Be ready for your belly. Lord God, it is a privilege now
to hear from Your Word. We know that all scripture is
breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
And we do pray that Your Word would have its effect on our
lives and on our hearts. I thank you for Billy and just
for his giftedness, Lord, to be able to communicate Your Word
with clarity and with conviction.
Thank you for the preparation that is put in this week and our
prayers. He preaches that You would give
him the grace to preach with boldness and courage and just
bring to mind, Lord, all that has prepared this week.
We pray that you would bless this time, that you would grow
us as your church and for your glory in Jesus name, Amen.
Amen. Very cool.
Good morning Church. Would you open with me to Luke
Chapter 4? Luke chapter 4.
I was able to be last week at the Orchard Church over in
Topeka. It was a real joy to just be
there and worship with them. And see, I mean, we had Mike
here, Mike Johnston here earlier this year and we had a deal that
we do a preacher swap and I put it off for so long.
My debt is paid. But it was a real joy to just go
and, and worship with them and and preach with them.
A couple from the orchard have come along talking over this
week, which was not my intention, but it's good to have
you guys as well. Hey, we are going to be in Luke
Chapter 4 this morning looking at versus 14 through 30.
So I'm just going to read those Luke chapter 4 starting in verse
14. And Jesus returned in the power
of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out
through all the surrounding country, and he taught in this
synagogues being glorified by all.
And he came up 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 RE and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah
was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found
the place where it was written. 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 sit at liberty those
who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant,
and sat down. And the eyes of all in the
synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today
this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
And all spoke well of him, and marvelled at the gracious words
that were coming from his mouth. And they said, It is not this
Joseph's son. And he said to them, doubtless
you'll quote to me this proverb. Physician, heal yourself what
we, what we have heard you did and capernium do here in your
hometown as well. And he said, truly, I say to
you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.
But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in
the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up for three
years and six months, and a great famine came over all the
land. And Elijah was sent to none of
them, but only two, Zarephath and the land of sight, on to a
woman who was a widow. And there were many lippers in
Israel and the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them
was cleansed, but only naming the Syrian.
When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled
with wrath, 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 they could throw him down the Cliff.
But passing through the amidst, he went away.
Amen. Well, I'm sure all of us at some
point have wondered the question if I could design my perfect
house, if I won the lottery and could design my perfect house,
how would I design it? How many bedrooms would I have?
What I want it to be? You know, maybe like far enough
out of town that you've got the country feel, but close enough
to town that you can just pop into countdown, but you've got a
big backyard, a couple of ensuites.
We're kind of pictured. Maybe this is the perfect house
that I want to have. I've seen it.
If you're a sports fan, I I follow the BAA little bit.
A big question that that people get asked is if you could build
your perfect basketball player, how would you build build this
player? So maybe he's got the shooting
ability of Stiff Curry. He's got the dunking ability of
Michael Jordan. Trying to build, If I could
build this ultimate player, I I've thought about it in terms
of preachers. How would you build the ultimate
preacher, the passion of John Piper, maybe the softness of Tim
Keller combining to create this perfect preacher?
The reason I kind of start with thinking about that is because
I, I think for most of us, or for many of us, we have built up
in our minds a ideal picture of who Jesus Christ is, or at least
who we think Jesus Christ should be.
And, and what we have in these verses this morning is Jesus is
gonna come forward and he's gonna present his mission.
He's gonna presence. This is who I am, and this is
what I've come to do. And he's bringing it to the
people of Israel. And what's gonna become very
clear very quickly is that the mission that Jesus presents, it
doesn't line up with this ideal picture of the Messiah that
Israel had. Jesus is going to present to us
the mission of Jesus according to Jesus because well, and you
might have noticed that I guess as we came to this passage, as
we have in verse 22, after Jesus had spoken to them, they're
amazed, They're amazed at the words they're, they're speaking
well of him. And then you go like moments
later down to verse 29. They're trying to throw him off
a Cliff. Now, I'm sure many or Dan have
said some things up here that maybe you didn't agree with or
didn't like the way we sit it, but no one's tried to throw me
off a Cliff yet that I know of. So something had to go down.
