Luke 4:14-44 - Jesus' Clarity

There's something that we talk a lot about is membership at Proclamation Church.

And, you know, people have all kinds of views on membership stuff.

But one of the things that I love about membership is it provides clarity.

And there's a it's clarity because you understand what we profess to believe as a church.

In that process, we want to hear what you profess to believe, and then we're clear that we're going to love one another as Scripture has called us to love.

And so that clarity, I think, is a kindness.

Maybe that's a phrase you've heard that clarity is kindness.

It's kind to be clear about things.

Sometimes we need to be crystal clear on things.

They're just so precise and so clear.

And it just comes naturally.

Other times we think we're being clear, or we have to work really, really hard to be clear.

It doesn't come easy often.

Sometimes we think we're clear and we're just not.

It's just really confusing.

But the blessing of Jesus Christ is when he came, he came to earth, and when he began his public ministry, he began by being very clear.

And this was a great kindness of the Lord.

He declares from the outset what he is, who he is, and what he is doing, what his mission is, what he has come to do.

Again, we'll be looking at verses 14 through 44 of Luke 4.

And we'll just take these kind of chunks at a time this morning.

Before we get right to the text, I just want to remind us a little bit of the backstory.

Here in chapter 3 and chapter 4.

In chapter 3, we see Jesus coming, being baptized by John the Baptist.

He's being affirmed by God the Father.

He's being, in a sense, anointed by the Holy Spirit for public ministry.

There's this lineage that we're given showing his connection to the first Adam as He is the last Adam, the better Adam.

And then he heads into the wilderness, into temptation for 40 days, being tempted in all ways, yet not sinning.

And he fights temptation with God's word by obeying God's word, obeying the commandments that God gave the Israelites after they wandered in the desert for 40 years, before they headed into the promised land.

Jesus, the Messiah, kept the word.

And as the second and the best and the last Adam.

And then he begins his public ministry, picking it up in verse 14, right after the temptation of Christ.

And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.

And the report about him went out through all the surrounding country.

And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

And he 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.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written.

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?

Of uh excuse me, and he said to them, Doubtless you will call you will quote to me this proverb, physician, heal yourself.

What we have heard you did at Capurnum, do here in your home town as well.

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

But in truth I tell you, 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.

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 they could throw him down the cliff.

But passing through their midst, he went away.

This first scene.

As we go through this text this morning, there's things we're just going to notice and pick up about Jesus.

And one of the things you're going to see is that the Sabbath day, he went to the synagogue and usually taught or read the scriptures.

It's a pattern for him.

So he comes to the place where he had been brought up.

Goes to the synagogue and he asks for the scroll, and they bring the scroll of Isaiah.

Obviously, there's no chapters and numbers.

So he's just scrolling and he finds what we call chapter 61, beginning of verse 1, and he reads to them this prophecy from Isaiah.

That the Spirit of the Lord is upon him.

Now, anyone who is familiar with the happenings, right, what's been kind of going on in the region, they would be probably immediately think, yeah, remember a while back, a couple months ago, when Jesus was baptized and the heavens were ripped open and God the Father spoke, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove came down and rested on him.

I remember that.

As Jesus says, the Spirit of the Lord's upon me.

Why?

Because he has anointed me, Christ says.

To proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year the Lord's favor.

Verse 19 there, for these Israelites, these Jewish people, that year of the Lord's favor would have, in their minds, meant the Messiah.

The Messiah, the chosen one, the promised one, that all the prophecies were about.

That he's the one coming, the year of the Lord's favor.

And there would have been this moment there.

Remembering the baptism, remembering all the connections and all these things that Christ is doing and he's now saying.

Was he come?

He's come to bring good news to the poor.

We're a poor people.

Liberty to the captives.

We're an enslaved people.

The Romans are living over us.

We're bound and innocence blind because we're not free.

We're oppressed.

The Lord has come to free his people.

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant.

And he sits down.

And everyone's looking.

Now it's just kind of a different culture, obviously.

I think most people were standing, and the teacher would sit, not opposite.

But Jesus would have been a rabbi, a teacher, right?

So everyone was showing him honor, great honor.

And then they say, as after he finishes this, in verse 22, all spoke well of him.

They marveled at his gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

The end of verse 20 says, and everyone was fixed on him.

And this is the interesting thing.

Like when you think about the message of Christianity, the message of Jesus.

Is not verse 18, 19 it?

That Jesus Christ is come, the Spirit of the Lord is upon him.

