How God Always Wins!

Luke 4:29-30 ESV

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.

Have you ever been so angry that you act in an irrational way with seemingly no control whatsoever? What I mean is, have you ever had a time when someone or something has made you so angry to where this raw, carnal side comes out of you and you do or say something that you’re not proud of, or later regret?

Well, I will admit that I have found myself in several situations such as these throughout my life. Someone may say something that hits really low, or that really hurts my pride, and at that point, my self-control goes out the window, the filter comes off, and I reply by saying something scathing in return.

I’ve certainly had these moments in my life, but every time this happens, almost immediately after I finish saying what I said, I will think to myself, “Now why do you do that?!”

Or sometimes I’ll have the tools out and be working on something and whatever it is that I’m working on just won’t come together the way I want it to. So, in an instance of uncontrollable anger and frustration, I’ll take the tool that I’m working with and throw it on the ground.

But just like in the instance that I just described before, right after I throw the tool on the ground, I’ll think to myself, “You know that you need that tool, it’s not the tool’s fault, it’s your own fault, so what good is it for you to throw it down?”

The point that I’m trying to make is that when this happens, when we react in seemingly uncontrollable anger, the result is never a good one, and what we hoped would happen through our reaction, doesn’t happen. In other words, when we react like that, we always lose.

Well, this morning, as we finish up our series of messages on the narrative of the Lord Jesus’ ministry in His hometown of Nazareth, what we see is uncontrollable anger on the part of those in Nazareth who rejected the Lord, how that anger manifested itself, and what the ultimate result of their decision to react in anger was.

We’ve been speaking for weeks now about how the Lord Jesus grew up in Nazareth, it was His hometown. And how by the time that the Lord returns to His hometown, He had already embarked on His public ministry and was making a great name for Himself.

But when the Lord returned home to Nazareth, He didn’t receive a hometown hero’s welcome. Rather, when He returned home, the people there questioned Him and doubted that He was Who He said He was.

They said that if He was Who He said He was, then He needed to back His words up and perform some miracles before them. They said that if He done this, then they might believe Him.

The Lord then told the people of His hometown that they were just like the Israelis who had come hundreds of years before them in that God sent them legitimate messengers too, the prophets. But they had rejected the prophets, and in the same way, these from the Lord’s hometown were rejecting Jesus, Who was not only a Messenger of God, but Who is God Himself.

And so, Jesus told them that just as the prophets did not bestow blessing on unbelieving Israel, but instead bestowed blessing on those from Gentile lands, so would He not bestow blessings on unbelieving Nazareth, but instead He would bestow them upon other cities where there were people who would believe.

And at hearing these words, those of Nazareth were filled with wrath. Now, in the human sense, to be filled with wrath means to be consumed with rage and revenge to the point of acting irrationally and uncontrollably. It’s like what I spoke of just a minute ago about being so angry that we seemingly act out without any sense of control whatsoever.

And the first verse of our reading tells us how these Nazarenes acted when they were filled with wrath to this extent.

First, let’s look at this from the first part of the first verse, where it says:

*Luke 4:29a ESV

29a And they rose up and drove him out of the town

Now, let’s try to really understand the mindset of these Nazarenes here. The Lord had just told them that He would not bestow blessings upon them due to their unbelief, but instead, He would bestow blessings in other places where there were people who would believe Him, just as God sent the prophets to Gentile lands where there were people who would believe His Word. And how God even sent a Gentile to Israel in the case of Naaman the Syrian.

So, at hearing this, the responsible, preferable, godly thing for these Nazarenes to do here would be to recognize their own vile, wicked nature, confess that they are wrong, repent of their sins, and believe on the Lord Jesus… but unless people are led by God, they don’t do the responsible, preferable, godly thing.

No, people typically act according to their strongest inclination in any given situation. And so, man acts in the way in which his strongest inclinations or motives lead him to.

So, while it would have been preferable for the Nazarenes to be repentant and humble when they heard the Lord’s words, they were instead consumed with anger, and therefore wanted to do only what anger, their strongest inclination at that moment directed them to do.

