Luke 4:14-30

Transcript

00:00:00:37 – 00:00:34:19
Clint Loveall
Hey, friends. Welcome. Thanks for starting Holy Week with us on this Monday as we continue our way through the Gospel of Luke. We are in the fourth chapter having followed the temptation narrative. We now move into Jesus’s ministry. Luke has told us Jesus is about 30 years old. That’s generally pretty accepted, I think historically and among scholars, somewhere in that age range, we see Jesus begin his three year ministry.

00:00:34:19 – 00:01:01:03
Clint Loveall
And really that’s what Luke begins for us today. So chapter four in the 14th verse. Then Jesus filled with the power of the Spirit, Return to Galilee, and a report about Him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone when he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day.

00:01:01:39 – 00:01:26:16
Clint Loveall
It was his custom. He stood up to read and the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah was given to him. He owned the scroll and found the place where it was written. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because He’s anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

00:01:27:00 – 00:02:03:25
Clint Loveall
And he rolled up the scroll again and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, and won’t we stop there? Michael So here Jesus first public ministry. Most of the Gospels have a moment like this where Jesus goes and has an encounter in worship or in the synagogue here we have this happening in Nazareth, his hometown, where he reads this passage from Isaiah.

00:02:04:51 – 00:02:28:30
Clint Loveall
This is not Luke alone, but this is very Luke, the idea he’s anointed me to bring good news to who? To the poor, and proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight. This is in Isaiah Passages quoted other places, but it it fits who Luke is and what Luke is doing. This emphasis on the the lesser and the lower.

00:02:28:57 – 00:02:59:07
Clint Loveall
And then Jesus has this moment where it says He said to them today, this has been fulfilled in your hearing. Now, one thing that is helpful, I think, to know in English, this introduction, in this first verse here, because he has anointed me the word anointed is significant because in Hebrew, the word Messiah and in Greek the word Christ both literally mean the anointed one.

00:02:59:27 – 00:03:22:06
Clint Loveall
So Luke is in having that conversation yet, but it’s in the background. It is if you understand the wording, it’s kind of lurking around the corner here. Luke isn’t doing much with it, but he wants it out there for us to see. And, you know, this is a kind of a pivotal moment. Luke Slow plays this story a little bit.

00:03:22:06 – 00:03:45:45
Clint Loveall
Michael In one of the other gospels, this kind of blows up quickly. Luke gives us a little chance to listen to this first. And I think the idea, you know, going to hear next that people spoke well of Jesus, but we’re building towards something. And this is a bold statement that Jesus makes, but it’s telling the way that Luke records it for us.

00:03:46:15 – 00:04:07:57
Michael Gewecke
Luke is very clearly making some move immediately into the story. We said that last week that it was going to move rapidly from a temptation narrative to this narrative. And here I think I just want to make very clear in verse 14, it’s not by accident that immediately following that testing, Luke tells us that Jesus is filled with the power of the Spirit.

00:04:07:57 – 00:04:31:33
Michael Gewecke
And here this is obviously telling us that Jesus is now beginning that ministry. He’s he’s been handed that torch and he is now carrying it. But also this is a Trinitarian reference. We see that Luke is already building into the story, the very spirit who Jesus is going to describe giving and sending to the disciples to be their advocates.

00:04:31:33 – 00:05:10:55
Michael Gewecke
And they’re essentially there. They’re life, their spirit, who’s going to guide them forward. Once we move out of Luke and into the second part of Luke into Acts. I also think it’s worth noting here that Luke is very intentionally starting this story in the synagogue, and not just any synagogue, but the synagogue where Jesus grew up. It’s a kind of homecoming, but more than that, it’s a kind of initiation of the ministry, because that slow play of the story that you describe, it’s going to lead us in this arc, in this story from initial acceptance and amazement.

00:05:11:13 – 00:05:39:30
Michael Gewecke
You could even maybe read into that joy and interest, and then that’s going to turn very, very quickly. And that both serves, as you’ve already said, to point us as the reader to this idea that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior for the lost and the least, but it also has a way of already beginning to tip up off for us the contention that Jesus is going to find in every synagogue along the way in all of the Jewish communities.

00:05:39:46 – 00:06:10:13
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is going to be met with mixed reception and Luke is already setting the tone for that. He doesn’t directly come out and say, this is the point of this story. But by beginning Jesus’s journey in this way, he is setting us up as the reader to understand that Jesus is going to have a very, very contentious relationship with the people who he should, who are his people, and that that does have implications then for the people who will accept and receive his ministry as the pages of this book Go on.

