STUDY THEME: ONE SOLITARY LIFE; "THE LIFE OF JESUS.   2-18-01
UNIT 3: INTRODUCING JESUS: "ANNOUNCING GOOD NEWS."
LUKE 4: 14-21, 22-24, 25-27, 28-30.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO LUKE 4.

In this portion of scripture we have the account of the Lord's return
visit to the city of Nazareth after He had laid aside His carpenter's
apron and His artisan's tools, and went forth, first to be baptized by
John in the Jordan, and to be sealed by the Holy spirit for His specific
work, and then to go through the temptation in the wilderness. After a
short stay in Jerusalem, He returned to His hometown. Perhaps
unaccompanied by any of His disciples, He made a visit to His former home
in Nazareth. It is a homecoming story of Jesus.

The people had heard a great deal about Him. They had heard of marvelous
signs and wonders following His ministry in other places, and they were
in great expectation, hoping to see something remarkable done by Him when
He appeared among them. We are told that He entered into the synagogue,
as His custom was. 

The Lord Jesus grew up in that city of Nazareth. When He dwelt there, as
a young man, it was His custom to attend the services in the place where
the Word of God was read and expounded, and where the people gathered
together for prayer. To Him the synagogue represented the authority of
God in that city. So it was His custom to wend His way there, Sabbath by
Sabbath.  So the people knew He would be there on this given Sabbath day,
and they gathered to see Him. He evidently was accustomed to participate
publicly in the service.  

The 17 verses in today's lesson serve as Luke's summary of what happened
throughout the entire ministry of Jesus: Jesus declared Himself to be the
Messiah; the Jewish hearers proved themselves to be unworthy of God's
blessings, and the Gospel would also go to the Gentiles.

 Our lesson opens with Jesus with his family and friends in a worship
service in the Jewish synagogue in Nazareth. He would be well known in
this synagogue.

1. PLEASE READ LUKE 4: 14-21. 

The three synoptic gospels are largely silent about Jesus' ministry
between His baptism and His return to Galilee, but John recorded a fairly
extensive ministry in Jerusalem and Judea in the lessons we covered
between John 2:12 and 4: 1. Because of that ministry news of Jesus
quickly spread. Luke says in Vs. 14, "He returned into Galilee. Herod
Antipas had silenced the voice of John the Baptist. He had put him into
prison. As soon as the voice of John was silenced, Jesus moved from Judea
into Herod' tetrarchy into one of it's major cities, Capernaum.

Vs. 14-15 summarize three facts about Jesus early Galilean ministry,
which last some 18 months: He acted in the power of the Spirit; He taught
in the synagogues; He was unusually praised. Vs. 16 introduces Jesus'
significant visit to His hometown synagogue in Nazareth. The word
anointed in Vs. 18 is the verb form from which comes the noun Christ, the
anointed One. Although the Son of God had been set apart for His mission
from before the foundation of the world, His baptism was His time of
special anointing. At His baptism Jesus was anointed as God's Servant. In
the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus publicly described and committed Him self
to this mission. 

Although the emphasis in Jesus' mission was on meeting the deepest human
needs, which are moral and spiritual, the Bible makes clear that God is
concerned about all who are poor, prisoners, blind, or oppressed. I
believe every one of us can testify that Jesus has met the deepest needs
in our lives. He has provided in my life what only He can give:
forgiveness, strength, purpose and hope.  

Synagogue is a transliteration of a Greek word meaning, "to gather
together." The synagogues originated in the Babylonian captivity after
the 586 B.C. destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar. They served as
places of worship and instruction. Jesus frequently taught in the
synagogues. 

Luke acknowledged in Vs. 23 that Jesus had already ministered in
Capernaum. Notice in Vs. 16 that it was Jesus' custom to attend the
synagogue wherever He was. The words "He stood up for to read" hint at
the fact that it was customary for the reader and the people to stand
with each reading of the Scriptures. Some churches do this today. In
fact, on Founder's day last Wed. at O.B.U. we all stood for the reading
prior to Bill Ford's being awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree.

