Christ The Chosen One

Luke 4:16 – 30

 

I did something this week that I really don’t like to do, I went back and watched and listened to myself preach on YouTube. December 4^th, 2022, was the first time I ever preached a sermon, I preached the same sermon here and at Hilmar that day. Who here was present that day and remembers it?

 

That first time that I ever preached a sermon, the YouTube broadcast of the entire service, music, announcements, more music, sermon, and offering was 41:35, today they average about an 1:10:00. I’m more long winded now, so poor Dusty back there has to extend our broadcast by 15 minutes otherwise it would cut off on its own, ha-ha.

 

That first sermon itself lasted about 20 minutes, pretty short by most standards (ok maybe by my standards, ha-ha), but I’ve been told that no one ever complained about a short sermon. I guess that would get y’all to the hall sooner for some French toast casserole, ha-ha!

 

You know, Scripture contains some very short sermons, and some very long ones. In Acts 20, Paul preached for hours, from dinner time until midnight. Paul preached so long that a young man named Eutychus sitting in the window of the upstairs room they were in fell asleep, fell out the window, and died! It’s ok though because Paul raised him back to life, came back in, ate again, and then continued on preaching until daybreak!

 

And then there’s the preaching in our passage in the Gospel of Luke today, short, sweet, and very to the point. So, let’s read God’s Word together: Luke 4:16 – 30.

 

Jesus was about thirty years old; He had been baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan river, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him like a dove, and God proclaimed from heaven, that Jesus was His Son, in whom He was well pleased. Luke adds emphasis to this by including Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam a son of God.

 

From there, Jesus goes into the wilderness, full of the Spirit and led by the Spirit to be tested by the Devil, to prove Himself as the Son of God. Now, Jesus was prepared for ministry.

I’m rather thankful that my preparation for ministry didn’t involve time in the wilderness, being hungry and facing off directly with Satan. But there is a reason that James says to count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds, I preached on it, do you remember? Trials produce steadfastness in your faith, they are an integral part of your sanctification process, and as such prepare you to minister to others in their time of need.

 

God prepares us for ministry, and not just formal ministry leadership like being a pastor or teacher, but also for ministering to fellow members of the body of Christ, to ministering to the church, and to ministering to unbelievers by sharing with them the truth of the gospel. God prepares you to minister to others, and often times that preparation is best taught through trials and testing where you prove yourself faithful.

 

And once Jesus had proven Himself by giving the devil his first loss, Jesus went to work. Last week we read in the Gospel of Luke that Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and He was teaching in their synagogues and everyone praised Him. He was well received, which is quite contrary to what we tend to remember about Jesus’ ministry that ultimately led to His death on the cross.

 

And so today we read that He went to Nazareth, His hometown, and as was His custom, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. Even the Son of God went to church regularly. His apostles did the same too. Paul would teach in the synagogue on the Sabbath to preach the gospel, and then meet with fellow Christian’s on the Lord’s Day, Sunday.

 

Jesus made it His custom because the 4^th commandment is to keep holy the Sabbath. So of course it was His custom because He was a Jew and He was sinless. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

 

What’s really interesting about this is that this commandment is one the religious leaders who had Him crucified claimed He broke, because He healed on the Sabbath. But because Jesus fulfilled all of the law, he also fulfills the commandment He was accused of breaking.

 

By putting our faith in Jesus, who Himself is Lord of the Sabbath, whose yoke is easy and His burden light, we maintain obedience to the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath. But that doesn’t mean we work seven days a week, rest is good, but by faith in Jesus we’re no longer bound to all of the unnecessary laws the Pharisees burdened the Jews with.

Now, the synagogue service had a very specific order. Typically, in a synagogue service back then they sang a psalm, read the Shema, they repeated the Eighteen Blessings (the central prayer), then they read from the Law, Torah, in Hebrew followed by reading a translation in Aramaic since Hebrew was no longer used and understood by the average Jew at that time. Then they read from the Prophets in Hebrew, and then in Aramaic, and then there was a sermon on the Scripture, and concluding blessing by the ruler of the synagogue.

