Good morning to all of you.
My name's Tommy.
I'm the rector of Church of the Advent,
and so I'm delighted to welcome you here.
And I know that this has been an especially heavy week
in our community and in our city with the plane crash.
I know many of you are struggling
with job insecurity right now,
and I'm deeply sorry for that.
And I think that you're in the right place.
I'm glad that we can gather together
to worship, to pray, to hear God's Word preached.
I'm just thankful to be here.
There's nowhere I'd rather be when things are challenging.
We wanna open God's Word together,
and we're gonna look at this passage in Luke chapter four.
And it raises this question of, you know,
have you ever wondered what it would be like
to be able to go to church
and to hear Jesus preach the sermon?
You know, to get to this part of the service,
Hillary stands up, she reads the text for the day,
and then Jesus comes up,
and Jesus is about to preach a sermon.
You know, a lot of people think about that,
and I've actually heard people say,
you know, I'm not a Christian,
but if I could actually just meet Jesus face-to-face,
if Jesus would appear to me face-to-face,
and if Jesus were to just appear to me and say,
it's all true, I'm the Savior, I'm the Messiah,
then I would believe it.
But I just need some proof to get me there.
And I've, in earlier times in my life,
have thought the same thing.
And the question we wanna ask this morning is,
is that really the case?
Would it really be that cut and dry?
Because what we see in our gospel reading
makes us question that.
In Luke chapter four, Jesus stands up,
he preaches a sermon,
and essentially the through line of his sermon,
the main idea is, I am God's Messiah,
and I have been sent to the world
as a fulfillment of God's promises.
And Jesus preaches that sermon,
and it doesn't result in mass conversions.
This sermon almost gets him killed.
And so we're gonna look more at this,
we're gonna talk about what it means for us.
We're gonna look at the context, the meaning,
and then ultimately the implications.
So let's pray and ask God to help us
as we open God's word together.
Lord, we thank you for your word,
and we ask now that your Holy Spirit
would illuminate your word.
And we pray that through your ministry to us,
through your word,
you would do your work in us.
We are all here desperately needing
what only you can provide.
And we pray that you would do this
in the name of your son, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
So first, I wanna catch you up
and help you understand the context
of what's going on here.
By this point in Jesus's ministry,
he's been baptized,
he's been tempted in the wilderness,
he has begun his public ministry,
he's been doing some things in Capernaum
that have earned him some notoriety.
So there's a buzz circulating about this rabbi,
Jesus, and the amazing things that he can do.
And so it's a big deal
when Jesus finally returns
to his hometown of Nazareth,
which is kind of a backwater town,
mostly insignificant.
Not on anybody's radar
is a place where anything of any import would happen.
So Jesus comes Sabbath,
like every good Jew,
he goes to the synagogue.
And when people begin to realize
that Jesus himself is the one
who's gonna give the message,
they're excited.
And so people pack in,
and they're craning their necks,
and they're dying to know what he's gonna say.
So Jesus takes the scroll from the attendant.
This is what they used to do when it was time.
It's a lot like what we do today.
He takes the scroll,
and he unrolls it to this place in Isaiah,
Isaiah chapter 61,
and then he reads these words.
The spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
Now this is an amazing passage.
It's mostly Isaiah 61,
but also a little bit taken from Isaiah 58.
But it essentially lays out
the entire mission of God's Messiah.
That's what anointed one means.
It means the Messiah.
And it lays out his mission.
The Messiah's gonna come,
and he's gonna bring good news to the poor.
He's gonna bring about the return of exiles from captivity.
He's gonna bring sight to the blind.
He's gonna bring liberation for the oppressed.
And at this time in history,
the Jews placed an enormous amount of hope
in this passage.
They interpreted it according to what they believed
they most needed.
The Messiah's gonna come,
he's gonna overthrow the Romans.
He's gonna vindicate Israel.
He's gonna restore us to our former glory.
He's gonna be from the line of David.
And so when he comes,
it's gonna be like the good old days
when David was our king,
the high point in their history.
So Jesus reads this passage.
Everybody, the tension just goes up in the room.
Everybody's hyped.
Everybody's excited.
And Jesus sits down and begins to preach.
Everyone's craning their necks.
And Luke gives us the essence of his message.
When you see a summary like this,
it's essentially a summary of Jesus's sermon.
And here's Jesus's sermon main idea.
Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
So that's the main idea of his sermon.
Jesus begins to explain to them
how he is the fulfillment of this messianic prophecy.
He is the one that Israel has been waiting for.
