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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today
this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the
meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our
Redeemer. Amen.
Today in our Gospel reading we read about
Jesus giving one of his early sermons. Actually, this is the first sermon that
Jesus preaches that is recorded in the Gospel of Luke. Over the last couple of
weeks, we have read about Jesus’ baptism where he was anointed with the Holy
Spirit for his ministry, and then where he performs his first miraculous sign
at a wedding in Cana where he turns water into wine. Today, we read about one
of his first sermons.
We read that he was actually doing a lot of
preaching. We read: Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee,
and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. And he
taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.
After Jesus was baptised, we read that the
Holy Spirit drove him out into the wilderness to be tested and tempted by
Satan. We read there that he didn’t eat for 40 days and 40 nights. But once
this time of testing had finished, Jesus went back to Galilee and was
preaching. In fact, Luke says here that he was preaching in the power of the
Spirit.
Last week, you might remember we were talking
about how the world looks for happiness now, because now is the only time that
the world has got. But Christians have a future, so sometimes we have to wait!
As the man says at the wedding: Everyone serves the good wine first, and
when the people have drunk freely, then the poor wine, but you [Jesus—you!]
have saved the good wine until now.
With the world, people have happiness and
then sadness and pain. But with Christians, we often have sadness and troubles
first, and then joy and happiness later. The same thing happens with Jesus here
in the reading. He goes out into the desert for 40 days and is gruelled by
Satan. He has his hard time of testing, his dark night of his soul. But then
the time of testing comes to an end, and the time of great blessing and joy
follows. Jesus goes out in the power of the Spirit, he becomes famous, and he
taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.
After being hounded by the devil, then
Jesus is glorified by everyone who listened to him. This should be such a great
encouragement to us. Often when we go through a difficult time, we might ask
ourselves, “Why is God letting me go through this? What’s the point of this?”
But then we realise later, that God has led us through this time precisely so
that he can equip us and send us in the power of the Holy Spirit for our next
task, just as it happens to Jesus here. And though everything, it is not us who
is glorified, but Jesus who is glorified. It says: He taught in their
synagogues, being glorified by all.
But then we read about where Jesus comes to
Nazareth, as Luke says, where he had been brought up. We read in Luke
that Mary and Joseph actually lived in Nazareth. The whole event where the
angel Gabriel visited Mary and told her that she would become pregnant all
happened in Nazareth. But then once Jesus had been born in Bethlehem, and when
they had fled to Egypt, and returned, then they went back to Nazareth. So if
you think about it, Jesus probably spent most of his life there, and only
really left there when he went to be baptised by John. Before that, he was
following his father’s trade as a carpenter.
And so, here Jesus comes back to his
hometown. There was a time before this when he was a local boy – now he comes
back as a prophet. And Jesus says later in the passage: No prophet is
acceptable in his hometown.
But before we get to talk about the actual
event in the reading, let’s talk about prophets. Actually, there are four
prophets mentioned in our reading today. We have Isaiah, Elijah, Elisha and
then of course, Jesus.
So what does it mean to be a prophet? A
prophet was a person that was particularly chosen by God to speak a particular
word of God. Sometimes prophets spoke about the future, about what was going to
happen – but also they spoke about what was happening right now. They spoke a
word straight from God to the people.
However, we have to be careful that we don’t
confuse prophecy with fortune-telling. Fortune-telling is also mentioned in the
bible, but it is forbidden. It is mentioned as a practice that belongs to pagan
people. So for example, going to a palm-reader or a tarot card person or a
clairvoyant is not prophecy – but as God says in Deuteronomy: Whoever does
these things is an abomination to the Lord… These nations, which you are about
to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the
LORD your God has not allowed you to do this.
We have to be very careful with this in the
church. Sometimes people claim to bring someone a word from God that they had
in a dream, or something. Is it a word from the Holy Spirit, or is it
fortune-telling from another spirit, an unclean spirit? I once heard about a
man where a prayer group from a church told him that God had revealed it to
them that he was no longer welcome in their congregation. How did they know
this? They stood in a circle and held hands, and asked God questions. If they felt
a tingle up their left hand, that meant “no”, and if they felt a tingle up
their right hand, that meant “yes”. This kind of thing is absolutely demonic.
