Luke chapter 4 and verse 14. And Jesus returned in the power
of the Spirit into Galilee, and there went out a fame of him
through all the region round about. And he taught in their
synagogues, being glorified of all. And he came to Nazareth,
where he had been brought up, And as his custom was, he went
into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto
him the book of the prophet Isaiah, and when he had opened the book,
he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor, he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the
blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the
acceptable year of the Lord.' And he closed the book, and he
gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of
all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he
began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled
in your ears. And all bare him witness and
wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's
son? And he said unto them, You will
surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself. Whatsoever
we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said, Verily I say unto
you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you
of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias,
or Elisha, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months,
when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of
them was Elias sent, save unto Serepta, a city of Sidon, unto
a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel
in the time of Elysias the prophet, and none of them was cleansed,
saving Naaman the Syrian. And all they in the synagogue,
when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose
up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow
of the hill whereon the city was built, that they might cast
him down headlong. but he passing through the midst
of them went on his way. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. I think I said Elisha there when
I meant Elijah a little bit earlier. So forgive me for that. Having withstood and having indeed
overcome the devil's temptations in the wilderness, the Lord Jesus
Christ continues, full of the Spirit, in his ministry. This is his ministry, having
been baptised by John in Jordan, this is his ministry coming into
its fullness now as he begins to labour amongst the towns and
the villages and the communities of Galilee and Judea. And he came into Galilee and
Capernaum, no doubt, where his preaching and his miracles almost
at once established his fame throughout the whole region. Such was the clarity of his ministry,
the beauty of his doctrine. Such was the power that he exhibited
in the healings that he performed. that we call it the jungle drums,
don't we? That soon there was this rise,
this awareness of the glory that attached to the ministry of this
man, Jesus. And he taught in the synagogues,
we're told, to general acclaim. Matthew tells us, that Jesus
went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching
the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sickness
and all manner of disease among the people. Thus, so early in his ministry,
the Lord's reputation as a healer and preacher was already becoming
well known. and passing through various regions,
he came at length to Nazareth, the place where he had been conceived
30 years previously and had lived as a child and an adult and where
he had worked and where he had worshipped for much of his life. He knew these people. He knew
the people of Nazareth. None of these places were very
big. We call them cities, but they're
not cities in the sense that we usually are aware of cities. They were no more than villages
and small towns at best, no doubt. And the Lord, when he came to
Nazareth, went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his
practice. And there he was invited to read
the scriptures and in some capacity to minister. And either by providence,
because it was that portion which was due to be read that day,
or by design, because the Lord Jesus Christ turned specifically
to it, he read several portions from the prophecy of Isaiah,
especially chapter 61, that spoke particularly and explicitly about
himself. And I don't want to repeat further
what is said in this passage as far as just recounting the
narrative. But let me make a few observations,
if I may, from this passage. And the first one I want to make
is this. It was the Lord's custom to worship
week by week in the synagogue. So just think about that for
a moment. For years and years, The men
and women of Nazareth worshipped God in the presence of the Son
of God, and they knew nothing about it, being, it seems, largely
without faith to a man, as we shall discover later. But just
the idea of that, such close proximity to the Lord Jesus in
worship is a lovely thought for believers. And yet that is no more than
the Lord's promise to us on an occasion like this. It is a passage
close to the hearts of all small groups who gather to worship
the Lord in spirit and in truth. That where two or three are gathered
together in my name, says the Lord, there am I in the midst
of them. And the promise of the Lord Jesus'
presence is with us in our worship today. and it is something that
we ought to cherish every time we meet. It's lovely to meet
one another. It's great to be able to share
together and have a sense of that union that exists between
us because of the gospel, though we do come from so far apart
and far away. But it's the Lord that we are
meeting here. and we ought to cherish that
every time we meet. Nor is the blessing diminished
because we meet online and not shoulder to shoulder in a physical
building, for example, because all true worship is spiritual
and the spirit is not constrained by walls and distance, nor the
presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. but there's something else here
as well. These men and women in Nazareth
had worshipped in the presence of Christ, well, maybe all his
life. I've written two decades here
in my notes, but maybe it was three decades, although he was
in Egypt as a child, of course. Let's call it 20 years. And yet
their attitude towards him and their actions against him indicated
that there was no spiritual light in them whatsoever. When they
did not gain from the Lord what they wanted or hear from him
what they wished to hear, they were intent on slaying him and
would have done so had he not prevented it. These people sang
their Psalms and read their Scriptures avidly, carefully. They even marvelled and wondered
at the gracious words which proceeded out of Christ's mouth. But that was when he was speaking
generally of the glories of the Messiah and reading from the
prophecies of Isaiah. But when the implications of
that message were brought to their attention, when the distinguishing
gospel of sovereign grace dawned upon their darkened minds, they
showed their true colours, or we might say the true colour
of their hearts. And that is also still the same
today, because there are lots of so-called Christian believers
who are happy and to worship together and fellowship
together and marvel at the scriptures and even the work of redemption,
the work of salvation. But as soon as the matter of
election is broached and the personal interest of God's people
alone in the work and accomplishments of Christ, their whole attitude
changes. Free will suits self-righteous
workers, but free grace suits those who are captive and blind
and bruised in this world. And that's what the Lord speaks
about when he draws on this passage from Isaiah. That chapter that
he reads, it's probably a couple of different passages from Isaiah
that are quoted here. That wasn't an unusual thing. When a portion was being read,
it would be linked together by the minister or the speaker.
