Beginning His ministry at His Baptism, we find Jesus at Cana where He performs His first miracle. Today, Luke puts Jesus in Nazareth, \u201cwhere he had been brought up.\u201d<\/em><\/span>So what is Jesus doing here? \u201cAnd as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/span>So it looks like Jesus is going to attend the local divine service. Quite fitting, especially since it is the Sabbath and where else would we expect to find Jesus except in His Father\u2019s house? But what Jesus does there is a bit unexpected: \u201cand he stood up to read.\u201d<\/em><\/span>But what Jesus read from the Scriptures wasn\u2019t just any text. He read from Isaiah, namely, the following: \u201cThe 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 recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord\u2019s favor.\u201d<\/em><\/span>These words from Isaiah 61 are good words to hear, as they echo what Isaiah had come to do: deliver the message of God to His people and to proclaim the love and favor of God unto the people. But is there another side to these words that Jesus quotes?<\/p>\n We can\u2019t forget who Jesus is and why He is here, and I don\u2019t mean here in the Synagogue. We can\u2019t forget why Jesus has come. He is the long-promised and long-awaited Messiah. He is the fulfillment of Isaiah\u2019s words. The Spirit of the Lord is indeed upon Him, for He is the Lord. He has been anointed to proclaim good news to the poor. And just who are the poor? You are the poor. It doesn\u2019t mean poor with regards to your wealth, but poor with regards to your salvation. You are spiritually poor; even worse, you are spiritually bankrupt. You have no salvation apart from Jesus. You are and have nothing without Jesus. That is why He has come, why He has come for you.<\/p>\n But being spiritually poor is not the only thing you have to deal with. You have to deal with your captivity, and yes, you are captive. You are captive to your sin, held hostage by all the times you have failed to keep God\u2019s Word, held hostage by your lack of confession and repentance for all those sins you committed that you don\u2019t think really are sins. That captivity keeps you from God and all that God desires to give you.<\/p>\n Everything that Isaiah has recorded, everything that Jesus reads, is indeed true. But there is even more to what Jesus has to say: \u201cToday this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.\u201d<\/em><\/span>It is true, all that Jesus has said has been fulfilled in Him. All seems right with the world according to the people: \u201cAnd all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a miracle! The people get Jesus! They understand what He is trying to tell them! And now, the next three years of Jesus\u2019 ministry will be easy as pie, with no questioning or resistance to His message. You might think that given the people\u2019s response, but Luke records that the people ruin it: \u201dIs not this Joseph\u2019s son?\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n With a simple breath, the people have gone from hearing the words of Jesus and seeing the truth in them and maybe even getting a clue of who Jesus is to seeing Him as nothing more than a carpenter\u2019s son.<\/p>\n What can you expect? These are sinful people that we\u2019re talking about. They can only grasp what they understand, and if they don\u2019t understand it, then it must not be true; hence why Jesus is nothing more than Joseph\u2019s son. But we are no different than the people of Jesus\u2019 day. We too fail to grasp who Jesus truly is. Even though we have the Scriptures in plain view with a plain understanding, we don\u2019t acknowledge Jesus for who He truly is. But then again, they had the Scriptures, the prophecies and God\u2019s promise to inform them of who Jesus was and they failed to do so.<\/p>\n Jesus, the hometown boy returns to church as a guest, and He claims that Isaiah\u2019s prophecy of the coming Messiah is now come true \u2013 in the person of Jesus. Jesus not only brings good news to the people, He is the Good News of God for every sinner! It’s just a shame that the people then didn\u2019t hear it and a shame that you and I don’t want to hear it.<\/p>\n Just as quickly as the people were enamored by Jesus, they turn against Him. Luke records, \u201cWhen they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.\u201d<\/em><\/span>The people of Nazareth reject the good news that Jesus is the Messiah and with that, everything that comes along with it. The expected response might be for the all to throw up their hands and rejoice in the hometown hero. You can almost see them wringing their hands and licking their chops with greedy anticipation.\u00a0\u201cHere is the answer to all our problems!\u00a0Can you believe that this is Joseph\u2019s boy?\u00a0We really hit the lottery with this one!\u201dInstead, the initial reaction was split. They marveled at the way or manner He spoke of God\u2019s love for them. But then doubt is quickly planted: \u201cIs not this Joseph\u2019s son?\u201d<\/em><\/span>You can almost hear them contradict themselves earlier. Surely Joseph\u2019s son cannot be the Messiah. Eventually, doubt turns into rejection.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t that just like us? One minute we are in love with Jesus and what He comes bringing and then the next, we\u2019re ready to throw Him out of town and off the cliff. This was the problem with the hometown crowd.\u00a0This is why Jesus spoke such brutal, attention-getting Law.\u00a0They were stubborn in their spiritual deafness and blindness.\u00a0They heard the words of Christ, but they didn\u2019t hear the Word of God.\u00a0They didn\u2019t listen.\u00a0That is us to a tee. We hear God\u2019s Word, but we do not listen to it. We hear God\u2019s pronouncement of forgiveness upon us on account of Jesus Christ, but we do not listen to the fact that the forgiveness is by Jesus alone. We want to find that forgiveness in anything but Jesus. But there is no forgiveness in anything or anyone but Jesus.<\/p>\n What does the hometown boy do? Does He leave the people with their desires or something else? He dies. He dies for the people who want to kill Him. The people get what they wanted: Jesus dies. The people should be happy. Everything worked out the way they had wanted it. And you know what? Everything did work out the way it was supposed to. Jesus died. He died for creation. He died to fulfill the Father\u2019s will. And He was successful. He died but did not stay dead. He rose victoriously to again fulfill the Father\u2019s will.<\/p>\n Even after everything that Jesus has done for creation, what is today\u2019s response to the shocking Good News of Jesus Christ? Some reject the Good News to their own damnation. They deny who Jesus is and what He has done. They deny that Jesus is the Messiah, the One who is promised of long ago to bring about salvation for creation. But then you have the other side of the coin as well. God the Holy Spirit creates faith in your heart through the Word of the Good News of Jesus Christ for you. By faith you see Jesus\u2019 mission completed \u2013 from Bethlehem to Calvary, from resurrection to ascension for you. By faith you see that all of Scripture points to Jesus for you.<\/p>\n Jesus truly is the fulfillment of God\u2019s promises.\u00a0He is the Anointed One, the Christ, the Messiah.\u00a0All this He gives to us through the Holy Spirit\u2019s gift of faith.\u00a0God has promised all these things to us and today they are fulfilled in our hearing. In Jesus\u2019 name, amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus, amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text: Luke 4:16-30 Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon is the Gospel, which was read earlier. Beginning His ministry at His Baptism, we find Jesus at Cana where He performs His first miracle. Today, Luke puts Jesus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16840,9016],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epiphany","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3986,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions\/3986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}