Run like the wind! It should have been a great encouragement to the man
that—not God!—but the devil wanted him to leave! As someone once said, “An
insult from an idiot is a complement!” So this kind of thing is not prophecy.
So what happens to a prophet? God calls a
prophet, and gives the person the Holy Spirit, for the purpose of speaking his
word directly from him. The Holy Spirit connects himself with the prophet in
such a way that what the prophet says is God’s word, but in such a way that the
personality of the prophet is not changed or destroyed. So for example, we
might read the prophets Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and we find that
these prophets have a different character. That’s because the Holy Spirit uses
each of these prophets, but doesn’t destroy their personalities and their particular
gifts, but uses them in all of their uniqueness.
Actually, the same thing happens with the
whole bible. In the bible, we don’t just have one book, but we have 66 books
written by many different authors. Even the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John—are all quite different. But God uses all of these different authors
with all of their different qualities for his purposes. And yet, the whole
bible so obviously has one author, one Holy Spirit who is behind the whole
book. We read in 2 Timothy 3: All Scripture is breathed out by God. And
in 2 Peter 1 it says: No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but
men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
And so, Isaiah has a certain personality, so
does Elijah and so does Elisha, but they are all carried along by the Holy
Spirit, and speak the same word of God.
There’s a character of prophecy too in the
Office of the Ministry. You might look back at your life and think about the
different pastors you have known. There are so many different pastors in our
church, who all have quite different gifts and different personalities. And
yet, provided that we all stick to God’s word, we pastors should stand together
in unity of the Holy Spirit, speaking a united word in churches all throughout
the country. Each pastor is called by God to preach, and is given the gift of
the Holy Spirit for the task. And yet, God doesn’t destroy their personalities,
but uses each of us in all of our differences and uniqueness.
The same goes for all Christians. We are all
called by Christ to follow him, we are all baptised into Christ, we all hear
the same word of God. And yet, the Holy Spirit doesn’t destroy our
personalities when we become a Christian, but uses us for the service of God’s
kingdom. Each Christian is a kind of prophet for the unbelieving world, and God
uses our speech and our actions in ways of which we’re often completely
unaware. And yet, wherever we are placed—in our homes, in our families, in our
workplaces—the Holy Spirit uses us in our unique situation.
And so, back to our reading. It says: As
was his custom, [Jesus] went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood
up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled
the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The 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’s favour.” And he rolled up the scroll and 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.”
Here we have this wonderful word of God from
Isaiah the prophet. But Jesus also comes along and shows that he is an even
great prophet that Isaiah. Jesus interprets the prophecy, and says that this
prophecy is about him. Isaiah is pointing to the future, but Jesus is saying,
“Here I am, I’m it!” Even Moses said in Deuteronomy: The Lord your God will
raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to
him you shall listen. Jesus is saying: This is me!
So Isaiah’s words say: The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me. We see this at Jesus baptism—the Holy Spirit, the Spirit
of the Lord, of God the Father, is upon Jesus.
Isaiah says: because he has anointed me to
proclaim good news to the poor. Jesus is anointed for a special purpose, to
proclaim good news to the poor. Why to the poor? Well, it’s not talking
just about poor people in the financial sense. It means those who have
been robbed of something by the devil, especially robbed of their peace with
God. In fact, the devil robbed the whole human race of the purity and
perfection and innocence when he led Adam and Eve into sin. And so to be poor,
means to be troubled, sad, sorrowful, miserable—in a word, a sinner. Sinners
are the only ones who need Jesus, and so Jesus wants to speak his good news to
them. These poor ones are the only ones who need it. There are plenty of rich
people who are poor in spirit, and there are plenty of poor people who are
spiritually arrogant. However, there is a connection with money—because when we
do have money, and possessions, and stuff, then we start to think we have
everything we need, and we don’t need God any more. When people go through a
crisis in life and lose money and possessions and livelihood, then they are
often in a much better position to go to Jesus and ask for his strength and
comfort, and of course, his forgiveness. So we who are rich have a temptation
and we have to watch out. But remember here that poor is not simply financially
poor, but spiritually poor. I remember reading a prayer from a pastor from
Haiti in the Caribbean, where he said: Heavenly Father, we are the poorest
people in the world. Make us also poor in spirit.
