Luke The Orderly Account of Truth - Hometown Haters - Luke 4:14-30

I think that it's potentially that one of my New Year's resolutions is going to

be to get into World War two history. I only say that because the

other day. The other day, I my wife wasn't home, so I

had we couldn't watch our show together, so I had to find something else

to watch, and I landed on a World War two documentary where they've restored

all the footage and color. Have you guys seen those? They're actually pretty

cool. And I found there's like every time they like release a new batch.

I've been doing this for a while, it's not that new. I

like every time they release a new batch of them, I basically watch all

of them and then wait for them to release more. But this new one

I've been watching kind of just goes year by year in the war, and

it's fascinating. It's really really cool. One of the things that kind of

stuck out to me is like, I don't know, I just think that

the way people used to dress back then was just really cool, you know

what I mean. I don't know, that's just me. I think it

was really cool and as you had kind of that like forties fifties look.

I don't know how if it had any like influence on my haircut that I

gave myself a couple of weeks or a couple of days ago. But it's

all right, it's fine. It is kind of funny how like each generation

kind of goes with its own ebbs and flows of what fashion kind of looks

like, or even just different things. You have the forties and fifties,

which is kind of clean cut. I have the sixties and seventies, which

is like people are trying to be more down to earth, they're growing out

their hair. They don't it's messy, it's natural, it's all fine.

And then they just kind of go back and forth, back and forth until

we get to today, where you have the clean cut top knot right and

everyone's like all about it. But as I was kind of like processing through

this, like why does each generation feel this need to look different or be

different in some way? It doesn't have to be drastic, maybe it is,

but why do they have to be different even in the smallest amount.

And one of the ways that I've heard it put is that each generation tries

to find a way to distinguish itself from the last generation. One of the

ways I was thinking through this is, why do they need this? What

does this need to be different? And why do we need to distinguish ourselves

from those who've been before us or that we grew up with And the phrase

that kind of popped into my mind. So have you ever heard the phrase

familiarity breeds contempt? Well, what that means, if you don't know,

is that the more we become familiar with something, the more we can grow

to take it for granted or be discontent with what we might think of as

normal. It might be that we become so used to something, so knowledgeable

about something, that it's no longer interesting. I know that growing up,

my friends had the video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and I didn't

go over to their house and they'd be like, what do you want to

do? And I'm like, we should play rock Band and they're like that's

boring. I'm like, that's easy for you to say. You like,

you're gonna have it every single day at your house, that's all for you.

But for me, I wasn't familiar with it. I wasn't used to

it, I hadn't grown bored of it, so it was something that I

wanted to do. Maybe you have a relationship with someone that after becoming so

close with them, you start to see their flaws and imperfections that we lose

and we start to lose respect for them. Or maybe we just start to

take them for granted. Maybe they're a great person and we just start to

take them for granted as we become used to them. There's this ultimate idea

that what we are most familiar with we may be inclined to shrug off.

Maybe that's our parents, Maybe that's our children, our bosses, our coworkers.

Maybe it's our church, our pastors. Maybe we shrug off God.

And today that's what we're going to be looking at and hour passage. So

what I'm going to do is I'm going to read our text for today.

We're going to pray and then jump right into the text. Does that sound

good? You guys with me? Awesome? Be good? All right?

Cool? All right? So if you would turn with me to Luke chapter

four, verses fourteen through thirteen, they will be available here on the screen,

as I'm told, And if you don't have a Bible, you can

go grab one in the back. Please take it. We love to go

through scripture here. So let's read it says Jesus returned to Galilee, and

the power of the spirit and news about him spread through the whole countryside.

He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to

Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and the Sabbath, And on

the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He

stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to

him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written, the

spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim

good news to the poor. He's sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,

in recovery of sight, for the blind, to set free, or

to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and

sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.

He began by saying to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came

from his lips. Isn't this Joseph's son, they asked, and Jesus said

to them, surely you will quote this proverb to me, physician, heal

yourself, and you will tell me. Do hear in your hometown what we've

heard that you did in Capridium. Truly, I tell you, he continued,

No prophet is accepted in his own hometown. I assure you that there

were many widows in Israel and Elijah's time when the sky was shut for three

and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet

Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow and Zarapeth

in the region of Sidom. And there were many in is Real with leprosy

in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed,

only naming the Syrian. All the people in the synagogue were furious when

they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town,

and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built,

in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through

the crowd and went on his way. Let's pray, Lord Jesus, as

we open your word, and you promise that it does not return void.