What went down and those moments that made them want to throw
Jesus off a Cliff. And very simply, it's because
they had this picture of what they felt the Messiah should
look like and what Jesus says he's here to do.
It didn't line up. They were two different things
and and as we come and I guess unpack that this morning, I I
want to think about how that might be similar with us.
What is the picture we have of Christ?
What is this ideal picture of? We say Jesus is supposed to come
and bring me this. OK, let's look at what Jesus
said he came to bring and see. Does it line up?
Do we have actually the right picture of who Jesus is?
So let's look together at the mission of Jesus according to
Jesus. As we look at these verses, very
simply, the first part is this. The mission of Jesus is Jesus
has come to save us. Jesus has come to save us.
It's pretty simple right at this point in his ministry when
you're going to see that in versus 14 and 15 Christ had
Jesus Christ had built quite the reputation.
He this is actually what we're reading here, the first of his
public ministry. So we've seen he has the birth
narratives of him as a child. We've seen him grow up and be
baptised and be tempted. Dan spoke on that last week.
So this is the first instance of Jesus actually interacting and
teaching the people of Israel. And it's going to say in verse
14 and 15 that a report had gone out about him through all the
country and he taught in their synagogues being glorified by
all. So people started to hear
stories and whispers about this Jesus guy and that the miracles
he was doing, the things he was doing, he was building quite the
reputation. And so the scene we have here
is, is coming to Nazareth. Now you might recognise
Nazareth, Nazareth as his hometown.
This is where he was born. This is where he was raised,
this is his people. And so he's coming to people who
know him, who probably knew him as a child, saw him grow up.
They saw him learn to be a Carpenter.
They, they didn't, probably didn't know him as Jesus the
Messiah. They just knew him as Jesus.
And so he's coming now into his hometown that the suspense is
built because now he's coming to the synagogue on the Sabbath
day. And to give you a picture maybe
of what the synagogue would look like, I think maybe our closest
representation is what we're doing right now.
So in in Israel at the time, you had the temples where you did
the sacrifices and all that, but the synagogues were mainly a, a
space for the reading of the word and the proclamation of the
word. And so people are the Jews would
come together to the synagogue and there would be readings from
the Torah, They'd be readings from the writings, they'd be
reading from the profits. And then someone would come and
speak. And what it would usually look
like is the person would stand and they would read, and then
they would sit and then they would teach.
And that's why I've chosen to sit this morning because I
wanted to maybe give you a picture of what that might have
looked like. I thought I might follow Jesus,
sleep. And So what happens here is the
scroll you're going to see in verse 17, the scroll of the
prophet Isaiah is handed to Jesus.
And the people, like you said, they know him, they've heard
these rumours. Now he's about to get up and
speak and it says he's gonna unroll the scroll to the section
from Isaiah, and it's Isaiah chapter 61.
And this is where he's going to read from these words in Isaiah
61. The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me because He's anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering
of sight to the blind, to sit at liberty those who were
oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.
And so before I look at what Jesus seared, I, I want you to
understand and maybe put yourself in the synagogue
alongside the Jews and understand the significance of
Isaiah 61. If you were a Jew.
In this section of Isaiah 61 is this promise that one day God
would rescue them. There is this promise of a
Messiah. And when I use the word Messiah,
I'm, I'm essentially Speaking of a, an anointed 1A promised one
who would save Israel in the future.
And so the Israelites, they, they would know this, they would
be familiar with this. And they're thinking, yes,
someone is going to come and save us.
But if we understand what the salvation had looked like so far
for the Israelites in the Old Testament, there had been the
Exodus where they were slaves in Egypt and and God sent Moses and
saved them from the land of Egypt and then eventually
brought them into the Promised land.
And then through their sin, God exiled them from their land into
Babylonian captivity. But he promised to bring them
back into their land. So the salvation that they were
likely thinking of was a physical salvation, a right
here, right now, physical salvation.
