Message Info:
- Text: Luke 4:14-30, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), No. 4
- Date: Sunday morning, February 2, 2025
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio File: Open/Download
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⟦Transcript⟧ We have been for a few weeks now in a series in the book of Luke, and we’re going to continue with chapter 4 this morning. With having so many kids and them being so busy with school and everything, my wife and I are rarely in the car together. And so we forget how much our driving irritates each other just because we’re never in the same vehicle.
Last night, because all the grandparents are in town, we had a rare opportunity to actually go to dinner together, like before we got married. It was great. Until at one point, she pointed out, okay, you’re going the long way again.
see this is this is one of the things I do that will stress my wife out I don’t drive to get there quickly I don’t park to to make it easy to get to the door I I look for what is convenient I look for what is going to be the least stressful option if that means we’re going to take twice as long to go through a neighborhood and not have to go through construction on cash road sign me up all right if I have to park at the very end of the parking lot because I found a spot where I can get out of the parking lot when it’s time to leave without having to fight with anybody, or I found a spot where I can pull through and not have to back out when we leave, I will do that. We will walk a half a mile, maybe not that long, but I’m looking for what is going to be that.
I don’t know if I’m running from something, but I’m looking for what’s going to be the easiest escape, what’s going to be the most convenient. Now for me, that works as a way to drive, as a way to get around. There are a lot of places in life where that sort of thing is okay, looking for what is the most convenient answer.
But that doesn’t work in every facet of life. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of places in our lives where that is the worst thing we can do, is just to look for what is the most convenient. This morning, we’re going to look at a group of people in Nazareth who heard about Jesus and they thought this guy sounds pretty good until what he said was inconvenient for them.
And then suddenly they were out. And so we’re going to look at these people in Nazareth. That’s our next spot in the book of Luke.
We’ll be in chapter 4 starting in verse 14. And once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. Now if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke 14, it will be on the screen for you.
But follow along as we read through here. Verses 14 through 30. It says, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding district.
And He began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all. And He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up, and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him, and He opened the book and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
And he began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And all were speaking well of him and were wondering at the gracious words which were falling from his lips. And they were saying, Is this not Joseph’s son?
And he said to them, No doubt you will quote this proverb to me, Physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. And he said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.
But I say to you, in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land. And yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.
And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things. That’s quite a shift there. They were filled with rage as they heard these things.
And they got up and drove him out of the city and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built in order to throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went his way. And you may be seated.
And it took me several times reading through this passage to wrestle with what is the point that Luke is actually trying to make in telling the story. Now, part of what he’s doing is just recording things that actually happened. But he’s telling the story for a purpose because it furthers the picture he’s trying to give us of who Jesus is and how his ministry began.
And what is he telling us? He could have focused just on the claims that Jesus made when he read the scroll, but he really focuses a lot on the reaction of the people. So what is going on here?
And as we look at the interaction between Jesus and the people in Nazareth in the synagogue, we realize that there is this shift that takes place in the way they understand him and in the way they react to him. And it points us to the fact that they were on board with Jesus until suddenly he asked just a little bit too much of them. And following Jesus is too often a matter of convenience.
That was true of people in Nazareth. That’s true of people today, that too often following Jesus is a matter of convenience. And I’m going to walk you through this over the next few minutes, unpacking how this played out, that the people said, no, that’s a step too far.
And suddenly they were out as far as Jesus was concerned. But these people provide a clear example of how quick we can be to pick Jesus up down as it suits us for that moment. Sometimes Jesus is really convenient.
You know, when you’re in trouble and you need somebody to call out to, Jesus is great to have. But you know, there are other times that following Jesus means He’s calling on you to do something you don’t want to do. Anybody ever face that?
Jesus does, what He tells us to do is not always what makes me in the flesh real happy. And as a consequence, it’s just our human nature that if we’re not careful, it’s easy up and put him down based on what we feel like our needs are at the moment. And that’s exactly what the people at Nazareth did.
So he came to the synagogue. We see this starting in verse 16. Prior to that, he’d been working his way through Galilee after coming back from Jerusalem.
He’s teaching, he’s doing miracles, word is getting around, and he comes to Nazareth. They’ve heard all the buzz about Jesus. And he comes to the synagogue because he was in the habit of faithfully attending worship and worshiping the Father.
And because of his fame as a teacher and his fame as a miracle worker, they apparently invited him to read and teach. As part of their service, they would have several people get up and read a small portion of the law, the first five books of the Old Testament. And then they would have somebody after that get up and read a section from one of the prophets and give a sermon on it.
And evidently, because of his fame, because everybody said, oh, we’ve heard about this guy. This is the miracle worker. This is the one that’s been wandering around Capernaum doing miracles.