We asked that we would understand this text, that we'd empathize with this text,

that our love of you would grow, our understanding of you would grow.

Or God, as we've already lifted up your great works in song,

we asked that it has prepared our hearts to receive from you this day.

So we give you this time, Lord God, and expect great words and

great works from word and Jesus name. Everyone said amen. Okay. So

we have been in a series going through the Gospel of Luke called the Orderly

Account of Truth. And in this series we've been following the historical account of

Jesus and his ministry. Luke tells us at the beginning of his gospel account

that the purpose for writing this gospel is that is for Theophilus to have certainty

concerning the truth that he had been taught about Jesus, and by God's grace,

it has been preserved for us as well, so that we too may

have confidence as we learn about who Jesus is. And last week we left

off just after Jesus successfully overcomes temptations from Satan by knowing and using God's word

to combat Satan's lies and twisting of scripture. If you didn't. If you

didn't catch last week's message, you should go back and watch it. It

was it was radical. But I've titled today's message because we're now we're going

to get to a turning point in in Jesus's life where he's really starting to

ramp up his ministry, and I've titled today's message hometown haters, Hometown haters.

So let's break down our text, starting with the first two verses.

Verses fourteen and fifteen says Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the spirit,

and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in

the synagogues and everyone praised him. So here Luke tells us that after the

temptation of Jesus, he returns to Galilee, which is the region from where

Jesus grew up. And as we will see in a little bit, this

actually isn't the beginning of Jesus's ministry, but Luke is actually bringing us up

to the point where Jesus is going to bring his ministry to this region.

And it's actually believed that it's been almost about a year or so after Jesus

has actually started his ministry and Luke's zooming in where he's bringing his ministry to

his hometown region, and now he starts to preach there. He starts going

around to the different towns and preaching in their synagogues and says, Jesus is

returning to his home region empowered by the Holy Spirit, and we saw that

a couple weeks ago when he was baptized. And the result of this empowerment

of the Holy Spirit his preaching is that news starts to spread about Jesus in

that whole area and tells us Jesus was teaching in their synagogues. And if

you don't know what a synagogue is, it's basically their church service. Except

for the difference is that they met on Saturdays. That was kind of the

big difference. Their order of service looked very similar to ours. You would

have blessings and thanksgiving to God to start and prayer. Then someone would open

scripture and read it, and then it might be and probably would be the

same person would then go on to explain that text and preach through that text.

After that there'd be a closing prayer or blessing, and then they go

home and they do it again next week. So Jesus was going to their

worship gatherings and teaching there, and it says everyone praised him, which seems

pretty cool, right, I mean, theoretically, I think if we knew

that Jesus was going to come preach at our church, it'd be full right

right, you know what I mean, Like, we heard that Jesus was

going to be here, that seems like it'd be pretty exciting. So that's

kind of the context that Luke is giving us. This is what Jesus is

doing. He's moved to this local region. He starts preaching and teaching in

the power of the spirit, and people start praising him and spreading the news

about him. And now we get to the next part of the text,

verse sixteen. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up,

and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom,

he stood up to read. So Luke zooms into the story to tell

us about a specific account of what happened when Jesus brought his ministry to his

hometown. Jesus comes to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. What

that means is that this is the place where Jesus grew up. This is

where Jesus would have played with the other kids when he was a kid in

this hometown. It's where he would have went shopping with his mom at the

market. It's where Jesus would have worked for other people as a carpenter.

All the people that Jesus had grown up with would be here in this hometown.