He has been tasked by the Spirit with this purpose to go and proclaim good news to the poor.

That he has come to proclaim liberty to those who are captive and liberty to those who are oppressed.

That those who are blind might see.

You think about your own life and what has maybe brought you to the faith or to a church or to be around Christians.

In some form of regard, you understand yourself to be poor.

You understand yourself in some way to be someone who is captive.

Someone who is oppressed.

Someone who is blind.

The things your heart reveal this.

If you if you just take a moment and listen, and if you have eyes just to look around you and look at the world, and you see so much oppression, you see so much physical poverty.

You see so much moral poverty, so much emotional poverty.

You see oppression everywhere.

People enslaved to lies.

Lies about what the world can give them.

Lies about what they deserve or should have in life.

Lies about who they are.

Oh the lies that they tell themselves.

You see people blind.

They're just they're blind to God, to the things of God, to the goodness around them, to God's grace in their life.

They're blind to their own sin.

Worst of all, they're blind to their need for a savior.

They're blind to these things.

The Jews had the law.

They had the Old Testament, right?

The Old Covenant and the law.

And as we read last week or a couple weeks ago in Romans 7, Paul makes clear the law has been given so that we would know our sin, that we would know we need a Savior.

And so they knew what it meant to be kind of poor in a sense, or captive, or oppressed.

But for them, they had God's revealed word, and they were God's people.

So they didn't view themselves personally as in their soul as being poor or being blind or their spirit being oppressed and being captive.

For them, it was physical, literal.

We have a temple that was destroyed and hasn't been rebuilt.

We have this occupying force called the Romans here dictating to us how we're going to live.

We have shame on us, and we're God's people.

For them, verse 18, it was very physical, literal.

And what Jesus is going after is the spiritual.

He's saying, listen, you're blind, you're poor, you're oppressed, you're enslaved.

And I have come to make, to change all that, to make it all from bad to good, to bring good news that there are riches for you in heaven.

To bring freedom to those who are captive spiritually, those who are in bondage spiritually, to bring sight to those who are spiritually blind and dead.

To liberate those who are oppressed.

To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, the Messiah.

Not a Messiah, which could mean an anointed one, someone who has the Holy Spirit is anointed, but the Messiah, the one, the Christ, has come.

Man, they would have been so excited.

Is this true?

Like this is, we watch this guy grow up.

This is not this Joseph's son?

Is he really the one who's gonna kick out the Romans and help rebuild the temple and bring all the glory of mankind back to this place?

He sits back down and he keeps teaching them.

Sure, you'll probably quote ask me to quote this proverb or quote the proverb to me.

You're doing these great things over here, why don't you do these things over here?

And then he gives them a sharp rebuke.

And what he's telling them in the next several verses is that although there was this famine or this time on the earth during Elijah when it did not rain for six and a half years and it created this great famine.

There wasn't relief wasn't brought to Israel.

Relief wasn't brought to the children of Abraham.

Relief came to a Gentile, to a non-Hebrew woman in the land of Sidon, a widow.

Relief wasn't brought to the king or the royal family, or to the sons, but to a widow, Gentile woman.

And then in the days of Elisha, there were many lepers.

Many people had leprosy.

There's difficulty, but Elisha was there, and who was cleansed?

Naaman, a Syrian.

Again, not a child of Abraham, not in the covenant family, a Syrian.

And then what's their response in 28?

When they heard all these things, everyone was filled with wrath.

And they rose up to kill Jesus.

It's amazing how quickly things change.

He stands up to read Isaiah 61, a passage that they would have had memorized, knew well, a passage that they had hooked their hopes and dreams to.

That there would be a Messiah who would come and liberate them physically, do things for them physically.

And here, after some crazy events happen, this brother stands up.

We've heard him teach.

We know he knows the word so well.

No one speaks like him.

Everyone's fixed on him when he's reading.

And he stands up and says, I'm, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

I just want to pause for a moment.

And just to step into this time and place.

When Isaiah wrote this, he longed to see it fulfilled.

When Jews for or Hebrews and Israelites for hundreds of years read Isaiah 61, they longed to see it fulfilled.

They longed.

There was their hope that, man, this is going to happen one day.

This is going to happen eventually.

They would tell their children when they were young, eventually this will be fulfilled.

And their children would grow up and older and older and tell their children, and then didn't die, and it wasn't fulfilled.

And they would tell their children, and on it would go for generation after generation after generation.

And here in Nazareth, in the synagogue on the Sabbath, it's fulfilled.

It has been fulfilled.

