Preach the Kingdom — Luke 4

0:09 Good morning. I think it's the first time I actually used my bookmark in my Bible to turn to the page. Was going to save myself a few seconds there. Let's pray. Dear heavenly father, we come before you again this morning to open your word.

0:35 Lord, as we look into your word, we're studying the book of Luke. We're in chapter four today. Lord, there's so much in this book for us to learn. Lord, we're studying the ministry of Christ. We're studying Christ's life.

0:52 In in the gospel of Luke and lord, we pray that you would open our minds and open our hearts As we look at the gospels, there is so much that we see of the Jews, of the of the Pharisees who failed to see Christ and lord, so often we we fall into that same trap and so lord, we we want to understand you. We want to see you. So, we ask that you would open our hearts and minds to see your truths that that you have laid out for us. So, we commit this time to you and ask for your blessing upon it. In the lord Jesus name, amen.

1:31 So, if you were here last week, Andy oops, Andy opened chapter four of chapter of of the gospel of Luke for us and covered the temptation of Jesus. And he left off in verse 13. He covered verse 13 and we're going to pick up today in verse 14. Now, there is a approximately one year gap between verse 13 and verse 14. This is recorded.

2:09 What what happened during this one year gap is the lord's ministry in Judea which is covered in just the gospel of John chapters two through five is where we have that. It's not in Matthew or Mark. So, there's a one year gap after the temptation of Christ and then he begins his ministry in Galilee in in in verse 14. We're we're actually going to cover from 14 through the end of the chapter, which is ambitious, but buckle up. We're gonna we're gonna get through this.

2:45 So let's start reading the first bit here in the text. Luke four starting in verse 14. And Jesus returns to Galilee from Judea where he he was in the power of the spirit, and news about him spread through all the surrounding district. And he began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all. And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read.

3:13 And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and he opened the book and found the place where it is written, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. And he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed upon him. And he began to say to them, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, and all were speaking well of him and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from his lips, and they are saying, is this not Joseph's son?

3:57 And he said to them, no doubt, you will quote this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. And he said, truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. But I say to you in truth, there were as many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was shut up for three years and six months when a great famine came over all the land. And yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon to a woman who was a widow.

4:32 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha, the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman, the Syrian. And all in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things, and they rose up and cast him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw him down. But passing through their midst, he went his way. We'll stop there. So Jesus is returning to Galilee.

5:05 Now Galilee was a pretty large area. It was about the size of the state of Connecticut, which is about the size of an eighth of Ohio to give you a little perspective. The Galilee is a pretty large region, and and Galilee is where Nazareth is... Was. So Jesus returns and he's teaching in their synagogue.

5:30 Jesus' focus during his ministry was on teaching and I'm going to harp on this a couple more times in the next forty minutes but his his focus was on teaching and at this early point, there was no organized opposition. It says he was being glorified by all in some translation. So there there wasn't any hostile feelings toward him yet at this point. So he comes to Nazareth, and and then he stands up to read. So the usual order of service during...

6:02 In a synagogue on a Sabbath was that they'd have a... An opening prayer and a praise, and then they would read from the law, then they would read from prophets, and then they'd have a type of sermon, which could also be from a from a visiting speaker. And so Jesus is a visiting speaker. In this case, he's returned to his home synagogue, and he's here to teach. So he's he's he's back with with all of his all of his people, the people who who know him, where he grew up.

6:35 So he reads from Isaiah, and this portion is from Isaiah 61 and it's first one and two to a. And so, he he dissects this a little bit. So he reads it and he says, the spirit of the lord is upon me. So Isaiah here is speaking about the Messiah. The one speaking in this passage is the Messiah.

7:00 I'm sorry. And in this prophecy, the Messiah announced that he came to heal the damage that sin does. And in in here, he lists five things. He says... He lists five damages that sin does that the Messiah comes to write.

7:39 To proclaim liberty to the captives, sin makes people captive and enslaves them, and the Messiah comes to set them free. Recovery of sight to the blind. Sin blinds us morally and spiritually, and the Messiah comes to heal that blindness. To set at liberty those who are oppressed, sin oppresses its victims, and the Messiah comes to bring liberty to those. And lastly, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord or the acceptable year of the Lord.