And it says, as it was his custom, he went to the

synagogue on the Sabbath, meaning what meant that Jesus went to church. That's

what that means. Jesus went to church. He says he stood up to

read, which as a traveling teacher, he would have actually been given that

opportunity when he went to the synagogue. He would have been afforded that opportunity

by the other leaders. Also, I'm sure that as the new has spread

from the surrounding area of his teaching and his ministry and his working, that

the people of his hometown would be eager to hear what he had to say,

which I think kind of makes sense because if someone left your hometown got

really famous and now there's this buzz going around abottom and then they come back,

you might be inclined to hit him up, be like, what's going

on? What's all the fuss about what's going on here? But for them

it was different because they didn't have YouTube, so they can just look up

Jesus's messages and be like, what's going on? Right, So they would

have been anticipating and waiting for Jesus to show over at their hometown so they

could just hear him preach what is going on? What is so special?

So Jesus stands up, and now we're going to see Jesus's message. Let's

look at verse seventeen, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to

him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it was written. We're

gonna pause just one second. So Jesus has handed the scroll. He stands

up. He's handed the scroll and he unrolls it because he didn't they didn't

have books, they had scrolls. So he unrolls it and finds the place

he was looking for. And the reason he had to find it is because

they didn't have chapter in verse. Then they literally just had to find it,

which to me, I'm like, praise God that we have chapter in

verse because that like kind of it's already hard to remember where things are at

in your Bible. But it makes it just that much easier. Remember if

you knew that something was written in the Gospel of Matthew, but he had

no correlation to verses, and you didn't have any headers on there that said

Jesus rejected in Nazruth, and they doesn't say anything like that. You just

have to be like, oh, I'll have to read it to find out

what it says. So praise God for that. But Jesus run and rolls

to a place in Isaiah, and it actually can be found in Isaiah sixty,

verses one and two, but he reads it there, and this is

what it says in verse eighteen and nineteen. The spirit of the Lord is

on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight

for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of

the Lord's favor. So Jesus opens scripture, finds a place, and then

reads them a verse about the Messiah. And what's interesting about these verses about

the Messiah is that specifically these verses address two things. It addresses who the

Messiah is and what the Messiah would do, and verse eighteen it says,

the spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me. So

this verse tells us who this passage is referring to, and it's God's Messiah,

and Messiah literally means anointed or God's anointed one. And this idea of

someone being anointed is something often found in the Old Testament, and it meant

that God had set something or someone apart for a a special purpose, which

is why most often in the Old Testament it was priests who served the Holy

Living God and the kings who were kings over God's people who were anointed,

so those people would be anointed as a recognition that God says, these are

people that I'm choosing I'm setting apart to lead my people or serve me.

And here we see that this anointing is kind of is a little different.

It's not just an anointing with oil, but it's actually an anointing with the

Holy Spirit or that there's what sets this anointed one apart is that he has

the Holy Spirit with him, which is also significant because the spirit of the

Lord was a sign of a savior in the Old Testament. If you go

read the Book of Judges time and time again, this is what happens.

God's people are oppressed or broken or enslaved to their enemy mean and God would

raise up a leader, empower them with the Holy Spirit, and then they

would just do some crazy stuff and it was awesome. You should go read

it. You'll get to it eventually if you get past March. But what

would happen is is who would send his spirit on this leader and he would

save his people from their enemies. So Jesus opens to this passage about the

Messiah whom the people had been anxiously waiting for. And they themselves, the

people that Jesus is addressing, are under roman gentile occupation in their lands and

they just have to sit there and they're just taking it. And so they're

waiting for a messiah. They're waiting for a savior, someone to come and

save them from their enemy. Jesus continues reading the passage, but then tells

us what this messiah is going to do. Says, this Messiah is spirit

empowered and set apart for God's purpose of proclaiming good news to the poor,

freedom to the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, setting those who

are oppressed free, and proclaiming the year of God's favor, which all those

things sound like good news. In this aspect of proclaiming the year of the

Lord's favor, from what I was reading, it actually can be understood as

the year of jubilee, which in the Old Testament God had commanded that basically

every fifty years that all debts would be forgiven. All debts would be forgiven.

So the year of God's Favor can be thought of as proclaiming the time

of God's forgiveness, which just adds to the good news of this message.

So in this passage we see who the Messiah is coming for, and that's

the poor, the imprisoned, the blind, and the impressed. So this

is what Jesus reads to the people sitting there in the synagogue in his hometown.