00:06:11:16 – 00:06:35:33
Clint Loveall
Yeah, there is a sense here, particularly as we move into these next couple verses of kind of hometown boy makes good all spoke well of him were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said Is this not Joseph’s son? So there is this sense that Jesus is celebrated. He’s he’s known to them. They know his father.

00:06:35:33 – 00:07:08:29
Clint Loveall
They point that out. And yet where Jesus takes that next, we really see in Luke the first significant controversy. So verse 23 here, Jesus said to them, doubtless you will say to me, and you will quote this proverb, Doctor, cure yourself. You will say, Do here also in your hometown, the things that we have heard that you did at Capernaum and Jesus said, I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in the Prophet’s hometown.

00:07:09:05 – 00:07:33:36
Clint Loveall
The truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over the land. Yet Elijah was sent to none of them except the widow with Zero Faith and Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel at the time of the Prophet Elijah, and none of them were cleansed except name in the Syrian.

00:07:34:21 – 00:07:59:54
Clint Loveall
When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of town, and led him to the brow of a hill on which the town was built so that they might throw him off the cliff. But he passed through them in the midst and went on his way. So you can see here how much ground we cover in this passage.

00:08:00:32 – 00:08:26:58
Clint Loveall
The people are good, they feel good about Jesus. And then to sort of make sure that they understand that Jesus is not their mascot. Jesus is not the face of Nazareth. Jesus is not the small town hero. He quotes these two stories, really, and essentially what he says is God sends people to specific places, and I’m not here for you.

00:08:26:58 – 00:08:50:00
Clint Loveall
This isn’t about you. And the reaction to that is strong. They’re deeply offended. This is the first instance already. We’re not very far into the story, really less than a page into Jesus’s ministry story. And people, in fact, not only people, his hometown people are trying to throw him off a cliff. And that, for Luke is a forerunner.

00:08:50:00 – 00:09:30:16
Clint Loveall
I think that’s a sign of how these gospels stories are going to play out. The idea that Jesus speaks truth to those who don’t want to hear it. And in many cases their reaction is violent, it’s angry, it’s retribution and punishment. And Luke here, I think, is working to help us understand that Jesus is going to be a person that garners such strong, strange and strong reactions really throughout the rest of the text.

00:09:30:52 – 00:10:10:13
Michael Gewecke
We may miss the force of it. We may miss the force of the fact that when Jesus goes to apply a story to the situation, that he turns to individuals here, like the widow at Sarah Faith, or to someone like Naiman, the Syrian. But you’ve got to figure for just a moment that what the people are hearing him say is that when they hear this prophecy fulfilled, that the prophecy is ultimately not fulfilled only for their sake, which is a contradiction of everything that they’ve been taught, everything that they believe, everything that they have up to this point are sort of the covenant of Abraham would mean for them.

00:10:10:30 – 00:10:35:56
Michael Gewecke
And so this interpretation that Jesus offers is inclusive and broad in a way that no one in that synagogue would have been comfortable with. And in some ways, I think you could have an interesting interplay conversation here. One question you could ask, you know, do the people misunderstand Jesus or maybe even on the flip side, do the people understand exactly what Jesus is saying?

00:10:35:56 – 00:11:03:28
Michael Gewecke
And I think that both of those may be present in this story that in some ways the crowd may be hearing Jesus claim a kind of exclusivity for that gospel outside of the circle. And then on the other hand, I think the people might rightly be hearing that Jesus is saying that the covenant was bigger than what we or you have considered, and that that itself, that understanding of his teaching was the thing that drove the people to anger.

00:11:03:30 – 00:11:27:36
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And you could easily come to the conclusion that Jesus is kind of trying to pick a fight with his hometown people. But I think behind that is this idea that the the danger, the temptation of familiarity is that the people will assume that Jesus works for them. If this is you know, in the case of this story, they heard that he did some great thing somewhere else.

00:11:28:03 – 00:11:52:39
Clint Loveall
So Jesus says, you know, I know you’re going to tell me do even better things here, do even greater things. As in you have an allegiance to us. You have some you’re beholden to us in some way, and we expect you to to make our lives even better and to gain even more notoriety for Nazareth. And Jesus says, Look, it doesn’t work that way.

00:11:52:51 – 00:12:18:09
Clint Loveall
God could send people to all of those people. And he chose these people instead of the others. And at that implication that the others have been chosen or that the others will be celebrated, perhaps even more than the people in Nazareth that might know Jesus by name is so offensive to them. They now think Jesus is out stepped his his place that he’s grown, you know, bigger.