8:13 This seems to be a reference to the Old Testament concept of the year of Jubilee, which is in Leviticus 25 if you care to go there. I'm not going to talk a lot about it right now but the Reader's Digest version is that the year of Jubilee happened every seven years and every seven years, all of the debts were cancelled, slaves were set free, and it was a fresh start for everyone. If you had mortgaged property that, you know, all... That that all got canceled and everybody returned to their their own place. And then every seven Jubilees, there was other stuff that happened.

8:47 Anyway, we're not gonna go there today. But, the acceptable year of the Lord being a reference to the year of Jubilee, Marvin Pate, who was a professor at Moody Bible Institute, he said this, Jesus came to preach the the Lord's acceptable year, a reference to the year of Jubilee. It is just possible that the reason Jesus returned to his hometown was because it was Jubilee year. It's possible. We don't know that, but it's it's it's possible.

9:13 But the other thing we take from this, the acceptable year of the Lord, he's talking about his first coming, and Jesus stops reading there in that portion of Isaiah because he doesn't he doesn't read the rest of the verse. So, he's he's here to to show the Jews that this is the coming of the Messiah and this is his first coming and the first coming is to preach the year of the lord. This is the present age and the appropriate time of salvation. When he returns the second time, when Christ returns the second time, it will be to proclaim the vengeance of our god. It is as it says in Isaiah which Jesus doesn't write here.

9:54 He doesn't quote here. And so where Jesus stops, it's it's showing us that that nature of the prophecy in relation to time. Since the since the further you go into Isaiah, it talks about the the second coming and the vengeance of our god. So Christ stops there because that's not what his focus is. That's not why he's here.

10:18 He's not here coming with the Lord's wrath. He's here now because this is the time of salvation. And there's a there's a two thousand here, then there's a two thousand year comma between those two phrases in Isaiah. So he stops there at a very deliberate point and he sits down. And he doesn't go back to his seat, among the congregation, but he's now going to speak about this.

10:49 So, everyone's wondering now what he's going to say and how he's going to explain what he just read. So, he starts by saying, today, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. That's how that's how he opens. That's how he opens his his sermon. And he's answering two questions that weren't asked.

11:06 But he's answering two questions, and they are, who was Isaiah talking about? And he says, Isaiah's talking about me. When was Isaiah talking about? He's talking about right now. This is me, and this is right now.

11:23 Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. And then they marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. So, this seems to mean that Jesus continued on in some discourse that is not all laid out here but Jesus continued on in his sermon and he's speaking on the theme that he's just started and he does it with words that are literally full of grace in only the way that the lord Jesus Christ could if you can try and put yourself there what that would feel like to to listen to him preach But... So they sense the the goodness and the grace of God that is in the announcement of the Messiah coming and that the ministry of the Messiah is here. So they can sense that.

12:32 They do a double take and they go, wait. This this this is Jesus. This is this is Joseph's son. This is the carpenter. I got some of his work in my house.

12:43 And, you know, and and they flip around and what do they what do they do? So, the the response of Jesus that follows this shows that it was not an impartial comment. They begin to resent that someone so familiar to them could be full of such grace and speak in such a gracious way and explaining scriptures to them and that he could be the fulfillment of such prophecies. So Jesus says to them, no doubt you will quote this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.

13:26 Luke doesn't tell us that that they actually said this. Perhaps they did, and Jesus was quoting their words back to them, but it's also just as likely that he understood what was in their minds and he understood their objection. Just as likely. They wanted Jesus to prove his claims with miraculous signs. And Jesus had done signs in Capernaum during that that one year gap that I mentioned at the at the beginning.

13:56 So he had done some miracles and they had heard about them. So they now wanna say, okay, Jesus is coming back to his hometown of Nazareth, so give us a show. We wanna we wanna see what the other folks are talking about. He's he's a Nazareth man, so, of course, he's in duty bound to help Nazareth. Spurgeon said, they considered themselves as being in a sort, his proprietors who could command his powers at their own discretion, end quote.