Now Jesus is going to get to the point of his reading this passage,

so let's look at verse twenty, says, Then he rolled up the

scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down, says The

eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on them, which makes sense.

He just read this verse about the Messiah we're all sitting here, we're all

waiting for Messiah. What's he gonna say? Heard, he's this great teacher.

And then Jesus starts talking. Verse twenty one. He says he began

by saying to them today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus just

said something incredible. He says, today the verses I just read and you

just heard, verses that were written hundreds of years ago, have been that

we've been waiting for it to come true, are fulfilled in this very moment.

Now here's the deal. If I did that, you should pick up

rocks and throw them at me. Okay, So there is an an under

an understanding of why. We're going to see how the people respond. We're

gonna get to that. But what is Jesus message to his hometown. He's

saying, this is who the Messiah is, God's empowered anointed one. This

is what the Messiah will do. Preach good news to the poor, set

the oppressed and in prison free, recover site to the blind, and proclaim

the year of God's favor. And what Jesus just said was I am the

one who's God's who. God's spirit is resting on. I am God's anointed.

I have come to set you free, recover site for the blind,

and preach good news to the poor. In short, I I am the

Messiah. That's what Jesus just said to them. He reads them scripture and

then says, this is about me. That's his message to his hometown.

I am the Messiah. And now we're gonna see the people's response. Luke

four twenty two says, all spoke well of him and were amazed at the

gracious words that came from his lips. Isn't this Joseph's son? They asked?

So at first glance, this seems like actually a positive response that they're

amazed at Jesus Jesus's words. But then it quickly turns and we start to

get to an idea of what like what all they're like may be amazed at?

They say, is this Joseph's son. What they're really saying is who

does this guy think he is? We know Joseph, is this Joseph's boy?

And actually we kind of get a clear picture a little bit of this

in the Gospel of Luke. So I just want to reference it Mark six

h In the Gospel of Mark, Mark six two through three says when the

Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard

him were amazed. Where did this man get these things? They asked?

What's this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he

is performing? Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother

of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon. Aren't his sisters here with us?

Do you see what that says? And they took offense at him.

The people are literally saying, who do you think you are? What gives

you the right? Don't we know you and your family? Aren't you the

carpenter? Are you the carpenter's son? Haven't we watched you grow up?

How can it be you? They're asking questions, and Jesus about to answer

verse twenty three. Jesus responds. Jesus said to them, surely you will

quote this proverb proverb to me, physician, heal yourself, and you will

tell me. Do here in your hometown what we've heard that you did in

Camprenaium, True that I tell you, He continued, No prophet is accepted

in his hometown Jesus knows what they're thinking, and Jesus knows what they're saying.

Jesus came with the greatest news of all time to his friends and family,

practically the people he grew up with. That is the Messiah, the

Savior has arrived and it's me. And the people were responding with who does

this guy think he is? Now? Jesus, I'm sure, was frustrated

because he goes on to show them their double mindedness. He says, in

one sense, you mock me and call me a prophet physician, heal yourself,

or you can heal others, heal yourself. It's just like Jesus when

he was on the cross. They're like, oh, he can save others,

but he can't save himself. He says, you mock me for calling

myself a prophet, but you have no problem with me showing you my power.

Really, what it is is that they're fine with party tricks. They

want to see him do cool stuff, but they don't want the prophet.

They don't want the prophet Jesus. They're willing to take what Jesus could do

for them, or maybe just give him a cool show, but not except

Jesus for Jesus, and Jesus kind of finishes it off by saying, truly,

I tell you a prophet is not accepted in his hometown, which is

so true. We think about in the Old Testament. You think about Joseph.

God starts giving him miraculous dreams, and he goes and tells his brothers.

He's like, guys, God's given me these dreams. Basically you're bowing

down to me one way or another, but God's given me these dreams.

And they're like, we're not about this. They resented him. They didn't

want to hear that. You think about a lot of the prophets in the

Old Testament, most of most of them at one point, if not for

their entire life, we're on the run from the people of Israel, the

people that they were supposed to be God's mouth peace. For I was thinking

about Jeremiah today, and Jeremiah is actually like it's kind of a doom and

gloom book because he's basically like repent where Babylon's gonna come take away our city

and our whole nation. And people are like, we have prophets who were

telling us that that's it's not gonna happen, so we're gonna listen to them

and he's like that's a terrible idea. And then eventually he tells them,

hey, Babylon's coming. They're like whatever, and then Babylon comes. They're

like, wait, hold on, we'll do whatever. What do we need

to do? And he's like too late. Why would I even tell you.

