"Jesus' Theology of Liberation" Luke 4:16-20 Sunday Evening Worship Service

This evening, Luke chapter 4, we'll be looking at verses 16 through 30.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Let me pray for us one more time actually before we read it.

God, that is our prayer that you would speak to us now.

Give us humble minds, hearts that are eager to listen, to learn.

Thank you for the joy of being able to study your word together like this.

God, thank you for Jesus Christ.

May He be beautiful to us as we study Him this evening.

We pray this in His name.

Amen.

So let me read for us from Luke chapter 4, beginning in verse 16.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

And he that is Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up.

And as was his custom, he 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, and 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 favor.

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.

And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth, and they said, Is not this Joseph's son?

And he said to them, Doubtless you'll quote to me this proverb physician, heal yourself.

What we have heard you did at Capernaum do here in your hometown as well.

And he said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.

But in truth I tell you, there are many widows, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.

And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.

And 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 their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.

But passing through their midst, he went away.

So reads the word of the living God.

There's a stack of books in my office that I wouldn't recommend that you read, but that reveal a grave misunderstanding in Christianity today.

In fact, all of these books have been recommended by the publication Christianity Today, and are popular, even bestsellers, some of them, not just outside of the church, but in the church.

Here's the titles of those books.

This is just one stack.

White awake, white fragility, white too long, and my personal favorite.

Can white people be saved?

Question mark.

All of these works are the product of a wider cultural movement that you're well aware of.

I don't have to inform you about.

This kind of push, particularly in the last decade and reaching a fever pitch in the last few years, of interest in so-called racial justice.

It's a large movement, a largely secular movement that is now moving the church.

And to hear those authors and many other racial justice advocates in the church say it, those books are how Jesus liberates his church.

Because they promote political activism.

Not liberation by a second coming, not liberation by the salvation of lost sinners, not liberation through gospel preaching.

Liberation through books about whiteness.

Brothers and sisters, that's a false gospel.

That's a counterfeit to Christ.

That is a fake liberation that enslaves and does not set free.

And the people of God dare not entertain it.

What we want is the true gospel, right?

We want real liberation from the real Jesus.

We want to know how Jesus really liberates, and this text shows us how.

Jesus reading, his response, his rejection here in his hometown in Nazareth pierces through the cultural confusion of our day to show us what Jesus' liberation is really like.

Because if the sun sets you free, you're free indeed.

So we need to hear what he would have to say about liberation.

My aim this evening, as we study Luke chapter 4, is to show you in this text Jesus' theology of liberation over and against the false gospel of what has been called liberation theology.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

It stands in absolute contradiction to Jesus and to his gospel.

And as you can tell, I'm going to be direct as we talk about this.

I think because it needs to be on a topic this critical.

I don't want any of you to walk away here unclear as to what the true gospel is over and against what we're being told it is today.

And so in order to do that, by way of introduction, we need to ask two questions.

The first is what is liberation theology?

I'm throwing out a term, we should define it.

And secondly, what's the context then of Jesus giving his theology of liberation?

So, liberation theology, if I had to summarize it very, very succinctly, I would say it's a strictly political gospel.

A longer definition would be that it's a framework for interpreting and analyzing the Bible and society that sees the goal of Christianity as social, economic, and political change right now for the advantage of the materially poor and oppressed.

You won't be quizzed on that definition, but there it is in case you you want it.

The chief aspects of that being the goal of Christianity is social, economic, political change for the materially poor and oppressed.

This arose in the late 60s and 70s, early 1970s, from two main fountains.

One, Gustavo Gutierrez, who is a Catholic priest in Peru.

He was kind of the father of liberation theology.

And then here in America, James Cohn, a liberation theologian who articulated black liberation theology as a defense of the Black Power movement.

Other notable figures are Leonardo Boff, Gerald O'Collins, J.

Diodis Roberts, John Sabrino, and many, many others.

And Gutierrez himself, who's kind of the framer of this, has kind of a famous phrase to summarize what he means by the liberation theology, and he means God's preferential option for the poor.

It's not just that God has compassion for the poor, it's that God has a particular preference for them over and against the rich, such that he does not save the rich but only saves the poor, and in a material, temporal way.