He says, the time has come, the kingdom is here,
and I am that kingdom.
And look at how the people respond.
At first, it seems like the sermon's going really well.
He has them eating out of his hand, right?
They're all, and they start to nod their heads,
and it says they're speaking favorably about him,
and they're nudging one another and saying,
this is absolutely amazing.
But then things take a turn.
Someone recognizes them.
They say, aren't you Joseph's son?
And all of a sudden, the mood in the room begins to shift,
and people begin to realize, oh, this is that Jesus
who is from here.
And people say, I remember watching you run around
as a snot-nosed kid.
I remember seeing you working next to your dad
in the shop, fixing things, and covered in sweat
and sawdust.
And they begin to realize that this isn't some far-off,
exalted rabbi.
This is that Jesus, Joseph's son, Mary's son.
And then the whole thing begins to take a turn,
and Jesus senses what's about to come,
the very next question out of their mouths.
He knows what they're thinking, and he anticipates it.
He says in verse 23, doubtless, you know,
now that you're doubting this, now that you're doubting me,
doubtless you're gonna quote to me this proverb.
Physician, heal yourself.
What we have heard you did at Capernaum,
do here in your hometown as well.
In other words, Jesus says, I know what you're thinking.
You want me to prove it.
You want me to do some miraculous sign.
You want me to heal somebody.
You want me to do what I did in Capernaum.
You want me to do that here and prove
that I am who I say I am.
They want to see a show.
And here's where we see Jesus's incredible boldness.
It'd be very tempting in this moment to just say,
okay, here you go.
And you just kind of do a miracle.
Is that enough?
You want to see more?
But that's not what he does.
He's not trying to win a popularity contest.
He's a prophet.
And he's going to speak truth whether they like it or not.
And so first he says this.
He says, truly I say to you,
no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.
In other words, when it comes to recognizing
true prophets who have been sent from God,
Israel does not have the best track record.
So why would anyone think that these people
would be able to recognize God's own son,
even if he comes, stands in front of them,
and says directly exactly who he is?
He says, we don't have a great track record
of recognizing true prophets when they come.
And then he reminds them of two events from their past.
Now these are sore subjects for Israelites.
He says, you know, there was a time
when the great prophet Elijah,
during a famine in Israel, many died.
Many died from the famine.
And there were many widows left alone.
And he's like, but do you remember what happened?
God only sent Elijah to bless a woman in Zarephath.
All these other people died.
And then his successor, Elisha, he says,
though many in Israel had leprosy,
God only sent Elisha to heal a Syrian named Naaman.
And we say, well, what does this mean?
It seems like a non-sequitur,
but in fact, it's not at all a non-sequitur.
The widow in Zarephath, she was poor, dirt poor.
She was also a Gentile.
She's a spiritual outsider.
She's a racial and ethnic outsider.
She's a heretic and an idol worshiper.
And he says, remember that time
when all those people were struggling?
God only sent the prophet Elijah to her.
And then he says, remember the time
that he sent Elisha to Naaman?
Well, Naaman wasn't poor.
He was very wealthy.
Also a Gentile.
He was a foreign military commander
who had actually fought against Israel.
He was also an idol worshiper.
And he was a leper.
So Jesus is reminding these people
of times when, although there was
plenty of legitimate need,
plenty of need among the Israelites,
God sent his prophets to help Gentiles
instead of Israelites.
And you gotta understand,
if you're a first century Jew
and you live in a place like Nazareth
and you see Gentiles all around
and you're very concerned about
keeping yourself separate from the Gentiles
and you hear Jesus saying this,
this is deeply offensive.
The Jews had always imagined God's Messiah
coming to vindicate them
over and above the Gentiles.
And Jesus is reminding them of times
in their past when God did something
very different.
He actually sent his prophets
to the Gentiles instead of the Israelites.
So this is a slap in the face
to their pride as people.
And it says in verse 28,
when they heard these things,
all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.
So they literally drive Jesus
out of the synagogue.
They drive him out of the town.
They drive him up to the edge of a cliff
and they intend to throw him off the cliff
and kill him.
But Jesus is able to mysteriously
pass through their midst
and he goes away to Capernaum.
Now in order to understand this,
we have to understand
that every single thing
that Jesus is saying
is a continuation of his sermon
on Isaiah chapter 61.
He does not get derailed
by their skepticism
and go in a different direction.
All of this is expounding
upon Isaiah 61.
God has sent his Messiah Jesus
into the world
to bring good news to the poor,
return for the exiles,
sight to the blind,
liberation for the oppressed.
