"Gracious Fulfillment"

Today,we’re continuing our look at the Gospel of Luke with a sermon i’m calling “Gracious Fulfillment”

Having successfully resisted the temptations of Satan in the wilderness, Jesus gets down to business doing what He came to do.

Let’s follow His example and do the same

Turn in your bibles to Luke 4:14

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Luke 4:14–15 (LSB)

14 And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding district. 15 And He was teaching in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

Luke-not always chronological

Power of the spirit-baptism, temptation, ministry

teaching in their synagogues - Naz not very first stop

glorified by all - so far so good

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Luke 4:16 (LSB)

16 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.

establishing:

Nazareth - brought up here - SO people knew Him

Custom to go to synagogue - SO not just as ministry, but as person -

as per Jewish custom - going since age 5

seen as “a man” since age 13 - can participate in service SO probably not the first time Jesus has read or taught in this synagogue

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Luke 4:17–22 (LSB)

17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the scroll and found the place where it was written, 18 “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 OPPRESSED,

19 TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.” 20 And He closed the scroll, 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 were speaking well of Him and marveling at the gracious words which were coming forth from His lips, and they were saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”

Today's scripture-broken into 3 parts-here we have the first:

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The Proclamation

great example of God’s sovereignty - Isaiah chosen by someone else, Jesus picks verse (looks for and finds this specific passage

Isaiah 61 - not exact word for word, adds in other aspect from different parts of IS - sight to blind, free oppressed

Jesus reads the scripture and sits - not finished - that’s how rabbi’s would teach

sign of humility - stand to read scripture - sit to teach

vs 21 - Jesus says that the scripture has been fulfilled - in and by Him

What does this mean?

SHOW Luke 4:18

Luke 4:18 (LSB)

18 “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 OPPRESSED,

Spirit is upon Him, anointed by God (baptism)

purpose of ministry stated in these lines:

each statement both physical and spiritual

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1. bring good news to poor

Luke says Poor - Isaiah says afflicted (many tran. poor)

hebrew עָנָו - a-naw - afflicted-root poor, humble, meek

poor - double meaning throughout Jesus ministry

poor, needy afflicted-reliant on help from others

and SLIDE

Matthew 5:3 (LSB)

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

poor in spirit - humble in spirit, reliant on God

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Proclaim Release To The Captives

Jesus never emptied a prison - but, physical

but many set free from life time of illness physical disability

dead back to life

Spiritual - Jesus brings freedom - proclaiming- “you can be free”

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John 8:34–36 (LSB)

34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. 35 “And the slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. 36 “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

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Romans 8:2 (LSB)

2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

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Sight To The Blind

physical - Jesus healed many blind folks - actually only one to do so

spiritual - spiritual blindness was something Jesus fought against a lot

from blindness to sight

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John 9:39 (LSB)

39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

from darkness to Light - Jesus was the light

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John 8:12 (LSB)

12 Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

the spiritual blindness of the religious leaders of that time - talk more in a moment

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Set Free The Oppressed

physical - demon possession

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Acts 10:38 (LSB)

38 “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

Spiritual - sin oppresses - oppressed, broken/weakened

freedom from that oppression

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Luke 11:46 (LSB)

46 But He said, “Woe to you scholars of the Law as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers.

Jesus answer to this oppression

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Matthew 11:28 (LSB)

28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

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Proclaim The Favorable Year Of The Lord

ultimate favor - salvation has come through Christ

Jesus reads the scripture - sits and says,“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Their response: SLIDE

Luke 4:22 (LSB)

22 And all were speaking well of Him and marveling at the gracious words which were coming forth from His lips, and they were saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”

they were impressed with the way he spoke, but didn’t seem to really understand what he had said, focusing more on the fact that they knew him a the carpenters son, rather than of his claim to fulfill scripture. not negative per se, not yet

Matt and Mark they vocalize this

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Matthew 13:54–55 (LSB)

54 And He came to His hometown and began teaching them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? 55 “Is not this the carpenter’s son?

innocent questions? - confusion “why is the carpenters son saying all this?

a lot can be said without words - faces doubtful

Luke - Jesus knew their hearts - as He does a number of other times in the NT - calls them out in our Second part

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The Proverb(s)

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Luke 4:23–24 (LSB)

23 And He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard took place at Capernaum, do also here in your hometown as well.’” 24 And He said, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.