The N.T. mentions two officers of a synagogue. The "ruler" or "president"
is mentioned in John 8: 41, 49. His duties were to oversee the synagogue
and to plan the worship services. The ruler or president of the synagogue
may have asked Jesus to read and speak (as were Paul and Silas in Acts
13:15). There was also an "assistant" or "attendant" who handled the
sacred scrolls of Scripture. Since Jesus later handed the scroll to him,
he was probably the minister who delivered unto him the book of the
prophet Isaiah. The Jews were probably using scrolls at that time. Books
in leaf form came later. 

Luke's use of the word 'found' in Vs.17 implies Jesus chose the passage
to read. Vs. 18,19 say "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 broken hearted, 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."
 
Very likely Jesus had been taught to read Hebrew in that synagogue as a
boy and therefore read the text in Hebrew. It would be translated into
the Aramaic so all could understand. You will notice that Jesus read all
but two lines of Isa. 61:1-2 and one line from Isa. 58:6. The scroll was
in Hebrew and was translated into the language of the people of the
day-Aramaic. When Luke wrote the words, he used the Greek translation of
the passage. These words are among the Servant passages of Isaiah.

There might not be any special to significance that Jesus closed the
scroll and handed it back to the attendant. He reads His text, He rolls
up the scroll, and He is seated to expound it. But the remarkable thing
is this: He broke off His reading in the middle of the sentence. He
stopped at a comma. If we continue to read where He stopped it reads as
follows: "To preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of
vengeance of our God." The Lord Jesus did not read those last words. Why?
Because He had not come to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God. He
had come to do all that is written of Him in the other part of the
sentence. ." Jesus deliberately may have not read that line because His
incarnate coming was for salvation; the Day of Judgment lies in the
future. John 3: 17 says "For God did not send His Son into the world to
condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me reminds us of the Spirit descending on
Jesus at His baptism, of the Spirit leading Him into the wilderness to be
tempted by the devil, and of His return in the power of the Spirit into
Galilee. Notice that Me appears three times in this passage. When placed
with Vs. 21, this was a claim by Jesus to be the Servant to whom the
Spirit was given.  

That the Lord anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor is the first
claim made by the Spirit-endowed servant. Although the title Christ was
not used, it was implied. Sent refers to what God did. God sent His Son
into the world. Preach the gospel represents one Greek word that means to
'announce" or "proclaim" good news. We get our word evangelize from the
Greek word used of Jesus' preaching during His ministry. This word was
used of the glad tidings of great joy declared by the angels to the
shepherds. We get our word evangelize from the Greek verb and our word
evangelism from the related noun. In secular use, these were everyday
Greek words that referred to any kind of good news. In the N.T., they
came to refer to the good news of Jesus Christ. We need to remember that
the biblical meaning of the religious-sounding word gospel is good news. 


Who were the poor to whom He told good news? The word at times refers to
those who are economically poor; at other times it refers to the
spiritually impoverished. Both kinds of the poor were more open to hear
the good news than the rich in goods or those who believed they were rich
in righteousness. Thus Jesus came to preach good news to needy people who
were open to His word.

It is a striking fact that in every land where the gospel has gone it has
been largely the poor who have rejoiced in its message. You remember, it
is written, "He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He
hath sent empty away." "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into
the kingdom of God!" The trouble is that when men have an abundance of
this world's goods they are so taken up with them that they are not
concerned about spiritual riches. But it is the poor, the needy, the
struggling, who love to hear the gospel message. When Jesus was here, the
common people, "heard Him gladly."  

The words "he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives," the verb sent means to be sent on a
mission. The words to heal the brokenhearted are not in the oldest copies
of Luke or in most major modern translations, although the words are in
the Hebrew text of Isa. 61:1. Deliverance or "release" also can mean
"forgiveness." Thus Jesus was speaking of spiritual deliverance from
enslavement to sin. The same Greek word is translated set at liberty in
the last line of Vs. 18. Bruised is a strong word meaning "to crush" or
"to break up." It refers to "the ones having been oppressed." Thus these
people of broken lives are similar to those of broken heart. Jesus
literally did provide recovering of sight to the blind, but the words
also refer to recovery from spiritual blindness.  