Here's how Gutierrez defined liberation theology.

He said, quote, liberation theology is a theological reflection born of shared efforts to abolish the current unjust situation and to build a different society, freer and more human.

If I had to summarize all of that, I would just say it's a redefinition of the gospel in purely political, economic, and social terms.

And if you don't believe me, here's the people who wrote the books on it, J.

Diotis Roberts said, quote, our understanding of the gospel is political, end quote.

Or James Cohn said that the desire for political rebellion among the oppressed, quote, is the gospel.

And this matters for us today because the legacy of liberation theology continues.

It may not sound exactly like these men originally articulated it, but its effect has been wide today, particularly in the last few years, and interest has been revived in liberation theology, such as being taught now in seminaries.

It's being advocated for.

You can go to many evangelical seminaries today and you'll see James Cohn show up on the reading list.

It's being preached and offered from pulpits.

It's being put out as a credible witness to the gospel.

And Christian leaders, because of it, are demanding things of their congregants that they never demanded before.

Hey, if you're a real Christian, you gotta go to this political protest.

If you're a real Christian, then you've got to align with this politic.

If you're a real Christian, then you need to get involved in racial repentance.

That, they say today, is the gospel.

I think what most people nowadays attribute to kind of the big broad term CRT critical race theory in the church, I think is far more influenced by liberation theology than it is by a secular framework.

I think this is really the fountain where that comes from.

And significantly, every major liberation theologian uses Luke chapter 4 as their foundational text.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

This passage, and you can understand why reading it.

It has the word liberation or liberty in it.

They use this passage as their justification for that errant theology.

And so I want to hear what Jesus has to say about it in his own words.

Rather than taking someone else's words for it, that the gospel that Jesus preached is really about politics and about economics.

Instead, I want to hear what Jesus would have to say.

What's his gospel?

What's his good news?

How does he intend to liberate?

So to get there, we need to get kind of a running start.

What's the context of this sermon?

Well, look in chapter 4, verses 14 and 15.

Luke writes, And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went through all the surrounding country, and he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

That is, Jesus has not until this point in Luke's gospel begun his ministry in earnest, but he was baptized.

Luke gives us this long genealogy, and then he's in the wilderness being tempted by Satan.

And coming right out of that, Luke says that he goes to Galilee and he starts teaching in the synagogues and is apparently very well received.

And if you're reading the Gospel of Luke up to this point, there's essentially no opposition to Jesus.

It's very well received.

It says he's being glorified by all.

Everyone loves what he has to say.

What we're going to find out as we read this text is that he had already been healing people, he'd already been preaching good news.

So who wouldn't like that?

Of course, they were very in support of Jesus' ministry.

He'd probably, by this point, by the time we get to verse 16, he's probably already spent a year in his ministry.

Some of it down in Judea, some of it up in Galilee, some in Capernaum.

And now he's going to make a special visit home.

He's going to go back to his home church, so to speak, where he grew up, where everyone knows him.

And in this wave of popularity, as Jesus makes his way back home, he preaches a sermon about true liberation that his childhood friends and neighbors do not want to hear.

What's interesting is that the reason they don't want to hear it is the same reason why liberation theologians don't want to hear it.

And so that's what we're going to look at this evening.

Jesus Liberation Sermon.

If I can just give it to you in a sentence, that's going to be our outline, is this this sentence?

Here's the sentence for you.

Jesus frees us from every sin right now by preaching about faith in him.

Jesus frees us from every sin right now by preaching about faith in him.

Starting with Jesus frees us from every sin.

Look back at verse 16.

And Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up.

And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.

Jesus at this point, Luke tells us, about 30 or 31 years old.

He's well known.

Even as a boy, he was well regarded in Nazareth.

Chapter 2, verse 52, Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and with man.

Presumably that occurred also where he lived.

And it says it was his custom to go to the synagogue, not only as an adult, surely, but also as a child.

His parents found him in the temple when they visited Jerusalem, so certainly he'd be at church on the Sabbath.

He was a good kid.

He always went to hear God's word.