 

Now, Jesus had been teaching in their synagogues prior to this. We don’t know how much time passed between His baptism, proving in the wilderness, and this particular Sabbath day. But we do know that He had already been teaching, and was well respected and praised for His teaching. So despite people not truly knowing who He is, they recognized Him as a good teacher and welcomed Him to teach.

 

So, He stands up to read Scripture, the synagogue attendant hands Him the scroll of Isaiah, and Jesus unrolls it and finds the passage He was looking for. Now, the Scroll of Isaiah is not a small scroll; in fact it is one of the longest scrolls and books of the Bible.

 

From Isaih 61, Jesus reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 

And then He rolls the scroll back up, gives it back to the attendant, and He sits down. That seems odd to us today, that Jesus sat down to preach. But that is how the rabbi’s taught in the synagogues. They stood up to read Scripture, giving due reverence to God, and then the teacher sat down in a seat or stool to preach and teach, and everyone sat on the floor around them at his feet.

 

And I just love this; the Bible says that the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. Fastened, everyone’s eyes were glued to Jesus, eagerly anticipating what He was going to say. What He proceeds to say is perhaps the shortest sermon ever on record. With just a handful of words Jesus interprets that passage from Isaiah when He says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” That’s it. That’s all He has to say about that passage of Scripture He read. And it is enough.

 

That passage is a messianic passage, and what it declares is the source of the messiah’s power and his mission. And so Jesus declares to the folks in His hometown that He is the Messiah. Now, look at how that passage begins, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, anointed.” When looking at where the Messiah gets His power, we’re faced with a question. Where did Jesus get His power to do all that He did in His earthy ministry?

 

Perhaps the greatest mystery of the Christian faith is the nature of the Holy Trinity. While we sing songs about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we proclaim that our God is three in one and we know it’s true, we don’t fully understand it. Throughout history we’ve tried to explain it.

 

But contained within the mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of the incarnation, where we find that in the incarnation of God, the incarnation of the Logos of which the apostle John speaks of to open his Gospel, the second person of the Trinity takes on a human nature. So that the person Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature.  

 

So when we look at Jesus’ earthly ministry, we have to ask ourselves that question: by what power was He able to perform the marvelous miracles and the captivating preaching recorded in the Bible. Were the miracles He performed a manifestation of His divine nature?

 

The boy Jesus in the temple at 12 years old already knew who He was when He asked His anxious parents, didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house? But the Bible tells us in Luke that from that point on Jesus grew in wisdom and stature. Why did He have to grow in wisdom if He was divine?

 

One mysterious aspect to the incarnation of God, when God the Son humbled Himself and took flesh, He took on the limitations of the body, He handcuffed Himself. He had to grow, He had to mature, He had to experience life and learn, and He experienced hunger, pain, sadness, joy, and suffering. Jesus is as much fully man as He is fully God.

 

This debate has gone on for centuries, where some groups so deny the deity of Jesus so much that they allow the human nature of Christ to swallow up His deity. And on the other side of the coin, there are many who are so passionate to proclaim the deity of Jesus Christ, who will often so strongly affirm His deity that they end up allowing the deity to swallow up the humanity of Jesus until there’s nothing human left of Him.

So again, we return to the question, by what power did Jesus do the works He did during His ministry? Were these works empowered by the second Person of the Trinity working through the human Jesus, or was it the human nature of Jesus full of the power of the Holy Spirit that rested upon Him that He was able to perform these miracles and preach so powerfully?

 

The Bible tells us of other’s who performed miracles, Moses performed miracles, Elijah and Elisha performed miracles and the apostles in the NT performed miracles, so by what power did they perform their miracles? The Bible is pretty clear about that, they did it by the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of the third Person of the Trinity.

 

Now, there have been some truly special preachers of the gospel throughout American history. Jonathan Edwards, a preacher from the 1700’s, so empowered by the Spirit, so powerful his preaching, led massive amounts of people to the Lord through his Spirit filled preaching and along with the spirit filled preaching of George Whitefield, God brought about the First Great Awakening in America, half a century before America even existed as a country.