If I did tell you, you wouldn't listen to me. And they're

like, no, we swear, well listen and he's like, okay,

this is what you got to do and they're like that's ridiculous. We're not

gonna do that. Like that's like that's the prophet's mo, that's what they

get. Or maybe think about your own life since coming to Christ. I

know that we've all experienced this in one way or another. People who raised

us, who grew up with us, maybe who most likely who knew us

before Jesus. I know. I don't know about you, but I know

that I was a piece of work. And if anyone could tell you about

it, it would be my family and my friends that I grew up with.

I have friends and family who see the change in my life and rejoice

the work that God has done and others who scoff at it. And I

don't think I'm alone in this room about that. Two. You're the goody

two shoes, now, huh, mister can do no wrong. How arrogant

or condescending it is to say that you know the truth, you're just out

here trying to save the world. I think it can be frustrated to try

and bring the truth to your family, to your friends and not have it

connect because they shrug you off, don't we know you. But I think

there's two things that are good for us to be reminded of. First of

all, Jesus wasn't surprised at his hometown rejected him, but even in spite

of him knowing what they would do, he was still obedient to God and

brought the truth to them anyways. And second, it's more anecdotal, but

if we aren't gonna be the mouthpiece that they can receive from, we should

pray that God would bring someone into their life that they can receive from,

no matter how annoying that is. You know, I know, growing up,

my mom was a little frustrated with me. She's in the room,

but it's okay, it's fine, right. She was a little frustrated with

me because she had picked me up from youth group one day and I was

like, my mind was blown. I was like, this youth pastor he

said something. It just made so much sense and it was so helpful.

She was very swift to remind me that that was the very thing that she

been trying to tell me for like months at that point, you know,

so she's like, the heck, I've been trying to tell you this forever.

And for me, I was kind of frustrated because I was like,

I thought you'd be happy that I finally got it, you know, but

which is true, you should be rejoiced that people finally get it. But

I think we can all empathize with the frustration of sharing the truth with someone

and then then not taking your under your advice or not understanding it until someone

who most likely is who loves them less and is less close to them comes

along and who shares this brilliance with them, you know, so quick.

Practical tip is that if it can't be you think and or pray for someone

that could be that person in their life. As Jesus just stated, the

one speak a prophet, the one speaking the truth is not accepted in his

own hometown. And there's that aspect of the familiarity breeding contempt. Who are

you We grew up in the same household I raised you. Right, there's

all kinds of there's all kinds of angles that it could go. But Jesus

doesn't stop there. He goes on. He's still going in. He goes

onto the list two illustrations from the Old Testament of two of the most powerful,

miracle working prophets who were either unwelcoming, on the run in their own

country or sent to help those that the Israelites would never consider worth helping.

And he kind of brings these examples up that wouldn't necessarily be the most popular

in the synagogue of that day. Here's the thing. One of the blessings

of being able to open God's word, pick a book and go straight through

it is that it makes you deal with the hard text. We don't get

a cherry pick. And the thing is is that here these would have been

those texts that you might be inclined to just read over, or these examples

of what prophets did and how God used and the Jewish people might have wanted

to just read over or not bring up. He iss uncomfortable, and we'll

get to why. He says verse twenty five. I assure you that there

were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for

three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land.