But it is a beautiful summary, a beautiful summary rendition
of Christ's whole ministry and the accomplishments of his sacrificial
death. He came into the world to preach
the gospel to the poor, that is, to the poor in spirit, not
the economically poor, not the health-wise poor. The poor in
spirit Sinners, poor in their own estimation, poor in their
strength and ability to do spiritual things. And it is to all such
poor that the good news of the gospel comes from the lips of
the Saviour who was anointed and sent to save them. He came
into the world to heal the broken-hearted, taking literally those whose
hard, stony hearts had been shattered by divine grace and turned to
hearts of flesh, or who had come under conviction for sin. and who cry for mercy which Christ
brings, healing and binding up with the gospel truth and with
spiritual life. And he came to preach deliverance
to the captives, to declare deliverance. to tell them that it was accomplished
and assured. Not that they had to do something
to gain it or achieve it or to win it for themselves, but to
preach deliverance to the captives. and to bring sight to the blind. Spiritual sight from nature's
blindness and the blindness imposed by the God of this world. Christ
gave literal sight to the blind such as Bartimaeus and he brings
spiritual sight and spiritual wisdom. and spiritual understanding
to sinners today by the preaching of his word and by his accomplishments
on the cross. He came to set at liberty them
that are bruised. And we've all been bruised one
way or another by this pilgrim's journey in the world. And we
may think of this either as liberty from a bruised conscience as
we learn about our sins, but learn that they are forgiven
and forgotten by God. Or else the bruising that comes
from the hardships of life. I suspect our Australian friend
is feeling very bruised at the moment. But we see that these
matters are all in God's sovereign purpose. And we are liberated,
at least in a sense, not from the sadness of these bruising
experiences, but from the captivity and the bondage of them. We see
them no more as judgments and as the hand of a wrathful God,
but as means rather whereby the Lord weans our desire and loosens
our affection for the things of this world and draws us closer
to himself. And all of these things are the acceptable year, the
appointed time of peace between God and his elect. That was why
the Lord Jesus Christ came and it was when, at the appointed
time, in the acceptable year, that the Lord Jesus Christ came,
the Messiah, sent into this world on behalf of the elect of God. And yet here in the synagogue
in Nazareth, there seems to have been few, if any, for whom these
things were spiritually meaningful. It was jealousy and pride rather
than conviction and faith that filled the hearts of these people.
It was what the Lord said next in describing the work of the
gospel as a sovereign act of grace, bestowed particularly
upon whomsoever God chooses that really riled and angered these
men and women. They realized that he was likening
them and their attitude to the wicked Jews of Elijah and Elisha's
day who were overlooked by the Lord while Gentiles were being
healed. It was to a widow of Sarepta
in the regions of Tyre and Sidon, and to Naaman the Syrian, neither
of them Jews, that God's healing grace came. And these words triggered
the Jews' self-righteous prejudice. And it's still the case. When
the sovereign will of God is preached, that alone stirs up
religious pride and indignation more than any other doctrine.
And these Jews hated it then, and religious, self-righteous
people hate it still. And the response of the people
on that day was to try to kill the Saviour. Nazareth was built
on a hill with cliff edges above the town from which a person
could easily be cast down to almost certain death. And it
seems to have been the intention of these erstwhile friends and
neighbours of the Lord Jesus to kill him there and then. How the Lord escaped is not said. It might be that this was a miracle
in itself, that he blinded these people, or he made himself invisible. But by whatever means, by some
authority, he passed through the midst of them and went his
way. And if we assume that this is
the same incident as is recounted in Matthew chapter 13, then we never read of the Lord
returning here again. This was neither the time, the
method, nor the place in which the Saviour would die. When the
time of suffering and death came, the Lord would not flinch, but
embrace it willingly. He would voluntarily lay down
his life for the redemption of his people. And until then, no
man or group of men could take his life from him. May the Lord
bless these thoughts to us today. Amen.