Despite Direct Rejection

The Good News Of The Lord’s Favor

1.26.25 [Luke 4:16-31] River of Life (3rd Sunday after Epiphany)

Grace and peace to you, oaks of righteousness, plantings of the Lord who are called and equipped to display his splendor. Amen. 

They say: You can never go home again. Of course, that’s not strictly true. Unless your home was the Garden of Eden or Pompeii or Chernobyl you can return to the location. That’s not what they mean when they say You can never go home again. What they mean is that the place you once called home is more than the place. It might have the same address, but it won’t be the same. Familiar buildings have been fixed up, fallen apart, or totally replaced. The circumstances and conditions have changed too. The people you grew up alongside did not stay frozen in time. Some have grown up. Some have gone on. Home, as you remember it, has changed so much that it very well might be unrecognizable. But it’s not just that back home has changed. So, too, have you. You are not the same person you were when you left. You are as different as home is now. So you can never go home again. 

Maybe, at first glance, it seems like that’s what’s happening in our Gospel reading for today. Jesus goes home again—back to Nazareth—and finds out that nothing is the way he remembered. Maybe we think: he’s changed; the people of Nazareth have changed, so home as Jesus once knew it is no longer there. 

But Luke’s Gospel gives us more than a couple of clues that that’s not what is happening here. In the first seven verses, everything is going great. As a recognized rabbi, Jesus was likely invited to speak to his hometown synagogue on the Sabbath day. He read from the scroll of Isaiah which the synagogue attendant gave him. He sat down to teach them as was the custom of that day. And Luke tells us Lk. 4:20 the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fasted on him. They were listening intently. They were impressed. Lk. 4:22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at his gracious words.  

So how do we go from that, to Lk. 4:28-29 all the people in the synagogue becoming so furious with Jesus that they drove him out of town and tried to throw him off the cliff? 

Luke reveals how this all happened by hinting at one cause and highlighting another. The cause that Luke hints at would fly under our radar were it not for Matthew’s Gospel. The people kept on asking themselves and their neighbors: Lk. 4:22 Isn’t this Joseph’s son?

While they were amazed at his gracious words, saving faith was not awakened. They were impressed, not inspired to believe. Surprised, not spiritually stimulated. Matthew tells us the question they kept asking was Mt. 13:54 Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? His parents aren’t special. His brothers are ordinary. His sisters still live here in town. Where does he get the idea that Lk. 4:18 the Spirit of the Lord has anointed him to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and serve as the long-awaited Messiah? 

The people of Nazareth first refused Jesus because of his humble background and regular relatives. 

But the second reason they rejected Jesus is what Luke highlights. They wanted Jesus Lk. 4:23 to do in Nazareth what they had heard he had done in Capernaum. Maybe they were feeling a little snubbed that Jesus was doing greater miracles in the bigger city. Maybe they wanted to be dazzled. Maybe they felt like Capernaum, with all its pagan baggage, didn’t deserve miraculous interventions. Maybe the people of Nazareth had a few sick and suffering people they hoped that Jesus would lay hands on and heal. As Paul, a proud Israelite,  rightly recognized in 1 Cor. 1, Jews demand signs. 

But Jesus wouldn’t do as they demanded, and not just because he wasn’t some circus monkey. Mt. 13:58 Jesus did not do many miracles in Nazareth because of their lack of faith. And when Jesus compared their lack of faith to Israel in the days of Elijah and Elisha, they was driving a painful point home. And they didn’t like it one bit. They felt the hometown boy was doing them wrong. So they tried to throw him out of town and then off a cliff. 

It’s crystal clear that Nazareth made a colossal mistake in this moment. But so too, can we, if we dismiss what happened here as something we would never do in a million years. While their actions are drastic and violent, politely dismissing Jesus is just as perilous. 

And we are tempted to do that for similar reasons. We are tempted to brush Jesus off when we get to know his family well. We are tempted to shrug Jesus off when we don’t get the signs we seek. 