14:29 Jesus understood that it is easy to doubt the power and the work of god among those who are most familiar to us. It's ease, it was easier for the Jews in Nazareth to reject Jesus because he was so you know, this was his hometown. He was their homeboy. You know? So, it's it's easy to dismiss and get upset about it.

14:59 They wanted special favors because he was in his hometown and Jesus points out that this doesn't matter to god. And then what he does is show examples of God's work among the Gentiles. And this is what made the most upset. So when he starts talking about Elijah and Elisha and Naaman, Jesus makes a couple of points here. And first, it's that the fact that they don't accept him as as Jesus, that that they don't they don't accept him.

15:35 They're not receiving him as the Messiah. It has nothing to do with Jesus. It has everything to do with them. He was truly from god but they would not receive him. Their rejection says more about them than it does about him.

15:56 And secondly, what Jesus is is saying in reviewing some of history with them, he's saying, it's showing God's miraculous power operates in unexpected and sovereign ways. Perhaps, there's there's people that we would consider most undeserving or or or strange, and they are the recipients of God's miraculous power. And without going too far into the story about Naaman, that's in first Kings if you wanna check it out there. But Naaman was healed by sovereign grace, but it's very important to note how it happened. So first, Naaman heard a report.

17:02 And then he has to obey the word of the prophet. He has to obey Elisha, wash in the Jordan River seven times, kind of humiliating, and put aside his pride. And and surrender that pride to God and the prophet. Then, he's healed. So, it's it's he's he's showing the responsibility, the the human responsibility and this is this is exactly the way that salvation works.

17:36 Is that god doesn't just save us. We have to accept it. He makes himself known. He makes the offer known but there's a human component to it. You have to recognize your sin.

17:48 You have to recognize your state And then you have to take action. So think about the impact on the Jewish minds after this. He brings up... He he brings this up. He brings up widows and lepers and all of

18:07 them

18:07 gentiles. So the Jews, especially the pharisees and and the up and ups in the synagogue, they they put women and lepers and gentiles at the very bottom of the social scale. Right? They they are at the bottom. And Jesus is putting them above all of the Jews.

18:35 And he also is pointing out that the Old Testament history is about to repeat itself. He would be rejected not only in Nazareth but in the whole nation of Israel and he would then turn to the Gentiles just as Elisha and Elijah had done. So then they respond. Verse 28. And all in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things.

19:09 And they rose up and cast him out of the city and led him to the brow on the hill on which the city had been built in order to throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went his way. This this is actually kind of hilarious in a very, ironic way. So this is really quite a response to a sermon. I mean, seriously, you don't...

19:35 I mean, some people have anger issues, but man, you're just... They take him out of the city and Jesus goes. Jesus goes. That's what I find so entertaining is that he actually goes with them. They lead him out to the brow on the hill where the city had been built.

19:53 It wasn't 10 feet away. Like, they they... The whole crowd gets up and they pull Jesus over. I don't know how far it was. They take him over there and he goes.

20:03 He goes. And then he passes through their midst. They're they're livid to be told that something's wrong with them. They're livid to be told that their miracle is about to be denied. They're livid at the fact that god also loves the Gentiles and then, in all to be the most ironic, he does a miracle right in front of them and passes through the midst.

20:33 It's like one of those things where, okay, they're they're all walking and they're all upset and they're all in an uproar and then suddenly like dude looks over here and he's like, where'd Jesus go? And he got on the other side, it's like, where'd Jesus go? And then there's a guy back behind him. He just, we don't know how he did it or what he did but, you know, he does the miracle. He does it and if they hadn't been so all up in their minds about how upset they were, if they hadn't been in that state of mind like he did it.

21:08 You wanted the miracle and here here it was. And so Luke sets the tone for Jesus's whole story right here. The whole... All of his ministry, he sets this tone. He comes sinless and doing nothing but good and they want to murder him.

21:35 Okay. I got fifteen minutes. Okay. So as far as we know, to wrap this up, Jesus never returned to Nazareth. It's not it's not recorded for us, so we don't...