And so what is this good news? It’s the
wonderful good news of Jesus and his presence, the fact that Jesus came from
heaven to be born of a virgin, and suffered and died on the cross for you, to
pay the full price for your sins. And to prove it all to you, he has risen from
the dead, and prays for you constantly sitting at the right hand of God the
Father. This is the good news of great joy that is for all people, that the
angel came to speak to the shepherds in the fields at Christmas time.
Anyway, we can see that this text from Isaiah
applies to Jesus exactly. And Jesus knows it and this is what he preaches. He
says: Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
We have to remember that Jesus is always with
us now. He is constantly in his church, and when we speak the word of God, this
is Jesus who is speaking. Sometimes he speaks a word of God’s law to strike
down our pride and to convict us of our sin. And then when we’re struck down,
Jesus speaks a word of Gospel, to raise us up and to heal us and forgive us.
Whether it is a word of law or a word of Gospel, Jesus always comes and fulfils
the Scripture in our hearing.
Even today, when we hear the preaching of the
Gospel, we remember that Jesus said to his apostles: Go into all the world
and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. And we can say: Today
this Scripture has been fulfilled in [our] hearing. When we baptise a
person, we remember that Jesus said: Make disciples of all nations,
baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
And we can say: Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in [our]
hearing. When we have the Lord’s supper, we remember that Jesus said: Take
and eat, this is my body. Drink of it all of you, this is my blood. And we
can say: Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in [our] hearing.
So this is what happens when Jesus is around.
The Scripture is continually fulfilled, because he has fulfilled the whole
Scripture. The whole Old Testament points forward to him, and the whole New
Testament testifies about him.
However, from a human point of view this
sermon of Jesus in his own hometown is a disaster. Jesus says: Truly, I say
to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. And then Jesus tells them
about Elijah and Elisha and how God sent them to people in far distant lands
because there was no one to listen to them in the house of Israel.
When Jesus told them this, the people didn’t
want to hear it. We read: When 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 the town was built, so that they
could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
Goodness me! Fancy people reacting to a
sermon like that, to even throw the preacher off a cliff! Jesus is sent to
preach to gospel to the poor, but this Scripture is fulfilled, and these people
are not the poor! They are the proud! Jesus fulfils here a passage from Ezekiel
where it says: Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words
to them. For you are not sent to a people of foreign speech and a hard
language, but to the house of Israel—not to many peoples of foreign speech and
a hard language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to
such, they would listen to you. But the house of Israel will not be willing to
listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house
of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart.
Sure, many people do listen to Jesus. Many
people do receive his words with joy and with gladness. But on this particular
day, the people of Nazareth want to throw him off a cliff. Instead of listening
to Jesus’ words, they were distracted by his person. All they could see was
their local boy, the local carpenter’s son, so much so that they were blinded
to his words and his ministry, and to the fact that he was even the Son of God.
But this always happens with prophecy—people don’t listen to the prophecy
because they reject the prophet. But when they reject the prophet, they reject
the God who speaks behind the prophet.
Jesus is not just a prophet though. He is
God’s son, and actually true God himself. Jesus is the one who spoke behind
Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Elijah and Elisha. All these prophets
had a hard time, and so it’s no wonder that when Jesus turns up, they treat him
badly too. In fact, in the end, they crucify him. And yet, when he is
crucified, Jesus says: Father, forgive them for they do not know what they
are doing. Jesus’ crucifiers are not in control, but Jesus himself is in
control the whole way, laying down his own life for the sheep. He knows what he
is doing, and he does it all for you.
And everything he has won for you, everything
he died for, everything he rose from the dead for is given to you, so that each
and every day of your life, the Scripture may be fulfilled in your hearing.
Amen.
Dear Jesus, we thank you for the wonderful
gracious words that come from your mouth. We know that the Spirit of the Lord
is upon you and that he has anointed you to proclaim good news to the poor.
Make us poor in spirit that we may be receptive to this wonderful good news and
inherit the kingdom of heaven. Amen.
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