And so on this auspicious day, Jesus shows up in the synagogue, probably the same one that he went to growing up, and attended a service.

Now, the services in synagogues in the first century went a little bit like this.

They started with the Shema, Hero, Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

They would then repeat the 18 benedictions.

They would read a daily psalm.

They would hear the ironic priestly blessing.

There would be a prayer from someone in attendance.

And then they would do two readings.

They would do a reading from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and then a reading from one of the prophets.

And I don't think that there is actually a calendar of readings yet at this point in time.

But they would call this reading from the prophets the haftarah.

And so that's where Jesus steps into this as they get to that part of the service, and he stands up.

Anyone, any male could have stood up and offered to read, but especially if you're a traveling rabbi, they would want you to do it because what would always happen after the two readings is that someone would give a little homily, a little sermon to kind of explain a little bit of what they've just heard.

So that's what Jesus does.

He offers himself, he stands up to read.

Verse 17.

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and he unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written.

So notice what's happening here.

They have an Isaiah scroll.

It's not entirely clear what language it's in.

If it wasn't in Aramaic, which would have been the language of their day, then they would need to translate it as he read it.

But either way, they give him the Isaiah scroll, and he finds the place.

I don't know how big the scroll was, but he knew where he wanted to go.

He knew what he wanted to say about himself in this moment.

He finds Isaiah 61, which, you know, they didn't have chapter and verse numbers at that point.

He was just good at finding it.

He found Isaiah 61, and then he read.

And this is what it was like.

I mean, just imagine for a moment.

Here's this kid who you know growing up, who was always there.

You patted him on the head when he was a little boy, and now he's in the pulpit and he's reading the word of God.

I'm sure you can't imagine what that's like.

But that's what's happening in Nazareth.

And Jesus reads this incredible text, Isaiah chapter 61, verse 18, or verse 1.

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 favor.

You should ask the question when you read this, but why did he choose this text?

He could have, I mean, if he had a bunch of Isaiah, couldn't he have gone to Isaiah 53?

That'd be an open and shut case, wouldn't it?

Why this text?

And I think there's two reasons.

Number one is to identify him, to show who he is according to this text.

And number two, is to say what he's going to do.

What's his mission?

This functions as a kind of mission statement for the Messiah.

So, what does this text say about who he is?

First words, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

That is an identifying marker because it's a phrase that's used all throughout the book of Isaiah.

Back in Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

Isaiah 11:1

And the spirit of Yahweh shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yahweh.

So the Davidic King is going to come, and the Spirit's going to be on him, and he's going to do incredible things because of it.

But then fast forward to Isaiah chapter 42, speaking now of this enigmatic servant.

Isaiah 42 · chapter mention

Behold, my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him.

He will bring forth justice to the nations.

And then Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

So those who are familiar with Isaiah would immediately know that in reading this text, what Jesus is doing is he's picking up on this whole drivetrain of theology that's been building in the book of Isaiah to say that Jesus is the Messiah.

He is the anointed one.

He is the servant who will come to save his people.

He is the branch from David.

And if you missed it in Isaiah, you wouldn't have missed it in Luke's gospel, because just back in Luke chapter 3, Jesus was baptized.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

And Luke chapter 3, verse 32, the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came from heaven.

Luke 3:32

You are my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased, or with you I am well pleased.

Which is a phrase that God the Father says from Isaiah 42.

So they're not missing these connections here.

Jesus, when he is reading this scroll and identifying himself as he's going to, as the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests, he's saying he is the Son of God and the Messiah.

So what then has he come to do?

Well, he says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

Ryan helpfully reminded us this morning that there are basically three categories of people in the Old Testament who would be anointed priests and kings and prophets.

And this is certainly meant to be the latter.

That he is an anointed prophet.

He is the Messiah, the anointed one, but specifically here he's going to compare himself to a prophet.

And his prophetic role is that of proclamation, to proclaim good news to the poor, just like the prophets did.

He is an anointed prophet from God to preach.

And his message is one of, he says, good news, liberation, and recovering of sight, and ultimately this kind of new burgeoning era of messianic favor.

The big question, though, with this text is what kind of liberation is it that both Isaiah and Jesus are preaching here?