Someone's gonna come and they're gonna save us.
Because at the time Jesus comes, they're under captivity from
Rome. The Romans had taken over the
land of Israel. They were oppressed under their
captivity. They were paying taxes.
It was not a nice time to be an Israelite person and and God had
had saved them in the past by bringing them into the land, by
giving them freedom from oppression.
And I guess the reason I want to give you that context is I want
you to understand as Jesus reads this, a juice sitting in the
synagogue is not thinking the same thing we're thinking right
now. They're thinking, yes, Jesus is
gonna save us from oppression, from Rome.
Not Jesus, but the the Messiah. The Messiah is gonna save us
from this physical right here, right now oppression that we are
under. And so Jesus, he grabs the
scroll and he stands up and he reads it, and he sees 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 sit at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim
the year of the Lord's favour. Today the Scripture has been
fulfilled and you're here. You imagine being in the
synagogue at this point. Imagine if someone even came up
here and there. Maybe read a passage from
Revelation that we kind of knew as a promise in the future.
And then they sat down and they said today this has been
fulfilled. I think that's going to give you
a picture of the shock that people have What really today,
but it also comes with so much expectation of what that is
going to look like. But Jesus is about to smash
those expectations. I remember as a kid when I was
maybe 10 or 11, Christmas Eve, the presents go out under the
tree and you start to like, look, We had the rule look, but
don't touch but the Christmas presents.
But you get like as close as you can and you try to like look and
see if you can see like a name tag or not to work out if it's
yours. One year there was this prison
at the very back corner of the tree.
It was about this big. It was a huge one.
I couldn't see the name tag, but I was convinced.
I mean, I'm the youngest of 6. I don't know why I thought this,
but I was convinced that it was for me and I was convinced it
was a Nintendo Wii. I'm like, Mum and dad have
finally caved. They've decided it's a good idea
and and I had built up this expectation that Mum and Dad had
bought me a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and it was the last
present there on Christmas morning as we're handing out the
presents and I'm sitting, I'm like alright, ohh, here we go,
you know, I'm looking forward to it.
And then they unwrap it and the rest of my siblings had all
chipped in to buy Mama's sewing machine.
Ohh, my, I didn't even know about this, but it's from the
children. This is kind of what's gonna
happen for the Israelites, because they have this
expectation of what's gonna happen when they hear this, and
those expectations are about to be smashed.
And I do think that many of us, we do have a prepackaged
understanding of what Jesus Christ promises to give us.
We have this understanding he is going to give me.
Maybe it's not freedom from Rome, but Jesus Christ has
promised to give me an easy life with a comfortable job, free
from suffering as long as I maybe come to church most weeks.
And I'm a relatively good person.
Jesus owes it to me. What kind of expectations do we
have of Christ? And is that what Christ promises
to save us from? Because yes, Jesus has come to
save, but not in the way we might think or want.
Not in the way we might think or want.
And firstly, what's gonna happen is we're gonna see very clearly
that this is not the Messiah that they expected.
This is not the Messiah they expected.
And I think firstly, on a foundational level, it's because
Jesus is in his hometown. They knew him from childhood.
They knew this is Jesus. Imagine here of our Andy sum
came up. And so this is pretty much the
only church you've come to. Andy kind of raised through
Hookway. If he comes up on stage right
now. And a lot of people, especially
if you've been here and seeing Andy grow up, he comes up and
says, hey, just letting you know, I'm going to start a new
career. I'm going to be a professional
rapper. I think for most people who know
Andy quite well, they go Andy. Like, look, Andy's being a
rapper. I I think that there is this
level of comfort that would go that doesn't really make sense.
And I think that's what it's coming across when they asked
this question. Is not this Joseph's son?
Is this not Peter's son? Peter son's son, as Jesus says
he's making this claim and he's making very clear I am the one
who was going to bring this, essentially saying I am the
promised one. I am the Messiah, the saviour
thing from God. And these people, they saw Jesus
as a teenager. They saw him growing up.