If the time ever comes when we are not interested in the poor, and do not
care for the poor, and draw away from the needy, "The Glory is Departed"
will be written over the doors of the church. We read of the poor in this
world rich in faith. We remember that little poem: 
"In the heart of London City
"Midst the dwelling of the poor,
These bright golden words were uttered,
"I have Christ, what want I more?"
He who heard them ran to fetch her
Something from the world's great store. 
"It was needless," died she saying,
'I have Christ, what want I more?'"

Christ is a substitute for everything, but nothing is a substitute for
Christ. He came to preach the gospel to the poor, and He says, "The Lord
has sent Me to heal the broken -hearted." In that He expresses His Deity,
for it is God only who can heal broken hearts. No man can do it. Dr.
Joseph Parker was once addressing young preachers, and he said to them,
"Young gentlemen, always preach to broken hearts, and you will never lack
for an audience. There are so many of them everywhere."   

Then He came to preach deliverance to the captives, not exactly to open
all prison doors and let people out of jails and penitentiaries, but to
deliver men from the captivity of sin and free those who are bound in
chains of habit which they could not break. He is doing that today.
 
When He was here on earth He touched the blind and His glory shone
through their darkened lids, and lighted them forever. He gives them
light, and they are able to say with that delivered man of old, "There
are many things I do not know or understand, but one thing I know, that
whereas I was blind, now I see." Oh what a wonderful thing it is when
Jesus touches blind eyes!

Then "He came to set at liberty those that are bruised." We have all been
bruised by Satan. The very humanity in which we live has been bruised by
the fall, but He came to set at liberty them that are bruised, to enable
the lame to walk, and the dead to live and to rejoice in His saving
grace. When John the Baptist was in prison, he sent his disciples to ask
Jesus if He was the promised One or should they look for someone else.
Jesus' answer in Luke 7:22 has much in common with Luke 4:18-19: "Jesus
answered and said to them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have
seen and heard: how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is
preached."

He closed with the words, "To preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
The acceptable year of the Lord-what is that? It is the time when God is
looking in grace upon poor sinners. It is the time when the gospel is
going out to lost men and women. He says, "Now is the acceptable time.
Now is the day of salvation."

This is still the acceptable time. It will not last forever. It has
lasted now for nearly two thousand years, since Jesus came and read this
Scripture. He said He came to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. He
did not read, "And the day of vengeance of our God." Jesus did not read
that because the time had not come for the vengeance of our God to begin,
and it has not come yet. But listen to me! It may come soon! It may not
be long now ere "the Lord Jesus will descend from the heaven with a
shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God; and the
dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall
be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the
air." 

Then the day of vengeance of our Lord will begin for this poor world.
Then the book of doom will be opened, the trumpets of judgment will be
sounded, and then the vials of wrath will be poured out upon this guilty
world. This whole dispensation of the grace of God in which we live, the
Lord Jesus puts into a comma. That is why He did not read on to "the day
of vengeance of our God." Today the door is wide open, and He says,
"Whosoever will may come."

Vs. 20 describes a tense moment. After completing the reading Jesus
calmly rolled up the scroll,
gave it back to the attendant and sat down instead of returning to His
former seat.  He rose up to read the Word and sat down to teach it. This
indicated that He intended also to preach. What a dramatic moment! Every
eye was glued on Jesus. 

2. PLEASE READ LUKE 4: 22-24. 

 In Vs. 22 the people spoke well of Him and were amazed at His gracious
words but they were quick to see the messianic claim in Jesus words. What
He said no one could have expected. He astonished the people there in two
ways. He did not merely explain the Scripture verse by verse. Instead He
made one of the most momentous pronouncements of the ages. 

And He began to say unto them, "This day is the scripture fulfilled."
That is, He applied the scripture to Himself. "The Spirit of the Lord is
upon Me."---upon Jesus. It was He who had come in actual fulfillment of
this O.T. prophecy. In the O.T. in the Book of Isaiah we have this
wonderful prediction of the Messiah who is coming. The Lord Jesus Christ
took these same words and read them, and He applied them to Himself, to
the amazement of His hearers. To apply them to Himself is one thing and
to prove it quite another, but He proved it by what He did. He did the
very thing that these words said He would do, and He has been doing it
all through the centuries since.