21:49 There's there's no record of it, but as far as we know, he did not return to Nazareth. So he goes back to Capernaum in Galilee, and he starts teaching again. Verse 31, he came down to Capernaum, the city of Galilee, and he was teaching them on the Sabbath. And they were amazed at his teaching for his message was with authority. And there was a man in the synagogue possessed by the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, What do you have to do?

22:43 And amazement came upon them all, and they began discussing with one another saying, what is this message? For with authority and power, he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out. And the report about him was getting out into every locality in the surrounding district. So, here's another example of Jesus focusing his ministry on the teaching. His primary calling aside from the work at Calvary, we're not we're not going there yet but the purpose of his three year odd long ministry was teaching.

23:28 And he uses the platform and the courtesy of the synagogue to do this a lot of the time, not all the time, but but a lot of the time. We're not told what he was teaching here specifically, but we're told about the effect that it had. They were astonished. They had never seen or heard anyone teach quite like this before and not with this kind of authority. And the authority is evident not just in what he's teaching, but then it's demonstrated here by his control and his power over the spirit, the the demon.

24:05 The terms unclean spirit, evil spirit, and demon all are are pretty much the same thing, and they refer to the evil powers of darkness, the enemies of god and man and they are organized powers. Paul talks about them in Ephesians six and they are led by Satan himself. And and the demons have a few things to say. Jesus hadn't even... I mean, Jesus was just preaching there and the and the man with the with the unclean spirit just comes in and the demon starts...

24:42 The demon initiates the conversation. And the demon testifies that Jesus is the Christ and that he is holy and pure. And Jesus does two things here. He doesn't just command the demon to come out but he also rebukes the demon to be quiet. And the the Greek word there is like the effect of it is is like it's like a muzzling against your will.

25:11 Like, it it is like clamping down with a muzzle forcefully. Like, that's what the Greek word is meaning there. I mean, Jesus is is almost literally forcing the mouth shut. Not in a physical sense. It kind of is in a physical sense because the demon is controlling the the man.

25:35 And so Jesus demonstrates his power and his authority here, and then he and he forces the demon to be quiet. Why? Jesus doesn't want the testimony of the demons to be the one that the people hear. God is going to proclaim and show everyone that he is the Messiah, but he doesn't want the demons to do it. So after this, Jesus heals many more from verses 38 to 44.

26:14 And the first thing he does after the teaching and then the incident in the synagogue there, it's still on the Sabbath, he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon's home, verse 38. And Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they made request of him on her behalf. And standing over her, he rebuked the fever and left her, and she immediately arose and waited on them. In case you all forget, Peter was married. I forget all the time.

26:45 I don't know. I just read about Peter and you just kinda don't don't don't don't have in the back of your mind, hey, Peter was married. And Clement of Alexandria, the early Christian historian, wrote of Peter's wife, a little bit and just said that that she helped Peter in his ministry and helped to minister to other women and meeting the needs of other women. Just as a little side note. But Jesus leaves the synagogue and moves from a public miracle and and a public display of power to a more private one.

27:21 He's not only interested in in the masses, but then he also takes time to minister individually and in individual homes. And the amazing miracle here is that not only was she healed of her fever, but she immediately rose and and waited on them. Typically, when a fever leaves you, you need some recovery time and not when the Lord heals you. So finally, to finish out this chapter, while the sun was setting in verse 40, all who had all who had any sick with various diseases brought them to him and laying his hands on every one of them, he was healing them. And demons also were coming out of many crying out and saying, you are the son of God and rebuking them, he would not allow them to speak because they knew him to be the Christ.

28:24 And when the day came, he departed and went to a lonely place and the multitudes were searching for him and came to him and tried to keep him from going away from them. But he said to them, I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose. And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. So when the sun was setting on the Sabbath, that's when the new day started. So the re...

28:53 Everybody was coming to him at that point because there were restrictions on the amount of traveling you could do on the Sabbath. And so at sunset, when the Sabbath was officially over, they were now freed from that and they... You know, the the the droves were coming. So they're all coming to him to bring their their sick. And Jesus works tirelessly here to serve the needs of others and putting their needs before his.