Is it primarily or only a political, economic, social, temporal, physical, material kind of liberation?

Overthrowing of governments, miracles healing the blind, getting people out of an actual prison.

Or is this mainly or only spiritual?

That these are kind of metaphors for spiritual darkness and spiritual captivity, spiritual poverty.

And I think the right answer to that question is that it's both.

I would say it this way: that Jesus saves us from every sin.

He saves us from every evil, from every pain, and every injustice.

Not necessarily all at once.

We'll get there.

But Jesus does save us from every sin.

Remember this part of the scripture that he's reading, this is in our Bibles, Isaiah 61.

That means there's 60 chapters that have preceded this in the scroll of Isaiah that inform what the prophet is saying about the poor and about the captives and about the blind and about the oppressed.

So what is it?

Well, it's complicated, is what it is.

It's both.

Isaiah chapter 10, verse 2, the poor are widows and orphans.

Isaiah 10:2

Isaiah chapter 58, verse 7, they're the homeless.

Isaiah 58:7

Isaiah 6, 9.

Right after Isaiah's commissioning, he says that the people of Israel are blind spiritually.

Seeing they don't see.

Hearing they don't hear.

Chapter 9, verse 2, they walk in darkness spiritually.

Isaiah 11, verse 4, the poor are compared to the meek spiritually.

Isaiah 11:4

This idea of liberty that's used twice in this text, I mean, he's actually inserting a verse from Isaiah 58.

This idea of liberty is used multiple ways in the book of Isaiah.

It's a connection with the year of Jubilee, the kind of physical release of slaves and the return of property.

Even as we're reading in Isaiah 61 earlier, you probably saw that there's discussion later in that chapter about other nations coming and serving and bringing goods, tangible money and goods into the nation of Israel.

This is this big eschatological vision of God's final kingdom.

And yet you have Isaiah 53, where Jesus himself, the suffering servant, is oppressed for our sins.

It's a spiritual reality, a spiritual deliverance.

And if you look at the Gospel of Luke, the picture is equally as complex.

It's not easily divisible into just spiritual or just physical, even going all the way back to Isaiah, uh Luke chapter 1, verse 71, this is Zechariah's prayer, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.

Luke 1:71

I mean, that's not talking about sin, that's talking about actual enemies.

But he also says in verse 78, because of the tender mercy of God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness.

A spiritual kind of darkness, I think.

Talked about there.

And over and over and over again, you see this complex picture.

This word that is used twice in this text, that we get translated liberty.

This is the only time that it's translated that way in the whole New Testament.

Every other use in the New Testament is translated forgiveness.

Release is the idea.

It's used earlier in Luke, a baptism of repentance for the liberty of sins.

It's a complicated picture.

And that's because all throughout Isaiah and in Jesus' ministry, there is a commingling of spiritual and physical realities, isn't there?

There are people who are physically blind who he heals, and there are people who are spiritually blind to whom he gives spiritual sight.

Jesus, as far as I know, doesn't actually get anyone out of a physical prison.

He does release them from demonic captivity just later in this chapter.

Jesus will really heal blind people, those being oppressed, to really open eyes spiritually.

All of that's true.

So I think the best way to understand that then is to see that Jesus' liberation is a whole person liberation, it is a liberation from every sin.

All of sin's effects, all of sin's affections.

This is an eschatological declaration.

When he says to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, year here is like age, the dawning age of the time of the Messiah.

It has come and it will culminate in this glorious kingdom in which all oppression and all injustice and all blindness and all poverty are totally stripped away, and in which the Messiah himself reigns.

And I hope you appreciate that's why this gospel is such good news.

Because we live in a world that has both spiritual and physical temporal evil.

Jesus is such a great liberator because he saves us from every sin, both inside and out.

And so, how wicked, then, is it for someone to come along and say, no, no, no, Jesus' liberation is only external.

All it does is solves your external problems.

Nothing about you in your sin.

Jesus liberating work is only to remove external poverty, external oppression, external captivity, but to leave you in the shackles of sin.

This is what James Conan, a liberation theologian, says about this passage in Luke 4.