And they go, is not this Joseph's son?
This is not the Messiah they expected.
Because I think very simply they were expecting a military
leader, someone who is going to come and, and start a
revolution, maybe even a violent revolution against Rome and
rescue them and, and, and give them the freedom, the political
freedom that they wanted as a nation.
But what do they get? They get Joseph's son.
It doesn't make sense to them. This is not the Messiah that
they expected and that's why essentially Jesus speaks on
their behalf. He says doubtless in verse 23,
doubtless you will quote to me this proverb.
Physician heal yourself what you've done and what we've heard
you did and capernium do here in your hometown as well.
Physician, heal yourself as essentially saying prove it
right. If I tell you that I'm a doctor
and I can, you know, do all of these things, you you wanna see
some proof that I can do there, they're saying prove it.
We've heard you've done these miracles, do them here.
And and Jesus is because of their unbelief.
No, I'm not I'm not going to do that for you.
And then he kind of gives us, I think, a truism by saying no
profit is acceptable in his hometown.
When there is familiarity with who Jesus is, there is contempt
because he's not fitting into this role that they expected him
to fit into. So already these expectations of
who Jesus might be are starting to crash.
This is not the Messiah they expected.
But secondly, this is not the Messiah they wanted.
You gonna find that out pretty quickly.
He's about to smash their expectations and he's gonna show
them that they have a wrong picture of what the Messiah
should be. They want a Messiah who's going
to come and make Israel great again, but Jesus is not coming
for that purpose. Make Israel great again.
He's going to give them two examples to show them that this
is not the case. And we're gonna look at these
and he's going to give them some examples from the Old Testament
to show them as illustrations what he has come to do.
And the first example is of this widow in Sidon, which is this.
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 all over the land.
And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath and
the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.
Now this is a familiar story for I'm sure all of the Jews and the
synagogue here. He's using this as an
illustration, pointing back to a time in Israel's history when
there were many widows and there was a famine that came over
Israel because of God's judgement, because of Israel's
sin. And he's saying the prophet
Elijah came, and who did he go to?
He was not sent to any of the Israelite widows, but he was
sent to an outsider. He was sent to a gentile.
He was sent to a woman. He was sent to a widow and if
you want to read more of that you go to 1st Kings chapter 17.
But but that's a, I guess a shocking illustration for him to
give. Who did the prophet come for?
Not the Israelites. The profit came from the
outsider. Then he's gonna give another
example, and then I'll just paraphrase it for you of an
example with naming the Syrian who was a lipper in the time of
the Prophet Alisha. And there were many livers in
the land of Israel. But who did Elijah go to?
Who was he sent to? He went to this Syrian king
called Neiman who had leprosy, and he healed Neiman.
What are these two examples have in common?
The Prophet came and passed over Israel and yet offered salvation
to an outsider, not only to an outsider, an outsider who
recognised the need to be saved across the saying here that the
mission he's saying here to the Israelites, the mission of the
Messiah. My mission is not for your
physical right here, right now game.
They wanted him to come and and fill the need that they felt
like they had at the moment. We need freedom as a nation.
We need to be free from Rome. We need social freedom, whatever
it was. And Jesus is making very clear
I'm not coming to help you right here, right now.
The purpose of Jesus Christ coming is to save sinners.
That is why He has come. He has come to save sinners.
He has not come to give us a good job.
He has not come to give us a comfortable life.
He has come to save us from our sin.
And it's very easy, I guess, if you look back over those verses
that you read, to read those as physical promises and the sense
to say we can read that right now and we go have Jesus.
Job is to give this to me right here, right now.
And the way that Israel do you have to give this to me right
now. But actually the way Jesus
speaks of it, and I actually think the way the rest of the
Gospels are going to speak of it is as a spiritual promise that
he's giving to them. Think about this.
The word good news to the poor, the way the word poor is used
throughout the Gospels, especially look Matthew chapter
5 and the Beatitudes. He says Blizzard are the poor
and spirit. So Jesus has come not to restore
Israel's fortunes right here, right now.