 

A century later in England, through the Spirit filled preaching of Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, God the Holy Spirit used him to bring about such a huge awakening in London, and really in all of England. It is said that Spurgeon wrestled in prayer over every sermon that he gave, and that whenever he went up into the pulpit in London, that pulpit was much higher than this one, it is said that with every step he would say on the way up to that pulpit, “I believe in the Holy Ghost, I believe in the Holy Ghost,” which was his way of saying the Holy Spirit.

 

Or much more recently, Billy Graham, who through his crusades, preached the gospel to over 200 million people in over 185 countries, and millions more through tv. It’s been said that over the course of Billy Graham’s lifetime, more than 3 million believed in the name of Jesus Christ and received Him, committing their lives to Christ. Billy Graham attributed the effectiveness of his crusades to the power of the Holy Spirt.

 

So dependent on the power of God should all preachers be to make his preaching effective because God has promised that His Word will not return to Him void and that the preaching of the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

We cannot do the work that God has ordained for us to do without the power of the Holy Spirit leading and enabling us for it. Truly, no one can do the works that God prepared for you to do before He even created you without the power of the Holy Spirit enabling you to do it. You cannot even be obedient to the gospel, believe in Jesus Christ without the Holy Spirit moving in you first.

 

So, which is it? By what power does Jesus do what He does? I say it is both/and. Jesus, God incarnate, performed His mighty works because He is fully God, and fully man, both fully divine and full of the Holy Spirit.

 

And even though the Son is distinguished from the Father and Spirit, He cannot be separated from the Father and Spirit because they are all one in being and in essence. And though the Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Father and Son, He cannot be separated from the Father and Son because they are all one in being and in essence.

 

But it is important, that the ministry of Jesus on this earth, takes place after He is anointed by the Holy Spirit, and that Luke places such an emphasis on it, at Jesus’ baptism, during his proving in the wilderness, and by going so far as to be the only gospel writer to record Jesus reading this passage from Isaiah here, with Jesus making the claim Himself that the Spirit of the Lord is upon Him, anointed by God, because His hour to get to work had come. He had grown in wisdom, He was full of the Spirit, and God Himself had proclaimed from heaven Jesus’ divine nature as Son.

 

Remember that the name Christ, Christos, is simply the Greek translation of the OT word for Messiah, and literally means “the anointed one.” Jesus Himself is declaring that He is anointed by the power of the sovereign God, that He is the Messiah. Christ is God’s Chosen One.

 

So, the greatest anointed preacher to ever walk the face of the earth, the one with the greatest power, the power to save, was Jesus of Nazareth, who had the fullness of power promised to the Messiah in Scripture, fulfilling God’s true, authoritative, and Holy Word.

 

He was anointed to preach the gospel, the good news, to the poor, not just the economically and societally poor, but the spiritually poor and morally bankrupt. Jesus Christ was anointed to proclaim freedom to the prisoners, those held captive by sin and shame.

He was anointed to proclaim the recovery of sight to the blind, those who can’t even see the wrath coming to them and their need for a savior, and He delivered on both accounts, giving the blind back their sight and bringing salvation to all who believe in Him.

 

He came to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of jubilee, when all debts are cancelled. The year of jubilee came about every 7 year in ancient Israel, any outstanding debt was forgiven, and what had belonged to the original owner was returned to them.

 

Because of Christ, God’s Anointed One, that year is now today, and every day. Through His work on the cross, your sin debt is paid in full, and you belong to your original Father, you are returned into relationship with the one who created you.

 

And when He tells the people at the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth that the Scripture from Isaiah is fulfilled by Him, they are both amazed and confused. They were amazed at the gracious words that came from His mouth, but they asked, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

 

People in your hometown don’t forget who you are. It’s a blessing and a curse. There are always those that remember who you were when you were growing up, and they hold it against you. I haven’t quite faced that yet in my own hometown, but I know there are some folks who used to be my friends and I know that I have plenty of relatives who are astounded, even disappointed, that I’m a Southern Baptist preacher.

 

Jesus faced the same looks, worse from the folks in His hometown. Yes, they were amazed, that’s positive. And the question of Him being Joseph’s son, they didn’t know the truth about Jesus, is both positive in the sense of, “Wow, how can Joseph’s son preach like this?” But it’s also negative in the sense of, “Humph, who does Joseph’s son think he is?”

