Jesus Messiah liberates believers

But of course there’s a pretty small set of things that can be absolutely conclusively demonstrated and proven, totally wrapped up. 1 + 1 = 2. Yep. A2 + B2 = C2? Yep.

Most of the time we’re dealing with things where’s there’s a level of evidence but we can’t deliver that totally watertight proof.

Take any idea: about the makeup of atoms, about how taxation and growth are related, about how coffee is actually good for you; whatever the idea, we want to be people who believe that idea, who put our trust in that idea, on the basis of evidence.

Where there’s limited evidence we’re cautious, appropriately cautious, we would say. Is coffee good for you? Is coffee bad for you? From reading the papers it seems the evidence is mixed!

Most of the time we’re dealing with things where’s there’s a level of evidence but we can’t deliver total watertight proof - and it will probably always be that way.

Like whether coffee is good for you or not. I don’t think we’ll ever finally settle that one.

Where there’s clearer evidence, we’re more ready to believe and to trust ideas. Is the earth really a globe rather than flat?

Now where there’s limited evidence we’re cautious, appropriately cautious. Would a universal basic income be a good thing? Don’t know. Not much evidence yet. Is North Korea disarming?

And where there’s limited evidence we’re cautious, appropriately cautious. Would a universal basic income be a good thing? Don’t know. Not much evidence yet.

Evidence is the source of belief; evidence produces belief. That’s how our culture thinks and works.

And I want us to notice one consequence of that relationship this morning: it means if we want to strengthen a belief, the way to do that is to gather more evidence, more data, right?

Evidence is the source of belief; evidence produces belief. That’s how our culture thinks and works.

Praying for a pink sheep

Demonstration -> faith // faith -> demonstration?

Like to believe we’re a rational lot

“If you … then I’ll ...”

Praying for a pink sheep

I can clearly remember, before I became a Christian, praying for a pink sheep to appear in my university room overnight.

Can you see how that fits into what we’re talking about here? If I’m going to believe in God, I figured, then I need some evidence. And a pink sheep would do nicely.

Evidence is how we come to believe things. More evidence, more belief, right?

God wants me to believe? Just needs to give me some evidence.

Well, for the record, no pink sheep. Yet.

less a question of proving something true or false, and more often it’s a question of degree, of extent.

Well, for the record, no pink sheep. Never. But it turns out I do believe.

Evidence produces belief. Evidence is the source. That’s what our culture believes. That’s what our culture says.

And not just how we come to believe things, how we go about growing our belief in things.

Evidence produces belief. Evidence is the source. That’s what our culture claims. That’s what our culture says.

For the record, no pink sheep. Never.

But sometimes it’s the other way around. And that’s what we’re going to be looking at today.

Transition

We’re continuing our journey through one of the books in the Bible, the gospel of Luke, Luke’s telling of the life story of Jesus.

And today we come to a section where the key issue is who people believe Jesus is.

But sometimes it turns out it’s a little more back-to-front than that.

What’s wrong with this world? Who will fix it - and how?

That’s in keeping with this general approach of

And I want us to notice one consequence of that relationship this morning: it means if we want to strengthen a belief, the way to do that is to gather more evidence, more data, right?

What’s wrong with this world? Who will fix it - and how?

Who do you think you are?

What does it look like when we don’t believe this?

think Jesus is just Joseph’s son - a nice guy with some crazy ideas about himself

I want you to watch closely how Jesus deals with this interaction between evidence and belief as we read through this section together.

So, find with me Luke chapter 4 verse 13, that’s page _______. Luke Chapter 4 - chapters are the big numbers - verse 13 - verses are the small numbers, page ____, and David’s going to read for us.

The New International Version Chapter 4

14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” q

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ ”

24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

remain poor, prisoner, blind, broken

Claim: Jesus is the liberating Messiah

Context

So Jesus, now about 30, is beginning the three years of activity that dominate our records of his life. First thirty years we have just a very few glimpses of him, short scenes, occasional events. His final three years are where almost all the focus is - and all the action too.

