Luke 4:16-30 Jesus AT Nazareth
Good morning! I’m very happy to be back with you this morning. I had a wonderful time at camp meeting, worshipping and fellowshipping with other believers from across New England. I was able to get some much needed projects done on our cabin there in Mechanic Falls, It has a fresh coat of paint and a new front deck that will hopefully get a roof and get screened in someday.
Joel and I were talking about taking advantage of the camp for this church family and maybe going there for a weekend retreat or something in the future so we could enjoy that fellowship and you all could fall in love with that place like I have.
I’m also grateful for Joel delivering God’s Word to the family last Sunday and I was very encouraged by his message of unity in the church family for the sake of the gospel and how that puts Jesus on display for the world.
I can say that this attitude is foreign to the world and is also sometimes difficult to find in Christ’s church but by His grace we are working together towards that unity here in this family and I’m so thankful to the Lord for that.
We are returning to our study in the Gospel of Luke, with chapter four verses sixteen through thirty, picking up where we left off two weeks ago.
Let’s pray and then we’ll jump right into the text.
16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
18 “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, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘ “Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’ ” 24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. 25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away.
One of the blessings and curses of preachers going to camp meetings is that we get to hear another preacher preach, and since we are a kind of self-conscious breed the temptation is to compare ourselves and our work to that of the one in the pulpit at the time. That was particularly challenging this year because the preacher, Josh Tate, from all the way up in the County, Presque Isle, Maine, was so terrific.
The other temptation is to try and repreach their messages! I’m not going to do that, I’d fail miserably.
Josh took us, one by one, through the eight miraculous signs of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John, and in every case he reminded us that each of these eight miraculous signs that served as a framework for his Gospel Jesus performed to display the glory of God.
One of the things that hounded Jesus throughout His ministry was the desire of people to see miraculous signs as if Jesus was some kind of street performer and here we see that mentality of full display when Jesus goes back to Nazareth, to the town where He was brought up.
I’m not going to reproach my own message from two weeks ago examining Jesus’ sermon that He gave there but we need to reference it in order to get good context.
16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
18 “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, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.
Jesus went back to His home church and, as was His custom, he went to service on the Sabbath.
This should have been the old story of “Hometown boy makes good,” here they had the Messiah in their midst, in their synagogue! Nazareth was the backwater town where everybody said, “nothing good ever comes from there.” But here He was, sitting in their midst saying, “This is the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of Jubilee, the captives will be set free, the blind will receive their sight, the poor will hear the good news, Messiah is here and I am He.”
The people of Nazareth had salvation at hand, the promised Messiah, the Savior, right there amongst them, good news, light and liberty, and the Lord’s favor was all right there in the person of Jesus and they had a choice to make.
And we can see in the second half of verse 22 the decision that they made.
They could have said, “Messiah is here! Our Messiah, and He’s from Nazareth! Hallelujah! Nobody will ever say, ‘what good comes from Nazareth,’ ever again!”
Sadly, that’s not what they said. Instead they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”
They could have glorified God by accepting His Son Jesus, instead they rejected Him seeing Him only as the Son of Joseph. They should have glorified God all the more because God had made One with such humble beginnings the Messiah. “Praise God the carpenter’s Son is the Messiah, God really can make something out of nothing!”
But instead of believing Him and believing in Him, they said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s Son?”
And Jesus, who knows the hearts of people, knew what they really wanted to see. They wanted to see the spectacle, they wanted to see the signs that they had heard about from the other towns in Galilee where Jesus had been.
23 And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’ ”
What they wanted was for Jesus to heal the sick and lame and blind in His hometown and among His own countrymen, make some water into wine here at home among your family. We’ve known you your whole life, we should be the first ones to see the spectacle!
All they wanted was a show. The Nazarenes wanted to see miracles and wonders as if Jesus was just a street magician. They didn’t seek the power of God, they didn’t seek the help they truly needed, which was right there in front of them and they closed their hearts to the Lord. His own hometown rejected Him.
The people wanted something from Jesus but they didn’t want Jesus Himself. There is a lesson there for us.
24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. 25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.
Why would the synagogue be filled with wrath at this statement?
The two stories that Jesus referenced about Elijah from 1 Kings 17, and Elisha from 2 Kings 5, were about God’s work among the Gentiles. Both the widow of Zaraphath and Namaan the Syrian were Gentiles and God showed His grace and blessed them with provision for the widow and healing from leprosy for the general of the army of Israel’s enemy.
In both of those stories from the Old Testament the nation of Israel was steeped in worship of Baal, as a nation they had turned their back on the Lord and forgotten His Word. Foreigners were preferred above God’s chosen people because God’s people rejected Him.
John Calvin wrote, “The meaning, is therefore, that the same thing happens now as in former times, when God sends His power to a great distance among foreigners, because He is rejected by the inhabitants of the country.”
This continues as a theme throughout the rest of the New Testament. The Apostle Paul, on his missionary journeys, would always preach at the synagogues first, and when the Jews rejected his message of Good News he would go to the Gentiles who almost always received the gospel with gladness.
Think of how Theophilus, a Gentile, for whom Luke wrote this Gospel, must have felt when he read this account for the first time.
But instead of receiving Messiah with Joy they were filled with wrath.
28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away.
Not just wrath, but murderous wrath! But since it was not His time to die, since it had been prophesied that he would die on a tree not be thrown off a cliff, He passed through their midst and went away.
We often lack perspective just like the synagogue in Nazareth, we often don’t see the good thing that the Lord has blessed us with even when it’s right in front of us because it often doesn’t align with our thoughts about what is best and we can’t see it through our pride.
Another thing that the Lord delivered through our speaker Josh Tate last week that has really stuck with me is that God doesn’t call us to do what is hard, he calls us to do the impossible. What is hard, we can do, we can muster up the strength, we can made difficult choices, give up some things that we love and get the job done.
But when we live like that we don’t need God to intervene because, even though it’s hard, we can still do it ourselves. And when we live prayerless lives that’s exactly what we communicate to the Father, that we don’t really think we need Him involved.
God calls us to do the impossible because impossible things require the intervention of the God of the impossible.
Preaching the gospel to people who don’t think they need it is impossible, telling the truth to people who don’t want to hear it is impossible. Just as filling that widow’s jar with just enough flour and oil to make bread for that day, and healing the commander of the army of your enemy of leprosy by making him wash in your river and not his was impossible. Walking away from a murderous mob trying to toss you off a cliff is impossible.
Saving faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin is impossible.
It’s impossible for us to do ourselves, it’s impossible for us to get for ourselves, setting at liberty those who are captives to sin and death is impossible, giving sight to the blind is impossible.
And that is why we pray, because we need the Father to work, the One who makes all things possible.
Amen.