00:12:18:09 – 00:12:39:57
Clint Loveall
His pants are too big. And so he’s he’s here now offensive in a way to them that they’re ready to destroy him. You know, again, this is the first story of Jesus ministry. And we have his home town ready to throw him to his death. And that’s not an accident in Luke. Luke’s going to tell us lots of great things that Jesus does.

00:12:39:57 – 00:13:09:34
Clint Loveall
But Luke starts here, I think, to make sure that the reader understands this is a real story with real consequences. And it will not be an easy story. People will be offended. People will be called to account. One of the things the gospel does, and we see it here, Luke has lifted up the idea of the poor and broken, and Luke has offended those who think they have privilege and and notoriety deserve some sort of notoriety.

00:13:09:34 – 00:13:19:55
Clint Loveall
And that’s we’re going to get a lot of that in Luke, But it’s not just Luke, it’s the Gospels on the whole. But Luke wants to make sure we get that right off the bat, I think.

00:13:20:06 – 00:13:37:49
Michael Gewecke
And let’s make sure that we’re all on the same page. Notice the detail at the end of this story. In verse 30, he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. I suppose it depends on how you want to define a miracle, but I think in many ways you could call this the first miracle in Luke done by Jesus.

00:13:37:49 – 00:14:01:12
Michael Gewecke
We have, you know, the the stuff with Zacharias, you have these divine appearances, you have some of those things, you have that angelic chorus. I mean, these are miraculous. But I think the idea that Jesus goes and preaches his first sermon, the entire town is enraged to the point where they want to throw him off a cliff. And Jesus does this really, really odd thing.

00:14:01:30 – 00:14:22:21
Michael Gewecke
He’s not that victorious warrior who puts down his enemies. He doesn’t come with a golden tongue and convince the people that they should not do this. He doesn’t give us a rousing speech as Luke records it. Instead, he just very simply passes through the midst of them and goes on his way. That’s it. That’s all of the detail that Luke gives us.

00:14:22:23 – 00:14:53:43
Michael Gewecke
I think that miracle, the kind of humility of that, the kind of non sort of attention driven nature of that action just Jesus passes through them is almost casually said. And I think it reminds us that Jesus is truly a unique kind of leader as he comes as the Savior. He deals with these situations differently than what you might expect someone seeking power and going back to his hometown.

00:14:53:54 – 00:15:10:26
Michael Gewecke
Jesus here is cast intentionally by Luke to be a different person than what we expect. And that’s going to happen over and over and over again. Jesus is always reversing expectations, and this is, I think, an amazing first miracle that really encompasses that.

00:15:11:16 – 00:15:38:13
Clint Loveall
The gospels in general, maybe Luke in particular, though it’s not limited to Luke, have a tendency to be anti climactic. And what I mean by that is we expect some lesson. We expect, you know, even even this sentence is vague. Did he become invisible? Did he just did he have something that convinced them, leave him alone? Was this a show of force?

00:15:38:13 – 00:16:01:03
Clint Loveall
Is it supernatural? And we’ll see this. You know, we’ll see times where Jesus does some great miracle and then he just says, okay, now go give them some food or there will be a demon and he’ll command the demon out, and then he’ll just tell the demon, be silent. And there are those moments, I think, where we expect there’s going to be some cymbal crash.

00:16:01:19 – 00:16:24:57
Clint Loveall
And instead Jesus just sort of casually goes on to the next thing. And some of that is a mark of storytelling, and some of it is just a constant way of reminding us that Jesus doesn’t fit the patterns we expect. Jesus isn’t a character in a story. Jesus has a presence and a power that we don’t know exactly what to do with.

00:16:25:00 – 00:16:51:27
Clint Loveall
And it continues to surprise us and where we expect one thing, we often get another thing. And you know, it’s well said Michael. He doesn’t defend himself here, doesn’t say anything. He just he walks through the crowd and goes on his way as if it’s not even a big deal. And that has a way of waking us up to the story again and again and again.

00:16:51:27 – 00:17:02:20
Clint Loveall
It’s an interesting storytelling technique, and I think Luke employs it really well. I think we’ll see more of that even in the next couple of days. I actually think we’ll see some other instances of that.

00:17:02:36 – 00:17:32:00
Michael Gewecke
In some ways, this is less confronting national than many stories you’ll find in like the Book of Matthew, for example, where Jesus does go toe to toe and he does lay in two people here. You could read these verses 23 through 27 as being a kind of hard teaching Jesus will straight up argue or catch people in traps, but here he is, pastoral in a way.

