Pressing Through Adversity: Luke 4:16-30

We are in summer, not according to the calendar, but school is out.  I always enjoyed summer reading programs while I was growing up.  The bookmobile even came to my street. One way we communicate is through books.  As we read we learn new vocabulary and we learn.  Even what we're doing now is communicating.  A sermon or preaching is  something we don't have in other aspects of our lives.  Preaching allows us to work through a passage of scripture.  What's so significant about preaching?  Some say preaching won't last in our culture.  The reasons why we communicate in sermons is this is how Jesus communicated.    Jesus taught and spoke to people.  Jesus was a preacher.  One of the main ways Jesus communicated was through preaching when Jesus was in his public ministry.  Jesus was so influential that even people who didn't believe He was God called him, "Rabbi" which means teacher.  Preaching can convict us and take us to a place that's uncomfortable.  We all feel discomfort in this time period.  Preaching should cause us discomfort and bring conviction.  In Jesus' first message we see how Jesus came through adversity.  Through preaching we see who Jesus is; Jesus discloses who He is.  People had a hard time with Jesus.  People loved Jesus but when they felt convicted something else happened.

Jesus sets us free.

This is the primary message of Jesus.  Jesus came to bring forgiveness.  Jesus will use an Old Testament passage here.  Some of this seems so simple and you may ask why I even tell you this.  This is something we should not take for granted.  Preaching should use scripture.  I've heard sermons that have no Bible in them.  The same is true for teaching.  Even Jesus, at the beginning, opens scripture and applies it to Himself.  Jesus begins His message with application. 

    18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me...He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind."

In the past few weeks we read about Jesus' baptism and how the Spirit of the Lord came upon Him and then He was led into the wilderness to endure temptation.  Here is the reason Jesus came: liberty.  Jesus came to set us free from our own sin.  Jesus does more than just proclaim forgiveness.  Jesus can also bring forgiveness.  "Recovering sight to the blind," yes, Jesus did this physically, but here it might be referring to spiritual blindness.  Jesus reveals this because we are all prone to spiritual blindness.  Jesus can open our hearts, our minds and our eyes.  Something we have grieved over the last decade is the death of cultural Christianity.  Those who are here this morning are not here because it's culturally appropriate.  You're here because you want to hear from the Word of God.  We want to know what God is saying.  Our prayer is for God to set us free, to give sight to our eyes.  Jesus continues His message:

We love grace.

Jesus gets a positive response in verse 22:

        22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

Jesus talks about freedom and grace.  God is telling us there is forgiveness.  We can walk with God.  People loved hearing this.  They were hungry for this.  We can be forgiven and right with God.  We can have hope in our lives.  Jesus gets a positive response from the people.  This reminds me of when I was in college.  Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A came to speak.  At the end he announced we'd all be getting free Chick-fil-A for lunch and we cheered!  Jesus is bringing hope to the people.  This isn't just for the future but for the present reality. Jesus was speaking to his hometown people in Nazareth.  Jesus says today hope is here!  There's hope in forgiveness.  Then everything shifts.  

We struggle with truth.

Jesus gets personal and people struggle with truth.  We struggle with truth individually and as a nation.  Here's what's happened in our world today; we are post- Christian.  We've experienced the death of cultural Christianity.  We don't go to church because all people do it anymore.  Those days are gone.  We live in post Christian America.  This is a reality that is hard for us to accept especially here in Randolph County.  Most people around us are not followers of Jesus.  Some might think they are but most people will spend eternity separated from God.  In our society truth is not determined by the Bible.  We do not live by the Bible here in the United States.  Throughout this pandemic how many times have you heard a leader say, "Here's what the Bible says, so this is what we should do?"  Our culture does not go to the Bible first anymore.  What has replaced that?  Where do we go for truth?  We go to public opinion.  What do most people believe?  Most of us grieve this as we see it happening.  What we do not see is that it happens in our own hearts as well.  If you need approval from other people to determine what's right and wrong you are living by public opinion.  Jesus is saying there's absolute truth.  Once and for all this truth is from God and isn't swayed by public opinion.  There's a big shift in verse 25 they are happy and then in verse 28 they turn to wrath:

    28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.