There's just this stillness.

Is this really it?

Is this a happening?

And then Jesus goes on and says, essentially, you don't love God, but you love what God can do for you.

And what do they do?

They try to kill him for it.

They try to kill him.

And that's the theme for the rest of his ministry.

He speaks hard truths.

And people want to kill him for that.

Jesus is telling us who he is and what he is here to do.

And in the next breath, we see human nature on full display.

Full display here.

If you don't believe in the depravity of man, that unless the Lord were to come and reveal himself to us, that there's no way that we believe in him, this is what the text is saying.

Here, in a moment, they're hearing the promises.

They're thinking of what they understand the promises to mean.

And then Jesus rebukes them and they want to kill him.

He has made no threat to them.

He hasn't said, I'm going to now step out of the temple and slay your families and destroy this whole city.

He doesn't do any of those things.

He goes right after their pride with these two stories.

They want salvation for themselves.

They want their pride built up.

They want to be chosen and set apart in a sense so they can look out over the rest of the world and say, look at us.

We're special.

We're God's people.

He's finally fulfilled his promise.

We have all his power and authority.

And that's not what happened.

That's not what Jesus has come to do.

And he rebukes them.

And their natures full display.

How quickly they change.

I mean, we're talking mere moments.

Fixed on him, marveling at him, to wanting to murder him.

It's interesting.

One commentator said that there's no record that they can find, and I haven't done the research myself to validate this, but it doesn't seem like Jesus ever went to Nazareth again.

He never came to minister to these people again.

I don't know exactly if that's true or not.

But he delivers a rebuke.

And then they fulfill, in a sense, his prophecy.

He's saying, Listen, you're poor.

You're oppressed.

You're slaves.

You're blind.

And he rebukes them.

And they show that they are blind.

They show that they are oppressed.

They show that they are poor, that they are slaves.

And that they do not want the year of the Lord's favor.

They don't want a salvation that just is a spiritual salvation.

They're not spiritually oppressed in their minds.

They're not spiritually blind or captives in their minds.

Their minds are doing okay.

Sure, they could do a little better, couldn't we all?

But when the scales come out at the end of time and we weigh our good and our bad, we're Hebrews, we're gonna be okay.

We're keeping most of the law.

And Jesus came to destroy all that.

So their initi their nature was to destroy him.

Let's keep reading in verse 31.

And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and he was teaching them on the Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching, for his words possessed authority, and in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon.

And he cried out with a loud voice, Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

Have you come to destroy us?

I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be silent and come out of him.

And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done no having done him no harm.

And they all were amazed and said to one another, What is this word?

For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.

And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region.

And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon's house.

Now Simon's mother in law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf, and he stood over her.

And rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them.

Now, when the sun was setting, and all these, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases, brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.

And demons also came out of many, crying, You are the Son of God.

But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.

And when it was day he departed and went into a desolate place.

And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them.

But he said to them, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose.

And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

So again, we in this second passage we understand one that there's this pattern again.

What does Jesus do on the Sabbath?

But he goes to the synagogue and he teaches and he preaches.

And it's easy for us to kind of miss that.

That the priority of Jesus when he was on earth was to gather as was commanded with God's people and to teach and preach the word.

There's a phrase for this that we use, it's not original to us by any means, called the ordinary means of grace.

And the ordinary means of grace is that God primarily works through his people, through his word and his spirit in prayer as the church gathers together.

It's easy for us to look and see the miraculous things that Jesus was doing.

And think, well, we just got to go do those things.

We just got to cast out demons and heal people.

But Jesus is prioritizing, assembling, gathering, teaching the word.

He's not neglecting these things.

We see this similar pattern in the early church.

They move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, the day of the Lord's resurrection.

As Hebrews 10 tells us, they're commanded to not forsake the gathering of the church.

So we understand that Jesus is prioritizing, it's a pattern.

And he's teaching.

He's teaching the word.

And sometimes in our day and age, people they want to look at the Old Testament.

They just want to say, well, it's kind of confusing.

It's really big and overwhelming.

There's a lot of bad, dark things I don't like.

And I'm just going to primarily stick to the New Testament.

It's not as boring, it's not as dry.

We'll stick to the New Testament.

We're not denying the Old Testament.

We're not saying it's not Scripture.

But functionally, the way we live is we predominantly are in the New Testament.

We neglect the Old Testament.

Why is Jesus teaching?

And what is he teaching?

Well, the scriptures say that all scripture point to Christ.

That everything in the Old Testament is pointing to Christ.