They wanted to hear from him. And so he comes in when it comes time for that part of the service. They hand him the Isaiah scroll and say, read something and explain it to us.
And so he does. He was invited to read and teach. And he read this passage from Isaiah 61, the first two verses.
That’s what we see quoted in verses 18 and 19. And then it says he sat down. And I always read that thinking he got up, he read, and he went back and sat down.
And they’re all just watching him. But apparently you would stand up to read and then they would have a seat where somebody would sit and teach, which sounds like a great idea, but I digress. So when it said he sat down, it was to be the one who taught that day.
And as he began to teach them, he said, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. All those things that Isaiah wrote about the anointed one who God had called and given his spirit to accomplish all of these things. He said, that scripture is being fulfilled right in front of you today.
And the people are looking around, say, what now? Okay, he sounds really good, but isn’t this just Joseph’s kid? He sat down, he declared the fulfillment of this prophecy in verses 20 and 21, and they were impressed with his speaking abilities.
When it says they were speaking well of him in verse 22, it doesn’t mean they were approving of what he said. It means they were impressed with the way he said it. And they were impressed with his authority.
They were impressed with his eloquence. But they didn’t necessarily buy in to what he was saying. That’s why they questioned it later on in that verse.
You’ve probably heard people who speak really well that you don’t necessarily agree with. Sometimes I hear the news, I’ll listen to people on the news and think, wow, you are a really great speaker. I don’t believe a word of what you just said, but you sound really convincing.
Politicians, I’ll leave it at that. Some of them are great speakers. Can’t always believe what they say.
They thought of him as just Joseph the carpenter’s son. You sound really good, but I don’t see how this really applies to you. And so in response to that, he began to teach them that when God worked among Israel and gave them evidence of everything that he was doing, When God did that in the Old Testament, a lot of Israel still didn’t believe, and so God moved on and worked among people who would believe.
That’s what those two examples are about that we’ll come back and talk about more in just a little bit with the woman at Zarephath and then Naaman the Syrian. These are Old Testament examples where God was sending His prophets to Israel. Israel wasn’t really listening, so God went and sent the prophets to work among the Gentiles.
The people in Nazareth were doing the exact same thing. God was at work in their midst. Evidence had even been provided. They had heard the stories of who Jesus was, and now he’s here confirming it, telling them who he is, and they’re not buying it.
And this is Jesus’ way of saying, if you’re going to reject what God is doing, then God will move and work among the Gentiles. This upset them. They refused to believe.
They wanted him to jump through their hoops instead of listening to what he had to say. And we’re liable to do the same thing today. God’s Word tells us to do something.
We say, God, if you really want me to do that, show me. Well, I think you’ll find He did. I have to have that conversation with myself sometimes.
He said it in here. That’s Him showing me that He wants me to do that. And so when He points out their unbelief, when He points out that they were in the wrong in their response, it made them so angry that they tried to kill Him.
And I’m trying to picture how this works, where in the last verse it says He just kind of slips through the crowd. They’re out trying to throw him off a cliff. I’ve never been that angry.
People have said some things that have made me upset. I’ve never been that angry that I’ve said, yeah, let’s just drag them out to the edge of town and throw them off the cliff. But evidently he struck a nerve with the people at Nazareth.
They were ready to throw him off the cliff. Somehow Jesus just slipped through the crowd and went on his way out of town. So in this account, we see some examples of some of the ways that Jesus interacts with people.
And we see really the exact wrong way to respond to what Jesus does when He speaks to us. We see the beginning of the crowd, they were drawn. In the beginning, the crowd was drawn to the miracles He performed.
I mean, who doesn’t love a show? Who doesn’t love some exciting spectacle where some guy is performing miracles, some guy is healing people. I don’t know, they’re regrowing legs, they’re able to walk, they’re raising people from the dead, He’s turning water into wine.
It’s a wonderful time. Everybody wants to see that. Of course, everybody loved the Jesus of the feeding of the 5,000.
Who wouldn’t? I mean, He made sure there was plenty to eat. You can get people to go just about anywhere if you feed them.
And they wanted to go because Jesus was providing snacks. The crowd loved that Jesus. And the Gospel of John fills in some of the blanks that are left in Luke.
He describes a large number of miracles that Jesus had already performed and a large number of ways that Jesus had already impressed the crowd and showed them who He was. These are not just rumors. These are things that thousands of people saw and we’re reporting on, there was ample evidence that Jesus is who he said he was.
And Luke, instead of telling all of those stories like John does, Luke just kind of summarizes what they understood about Jesus, that he was famous. It tells us in verse 14 that news about him spread through all the surrounding district. And it tells us he was popular.
He began in verse 15, he began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all. He was famous and he was popular because of the miracles, because they thought they never knew what he was going to say next. And he’d speak with authority.