There are really 2 proverbs, or wise thoughts/timeless truths being stated here

Physician

no prophet welcome

we can understand this in two ways

1. they wanted proof - miracles proceeded Him - do what you did in Capernaum

moreover-”if you claim to be the anointed on of God, let’s see something impressive”

2. they had a sense of entitlement - you’re our home town son, you ought to do the greatest things here!

prophet not welcome - why does He say this?

familiarity breeds contempt - hard for people to think differently of someone they’ve known forever

Jesus drops a truth bomb on them next

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Luke 4:25–27 (LSB)

25 “But I say to you in truth, there were 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, 26 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. 27 “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.”

summary - Jesus mentions 2 instances where God sent the prophets Elijah and Elisha to gentiles instead of Jews.

combining all of this Jesus, sitting in the synagogue, had basically told the Jews, children of Abraham, chosen people of God, that they weren’t God favorites anymore.

The Jews will always have special favor as it was to them that both the OT and Jesus were given to the world.

However, in the past it had been us against the world; God’s chosen people, Israel, and everyone else.

What Jesus is not so subtly implying with these proverbs is that

1. Nazareth doesn’t have exclusive rights to Jesus

2. the Jews would no longer exclusively have God’s favor.

It’s hard for us to understand how offensive that was to hear

the word chosen is used roughly 270 times in the PT to refer to the Jews.

And now Jesus implies that chosen as turned into optional.

their response gives us a clear understanding of how they felt about this. Leads to the final section

The Problem

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Luke 4:28–30 (LSB)

28 And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things, 29 and they stood up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the edge of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, He went on His way.

there would be no simple garment tearing and ashes for this offence - jumped straight to murder

notice that there is no sense that Jesus resisted this attempt to throw him off a cliff.

this shows that there is a difference between ignorance and blindness - they knew exactly what Jesus was saying, and it led to the first attempt to kill Jesus.

The blindness comes through in the deeper issue

speaking of this, Simeon says SLIDE

Probably in executing what they would have called the judgment of zeal , they thought they were doing an acceptable service to their God; so blinded were they by their own passions, and “captivated by the devil at his will.”

1 Charles Simeon, Horae Homileticae: Mark-Luke, vol. 12 (London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1832), 308.

Yet for all their effort, it was not time yet for Jesus life to end, and he “passed through their midst, and went away.”

this may have been something miraculous, but regardless, it wasn’t the last time Jesus escaped the grasp of those set to do him harm

Explain (what it means):

What we are seeing in these verses are a few remarkable truths.

For all the miraculous signs and proof the people demanded, they missed the best one.

Jesus’ Proclamation of scripture being fulfilled is proof of a

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Promise Kept.

how can you tell a true prophet from a false prophet? The prophecies come true!

During his life and ministry, Jesus fulfilled somewhere around 500 OT messianic prophecies.

God promised a Savior-God made good on that - God’s keeps His promises!

another remarkable truth that the Parables represent is that of a

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Paradigm Shifted

Through Jesus God’s Plan of Salvation:

Expanded: From Israel to the whole world

Narrowed: From Israel as a nation to the individual. (OT they forsook Him, He judged them as a nation.)

what the residents of naz were mad about, we should celebrate: That God sent Jesus to die for the gentiles as well as the Jews.

the final truth, which the angry mob represents, is that Jesus was

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Persecuted for Truth

the men in the synagogue sure didn’t like it, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true

This huge paradigm shift is represented in countless aspects of Jesus ministry including the arguably most well known verse in all of scripture

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John 3:16 (LSB)

16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

We know that “the world” in this verse doesn’t mean literally everyone on the planet.