He spent most of those first thirty years in this small town where today’s story is set, Nazareth. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone - it’s nowhere special. Nothing much has ever happened there. It’s tiny - best estimates today give it a population of around 500. It’s inconsequential apart from being the place where Jesus grew up: presumably cut his teeth as a carpenter with Joseph, hung out with the local kids. In a town that size with a relatively stable population you’d have to imagine everyone knew everyone. He’s been off teaching in Synagogues, these religious gathering places of the Jewish community, all through the surrounding area and winning rave reports - and now he’s arrived back home. Everyone in the town would have known who Jesus was - and I’m sure it only took a few minutes for word to spread that he was back in town again. Bet the synagogue is packed to the rafters. And the moment arrives where Jesus takes the floor.

Text

He reads out a section from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah - that’s one of the key figures from Jewish history, a guy speaking for God who’s responsible for a big chunk of their holy texts. And it’s not just any random section, or the next bit on from last week. He’s picked this carefully - see in v17, “he found the place where it’s written.” What he reads out is going to take a bit of unpacking for us. Back then, they would have been pretty familiar with it. They would have understood its context, its language. It’s a bit more remote for us. So let’s just take a moment to understand what that section is about.

It was originally written to God’s people hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus, telling them about what God’s promised Messiah would do. Messiah just literally means the anointed one, that is, the one who is marked out, the chosen one. It was written for a time when God’s people were in a bad place: crushed by their enemies, exiled from their land, away from their temple, breaking their connection with God, hopeless and helpless. And it told them that the Messiah was going to change all that.

It finishes with this reference to the “year of the Lord’s favour” in v19 and that would have brought into their minds something which wraps up and captures all the different threads of that section: the Year of Jubilee. Now this Year of Jubilee was something built into the foundations of Israel, God’s land, God’s people. You can read about it in the bible, in . It was an amazing idea: Every 50 years, every debt would be cancelled. Every slave would be freed. Every piece of property would be returned so everyone had a home and land. It was like pressing “reset” on the whole nation: like restoring your computer from a backup after some terrible catastrophe. Everything put right again.

The Messiah, coming to God’s people in the midst of their troubles, was going to put everything right again, back to how it should be.

Claim

And then, off the back of this huge text, Jesus says this: “today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Do you see just how big a claim he’s making here?

Quotation

Proclaim to poor / prisoners / blind it’s the year of Jubilee

Year of Jubilee

Do you see just how big a claim he’s making here? He is saying “this is happening now - this is happening here - I’m the one.” Boom! Mic drop.

Not just proclaim, to act: send the broken into freedom

Context

Can you put yourself in their shoes for just a moment? Well, in their sandals? Can you imagine what it would be like to hear that, to see that happen right in front of your eyes.

At first, it seems everyone is with Jesus: v22 “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips.” Let the revolution begin!

Who’s this Jesus? The Messiah who liberates those who believe

But then a question begins to ripple through the crowd:

Counter: You’re just the son of Joseph!

Messiah? You’re just the son of Joseph! (they’re quite wrong: as God himself has stated, and as Satan knows, Jesus is the son of God)

But then a question begins to ripple through the crowd: “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” Isn’t this just the boy we all grew up with? The one from round the corner? The one we’re already familiar with.

This is no messiah. This is just Joseph’s boy. He made my chair. He fixed my door. He’s making claims a thousand miles above his station. There’s no way he’s someone significant.

Now if you’ve been tracking with us through Luke, you know Jesus’ identity has been in sharp focus through this whole section: God declares at Jesus’ baptism “this is my son”; the devil begins his temptation with “if you are the son of God..” And now here in Nazareth, “isn’t this Joseph’s son?” Who is this Jesus? What will the people of his hometown choose to believe about him?

They’re quite wrong: as God himself has stated, and as Satan knows, Jesus is the son of God

Remember where we started today? In our modern world, evidence produces belief. It can be tempting to think that back then, thousands of years ago, and out in the middle of nowhere, people were very gullible, very naive, very simple, very foolish. But perhaps we’re not so different from these people after all. Perhaps we’re not so much more sophisticated than them after all. Because when it comes to the question of what they’re going to believe about Jesus, at the top of their minds is the question of evidence.

Jesus is making this claim, asking them to believe something huge. They want him to prove it, to pony up some evidence.

Jesus tells us what they’re thinking: v23: “physician, heal yourself” “do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum”. They do have some evidence about him already: they’ve heard about what he’s been up to elsewhere, in Capernaum. But we’ve seen just how big the claim he’s making is. I think they’d feel completely justified in wanting some better, clearer, first hand evidence for a claim that huge.