29:24 And again, we have more reference to casting out demons and Jesus again not allowing them to speak. He does not want their testimony to be relied upon. Now, it's interesting. We we get the we get the sense that Jesus was casting out demons left and right because the the biblical accounts are compressed. Right?

29:47 We get the we get the highlights. We get the important and the exceptional events, but we don't have a minute by minute play by play of Jesus' whole three years. Right? We don't have all of it. So it's easy to think that there was a whole lot more demon possession that was really...

30:01 Than there really was. So there's really only 10 specific records of demon possession and then a couple of other general occasions where it describes people being delivered. So it doesn't really seem that abnormally high over a period of three years in a very densely populated pre Christian region. So just a little note there. Finally, the the further preaching in Galilee, Jesus goes to a deserted place.

31:03 He spent most of his time ministering but he also, this is not the first and only place where it's documented where Jesus needed time alone. And the great work that Jesus did in his ministry didn't always draw on his just his own resource of his divine nature, but it's it's this this concept that all of his ministry and all of that power was coming from the father and the holy spirit. It was the triune God, and and he was spending time. That's why he was spending that time alone. And it was essential to his ministry.

31:47 And the people all come, they they they all come and and and find him. They were they were looking for him. They finally find him and he's trying to get out of there and and head on to the next city to to to teach and they're trying to keep him back. He taught about the kingdom of god and in the sense that he announced the presence of the king, he announced the presence of the Messiah and is trying to correct the misconceptions. They had misconceptions about who the Messiah was.

32:29 They had misconceptions about what the kingdom of God was. They wanted a savior from political problems and what they needed was saving up from their sins. And he... Jesus said, he says, for I was sent for this purpose is the point of his ministry was to teach and to preach and he was he was teaching the kingdom of god. Miracles were a part of that work but they weren't the focus.

33:03 Before he went to the cross, before the ultimate purpose of his being here, before the cross, his work of healing and miracles, they were amazing and they were incredible. But what was he what was he really trying to do? He's trying to teach and he's still doing that. We we know that miracles still happen every day. Miracles still happen.

33:32 God still does miracles. And can we still ask for miracles? Absolutely. God doesn't always grant them, and God doesn't always work in ways that make sense to us. We don't understand why we think about where we've been.

33:58 You know, why why is he exalting the Gentiles and the women and the the lepers? We don't understand. We don't understand why he didn't let the demon speak. We don't understand why he went to be by himself. We don't understand why he's gotta go on to the next town.

34:17 We don't understand we don't understand what's happening. And you can put yourself there and you try to think about today and and you're going about your life. You're going about your day to day and you're just like, I don't I don't get it. I don't get it. And it's okay.

34:39 God works in unexpected ways and in ways that don't make sense to us but because he's got another purpose. He doesn't let the demons speak because he he that's not where he wants his testimony to come from. So, he's doing this today and we don't understand that. Why wouldn't you just let the demons proclaim that he's the Christ? I mean, they already know and there's more irony for you.

35:02 The demons know it and his own people don't know it. Let the let the let the demons do the evangelism for you because they're... They seem pretty good at it. We don't get it. We can we can understand some of it now in retrospect reading this book, but if this was if this was you, if this was our this was our story and we were there, or if it was your your life and this was yesterday, and we're sitting there going through this just not understanding and not seeing.

35:36 It reminds me when Jesus said, Martha, Martha, Mary has chosen the better thing. To be at the feet of Jesus, he wants to teach us. He wants to teach us and he wants us to be a part of his kingdom. He wants to be there. He wants to save us from our sins and he wants to teach us and he's still doing that.

36:03 That is the point. The point is not that he will do all of the miracles and because the smooth sailing doesn't make smooth seas don't make a skillful sailor as the saying goes, right? He wants to teach us and he wants to lead us along the way. Let's pray. Dear heavenly father, we we thank you for this time that we've had this morning to open your word.

36:51 Lord, may we have the faith and the trust to cling on to you and to listen to to to your spirit teaching us.

37:06 Be with us as we go now today. In

37:07 the Lord Jesus' name. Amen.