 

The Bible shows us that Jesus has always had a keen awareness of the thoughts of others, of their true feelings in their heart. Look at Nicodemus in John 3. He comes up to Jesus at night and greets Him with, “Good Teacher,” and Jesus immediately responds with, “You must be born again,” not anyone’s expected response to being greeted.

 

 

Jesus knew Nicodemus’ inner struggle with living the life of a Pharisee and how it conflicted with the truth that Jesus was revealing, and so He got right to the point. The same thing is happening here.

 

He knows they want a sign, that they would demand He does there what He did in Capernaum. We always want a sign, don’t we. So, Jesus goes on and says, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” He knew the rejection of Him that they harbored in their hearts. He illustrates it by citing the prophets Elijah and Elisha.

 

In Elijah’s time, there was severe famine throughout the land, beyond the borders of Israel and Judah, for 3.5 years. And yet, God sent Elijah to a Phoenician widow in Sidon, a city on the mediterranean coast, north of Israel, instead of to any Isralite widow. She was a Gentile, and God sent Elijah to save her rather than the children of Israel.

 

And the same holds true for Elisha. God could have sent Elisha to miraculously heal any of the lepers in Israel, but instead He only has Elisha heal Naaman, the Syrian general, of his leprosy.

 

The blind ignorance of God’s people throughout biblical history is astounding, but truly if we were in their shoes we would have done the same, sometimes we still chose to be blind. God has been saving those outside of His chosen people for millennia, demonstrating, as is Luke’s emphasis in his Gospel, that salvation is for all who believe.

 

And when the people heard Jesus say this, what He knew was in their hearts came gushing out. They were furious when they heard this. They were so heated that they got up and drove Jesus out of the town. And they didn’t stop there, they took Jesus to the edge of a hill, in order to throw him off a cliff. That’s complete and utter rejection by the people of His hometown, the people who would have seen Him grow up.

 

You know, the apostle John writes in chapter one of his Gospel, that Jesus came to His own people, but they did not receive Him, this is one layer of that. Jesus came to His hometown and was rejected.

 

Jesus came to the Jews, His own people, and they rejected Him. And Jesus came to the world, a world that is filled entirely with descendants of Adam, a son of God, and Jesus the Son of God has been resoundingly rejected throughout history by the world.

Yet Jesus walked right through the crowd and went on His way. No idea how, other than it was not yet His time to die, and so they couldn’t touch Him. Despite their rejection of Him, they couldn’t hurt Him. Despite their crucifixion of Him, they couldn’t stop God’s plan for the salvation of the world.

 

Despite their rejection of Him, Jesus is not rejected by all. as John says, to those who received Him, those who believed in His name, he gave them the right to be called, children of God, born by the will of God.

 

Because Jesus Christ is the Chosen One who brings salvation and hope, you must respond to the gospel in faith, even in the face of rejection.

 

The fallen world hates the truth, as the Bible says, being a friend of the world is being an enemy of God. There are a few certainties about being a born again child of God. One of those is the greatest promise of all, eternal life in Christ Jesus. But another promise is probably the most challenging of all, you will face rejection and hate from the world. This is the cost of discipleship.

 

But understand and believe that Jesus already paid the ultimate price for your sin, so you can certainly afford the cost of discipleship. Responding to the gospel in faith goes beyond the moment of salvation, it’s a life long continual response that transforms your daily life.

 

You can do this by immersing yourself in community with fellow believers in the church, by being a part of the body of Christ. You may have to adjust your circle, in order to have less of the world and more of the church around you.

 

You can do this by seeking out and engaging in discipleship. Discipleship is one of the best ways to grow in your faith, but it requires active engagement. All Christians are called to both be discipled, and to disciple others. As you grow in your walk with God, He will equip you and empower you with His Spirit to face the rejection, the temptations, the trials, and the testing of this world.

 

And lastly, you can do this by finding your rest in Christ, God’s anointed, the Chosen One. He secures your identity, your peace, and your eternity. He has secured the victory, so receive Him by believing in His name, and experience the joy in resting in Christ. Let’s pray.