But here's the point
that Jesus is making.
Unless you recognize
that you are spiritually poor,
the coming of Jesus
is going to be irrelevant.
Unless you recognize
that you are right now
a spiritual exile,
the coming of Jesus
is not going to be good news.
Unless you recognize
that you right now
are spiritually blind,
Jesus has nothing to offer you.
Unless you recognize
that you are in fact
spiritually possessed,
spiritually oppressed
by death,
by sin,
by the demonic,
the liberation of Jesus,
the freedom that he offers
is meaningless.
Unless you recognize your need
and unless you're willing
to look to Jesus,
he has nothing to offer.
And this is a slap in the face
to the Israelites
because they always assumed
that the Messiah
was going to come
for them only.
But Jesus is saying this,
God does not send
his Savior
to a people group.
He does not send
his Messiah
to the Jews.
He does not send
his Messiah
to the Gentiles.
He does not send
his Messiah
only to the poor.
He does not send
his Messiah
to the wealthy.
He sends his Savior
only to those
who truly know
they need a Savior.
Whether they are Jew,
Gentile, rich, poor,
morally upright,
morally bankrupt.
He sends his Savior
only to those
who know they need
a Savior.
And this becomes
very clear
in the next chapter
in Luke.
The religious leaders
are scandalized
when they see Jesus,
who's this respectable rabbi,
eating with the very
worst kind of people.
In Luke chapter 5,
they see him eating
with sinners
and tax collectors.
sinners.
And they're scandalized.
And Jesus responds
this way.
He says,
those who are well
have no need
of a physician.
You don't go to the doctor
when you're well.
You don't value
the doctor
when you're well.
You don't seek out
the doctor
when you're well.
It's those who are sick.
He says,
I have come
not to call
the righteous,
but sinners
to repentance.
And this really brings
us to the point.
At the beginning,
we talked about
people who think,
if I could just
hear Jesus
stand up in front of me
and say directly to me
that I am God's Messiah,
if Jesus would do that,
then I would believe
because I would have proof.
But here we see
in Luke chapter 4
that that is
far from the truth.
It's not that simple.
Jesus does that
very thing.
He stands up in front
of a crowd of people
and says,
I am God's Messiah.
And they reject him.
That's because
the primary obstacle
to faith
is not intellectual.
Those of us who think,
if I could just
have some proof,
it is not intellectual.
It is spiritual.
These people
want a champion.
They want a political hero.
They want somebody
to make them feel proud
to be Israelites.
They want somebody
to stand up
to the Romans.
The last thing they want
is a savior
because that means
that they are
the sort of people
who need saving.
And that's the rub
for most of us
if we're really honest
is that fundamentally
down deep
we don't actually
believe that.
These people
are blinded
by their own pride
so they can't recognize
Jesus for who he is
even when he's standing
right in front of them.
You know,
this is like the story
of Joy Davidman.
She was a poet.
She was a committed atheist.
At one point in her life
she joined
the Communist Party
because she thought
that that would offer
the kind of meaning
and focus on justice
that mattered to her
and she says this
about her atheism.
She says,
of course I thought
atheism was true
but I hadn't given
quite enough attention
to developing
the proof of it.
Someday when the children
grow older
I'd work it out.
So she's like,
I'm sure there's no God.
I don't really,
can't get there intellectually
but one of these days
I'll sit down
and I'll do my homework
but I already know
there's no God.
And she was very confident
about that.
And she marries a man
named Bill
and Bill is a workaholic.
He is chronically unfaithful.
He's an alcoholic.
He's kind of a train wreck.
And one day
Bill calls
from his New York office.
He calls Joy
and he's in the midst
of a nervous breakdown.
And from the phone conversation
she's deeply worried
that he's gonna take
his own life.
And he says he's
in the middle of a breakdown.
He doesn't know what to do
and then he hangs up the phone.
And then for the entire next day
she's frantically calling
the New York office
trying to get through,
trying to find out
what happened to him
and she can't get through
and she has no idea
if he's alive or dead.
And by nightfall
that next night
she recalls
there's nothing to do
but wait
and see if he turns up
alive or dead.
So she has no idea
if her husband
is even still alive.
And so she talks
about that night.
She puts her children
to sleep
and then she just waits.
And here's what she writes
about what happens next.
In that silence
something happened.
For the first time
in my life,
Joy writes,
I felt helpless.
For the first time
my pride
was forced to admit
that I was not calm
after all.
That I was not
the master of my fate
and the captain
of my soul.