The Scriptures tell us that Heb. 2:11 Jesus is not ashamed to call believers his brothers and sisters. Rev. 21:9 The Church is his bride. Yet, when we meet Jesus’ family, often times, we’re not impressed. We see faults and flaws. Christians have personality quirks and irritating habits. They struggle with sins that don’t fit the name of God. They don’t talk or act like Jesus. We’re shocked & appalled.

When we see the warts of God’s family members at his weekly reunions, we may even self-righteously withdraw. How could they? is what we say. But I’m nothing like them is what we really mean.

We may not have driven Jesus out of our place of worship, but is there any real difference? We stopped going to church because we didn’t find the perfect fit. We stopped being among God’s people because they were not shining examples of sanctification but rather sin-sick souls who needed a doctor. In our minds, we have not tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. But we have insulted his bride. 

We are tempted to brush Jesus off after getting to know his family. We are also tempted to shrug Jesus off when we don’t get the signs we seek. This one is among the most challenging for us. 

Living in a world that is subject to sin leaves us with a great many prayers. We have loved ones we long to see healed physically, mentally, and spiritually. We want to see our congregation grow. We want our world to wake up. And God has that power. Not only that, but we have seen him use it in other times and places. Do you get frustrated when God heals others and not the ones you're praying for? Do you get angry when God works faith in the heart of some lost soul, but not your loved one? Do you get discouraged when you see other churches growing by leaps and bounds? 

When Jesus doesn’t give us the signs we demand, we become irritated, then infuriated, and finally embittered. But our God has not promised to fulfill all our wishes. He fulfills the Scriptures. And this is good news. We are living in the favor of the Lord, today. 

That’s the message that Jesus preached in his homecoming address. God did not come to rally together the best and brightest, the smartest and the strongest. He came for the poor. The prisoners. The blind. The oppressed. He came for sin-sick souls who need God’s favor. Jesus, as God’s Messiah, was anointed with the Spirit of the Lord for a very particular purpose. He did not come for those who were confident in their own righteousness. He came for sinners. He came to seek and save the lost. 

That Good news came at an awful price. Freedom for spiritual prisoners required Jesus to stand in our place. In order for the blind to see, Jesus had to be blindfolded and beaten. In order for the oppressed to be set free, Jesus had to be Is. 53:7 oppressed and afflicted. Led like a lamb to the slaughter. In order for us to live in the Lord’s favor, Jesus had to experience the wrath of the righteous God. 

Tragically, as he was suffering for the sins of the world, the crowd at Calvary rejected Jesus for much the same reasons that Nazareth did. The chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders mocked Jesus and his claim as the Son of God. They said: Mt. 27:43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him. They rejected him because they did not believe that someone like him could be the eternal living God of Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob. 

Not only that, but they challenged him to give them a sign as he hung on the cross. Lk. 23:35 He saved others. Let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One. Mk. 15:32 Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe. Jesus suffered the pains of hell, the mockery of sinful men, the abandonment of his Father so that we might have the Lord’s eternal favor. 

That is where we now live. By God’s grace, through faith, we dwell in the favor of the Lord. We must not lose sight of this when the family of Jesus leaves us frustrated. We must fix our eyes on the promises that God has made and fulfilled and not on what we would like to see him do. God has graciously given us his favor. 

He has also given us an important role in his plan of salvation. You and I are Jesus’ family. And how we live and talk and act and react is designed by God to be a powerful witness to the world around us. 1 Jn. 4:11-12 Since God has so loved us, we ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God in the fullness of his glory, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We ought not give unbelievers excuses to reject our Redeemer. Instead, our lives of love ought to reflect the perfect love of Jesus. Then they will know we are his disciples, his family. 

We can also come to the aid of those who are hung up on the signs they don’t see. We can listen to their pain and their problems and point them to the Prince of Peace who knows those kinds of troubles first hand. Jesus took up our pain. Jesus bore our suffering in his own body. Jesus was punished to bring us peace. Jesus was wounded so that we might be healed. He knows what we need. He has taken up our iniquities so that we might receive the Lord’s eternal favor. We must point them to the Anointed One. Only he can open their eyes. Only he can set them free. He is the only good news we all so desperately need to hear and believe. Amen.