He says, Quote, it is a message about the ghetto and all other injustices done in the name of democracy and religion to further the social, political, and economic interests of the oppressor.

Through Christ, the poor man is offered freedom.

And man, if he just stopped there, I'd be okay.

But he doesn't.

Through Christ, the poor man is offered freedom now to rebel against that which makes him other than human.

Friends, that's not freedom.

There is no true freedom unless there is freedom from sin.

To reduce the gospel to a picketing sign is to strip it of the awesome and essentially spiritual power of the forgiveness of the cross.

Which is to say that Jesus is not a political revolutionary.

He is a gracious Savior who wants to break all chains, the chains of injustice and the chains of sin.

He is a deliverer who offers freedom from mankind's greatest oppression, the bondage of sin.

And yet, I think we would be wise to not neglect that this is a whole person kind of liberation that Jesus is talking about here.

That Jesus announces freedom from all oppression and sin and pain.

I mean, what hope, in addition to freedom from sin, does Jesus offer to believers who are languishing under tyrannical regimes, even today, who are being persecuted and hurting.

Well, he offers them a very great hope.

He offers them a kingdom, a kingdom to come in which all of that will be done away with.

There are no more prisons in his kingdom.

There is no more persecution of Christians in his kingdom.

There is no more long night and tear in his kingdom.

This is a kingdom of perfect justice and freedom, a righteous rule and reign, a world free of racism, a world free of hate, free of false gospels, free of false hopes, and filled with the love of the Savior.

That is a joyful hope, friends.

And we ought to extend it to our brothers and sisters in Christ who are struggling.

Jesus saves us from every kind of sin.

But if you're paying attention, you'll notice I called that kingdom a kingdom to come.

There's a time issue that needs to be appreciated here.

There's an already and a not-yet aspect to this proclamation that Jesus reads in the synagogue.

The question is when and how does this liberation from all sin come?

And that's the second part of our sentence.

Jesus frees us from every sin, and he does it right now by preaching.

Right now by preaching.

Look at verse 20.

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.

So it was normal to sit down.

Sitting down wasn't like he went to the first pew.

Sitting down was a normal posture for teaching.

You would stand up to read the word, and then you would sit down, and the teacher himself would sit, the rabbi, and he would teach, and everyone is riveted.

What is he going to say?

He's already kind of a popular celebrity preacher at this point.

Why did he choose this text?

What's he thinking?

And Jesus gets ready to explain how this liberation is going to come.

And he says it this way, verse 21.

And he began to say to them, which I take to mean he probably said more, it's just not recorded here, but this is the essence of what he said.

And he began to say to them, Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Today, in this sentence, is not just like a throwaway obligatory word that he happens to use.

That's an intentional word.

Because it indicates the timing of the fulfillment.

Even the way the verb works.

Today, this scripture has been fulfilled.

The servant has come, the age of the Messiah has begun, and the liberation that he brings will also come.

So it's happening right now, in Jesus' day, in this very moment in the synagogue, he's bringing this liberation.

The question is, how?

He also answers that.

Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Also, not just to throw away phrase.

In your hearing is actually how the liberation comes today.

It is the vehicle by which Jesus frees his people right now.

From this day in the first century to today, it's the same way that Jesus still liberates his people, it is through preaching and hearing.

Notice, even in Isaiah, the emphasis on preaching.

Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

And Jesus' ministry was marked by this emphasis, this fixed focus on preaching.

Verse 15 in this chapter, and he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

Or at the end of the chapter, verse 43, but he said to them, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well.

Why?

Because I was sent for this purpose.

That is why Jesus came, is not to get a bunch of people out of jail immediately, but to preach.

God has one son, and he made him a preacher.

Why preaching?

Why not activism?

Why not revolution?

Why not political rallying?

Because the liberation that Jesus brings right now, today, is decidedly spiritual.

He does save us from all sin.

Eventually.

But the liberation that Jesus brings today is decidedly spiritual because our greatest bondage is spiritual sin.

He gives us a vehicle for a message that can save us from that bondage through preaching.

