The mission of Jesus (4:13-30)

N St. Baptist Cheddar 21.11.07

Last week we saw how Jesus was baptized then led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan. After that, we find that the Spirit empowers him as he commences his ministry. Having seen Jesus credentials tonight we move on to his mission. It is all part of Luke encouraging Theophilus to be confident in what he has been taught.

Verse 14 sets our scene:

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

Then Jesus visits Nazareth (16), goes to the Synagogue on the Sabbath and is offered part of the Old Testament to read. This was a normal custom for visiting rabbis. They would read then comment. So Jesus was viewed as a rabbi and with respect. So far. He reads from Isaiah 61. Remember, he didn’t choose this scroll. It was given to him. God had it all planned. You see from your bible footnote that he reads verses 1-2, but he doesn’t read the whole of verse 2. It’s significant he stops there.  Had he gone on he would have read,

and the day of vengeance of our God,

John had prophesied Jesus would come and gather the wheat into his barn, and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire (3:17) – the good news and the worrying news. Jesus announces only the first part, the good news of freedom. The difficult news of judgement, Jesus is leaving until his next coming. For now, he says, its time for good news of liberation. That was the point of the message. “The year of the Lord’s favour” refers to Lev. 25:8ff, the fiftieth year, called the year of Jubilee, when everything in Israel was restored to its proper place.

Jesus comes to put things right. He did then and he does now. Jesus is not simply a prophet of doom. In fact he’s not at all. He comes with good news of liberation, good news to the poor. (Poverty here is partly literal – he comes to the “outcasts”, but also spiritual: Luke’s gospel will show some literally rich people turning to Jesus – the “sinful woman” who poured oil on his feet gave an expensive gift. She was literally rich but spiritually poor)

Every one of us is poorer without Jesus. He comes to help, to heal, to restore, to put right. The “bad news”, judgement, burning chaff, the axe at the root of the tree, is only applicable where people resist or reject the good news. It is consequential not primary. Jesus later says in Luke’s gospel:

If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.(9:26)

This pivotal event at the start of Jesus’ mission tells us not only what his mission is, but how we must appropriately respond to it.

Jesus then comments on this text, as Rabbi’s were expected to, in what must be the shortest recorded sermon in history. It was typical of rabbi’s to stand to read scripture then sit down to preach. Jesus does so, sitting and saying,

“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

He takes a text, interprets it, brings it to life, up to date and applies it, all in one sentence! To be fair, Luke writes that he began by saying… But that is as much as Luke needs to record. That’s the essence of Jesus sermon.

Note that they still spoke well of him at this point (22). Their problem started when they saw Jesus from a human point of view.

“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. (22)

Luke has been showing through Jesus birth, through John’s preparation, Jesus’ baptism and his temptation in the wilderness that Jesus is the Son of God, but all these people can think is  “son of Joseph”, which wasn’t technically true. Paul wrote in 2 Cor 5:16: Though we once regarded Christ [from a worldly point of view], we do so no longer. What a tragedy not to see Jesus as he really is. Jesus comes down on this heavily, making a stark contrast with his congregation here and others outside:

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

In other words, he challenges the “we won’t believe until you’ve proven yourself. We want to see what others have seen. We’ve heard about Capernaum and we’d like to see a bit of that here.”

But Jesus won’t have it. He quotes the Old Testament again, citing firstly Elijah and the widow. No rain had occurred for 3 ½ years. There was famine. But God sent Elijah to help a foreign woman in Zarephath. Then he cites Elisha. Lots of people suffered from leprosy but Elisha helped a foreigner, Naaman. Remember I said last week that Luke repeats this outsider/insider reversal? The people of Capernaum responded to Jesus, but here in his home town people question, challenge and doubt. They even come to the point of driving Jesus out of the Synagogue to the brow of a hill to push him over a cliff and kill him. We don’t know how but Jesus walked away from it. Whether supernatural power or “slipping into the crowd” he evaded them. That’s not the point. The point is, their praise, their amazement, their well spoken words had so quickly become irritation, offence and rejection. They’d become outsiders! They started in the Synagogue and ended up angry on a hillside, casting Jesus aside. Why? Because they would only look with human eyes.

Conversely, not in 4:31 that Jesus returns to Capernaum, where people were amazed at his teaching and authority. What happened in the Synagogue there? The power of Jesus is displayed. He can work there! Luke didn’t directly quote it but Mark tells us that Jesus couldn’t do many miracles in Nazareth because of their lack of faith.

Anointed preaching, freedom for prisoners, healing and the time of God’s favour had been turned into rejection, cynicism and potential judgement that Jesus had signally avoided. Three life changing questions come to us today:

Who is Jesus?

What has Jesus come to do?

How will we respond to him?

What we make of those questions will define whether we are insiders or outsiders. Today is the day of liberation.