00:17:32:00 – 00:18:10:51
Michael Gewecke
He says this thing. People are angered by it. And instead of him losing his temper or Luke presenting Jesus as rising up, he just passes through them. And that is the nature of him being God. I think that what you speak of, Clint being unable to be owned or anticipated or or predicted that Jesus is truly representing a power beyond, and the fact that he’s able to just simply continue the story, he will pass through them and then he will begin addressing the next thing that comes from, which is, by the way, once we get to it tomorrow, not accidental.

00:18:11:00 – 00:18:40:28
Michael Gewecke
It’s not accidental. You begin with a story in the church, in the sanctuary, at the place of origin, and then you immediately move to a man who is possessed by a demon. This movement and Luke is clear because while some people in scriptures get called a demonic act, they get called as a person who has demons. Luke is going to make it clear that that demonic power is existing in very many places, surprising places.

00:18:40:44 – 00:19:05:13
Michael Gewecke
And I think that it’s fascinating that when Jesus goes and preaches the good news in his home congregation, it drives them to anger and pushes the savior of the world out of town. And it pushes him right into the Ministry of Healing and restoring and and bringing God’s hope and kingdom to the world. So Luke is presenting Jesus as beginning of ministry.

00:19:05:13 – 00:19:18:30
Michael Gewecke
He’s doing so in a thoughtful, intentional way. And I hope if we can really give it attention, we’ll see that it’s really beginning Jesus a story in a way that that points out the values that Jesus has and what makes him different.

00:19:18:41 – 00:19:46:06
Clint Loveall
It may be the idea of Luke as a historian, and I would be interested to know what Bible scholars would make of this statement. But I don’t find Luke to be preachy. There aren’t sermons type texts in Luke. It. It’s as if Luke knows that at the end of the gospel, he’s going to do this massive reveal of the resurrection as we, you know, as we make our way through this week, through Easter week.

00:19:46:49 – 00:20:12:16
Clint Loveall
Luke knows that at the end of Jesus story is the miracle of all miracles. And it’s almost as if Luke has decided, I don’t need to spend a whole lot of time along the way unpacking what this meant and what that meant, that there’s more of that I would argue in. Matthew. I think there’s some of it and John Mark does it in a different way.

00:20:12:27 – 00:20:40:39
Clint Loveall
Luke isn’t preachy in that sense. Michael I think Luke Is it? I mean, maybe you could say that, that as the historian he just sticks a little closer to the narrative. But I, but I actually think it’s simply that he doesn’t want ultimately to overshadow what he considers to be the major point of the whole thing. And in the meantime, we’re going to get lots of lessons, lots of miracles, that stuff.

00:20:40:39 – 00:20:49:39
Clint Loveall
Is there. But Luke tells them in a in a fairly concise way and often doesn’t dwell on them. And I think I think that’s interesting.

00:20:50:20 – 00:21:17:45
Michael Gewecke
Just very, very briefly take note that at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, he starts at the center of his religious life, his home, synagogue and his pushed out and the gospel moves away from that Jewish center. Remember with me that in acts, the church literally begins in Jerusalem and then moves out of that center in concentric rings as it spreads out to the rest of the world.

00:21:17:45 – 00:21:42:59
Michael Gewecke
I would make the case that Luke is in the story itself, showing us that what happens in Acts is mirrored or began. Rather, it was the seed planted in Jesus’s own life in ministry that he began at the center and that he was moved out and that he just simply continues to do his ministry as it grows and grows concentric even outside sort of that beginning home base that he began.

00:21:42:59 – 00:22:22:26
Michael Gewecke
He was a Jewish man who worshiped, who knew the Torah. He did all that was required by nature of that covenantal relationship and those people. But it’s clear that Jesus is doing more than that, and He is instituting a new kingdom, and Luke is going to show how that progresses and how that becomes more and more known and accepted and how that revelation is ultimately, to your point, seen in Jesus being given, being showed in the revelation of resurrection to be something that no one had ever even considered before, both in and outside that Jewish community.

00:22:22:46 – 00:22:42:51
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And if you have the chance to join us tomorrow, we’ll see Jesus in the next spot. We’ll see the next step on that journey as Jesus moves out of Nazareth, as He begins to encounter some more teaching, some healings, some exorcisms, and continue his work. So thanks for being with us today. I hope you can join us again.

00:22:42:52 – 00:22:51:27
Michael Gewecke
We’ll see you tomorrow.