I mean, just appreciate that if Jesus' real objective, if his real mission on earth was, I gotta make sure all the poor people aren't poor anymore, and all the oppressed people aren't oppressed anymore, and all the jailed people aren't jailed anymore, well then he was a phenomenal failure.

John the Baptist died in prison.

All of his disciples died by the hand of a government.

Jesus' program of liberation was not in his day, today, political.

But Jesus' program of liberation begins by liberating hearts through preaching, not social groups by protesting.

Preaching is how the truth of who this liberator is gets into the heart of his people and makes them fit for a perfect kingdom.

And this is, of course, totally opposite of what you would hear from a liberation theologian.

Again, James Cohn, quote, To participate in God's salvation is to cooperate with the black Christ as he liberates his people from bondage.

Salvation, then, has primarily to do with earthly reality and the injustice inflicted on those who are helpless and poor.

To see the salvation of God is to see this people rise up against its oppressors, demanding that justice become a reality now, not tomorrow.

It is the oppressed serving warning that they ain't gonna take no more of this, and then he uses some colorful language, but a new day is coming and it ain't gonna be like today.

End quote.

And yet Jesus says, Today, this is fulfilled in your hearing.

One of the chief issues with liberation theology is actually the same problem with the prosperity gospel.

And it's really just an issue of timing in a lot of ways.

It's what theologians call immanentized eschatology, claiming the promises of this future kingdom, which are real and still coming, for right now.

But appreciate that Jesus isn't in some kind of long-term grudge match with oppressors and injustice in the world, that he kind of keeps losing, but if we would just kind of get our axe together and really rally in a political way to fight against those oppressors, then things would get sorted out.

No, that's that's not how this is working.

Jesus is sovereign over every suffering, he has purposes in them.

He intends to come and bring full liberation, and he will in his own time.

Right now, he brings liberation in our hearts from sin.

One day he will bring liberation from all sin.

And when he does, he will not need our help.

He will come on a white horse with a sword in his mouth and fire in his eyes, and he will take care of the liberating.

Until then, we just do one thing.

We preach.

Tell people that Jesus can save you.

December of 2018, Pastor Wang Yi, a fellow believer in China, was arrested for inciting subversion of state power.

He was just preaching the gospel in his church.

And he was sentenced to nine years.

He's still there to this very day, as far as we know.

His family's only been able to visit him once.

He was in solitary confinement for a number of years.

Uh they only fed him moldy rice.

I think they're kind of hoping that he would just die in prison.

He hasn't yet.

And about a month after, or two weeks after uh he was imprisoned, he wrote this letter to help his church understand how to respond to this oppression.

And it's kind of long, but I'll read it and I think it'll be helpful.

Here's what he wrote.

According to the teachings of the Bible and the mission of the gospel, I respect the founding powers of God in China.

At the same time, I'm full of disgust and hatred for the CCP, the China Chinese Communist Party's persecution of the church, the deprivation of human faith, and the freedom of conscience.

However, the change of all social and political systems is not the mission of my calling, nor the purpose of the gospel being given to the people of God.

Because all the ugliness of reality, the political injustice, and the arbitrariness of the law, they show that the cross of Jesus Christ is the only salvation that every Chinese person must have.

It also shows that true hope and perfect human society don't exist in any institutional and cultural changes on the earth.

But simply how human sins are forgiven by Christ.

Christ is so urgent and willing to forgive all who turn from sin.

This is the purpose of all the work of the church in China.

It is to witness Christ to the world, the kingdom of heaven to China, and to witness the eternal life of heaven to the short life of the earth.

This is my pastoral call.

End quote.

Now, let's also not be be naive.

If we have brothers and sisters who are suffering under persecution and oppression like that, and you can do something to help, I would advocate not only preaching the gospel, but also trying to help if you can, right?

Well, sorry for your predicament.

Here's a track.

Hope that helps.

No, of course, if you can be helpful in some way, be helpful.

If you can avail yourself of some means to get out of prison, if you can avoid that suffering in a godly way, I yeah, go for it.

We should be praying for those.

We should have empathy for those who are suffering under oppression.

But do you appreciate how precious to Pastor Ye is the centrality of preaching the gospel even while he's in prison?