Millions have tested Him for themselves. They have come to Him. They have
come with their sins. They have come to be delivered form their chains of
evil habits, and they have put their trust in Him, and they have found He
is able to do what He said He would do. 

As He declared, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in their ears," we
are told that 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?"  They had never heard anything like this before. None of the
Scribes ever said anything like this. None of them ever dared to apply
such a prophecy to themselves. He was actually the son of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, but so far as they knew He was the son of Joseph, who had
taken His mother under his protective care. They knew Him as the
carpenter's son but not as the Christ. So they said, "Is not this
Joseph's son?" This is as to say, "If he grew up here, he can't be much."
Someone said, "An expert is a man away from home with a briefcase." Like
them, many today underestimate Jesus. They say He was a good man and a
great teacher, but they also refuse to let Him meet their needs. And like
Nazareth, they are the losers because of it. 

 He knew what they were thinking. And He said unto them, "Ye will surely
say unto Me this proverb, "Physician, heal Thyself; whatsoever we have
heard done in Capernaum, do also here in Thy country." Prejudice is
putting people into categories based on past experience. The people of
Nazareth had a category for hometown boys. Hometown boys they knew were
not miracle workers. Therefore, they concluded, Jesus could not work
miracles. Jesus consistently refused to do miraculous works simply to
satisfy people's curiosity or demands. 
 
All three Gospels tell of the unbelief of the people of Nazareth. Matt.
13:58 and Mark 6:5-6 state that Jesus was unable to do much in Nazareth
because of their unbelief. The people were acting in the way foretold in
John 4: 48 "Unless you people see signs and wonders you will by no means
believe." But He added, "No prophet is accepted in his own country." He
knew the unbelief that controlled their hearts, so that they had no
desire to turn to God in repentance.  

3. PLEASE READ LUKE 4: 25-27.

Jesus had just spoken of prophets not being welcomed in their own
country. Sensing their opposition He noted two instances in which God's
prophets ministered miraculous acts of grace to Gentiles while Israel was
in unbelief. He used two illustrations of prophets whose ministries were
not always offered to all Israel but were granted to be faithful whether
Jew or Gentile. He selected the two most often spoken of-Elijah and
Elisha. Elijah multiplied food to the Sidonian widow and Elisha cured the
leprosy of Naaman the Syrian. Jesus' point was that God had bypassed all
the widows and lepers in Israel, yet showed grace to the two Gentiles.
God's concern for Gentiles and outcasts is one of the thematic threads
that runs through Luke's Gospel. Jesus declared to them that the benefits
and the blessings of the Divine Kingdom were coming in answer to faith,
and not in answer to racial relationship. 

This shows that the intention of Jesus from the beginning was to offer
the good news to all people-Gentiles as well as Jews. It was also a sad
prediction that Israel would reject Him and the good news He wanted them
to hear. This is what happened in the first century. The Book of Acts
tells how a movement that began as purely Jewish was rejected by many
Jews. When this happened, Gentile believers came to the Lord in faith.

The good news of Jesus Christ is offered to all people, but people can
receive Him and experience the help promised in the good news or they can
reject Him and miss the benefits of the good news. The N.T. has many
references to the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ. Most of these fall
into two categories: invitations to repent and believe the good news and
commands to tell the good news to others.   
Katherine Hankey wrote: 
I love to tell the story; For those who know it best
Seem hungering and thirsting to hear it, like the rest.
Why is this true? The good news is for all people. It reveals God's love
for us. It assures us that life can begin anew. It comforts us with the
confident hope of eternal life. Thus the good news lights up every aspect
of the Christian life. 
		
In the description which Jesus chose to represent His Messiahship there
was not one word connected with the current conception of the Messiah.
There were no worldly hopes inspired, no personal ambitions satisfied, no
flattering of Jewish pride, or championing of Jewish nationalism. In fact
Jesus had chosen about the most un-Jewish conception of the Messiah He
could have found. As the Messiah He aimed a redemptive ministry at the
poor, the dispossessed, the broken-hearted, the discouraged, the
penitent, and the needy.  