Wouldn’t you? Say one of your childhood friends goes away for a while, comes back, and then tells you he’s the messiah. I think you’d be wanting some pretty serious evidence, right?

How will Jesus respond?

They want some evidence before they believe. That seems reasonable enough. So how will Jesus respond? A quick healing? raise someone from the dead? call down fire from heaven? visible halo effect?

Nope. He just reminds them of two stories from Israel’s history - stories they would have known well. Stories which, on the surface at least, don’t seem directly related to evidence and belief, to authentication and identity, to the live issue Jesus is facing.

Case studies: Faith brings blessing

He tells the story of a widow caught up in a huge famine and miraculous provision from God.

He tells the story of a military commander struck by a terrible disease and miraculous healing from God.

Jesus emphasises that both were outside of God’s people, Israel - and that there were similarly needy people in Israel who didn’t enjoy the same demonstration of God’s power.

Both, as it turns out, had to believe before seeing evidence.

So how come they enjoyed blessing, saw evidence of God’s power first hand? And how come others didn’t? Others who perhaps might have felt they had more right to it, being a part of God’s people?

What distinguishes the widow, the sick commander? And what’s that got to do with evidence, or the lack of it, and belief?

Well, it’s not just that they’re not Israelite. I mean, as much as there were other widows, other sick people in Israel, there were other widows and other sick people outside of Israel too. Jesus’ point isn’t simply that blessing is for outsiders, not for insiders. And as we’ll see as we carry on through Luke, Jesus will go on to perform signs and wonders for many Israelite communities, people just as Jewish as the folk in Nazareth. That’s not the key point. That’s not what’s keeping Jesus from delivering the evidence the folk of Nazareth want.

Here’s what distinguishes the widow, the sick commander: they make the choice to believe. They exercise faith first, rather than demand evidence first. Belief leads to evidence for them rather than evidence to belief.

Now I don’t think either of them finds it easy. The widow is reluctant at first. The military guy complains and grumbles. But they both ultimately act in faith, act out belief, before they have any direct evidence.

Read the stories today; they’re both great gripping bible stories - read closely and imagine as you read them what Jesus is trying to say to the people of Nazareth through them. Read them and let the widow’s faith, the commander’s faith, stand out to you. These are the examples Jesus has chosen to put before the people of Nazareth. Outsiders, yes. But more than just outsiders, outsiders who choose to believe.

If you read the stories - and I encourage you to read the stories today; they’re both great gripping bible stories - here’s the difference you’d see between

I encourage you to read the stories today; they’re both great gripping bible stories - here’s the difference you’d see between

Both, as it turns out, had to believe before seeing evidence.

And the point he draws out of both stories is

Sent -> Widow of Zarephath

Came to him -> Naaman

Reluctant faith in both cases.

Curious: Why won’t Jesus prove it?

So, back to Nazareth: Why won’t Jesus provide evidence of his identity? Why won’t he prove it to them, then and there? He won’t give them evidence because they don’t believe.

Prove it: Why won’t Jesus “do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum”?

That seems back to front to us. We feel like we shouldn’t believe without evidence - perhaps even we can’t believe without evidence. It seemed back to front to the people of Nazareth, too. Why should they believe without evidence?

Calvin: "he denies the benefits of his works to those who are found to be unworthy because of their unbelief."

But it is their lack of faith which leaves them with no evidence. Both Matthew and Mark in their Gospel write about Jesus’ experience in Nazareth. “he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” “He could not do any miracles there … he was amazed at their lack of faith.” It’s their lack of faith which keeps them from evidence they say they need. And ultimately it’s this same lack of faith which leads them to hate and reject Jesus - and even to try and kill him.

What defines God’s people? God’s people are the ones who believe.

Because of their lack of faith - “he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith”/ “He could not do any miracles there … he was amazed at their lack of faith.”

Because of their lack of faith

“He could not do any miracles there … he was amazed at their lack of faith.”

- “He could not do any miracles there … he was amazed at their lack of faith.”

What defines God’s people? God’s people are the ones who believe.