He has come to save those who are poor, not in money but poor
in spirit, to save those who realise that they are
spiritually bankrupt, that our sin is a problem and we need to
save you. And God has come to meet the
spiritually poor who recognised their need, spiritually rich.
And I think it's very easy for us to have these assumptions.
Cross job as to meet my needs. Crust job as to improve my life.
Christ job is to lighten my yoke.
Shouldn't that give me an easier life?
Shouldn't that make things a little bit more comfortable for
me? Why is life still so hard?
I was at youth Group A couple of weeks ago and they had a Q&A.
They had some questions that they put in and there was a
really powerful question that was asked, which was essentially
saying if Jesus promises come to me and I will take your yoke
upon me, why is life so hard? If Jesus promises us rest, why
is my life so hard? I think that's a very real
question that a lot of us ask in our day-to-day life.
I've trusted in Jesus, but my life is still hard and I want to
speak to the comfort that comes from Christ in a moment.
But I also just want to recognise that we do need to
step back and we go what has promised?
What has Christ promised to give us?
Because if we're looking to Jesus Christ and assuming that
it's his responsibility to give us an easy life, we're only
going to be angry. We're only going to be
disappointed because we're looking at things that he hasn't
actually promised to give us. Jesus Christ has come to save
us, but not in the way we might want.
He isn't promised us health. He hasn't promised us He's he
promised, hasn't promised us wealth.
And a lot of these things are good things in their their gifts
that God often chooses to give. But they're not the promise that
cross gives us. It's not the mission of Christ
and I could see him saving. As we talk about this, there can
be a lot of feeling of being like, what does this mean?
Does this mean that we just need to taper our expectations?
OK, I thought that it was going to be this good following Jesus,
but actually it's just this good.
Is that what I'm saying to you? That's not at all what I'm
saying to you. What?
What I wanna leave you with this morning as we reflect on this is
we reflect on the mission of Christ as actually being able to
see this as good news to walk out and go.
I thought I wanted this, but actually what I've got is far
deeper. It is far richer, it is far
better what Christ has come to bring.
That may not be what we think we want, but it is truly deeper.
So I wanna ask the question why is this good news?
Why is this good news? Cause so far it might just sound
disappointing. Why is this good news?
Firstly, this This is good news because although Jesus hasn't
come to give us necessarily what we want or what we think that we
need, Jesus Christ and God knows our true needs.
He knows our true needs, and he wants to reorient our
perspectives around what we truly need.
There's a lot of things in life. We use that word very freely.
Neat. There's a lot of things in life
that we tell ourselves that we need.
Acceptance, fiction, self esteem, purpose, money, job,
house, whatever it might be. There are a lot of things that
we say, I need this. And when we're saying everything
is a need, we, we, we put those on Jesus Christ and we say it is
your responsibility to provide me those needs.
But the good news of the mission of Christ is that firstly, we
Jesus knows our true needs. He knows them better than we
know them. In the same way, if you've seen
a child who is convinced that they need this, and as a parent
or as an adult, you can often look at it quite objectively and
go like, you don't need this right now.
In fact, if I gave it to you everyday, it would not be
healthy for you. We need to trust that Jesus
knows our true needs and also we need to trust this that Jesus
Christ has a provided for them in abundance.
If we're actually understanding the reality of what we truly
need and we look at the mission of Christ, he is saying I've
provided for it. Because let me tell you, as
human beings, our deepest true need is to know God.
It is to know the God who made us and created us and loved us.
And the problem is that because of our sin, that relationship
with God has been broken our way to God, our way to be made right
with God, and our hope of spending eternity with God
because of our sin, that has been broken.
That is our deepest need. It is an eternal need.
God knows that, and through Jesus Christ He has provided for
that in abundance because of what Jesus did as Dan was
talking about before, because he said it is finished on the
cross. We have that hope because you
know you're gonna see at the end of the passage, these men tried
to throw Jesus off a Cliff. Jesus passed through their
mouths. I think that gives the idea it
might have been a miraculous, like he walked through them, It
might have just been that he managed to escape.