Keep me locked up, release me.

Either way, the gospel goes forward.

Our mission isn't to fix the system.

Our mission is to preach the gospel.

Because that's what was Jesus' mission.

And then finally.

Jesus frees us from every sin right now by preaching about faith in him.

What's the content of this preaching?

What are we preaching about?

Simply, we tell people believe in Jesus.

Have faith in Jesus, the Spirit empowered, preacher of full liberation.

Believe in him.

You appreciate by this point in this story, the Nazarenes are on board for the most part.

They like hearing this news.

They even like the sound of a hometown Messiah.

And that's why in verse 22 it says, all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

They liked what this guy had to say.

And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?

Now I take this first response to be actually kind of a positive one.

What they're saying here is, he's a hometown guy.

He belongs to us.

So shouldn't we kind of get first line, first dibs rather, at whatever miracles he's about to give?

There's a positive response, it's a sinful response, but there's a positive disposition towards Jesus in that.

And he, of course, knows their thoughts, so verse 23 says to them, doubtless you'll quote to me this proverb, physician, heal yourself, a well-known Greek proverb of the day, saying essentially, listen, if you're Joseph's son, which chapter 3, verse 23 tells us was supposed, well then you should help us out.

Give us priority seating.

Help us be first in line at the kingdom buffet.

But of course, we know he's not Joseph's son.

He's the son of God.

That's been the point from Mary's interaction with Gabriel.

He'll be the son of the Most High, the Son of God.

Even Satan himself, if you are the son of God.

We know he's the son of God.

He's not the son of Joseph.

But they don't know that.

So they think you gotta help us out.

What you have, what we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown.

There's a little bit of jealousy, a little bit of rivalry.

Capernaum just 20 miles away.

Why would you give them all the kingdom blessings and all the spiritual and the physical liberation if you're not gonna do it here?

We're your people.

But there's also a second kind of response.

And I think that's what's going on here in the text because verse 24, Luke breaks it up a little bit.

It's not just a continuation, but notice it says, and he said.

And I think here he's starting to respond a little bit to a different mindset.

And he said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.

So there's a group of people in the synagogue who are excited because he's a hometown kid, but they just want him to bring all the hometown blessings.

And then there's a group of people in the synagogue who don't accept him because they're skeptical.

And the reason I think that's what's going on is because in the two parallel accounts in Matthew 13 and Mark 6, which we won't turn to, but you take my word for it, in both of those parallel accounts, there's a fleshed-out question-asking period.

Is this not the carpenter's son?

Don't we know his mom is Mary?

And here's all of his four brothers, and here's his sisters, and it says the same thing in both Matthew and Mark, that he didn't do a bunch of miracles there.

Why?

Because of their unbelief.

And I think what they're helping us understand is that really the root of both of those responses is the same problem.

It's just plain old unbelief.

I don't think you are who you say you are.

It's an unwillingness to be humbled before God, to confess your deep sin and your need for a savior, and a pride that refuses to allow the benefits of Jesus' liberation to extend beyond certain cultural, social, and ethnic lines.

He's for us, the subsistence farmer, poor people over here.

That's who he's about.

And so Jesus says, Well, this is why all the prophets keep getting killed.

Because you don't believe.

You think things work on your timetable and according to your plan, you want to have the kingdom without having faith in the king.

And so Jesus rebukes them by reminding them of two stories from the Old Testament, which we won't spend a lot of time going through, but just briefly, verse 25.

But in truth, I tell you, Jesus says, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.

This is apparently a well-known story because Jesus doesn't flesh out what he did for the widow, but we know from 1 Kings 17, 8 to 24, that Elijah goes to the widow, she makes him some food, and then she has an abundance of food, and then later the widow's son dies, and Elijah comes back, and he brings the son back to life.

Blessings, miracles, all kinds of divine power being poured out on this Gentile woman.

So what was going on back in Israel?

Well, there's Ahab.

Idol worship, rejection of God and his prophet.

So, what does that mean Jesus is saying about the Nazarenes?

Or, verse 27, there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.

There's lots of people in Israel who need healing, and this other prophet Elisha shows up and he doesn't heal them.