Sent -> Widow of Zarephath

Faith brings blessing - to those who believe - no matter who exercises it

Sent -> Widow of Zarephath

Came to him -> Naaman

Reluctant faith in both cases.

The heroes Jesus puts in front of them model what it looks like to turn this on its head: to believe first and then see the evidence.

Struggle of faith in both cases Jesus cites.

What defines God’s people? God’s people are the ones who believe.

So what?

Non-Christians

This passage shows us just how massive a restoration Jesus, the Messiah, the chosen one is bringing about. And he’s still busy bringing that about:

Around you in this room are many people who’d tell you that Jesus has brought them good news. That Jesus has opened their eyes and let them see. That he’s given them freedom.

But you can’t stop Jesus’s mission - Ambrose: “when he wills, he is taken; when he wills, he escapes”

Around you in this room are many people who’d tell you they were oppressed and that Jesus has set them free: free from guilt, free from their past, free from the wrong things they’ve done.

Around you in this room are many people who’d tell you that Jesus is bringing them freedom: freedom from guilt, freedom from their past, from wrong things they’ve done

Around you in this room are many people who’d tell you they have begun to experience that idea of Jubilee: to have Jesus press “reset”, and begin to restore their life to what it was meant to be - though that work’s only begun, not finished yet.

If you’re not a believer, there’s evidence here. I could tell you my story of coming to believe. Others could tell you theirs - in fact, if you came with someone today, why not ask them to tell you their story.

There’s some evidence for you here. I could tell you my story of coming to believe. Others could tell you theirs - in fact, if you came with someone today, why not ask them to tell you their story. But it’s all going to be second hand evidence for you. Like the guys in Nazareth had heard about Capernaum.

But it’s all going to be second hand evidence - like the guys in Nazareth had heard about Capernaum. And ultimately Jesus is laying the same challenge in front of you as he laid in front of the people of Nazareth: let go of that “prove-it”, evidence-first culture we live in. Get over it - because Jesus just isn’t going to play. Take that first step of faith. Choose to believe Jesus is just who he says he is.

Ultimately Jesus is laying the same challenge in front of you as he laid in front of the people of Nazareth: get over that “prove-it”, evidence-first culture - because Jesus just isn’t going to play. Believe and then see the evidence.

This passage shows us God’s blessing is open to anyone, not just one people, not just one place, not just one time - it’s open to anyone - anyone who will believe and take that step of faith.

Jesus sent to us / now invites us to come to him.

There’s another way, though.

Are you ready to do that today? I think this passage warns us we’ll never have enough evidence. In the end, it’ll always be a step of faith. If you’re right on the edge now, if you have that sense you’re on the cusp of believing, take that first step - jump off the cliff - don’t walk from the edge. If you want to talk about it, about what it would mean, about how to do it, I would love to chat. I’ll be around here at the front afterwards.

Christians

And if you’re already a believer, what does this have to say to you? I think the key question is whether we’re still living that life of faith. Or whether we’ve drifted back into the “safety” of a faith-free risk-free life which never steps outside of the evidence? You see, the Christian life doesn’t just begin with a step of faith - the Christian life is made up of a whole series of steps of faith. God is always asking us to love him just a little more, to trust him just a little more, to take one more step of faith towards him. And through that step we will see and know and experience him more.

Jesus sent to us / now invites us to come to him.

Maybe the biggest step of trust for you today is just to hold on to your faith in the midst of the white-knuckle whirlwind and chaos of this moment in your life, to believe again that Jesus is just who he says he is, and that he’s going to do just what he says he will: putting everything back to right one day. Just not giving up is a huge step of faith sometimes.

Maybe for you, you’ve lived in comfort and safety for a while now and it’s beginning to become your new normal. I wonder for you when was the last time that you took a step of faith big enough that it gave you butterflies? Maybe it’s time for another step of faith today, creating the space for God to act?

What’s your next step of faith? Wherever you are, choose to take that step today.

Choosing to step out in trust of God, creating the space for Him to act. Faith grows when we step on it.

Jesus sent to us / now invites us to come to him.

So what about you? too good to be true? Or dare you believe?

More Evidence -> trust?

Or more trust -> evidence?

What defines God’s people? God’s people are the ones who believe.

A first step of faith

A life of steps of faith

Related Media

Related Sermons