And what their anger led them to do was reason that because the Lord Jesus chose to not bestow blessings on the people of Nazareth, and because He said that He would instead bestow blessings on people from other communities, that He then didn’t belong in their town, and so, they were going to run Him.

But the people didn’t want to just run Jesus out of town, no they wanted to do away with Him for good, as the last part of this verse tells us that they:

*Luke 4:29b ESV

29b brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.

Now, we need to ask the question of why did these Nazarenes want to kill Jesus? I mean, I can understand getting mad at Him and telling Him to leave, but why would they want to kill Him here? I mean, I get that they were salty and didn’t like what Jesus had to say? But you would think that there was a deeper reason than that for wanting to kill Him.

And I do believe there was a deeper reason for these Nazarenes to want to kill the Lord.

You see, these people from Jesus’ hometown didn’t just dislike what Jesus had to say, they also didn’t believe what He had to say. Yet Jesus claims to be speaking the Word of God. Well, because He claims to be speaking the Word of God, and they don’t believe Him, then their conclusion is that Jesus must be a false prophet!

Don’t we ourselves do that a lot? If someone tells us something that we don’t like, we almost always conclude that they are wrong and need to be corrected.

Now, for anyone who knows a little bit about the Old Testament Law, you know that if someone was found to be a false prophet, that is, someone who claimed to speak the Word of God and thus be God’s mouthpiece, and yet was not inspired by God and thus spoke false prophecies that did not come from God, you will know that God commands that when such a person is found out, they were to be put to death.

And because these Nazarenes did not believe Jesus and thus considered Him to be a false prophet, their anger led them to attempt to execute Him.

They drove Him out of town, and they led Him to a cliff, and they were going to throw Him off the cliff and thus kill Him.

But that’s not what happened… rather, this is what happened:

*Luke 4:30 ESV

30 But passing through their midst, he went away.

So, it says that the people had determined to kill Jesus, and they brought Him to the edge of the cliff to do just that. But it says that when they got there, He passed through their midst.

Now, that could mean that when they attempted to throw Jesus off of the cliff, He vanished and passed through the crowd. It could mean that when Jesus got to the edge of the cliff, those who desired to throw Him off fell back in awe just as the soldiers did when they would later arrest Him, and because of this, Jesus just walked away, cutting right through them.

But at any rate, there was something that was stopping them from carrying out their plan and being rid of Jesus. And that something was God!

You see, Jesus was indeed destined to die. And even more than that, He was destined to die at the hands of the people whom He had set apart to be His own holy possession. As Isaiah says, it was God’s will to crush Jesus that He may make an offering for sin. But the Lord Jesus had no sin, therefore, the offering that He made, the offering of His body crushed was for the sin of those who would be saved.

That was indeed the will of God. But what was not the will of God was for Jesus to be put to death at this point, when these Nazarenes attempted to kill Him.

No, it was God’s will for the Lord Jesus to be killed on the cross, becoming the curse in place of those who would trust in Him. Taking on the full brunt of God’s wrath for those who would be saved.

And furthermore, it was God’s will for the Lord Jesus to be crucified in no city but Jerusalem, for as the Lord says later on in this same Gospel:

*Luke 13:33 ESV

33 … I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’

And if we know our Bibles, we know that the Lord Jesus did indeed die in Jerusalem by crucifixion at the hands of those who were His countrymen, from the blessed people of Israel.

And so, beloved, as we finish this series of sermons on the account of Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth, we see that the One Who comes out as the victor, is God Himself, as it is always God Who wins, it is always God Whose will is done and Whose purposes are accomplished.

And so, what this tells us is that if God does not want something to happen, then guess what? It’s not going to happen. And if something does happen, we know that God allows it to happen for a very good purpose that is always most glorifying to Him.

So, the next time that you are struggling and frustrated that something is not happening, know that it is only because in His wisdom, God has deemed best, and for your good, to not let it happen.

And whenever something does happen, whether it appears to be good or bad, know that God is allowing it to happen for a very good purpose, a purpose that is good for us, His people, and is most glorifying to Him.

Trust in and hold fast to this mighty God today!

Amen?