He goes to Naaman, a Syrian, someone they're at war with, who's a military officer, and heals him.

Notice one of the things that he's saying here.

Jesus is not simply compelled to do miracles or to liberate by the sheer existence of need.

There's widows.

So aren't you on the side of the widows?

No, not necessarily.

There's people with skin diseases.

Aren't you going to heal them?

Not necessarily.

What's the common denominator with this widow and this Syrian?

It's faith.

It's just faith.

They believed God's prophet.

I don't have much.

Whatever I have, here you go.

Man, everyone back in Syria is gonna they're gonna hate me for going down to Israel, to the dirty Israelites to swim in their water to get clean.

But I I think someone's there who can heal me.

It's just faith, just true belief in God and in his prophets.

And in summary, Jesus is saying what he's going to say in chapter 5, verse 31.

Those who are well have no need of a physician.

But those who are sick, I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

You know that you need a savior?

Here he is.

Friends, this is the liberation that Jesus preached.

A liberation by faith alone, not by social caste, not by priority according to poverty level, not by oppression or any other earthly standard, only by sovereignly wrought faith in him.

This is why Paul says in Romans chapter 10, verse 17, faith comes by hearing.

Romans 10:17

And hearing through preaching the words about Christ.

That's how this liberation comes.

It does not come through a social program, it does not come through us doing good works, it comes through us opening our mouths and telling this broken world, you need Jesus.

And he can save you.

Syrians can get saved if only they'll have faith.

What would this sound like today?

A transgender BLM activist is not beyond the reach of Jesus Christ.

A hardened politician who hates everything about Christianity is not beyond the reach of Jesus Christ.

The racist white supremacist is not beyond the reach of Jesus Christ.

The church kid is not beyond the reach of Jesus Christ.

The Nazarene and the liberation theologian, nobody is beyond his reach because all you need is faith.

Jesus calls all to come to him in humble faith to be freed from their sin.

So the Nazarenes hate this.

Verse 28.

When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.

How dare you tell us there's something wrong in here.

And they rose up, they drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so they could throw him down the cliff.

They're treating him like a false prophet.

They're saying, you are not who you say you are.

It's just unbelief.

Jesus, passing through their midst, went away.

Maybe miraculously, I don't know.

Maybe he's just really sneaky.

I'm not sure how he did it.

But somehow he gets through and goes on to Capernaum, where he's going to heal and preach and heal and preach.

If you remember last week, when we were looking at John chapter 17, we said there's basically, not basically, there is just one requirement for unity in the church, in Jesus Christ.

John 17 · chapter mention

It's belief.

All those who believe in me through their word.

So if you want to have unity in the church, the essential ingredient is belief in Jesus Christ.

So a sure way to get division in the church is to attack that faith.

To distort it, to turn it into political allyship rather than gracious liberation from sin.

So what I want to appeal to you, brothers and sisters, this evening is that you not fall for a gospel that will divide and enslave rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ, which will unite and liberate.

A false theology of liberation that rejects spiritual salvation, that refuses to be humbled in faith, and turns Jesus into a political lobbyist.

Behold, today is the day of salvation.

Because he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

That's the gospel.

That's true freedom.

And if the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank you for sending such a powerful, wonderful, glorious, liberating Savior.

We're challenged by these words.

We need to think rightly and well about what implications these have for our lives.

But one thing is clear.

Even as we sang earlier, Lord, we need you.

We place all of our faith and our trust in you.

We do not trust in ourselves.

We don't trust in any earthly institution.

We place ourselves in your hand.

Because that's where we want to be.

Father, I do pray for any of my brothers and sisters here who are suffering for any variety of reasons.

I pray that they would cling to you.

That they would see Jesus to be so precious, such a great, faithful high priest who understands and sympathizes with them.

That they would look to Him for help and comfort in their time of need.

And God, I pray also that you would make us faithful evangelists and witnesses to the true gospel of Jesus, full liberation.

That we would go to our workplaces tomorrow, our schools, our homes, with the message Jesus saves on our lips.

Would you cause us to be people marked by that message?

Pray all of this in his name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with oldness.