant that that time, He didn’t just pass through the crowd and go on His way.
Closing
Closing
But with the people of Nazareth, He did go on His way. And here’s something that I found as I studied: Jesus never went back to Nazareth. At least, there’s no record of it in any of the Gospels. So it appears that Nazareth’s rejection of Christ was permanent—that they had passed on their one opportunity to receive their Savior.
Now, I’m not going to say that today is your one chance to believe in Christ. I don’t know what the future holds. I know that life is sometimes unpredictable, and none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. Jesus could come back this afternoon, for all we know (Lord, please… that would be awesome!) So today could be your one, or your last, chance to trust Jesus.
The band is going to come down and lead us in a song of response. I’m going to ask Joe and Kerry, Trevor, and Rich to join me down front, and if you’re trusting Jesus for the first time today, come and tell us, so we can celebrate with you. If you’re online, you can send me an email to bill@ehbc.org.
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PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (Ezekiel 35:1-36:15; Ps 68)
No Pastor’s Study - Business Meeting starting at 5:30 pm, then out to Wendy’s for a frosty (or dinner).
Prayer Meeting
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Benediction
Benediction
20 Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus—the great Shepherd of the sheep—through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 equip you with everything good to do his will, working in us what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