What is Jesus doing?  There's a major shift here.  We see the prophetic role of Jesus.  In Mark 6, Mark tells about this same encounter.  All the people were offended.  We too are easily offended.  God can speak into us but we can be easily influenced by our culture around us. 

We prefer to be entertained.

    23 "What we have heard you did in Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well."

Today, in this moment scripture is being fulfilled.  There is grace.  There's no greater news than to hear you are forgiven and made right with God.  Jesus says there's grace, forgiveness and hope!  They say, "Hey, can you do a miracle?"  They're asking for Jesus to to a miracle.  This is a sharp contrast.  They're wanting Jesus to prove who He is.  This is exactly what Jesus Satan just tempted Jesus with in the wilderness.  This is not what Jesus is here for.  Jesus settled those things in private before going into His public ministry.  Jesus knows what to do when this temptation comes.  This is where we are as a people when we have deep truth before us.  We want something more simple and basic.  Can we just do something fun?  Imagine you cooked up a terrific meal for your family, a special meal and when your family comes in they say, "can we go to McDonald's?"  That's what's happening here.  We prefer to be entertained.

We want our needs met more than we want our hearts changed.

    26  "and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow."

Jesus says no to the request for entertainment and he gives 2 examples from scripture.  This is how God works.  In the story of Elijah is a widow.  There's a miracle and we love this story.  Inside this story there's something we've missed.  This widow was a foreigner.  Elijah went to the foreigner and did the miracle.  God went to other people, a foreigner.  They hadn't thought about this.  We have a sense of entitlement.  We want God to do what we want.  We see we have personal needs. 

We don't love people the way God does.  

We love the people that are close to us but there's some we do not want to associate with.  We do not want to see God blessing those people.  Jesus has given the example of Elijah.

    27 "and there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."

If we read this verse quickly we might miss it.  Nobody was cleansed in Israel except a Syrian, a foreigner, not an Israelite or a Jew.  Jesus is pointing out a truth among His own people.  We don't love people like God does.  God wants to transform us.  What we want is forgiveness and grace without being changed.  We want to be entertained.  I'm going to press in a little more here.  All of us can answer this question: Who are the people you don't like?  This is what Jesus is doing here.  Maybe a better question is who are the people you hate the most?  God loves them.  God is doing things in their lives that He's not even doing in your life.  God can change our hearts so that we truly love God and everyone.  God does this for us.  If we don't allow this we swing like this crowd does.  The crowd's response is they need to get rid of Jesus.  They go from loving Jesus to being filled with wrath.  This group wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff!  What have we learned about trying to get rid of Jesus?  You can't get rid of Jesus!  The Romans nailed Him to a cross and made the tomb as secure as possible and Jesus rises from the dead.  Truth isn't going to change.  Truth transforms us and God changes us and gives us a new heart and life.

We need Jesus.

    30  But passing through their midst, he went away.

This is a gracious act by Jesus.  Jesus could have wiped them out!  He could have said, "You stubborn people!"  Jesus goes away but He will come back.  In John 6 Jesus is doing the same thing.  Jesus gave a hard truth of heart conversations.  Jesus speaks to a group and they too get mad at Him.  Jesus asks his disciples if they want to go away from Him in John 6:67 and in verse 68 Peter responds asking, "Lord, to whom shall we go?"  Where would we go?  

We have words of eternal life.  Our prayer today is for God to use the hard words of truth to change us.  Lord, give us hearts and eyes like Yours.  In a world losing truth and hope we have to love people.  We pray god will change our hearts to love even the people we disagree with.  We need peace and a heart like Jesus.

Sermon by Dr. Scotty Carpenter.  Sermon notes by Jeni Martin Johnson.