And then the next minute, he’d call out the religious leaders for getting it wrong all this time with their added rules and things that they had added to God’s word. It was a spectacle as far as they were concerned. They wanted to see the miracles.
They wanted the food. They wanted to hear what he was going to say. They were eager for the benefits and the blessings of following Jesus.
And if that’s all we know about Jesus, there are not many people who object to that Jesus, even in the world today. Oh, the Jesus that just blesses us, the Jesus that just answers our prayers, that takes care of things, the Jesus we can turn to in times of trouble. Everybody likes that guy.
And they’re not wrong to do so. Jesus shows his compassion in a lot of ways. But a lot of these people early on were just following Jesus because of the benefits.
And and Jesus never asks us to believe anything or do anything or change anything. But when Jesus starts asking something of us, it gets real, real fast. Everybody wants the Jesus who gives but never asks us anything further. But Jesus didn’t stop with just the miracles.
He had performed the miracles. He had taught in these amazing ways. And then He comes into Nazareth and they want to hear what He’s got to say.
They give Him this seat of honor in the synagogue. They put Him there as the one reading the scroll and bringing the sermon on the Sabbath day. And then he began to claim some things about himself that they said, wait a minute, I’m not sure about that.
And the crowd was wary of the claims that Jesus made. So they were drawn to the miracles he performed, but when he started making claims about himself, then they’re saying, that might be a little bit too far. Look at the statements that he made in verses 18 and 19.
Now, it’s one thing to just read these from the book of Isaiah. I’m reading this passage to you from the book of Luke, and I’m not following it up with this has anything to do with me or who I am. But Jesus read this passage from the book of Isaiah, and then his sermon very early on said, the things that Isaiah is talking about are fulfilled right here in front of you.
So some of the things that he’s claiming about himself, he claims that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. He claims that he’s been anointed to preach the gospel to the poor. Now, we might say that God has given somebody an anointing today to preach and proclaim the gospel.
But this was very specific language that in the book of Isaiah they knew was talking about the Messiah. As a matter of fact, in Hebrew, that’s where the word Messiah comes from is their word for anointed. And so when he points to Isaiah 61 and says, that’s about me, he’s claiming to be the Messiah.
He’s claiming to be one who was specifically sent by God to Israel. He sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. He’s talking about setting people free were imprisoned, not just physically, but spiritually as well.
He’s talking about the recovery of sight to the blind. That’s something that only God can do. He’s talking about being able to do these things, to set free those who are oppressed.
He’s talking about bringing justice and judgment. Again, something that God has the right to do. And then he says to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.
He’s talking about the jubilee in the Old Testament, where debts were canceled, slaves were set free, everything started over. It was a time of grace. And we’ll talk more tonight about some of these claims that he makes about himself.
But understand, everything he reads there in verses 18 and 19, everything he reads there has to do with the Messiah and the work of the Messiah. And then to follow it up with, this is all fulfilled right in front of you. He’s telling them, I’m the one, I’m the one that Israel has been waiting on for thousands of years.
And I want you to think of anybody that you’ve known from the time they were a little kid, they’ve grown up around you, and if they show up at the age of 30-ish and say something like that, I’m the one everybody’s been waiting on for 4,000 years. Okay, admittedly, I’m going to have some questions. However, they also knew the prophecies of the Messiah and how he had already fulfilled so many of those.
They also had the evidence of the eyewitness testimony from the surrounding towns saying he’s been going around doing all these things. There was no reason for their skepticism other than he just didn’t fit their expectations. They were looking at it saying, he’s just the carpenter’s son.
People from outside thought, he’s just from Nazareth. Nazareth was such a small, insignificant town that until the last 50 years or so, archaeologists didn’t even think it existed at that time, because they could find very limited evidence of it because it was so small. Now we have evidence, we know it existed then, but it was that tiny.
You talk about a wide spot in the road that if you blink, you miss it. That’s Nazareth. That’s why one of his disciples said, could anything good come from Nazareth?
Not that it had a reputation for being a bad place, but you’re telling me somebody that important comes from someplace that unimportant from such a humble background? Even the people who were from there didn’t believe that this kid they had known from their little rinky-dink town could have been the one that God had promised. And so in spite of all the evidence that they have, all the things that pointed to his birth and his coming, all of the miracles he had done and the authority that he had taught with, the things that he had done that had convinced others, they were looking at that and in spite of the evidence, they couldn’t overcome their own skepticism.
Now, see, he’s asking us to believe things that we’re just not inclined to believe. And it says when they heard this, They were speaking well of him. Again, that means they were impressed.
Doesn’t mean they believed. Because with the very next breath, they’re saying, isn’t this just Joseph’s son? He can’t really be the things he’s claiming to be.
Suddenly, Jesus was asking them to believe something exclusive about him, and they weren’t sure about it. And for a lot of us, that’s where it becomes a problem. Jesus is blessing us.