What it DOES mean is God’s love and favor, once reserved for the people of Israel alone, has now broadened and in a way, simplified, to “whoever believes in” Jesus.

to clarify - Jesus says He’s the only way to Heaven - that’s not different

He has ALWAYS been the only way to heaven

begs the question of salvation in the OT, before Jesus came to save

Jesus was the only way to heaven then as well, as He made clear when He said

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John 8:58 (LSB)

58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

Steven Lawson explained it like this: salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. In the NT and onward, we look back to Christ and what He has done.

In the OT salvation was by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but at that time they were looking ahead to Christ and what the messiah would do.

Exhort (what to do):

so 2000+ years later, what’s our takeaway from this passage

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We are to consider our salvation with humble thanksgiving, not entitlement

The issue with the Jews that rejected Christ - relied on 1. their heritage as descendents of Abraham, God’s chosen people, and 2. relied on keeping of the law.

even if they didn’t keep the law, they were still sons of Abraham and felt that was all they needed.

they had fallen into a sense of entitlement, they were the chosen people, so OBVIOUSLY they would always be God’s first pick

They still needed Jesus - that’s where the blindness came in.

the Pharisees in general took that prideful entitlement to an extreme as Jesus pointed out in

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Luke 18:11 (LSB)

11 “The Pharisee stood and was praying these things to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

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But what does that have to do with Us?

We believe in Jesus! We know that salvation is a gift of God and not based on our works!

And yet, believers today still wrestle with our own version of entitlement. This is extremely dangerous.

If we’re honest, there are times when we all might feel like as long as we’re faithful to God, thing will probably go well for us.

Listen to how author Peter Maiden puts it.

He's written a book called “Radical Gratitude : Recalibrating Your Heart in An Age of Entitlement” and in it says that even if we don’t fall into the trap of the prosperity gospel, “don’t we expect, at the very least, such blessings as reasonable health, financial provision, the ability to hold down a job, a basically happy marriage, a loving family and a caring church?”

that’s reasonable isn’t it? But listen to what he says next. ready for a gut check?

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Isn’t there a danger that we think we love Jesus when we’re actually using him, expecting him to turn up when we are sick or in need in some serious way? He is ‘the big fix’. We expect an experience with him that will take away our pain and suffering. But if we are not careful, this begins to resemble the drug addict looking for a high or the drinker looking for that alcoholic haze to achieve at least a brief respite from pain. After all, we know Jesus, and when we know someone well, surely it entitles us to certain privileges?

MAIDEN, PETER. Radical Gratitude : Recalibrating Your Heart in An Age of Entitlement, IVP, 2020

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When i read that, it stopped be cold.

Have i been using Jesus instead of loving Him?

this is an incredibly difficult thing to contemplate

if this isn’t you, Praise the Lord!

but, speaking for myself, and being really honest, i KNOW there have been times when i approached the throne with more entitlement than gratitude.

the difficult thing is that we have to balance knowing that we have been forgiven, washed clean and are co-heirs with Christ, along with knowing that apart from Him we can do nothing.

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We are to consider our salvation with humble thanksgiving, not entitlement

People in Jesus day were offered the gift of forgiveness and salvation from the messiah Himself and in their blindness, they rejected Him.

We have the benefit of hindsight - see the mistakes they made, the model and example of Jesus and the apostles

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on the one hand it’s easy to understand how people could be skeptical, at least at first. Their long awaited messiah......was Joey’s boy?

How sad for us today, having the blessing of perspective and the word of God, if we were to not avoid falling into the same traps they did.

Closing

Are we making demands of Jesus? Asking for signs and wonders? health and prosperity? happiness and comfort?

more critically, how do we feel when we don’t always get those things? are we angry and bitter and God for not keeping up “His end of the bargain”?

Jesus instructed us to

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Luke 6:35 (LSB)

35 “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and evil.

If we are called to give, expecting nothing in return from our enemies, how much more we should be thankful and love God expecting nothing in return?

Be wary brother and sisters, that when you approach the throne, you do it gratitude and not the misguided spirit of entitlement.

we know as Peter says that every thing we have is a gift from the Father above

moreover, we have been given the most precious gift. One that should overwhelm us with thankfulness, for

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Ephesians 2:4–9 (LSB)

4 God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ...8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, so that no one may boast.

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Let’s pray