Yeah, Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow

and Zaraphath in the region of Sidon, that is outside of Israel. And

there were many and there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of

Elishah the prophet. Yet none of them, or not one of them,

was cleansed to only name in the Syrian So Jesus tells the people that two

of the most powerful Old Testament prophets at different times, were not sent to

help work miracles for their own people, but for gentiles. And what did

those gentiles have in common is that they were God fearing, and they humble

themselves before God by being obedient to God's word. So why would he tell

them these examples. Well, these people were rejecting Odd's word that Jesus was

there to proclaim to them. They were rejecting Jesus, who is God's word

in the flesh and Jesus is saying, just like Israel had rejected these prophets

at different times in the past, those prophets didn't stop being prophets. God

just ended up having to be prophets somewhere else. And then this is how

the people responded to that. Verse twenty eight says, all the people in

the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up. This is

crazy, Okay, this is insane. They got up, drove him out

of the town, and if that wasn't enough, and took him to the

brow of the hill on which the town was built in order to throw him

off the cliff, in order to throw him off a cliff, says,

but he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. The people

were so furious at what Jesus was saying to them that they don't just like

walk out of his teaching, you know what I mean. Like most of

us here were like, I don't like what this guy is saying. I

disagree with him. I'm going to sneak out the back, right, I'm

gonna get out of here. At most maybe we stand up and we say

this isn't right, you know, but they'll break out into a mob and

grab him and drive him out of town, or like, let's take him

to the cliff, let's just throw him off. Let's get rid of this

guy. Take him to the edge of a cliff, and are going to

throw Jesus off a cliff. But then we actually do God and get to

see a miracle. Somehow, some way, Jesus he escapes from this angry

mob. He walked right through the crowd and went on his way. A

long time ago, we do pre huddle meetings before service, and we'd like

to ask a question just some people like get a share, get to know

each other. And one of the questions that Greg had asked was, what

is one miracle that you would want to see that Jesus did. I can't

remember if it was Greg or if it was my brother Jasper. And one

of them had said, like, I would love to have seen Jesus get

away from the mobs the many times that he did. I don't know what

that looks like, but a lot of times it always just makes it look

like he's just like I'm just walking out of here. And it wasn't a

problem because, I mean, here's the deal. They got into a brow

of a hill at the very least. I don't know if it was the

cliff that made him go like, okay, maybe it's time to get out.

Now I'm finally being driven out and taking oriever there to take me.

Let's see. You know. I don't know what did it for him,

but he's like, all right, this is the time. So he miraculously

gets away, And all of this seems kind of crazy because this is Jesus

we're talking about. I know why my family and friends would reject me if

I said that. I know why my family and friends would maybe just reject

me. In general. My life is imperfect. This is Jesus. His

life was perfect and sinless. What did they have to hold against him?

Why would they not believe him? I think it's actually gonna be helpful for

us to remember some scripture that we read actually a few weeks ago. Let's

look at it. So some when Jesus was a baby and who was brought

to the temple, there was a man who was waiting for the Messiah,

the Savior to show up, and this is what he told Jesus. This

is mom. Then Simeon blessed them and said to marry his mother. This

child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and

to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of

many hearts will be revealed, and a sword will pierce your own soul too.

So we looked at this a couple of weeks ago, and now we're

actually starting to get a seat. It come to fulfillment, it come to

pass. We go, well, this seems like not the right response to

have towards Jesus. That are you supposed to be the savior? Wouldn't they

be welcoming him? But here he says he's a sign to be spoken against,

that many hearts would be revealed. And that's exactly what God's word always

does. God's word always reveals our hearts. And in this case, when

he brought the good news to his hometown, their hearts were revealed. And

what did we find? Their hearts were hard. The truth always reveals our

hearts, and how we respond to the truth always reveals our hearts. When

we hear the truth, do we humble ourselves and accept it or do we

reject it and find excuses as to why we can dismiss the truth? Isn't

this Joseph's son, why we listen to anything he has to say. Jesus

told them he was the Messiah and that he was there for the poor,

the blind, the oppressed, and the captives. But when Jesus is talking

about these things, he's talking about something that's so much deeper than just our

physical condition. And I need the band to come up. Scripture says,

as it regards our our on a deeper level our condition. So I got

a couple verses. Matthew five to three says, blessed are the poor in

spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. We go to the next

verse. Galatians three twenty three says, now before faith came, we were

held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

We have one more verse says the God of this age has blinded the minds

of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the

glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And what we preach

is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for

Jesus's sake, for God, who said, let light shine out of darkness,

made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the

knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ. And Jesus, in

talking to the church in the Book of Revelation, actually chastises this church because

they think that they are fine because their physical outward needs are all taking care

of. And this is what he has to say to them is brutal.