4. PLEASE READ LUKE 4: 28-30.                                            
                                                                         
                                                                         
        

This was more than the hearers could stand. All of the people in the
synagogue understood exactly what Jesus was saying. Not only was He
refusing to do a miracle for them, but He also was predicting that their
failure to believe in Him would result in their being excluded while the
hated Gentiles who believed would take their places. Jesus had reminded
them that in the past God had bypassed the Jews to work with the Gentiles
and He could do so again. The people were filled with wrath. This refers
to a wrath that boils up in a burst of rage. 

Two reasons are suggested for their outburst of anger and their
subsequent attempt to destroy Jesus. First, Jesus had deeply disappointed
them by presenting a strictly spiritual redemptive Messiahship aimed at
meeting human need, whereas they thought only of a Messiah who would
remove the yoke of Rome and set up a Jewish super-state which would be a
going concern politically, militarily, economically, and culturally. 

Second, the congregation was stirred to violent action by Jesus' adverse
application of His sermon to themselves. He placed believing Gentiles in
the full light of God's redeeming grace through His prophets and, at the
same time, left Israel without in the shadows. At Nazareth and at
Jerusalem, His condemning crime in the eyes of the religious leaders was
that He refused to be the kind of king of Israel they wanted Him to be.
Christ had come the first time to "seek and to save that which is lost."
Not to be their king. 

In the case of Nazareth, when Jesus showed the people from the Scriptures
how God had blessed non-Jews instead of unbelieving Israelites, the
people's criticism erupted into violence. Later when Jesus visited
Nazareth in Mark 6: 1-6 Mark wrote in Vs. 5-6 "And He could there do not
mighty work, save that the laid His hands upon a few sick folks, and
healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief. --." Insofar as
the record shows, Jesus never visited Nazareth again. Lost people today
would do well to heed this.

Jesus offered seemingly no resistance as the people crowded Him out of
the synagogue and up the hill in order to throw him down to his death.
Near the end of the walk, He turned and passed through their midst and
"went away," presumably to Capernaum. The implication is that this was a
miraculous escape-the first of several similar incidents at the hands of
a mob as recorded in John Ch. 7, 8, and 10.  The visit to Nazareth
described in Mark 6: 1-6 and Matt. 13:54-58 occurred near the end of the
great Galilean ministry. Without violence, the Nazarenes repeated their
rejection of Jesus. The verdict of Nazareth of the Man, His message, and
His mission was "thumbs down," a total, violent, tragic rejection of the
One who would make His name known and loved forever. 

Thus began the public ministry of the Man of Nazareth, of Jesus, of the
Word made flesh. The Messiah thus moved out along the pathway of His
public ministry. This may be called the inauguration of His public
ministry. 

In God's plan it was not the time for Jesus' death. Even at the beginning
of Jesus' Galilean ministry, however, the cross was casting a shadow over
Jesus' life. People can reject Christ, but they do not derail God's
purposes. When the good news was announced to the people of Nazareth,
they rejected it. But Jesus went on His way. He had come into this world
to die on Calvary's cross, and no power of men or of the devil could put
Him to death until that hour when He was to yield Himself a ransom for
sinners, upon the tree. Till then all their power was in vain. 

The residents of Nazareth, who thought they knew Jesus better than anyone
else did, failed to respond appropriately to Him. Familiarity is a
privilege that tends to blind. Many people living in western culture have
heard the gospel message so often that they have become bored by it and
seem immune to it. 

This fact is true even of people who sit in church Sunday after Sunday.
In spite of their proximity to church and their familiarity with
Scripture, they fail to respond appropriately to the good news.

The truth remains, however, that only Jesus brings salvation, and new
life. The gospel that we herald as Christians is good news. All people
need it, including those who reject it. 

NEXT SUNDAY FROM MARK CH. 1,2,  AND 3 JESUS CALLS HIS DISCIPLES AND
TEACHES US WHAT FOLLOW HIM MEANS. A.V. DAUGHERTY      2-18-01