All my defenses,
all the walls
of arrogance
and cockiness
and self-love
behind which
I had hidden
from God
went down momentarily
and God came in.
It's like for this
brief moment
she feels utterly helpless.
Her walls go down
and in that moment
she says,
God came in.
There was a person
with me
in that room
directly present
to my consciousness.
A person so real
that all my previous life
was by comparison
a mere shadow play.
And I myself
was more alive
than I had ever been.
It was like waking
from sleep.
Now of course
God had been there
all along.
Jesus had been there
all along.
But it wasn't
until she felt
her own helplessness.
It wasn't until
that illusion
of her self-sufficiency
crumbled.
It wasn't until
that moment
that she became aware
of the presence
of God
with her.
That is what enabled
her to recognize
Jesus who was standing
right in front of her.
And it's this experience
that leads her
to convert to Christianity
which profoundly changed
her life.
And by the way
the epilogue
is that after
Bill eventually
survived that night
but he eventually
left her for her cousin
and they got divorced
and so Joy went on
to marry C.S. Lewis.
And she's the wife
that Lewis loved
and writes about.
And this story
of Joy's conversion
I think shows us
something extremely important.
No one could have argued
her into the faith.
No amount of cups of coffee
and sitting down
and laying out
all of the rational
apologetics
for the existence of God
or the truth
of the resurrection
or the claims
of Christ
as fulfillments
of prophecy.
No one sitting down
and laying all of that out
would have
I would think
convinced Joy
to give up
her atheism.
She couldn't
be argued
into faith.
She needed to be
humbled into faith.
She had to be humbled
into faith.
She had to come
face to face
with her own helplessness.
She had to see herself
as spiritually poor.
And then Jesus began
to look like good news.
She had to see herself
as spiritually blind
and then Jesus'
message began
to have relevance
for her.
It's only at that point
that the reality
of Jesus
becomes plain to see.
Now this is why
in terms of implications
some people
maybe some people
in this room
remain in unbelief.
The problem
I would suggest
for some of us
who remain in unbelief
is not primarily
intellectual.
I'm not saying
there's not a place
for intellectual arguments.
I'm not saying
there's not a place
for rational argument
and apologetics.
And anybody
who has seriously looked
you will discover
that there are
incredible
thoughtful
compelling
arguments
for the truth
of the things
that we believe
as Christians.
Absolutely.
There's incredible
compelling evidence
that the resurrection
happened.
There's incredible
compelling evidence
that this is true.
But I would suggest
that for some people
who remain in unbelief
the primary issue
is not intellectual.
You're not going
to be able
to be argued
into the faith.
Your primary obstacle
is spiritual.
It's a heart
posture issue.
And God may love you
so much
and want you
so much
that he does things
in your life
that humble you.
That he does things
in your life
that bring you
face to face
with your finitude,
your limitations.
that he brings
a situation
into your life
that causes you
to feel helpless
because he's trying
to get through to you.
He's standing
right in front of you
saying,
I am here,
the savior,
the fulfillment
of all of God's promises
and all he wants
is for you
to recognize him
instead of throwing
him off a cliff.
Right?
So that's the first thing.
Second implication
is this.
I do believe
this is probably
partly why the church,
not just our church
but the church,
is filled with people
who have grown up
with Christianity,
filled with people
who have grown up
around these truths,
who have heard the gospel
a thousand times,
they've gone to Sunday school,
they've gone to youth group,
they've gone to the camps,
they've done all of it,
they've heard it
thousands of times.
But it's never really
connected with them
on a deep level.
You know,
it's never really penetrated.
I think the reason
is because maybe
you've heard the gospel
a thousand times
but it's never really
moved you
because you've never
really been confronted
with your need
for a savior.
You've never really
come face to face
with the truth
of your own condition.
In the UVA med school,
probably like all med schools,
one of the ways
that they train students
is by having actors
come in
and they'll give the actor
a medical condition
and then the actor
has to act out
the symptoms
of the condition
and then they bring
the med students in
to do an exam
and their goal
is to try to correctly
diagnose the condition
that's being portrayed.
And a few years back
at UVA,
an actor went in
and he was told
that he was supposed
to pretend to have
an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
And here's the symptoms
and you need to pretend
like you have this.
And then the med student
began to examine this actor
and the med student
discovered that,
in fact,
the actor actually had
a real abdominal aortic aneurysm.
I mean,
can you imagine
the odds of that?
You go in,
you're randomly
given a condition.
You go in,
you're randomly given
a condition.