He says, you say, I am rich, I have acquired wealth and

do not need a thing, but you do not realize that you are wretched,

pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. He's not talking about them

physically. He just said those things are taken care of, and they actually

take comfort in those things. But he's coming to address to their heart and

what's really going on there. Jesus' rejection at his hometown shows the blindness of

the hearts of those he was preaching to. And this rejection is just the

first and really a foreshadowing of the greater rejection that Jesus is just going to

go on to face as his ministry grows, as he continues to walk out

what God has put him on mission for. And first we're seeing it here

in his hometown, and later we're going to see it done by the whole

nation. And even in a much bigger sense, there's another way in which

we see him rejected by the creation. But this isn't something to worry about

because Jesus himself doesn't worry about it, because this rejection was also a fulfillment

of prophecy. We look at Isaiah fifty three to three. It's another chunk

of scripture about the Messiah, and it's usually referred to as the Suffering Servant,

and it says he was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of

suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces.

He was despised and we held him in low esteem. So this rejection was

part of Jesus' mission, that he would come to his own but be rejected.

But the good news is that that was the That was only the first

part of the plan. Jesus would be rejected by his people, hung on

across to die for our sins, and then rise again not only as the

savior for the Jews, but because of the jews initial reaction or rejection,

he would go on to extend this salvation to the rest of the world.

Just like how the prophets went on to help the gentiles, Jesus would go

on to help the gentiles and bless them, the scripture says, and John

ten through thirteen it says he was in the world, and though the world

was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to

that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet

to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural

descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

Jesus came to save the poor, the blind, oppressed, and imprisoned.

What that means is Jesus came to save us. We are poor,

blind, oppressed, prisoned, and in need of Jesus, the Savior and

the Messiah. And the irony in all of these things is that when you're

spiritually blind, poor oppressed, you don't think you are. But once you've

been set free by Christ, you can clearly see how poor and blind and

oppressed you are actually Without Christ. For an example, who sees clearly the

blind man who doesn't think he's blind, or the blind man who knows he's

blind. So how do we apply this text to our life? Well,

I think, first and foremost, the most obvious one is we shouldn't reject

Jesus. Rejecting Jesus is bad, right, But I think something that is

helpful for us as believers is for us to be prepared to be rejected.

A lot of us won't even dare to share our faith because we fear rejection.

But Jesus was on mission, not for himself, but but well,

Jesus was on mission for God. And if his mission meant rejection at times,

and we're on a similar mission following after him to look more and more

like him, then we can expect to be rejected as well. But here's

good news and all of it that puts us in good company. We shouldn't

think it above ourselves to put ourselves in situations where we may face rejection.

Because Jesus didn't. We praise God for that. It took him being rejected

by his people to even have or make a way for us to have a

way of salvation and being reconciled to him. We were saved by by Jesus's

rejection. We know our role as believers not only to glorify God with our

lives, but also we've been set free, We've been made to see,

and now we have good news to share, a light to shine because this

is such great news. It's impacted and affected our lives in such a way

that we want to share that. We share this good news not because we

think that we save people, because we believe in the one who will save

people through the power of the gospel that we're gonna share. We're gonna go

to those who need the gospel, which is everyone in hopes that when we

share this gospel, this power that is in the truth of God's Word,

that it would set people free. And we do so knowing that there will

still be people who will reject this good news. And does that break our

hearts? And it totally should. It should crush us, and we should

cry out to God and go If it wasn't me, well, I might

just have to try again and share it with them again. We might have

to pray for someone to bring into their life so that they would finally hear

it, Lord God, because I want them to be saved. But we

know that there's going to be those who reject the good news that we share

with them. We have to remember that we're just the messengers. And I

put it down it might sound kind of cheeky, but honestly and processing how

we I might think about this, the way I wrote it down is ultimately

we can expect that haters are gonna hate. Okay, genuinely, we're gonna

expect. We can expect that, But we preach and we share the good

news because we believe in a savior who's able to save. He is our

confidence. He's the one that we know that we are the messengers and that

is his power and his working that actually saves anyone. So we put our

trust in him. We expect the hate, but we pray to God that

he will save. Right. Okay, would you guys please stam