Jesus is doing and giving, and we’re all good with that. And then Jesus calls on us to believe something. Yeah, I don’t know about that.
But he’s given all this evidence. He’s shown us who he is. Yeah, I still don’t know because it’s going to affect my entire belief system.
It’s going to affect my life in ways I’m not prepared for if I start believing what he’s called on me to believe. Then it got worse from there. The crowd was outraged by the sin that Jesus exposed.
And that’s what’s going on in this latter part. The final straw for the crowd was when he called out their unbelief. They demanded that he do miracles for them to prove what they’d heard.
And this is not so far-fetched. People still do this today. I see online, I hear from skeptical people, well, you know, if God would just perform some kind of sign, if God would put a neon sign in the sky that said, Jesus is Lord, then I’d believe.
No, you wouldn’t. Jesus said that. You’d try to find some explanation for it.
Because anybody can put a neon sign in the sky. Jesus predicted and accomplished His own resurrection from the dead. I think that’s a whole lot more convincing than a neon sign in the sky.
I could do that. I mean, not today. I’d have to study it.
There’s probably a YouTube video on how to do that. I’d have to learn, but I could probably make it happen. I can’t predict and accomplish my own resurrection from the dead.
Jesus has already given the ultimate sign. And in their day, He hadn’t done the resurrection yet, but He had already shown them signs and they’re saying, no, no, we don’t like those signs. We want our signs.
We want you to do it right here. they still want the spectacle. They demanded that He do miracles for them on their timetable in their way to suit their choices.
And instead, He called out their unbelief. And He said reactions like that are why God moves on and works among other people. Because Israel didn’t listen to Elijah, so the woman that her son got raised from the dead, that wasn’t in Israel.
That was among the Gentiles. And for a group of people that said, you know, we have a special covenant relationship with God, What an indictment that was to say these heathen Gentiles believed what God was doing when you wouldn’t. But you wouldn’t, so God moved on to others who would.
And the same thing with Elijah’s successor, Elisha. Israel wouldn’t listen to him either. So who was the one that got healed of leprosy?
It was Naaman, the Syrian, who believed enough when the prophet of God said, go dip yourself seven times in the Jordan River. He did it. He believed God, and he followed those instructions.
He believed God enough to do what God said. And God said, when Israel doesn’t believe, then I move else who will. And this is also Jesus’ foretelling he was going to be rejected by his own people.
And the Gentiles, which includes most of us, God was going to open that door to us. Well, they didn’t like this because not only is he saying, you are banking on your background. You think that your descent, you think your family line and your background and where you come from is what is going to make you right with God.
And he was telling them it’s not because God is going to work among these other people too. But it was calling out their self-righteousness. It was also out their unbelief, saying you’re looking at what God is doing in your midst and you don’t want any part of it because you are not willing to believe.
And that’s what made them angry. He exposed that their hearts were hardened toward God’s work. We don’t like to have our sin exposed.
It doesn’t feel good. It’s good for us in the long run to have it exposed, but it doesn’t feel good in the moment. And that’s what he did.
He exposed their sin and then they became hostile. Jesus was not just calling on them to believe something. He’s calling on them to change.
He’s calling on them to repent, and they wouldn’t. And so the crowd changed its reaction to Jesus based on what he was calling them to do. And the more inconvenient it became, the harder they rejected him.
And I look at this, I look at this, and this, among the other things it could teach us this morning, this passage teaches us that true followers can’t follow Jesus only when it’s convenient. Because the people of Nazareth are given to us not as an example of what to do, but of what not to do. If we think we’re following Jesus, but we’re following Him when it’s convenient, because we like the benefits, we like the blessings, we like what He does when we call out to Him when we’re in trouble, that’s not the real test of whether we’re following Him.
The test is whether we cut and run when He calls us to believe something that challenges what we want to believe. The ultimate test is when He exposes our sin, what do we do then? even if you’re following Jesus, it’s not going to be fun to have your sin exposed.
I should say, especially if you’re following Jesus, because sometimes we like to think we’re just a little bit better. We know we’re not, but we like to think it. And then when that sin gets exposed, it hurts even worse.
But if we’re following Jesus, that exposure of sin is an opportunity for us to repent and for that fellowship with God to be restored, or it’s an opportunity to do what the people of Nazareth did and hold him at arm’s length because it’s no longer convenient to follow him. When He tells us who He is, following means believing Him, even if it’s inconvenient. And when He exposes the sin in our hearts, following Him means repenting and continuing to follow, even though it hurts for a moment.
It’s easy to follow Him when it’s convenient, when it’s just about the blessings and the spectacle. But we’ve been called to take up our cross and follow Him daily. Taking up our cross means suffering and denying ourselves.
And that’s what we’ve been called to do.
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