But it happens a couple of times in the Gospels where people try
to kill him and it becomes very clear that Jesus sees it's not
the time. But we have this hope because
there was a time in the Garden of Gethsemane when when the
Romans came to arrest and when he was betrayed by Judas.
And Peter has has his brash apostle pulls out his sword and
cuts off one of the servants ears who was trying to arrest
him. Jesus heals the servant and
tells Peter, Put away your sword.
Shall I not drink of the cup my Father has given me?
This wasn't the time for Jesus to die, but when the time came,
Jesus didn't run from it, although he could have.
He faced it head on. He he mixed the wrath and the
anger of God so that he may provide for our needs a restored
relationship with God. And I will say this because it
might be, it is challenging. I mean, as Christians, we live
in a sinful world, we face sufferings, we face hardships.
And in a sense that's probably natural to look to God and go
God, it's your responsibility to take these away from me.
And I don't want to minimise those sufferings.
I don't want to minimise what people are going through, but
what I will say as well is that the way, although God doesn't
promise to remove all suffering from us in this life, He's
provided for our needs. That and, and, and Jesus Christ
We have access to God who have pulses in Second Corinthians
chapter 1 as the God of all comfort.
His Holy Spirit is with us to comfort us in the midst of our
afflictions. We have access to the God who
has the power to strengthen us in the midst of our weaknesses.
His grace is sufficient. Second Corinthians chapter 12.
Go have a read of that. Because we are in Christ, we
have hope. We have hope and the
resurrection that one day we will be perfectly united with
God. We have purpose in the midst of
our trials. There is purpose.
There is reason, there is sharpening that happens in the
midst of our trials. And actually we have the hope
that in the new heavens and the new earth for those of us who
are in Jesus Christ, for those of us who know Jesus Christ and
trust in Jesus Christ, these realities that are spoken about
here and Isaiah chapter 61, they will be fulfilled.
They will come to fruition not spiritually, but physically,
meaning this. We will not be in want.
We will not be looking for more. We will not have to suffer.
We will be perfectly united with God.
We will be perfectly united with one another.
This aching, this groaning in our hearts will be fulfilled.
And so right now, right here, we, we, we, we are on earth.
Sin surrounds us and we suffer. But we have the hope that one
day we will be perfectly united with Jesus Christ.
This is good news because Jesus knows our true needs, the
mission of Jesus. Jesus has not come to meet our
wants, but he's come to fill our needs, and that is good news.
If he had just come to free Israel from Roman captivity,
they might have had a slightly easier life, but they still
would have been in this scene. They would have been lost if
Jesus came to make our lives easier.
Yeah, sure, they might be easier, but our greatest problem
is our sin problem and and Jesus Christ has come to deal with
that. And we're gonna see that more as
we journey through the book of Luke.
That is good news for us to sit with them.
And really as we go from here, we we've got 2 responses as we
think about who Christ is, The mission of Christ.
Firstly, we could either mould our understanding of who we want
Christ to be to the actual picture of how Christ has shown
himself. Meaning this we we don't
continue to look to Jesus to provide us a easy life when he
hasn't promised that, but we actually look to him as to how
he's shown himself to us. That's our first option.
We could. We could look at him in the way
he's shown himself to us, or we could reject Him and we could
look to build our own Saviour, look to find someone or
something else that is going to provide us with the things that
we think that we need. Those are our options this
morning. And my prayer is, as you look at
the mission of Jesus Christ, you would see truly has given us all
we need through what He has done on the cross.
What a great hope we have. Let's pray.
Lord God, we thank you for your goodness.
We thank you for your grace, and we thank you for the mission of
Christ and what He has come to do.
I pray for all of us, Lord, that we may look to You as who You
truly are. You are good.
You are. You're the one who has meet all
of our needs. God pray, Lord, you make comfort
those of us who are struggling and those who do not know you
would. They just see the good news that
is found and what Jesus Christ has done.
Thank you for the thought. In Jesus name I mean.