It's revealing and teaching.

And so he's helping the people understand all this is about me.

All of the prophets, the genealogies, the instructions of how to build the temple.

It's all pointing to Christ.

He's faithfully teaching them.

We also see that Jesus has tremendous authority and power.

As he gathers and he teaches, it's with great authority and power.

People marvel at his teaching.

And this should be a warning to us, especially as Christians.

We can listen to good preaching.

Get some good preaching and podcasts or on the TV or YouTube somewhere.

And you just, man, you just love good preaching.

I love good preaching.

And I can just get to a spot where I'm listening to good preaching, but it's not having much effect on my soul.

I'm nodding, yeah, amen.

That's good.

That's good stuff.

But I'm not then repenting.

I'm not confessing my sin.

I'm not asking others to help me fight sin.

I'm not praising the Lord as I should.

It's easy to enjoy and marvel at good teaching and preaching and yet go on our way.

Not looking to repent, not looking to change, not asking ourselves, do I really believe that?

If someone could run a tape of my life for the last 72 hours or 72 days, would the theme that they picked up on in that time, after watching all the footage of my life, be like, man, this person believes God's word.

This person is seeking to follow God's word.

And one of the tricks of the enemy is for us just to hear good preaching, marvel at it, and then go out and forget it.

And not apply it to our lives.

Not ask the Lord to keep working in us.

Jesus is coming.

And again, he's contending against people who want a mere physical deliverance.

And he's happy to help with these things, right?

He does some miracles here.

He's casting out demons, he's rebuking evil spirits.

And they're always, again, we talked about this last week, like Satan has really good theology.

The demons have great theology.

And they're saying, we know who you are.

What are you going to do with us?

And he's rebuking them to be silent.

And this can feel kind of puzzling because earlier, just a few verses, Jesus is saying, Hey, I'm the Messiah, by the way.

I'm the one you've been waiting for.

And now he's rebuking these spirits.

It feels confusing.

And different commentators and people have different opinions.

One that I think is compelling and seems to make sense the most is that Jesus is not wanting them to be distracted.

That he's just here to liberate a bunch of, do a bunch of physical things, cast out demons.

And then people think, well, this is the Christ, this is what he's just come to do, is these things.

Bring physical healing, bring physical deliverance, cast out demons.

Rather, Jesus is going to do spiritual things as well.

He's going to bring spiritual liberation, freedom to people who don't even know that they're in bondage.

He's displaying his power.

It's easy for us at times to acknowledge that we are spiritual beings.

And we live in a very materialistic culture.

I don't mean just like materialism.

I mean like the worldview that the only thing exists is material and matter.

If I can't see it or touch it, can't measure it, it doesn't exist.

There's no spiritual realm.

And Jesus is here, is rebuking that obviously, but it's easy for us, even as Christians, because we live in a culture where we hear about some kind of spiritual activity or things and we're just like, whoa.

Like I thought that stuff only happened like in Africa or, you know, in South America.

Like there's demon possession here in our community.

There's spiritual forces at work among us.

Yes, there are.

There's oppression.

There's enslavement.

There's blindness.

Those are all spiritual things.

We are way more in the spiritual realm than we would ever like to admit, or even think we are at times.

And Jesus has come to bring deliverance.

He's come to teach, to rebuke.

But people have to understand what he's come for.

We see that the crowd is following him.

He even tries to get away to a desolate place.

He's like, guys, I just need some rest.

Right?

Jesus is fully man.

And he's going away to find a desolate place, to be alone, to restore his soul.

And people follow him there.

Why?

Because they want this.

Like, who doesn't want physical healing?

Who doesn't want to be set free from dark, oppressive demons in their life?

What's remarkable, I think, here in the end of verse 40, it says that Jesus laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.

And that's not what we the pattern.

The pattern isn't that every time Jesus is somewhere, he heals and delivers everyone there.

Jesus just said that a few verses ahead, that there was a famine in the land.

God provided food for one widow woman.

There was leprosy everywhere.

God healed one man.

Yet this scene right here in these verses, in this place, Jesus heals all who were there.

And they're coming after him.

And he said to them, I must go and cast out demons and heal the sick everywhere else.

That's not what he said.

I have to go and help everyone else find their fortune and their meaning in life and find that perfect spouse and find their career.

That's not what he says.

He says, I'm going to preach the gospel, the kingdom of God, to other places, to other towns, for this is why I was sent.

And then the last scene, he's preaching in a synagogue again.

And how it how easy it is for us to misunderstand when we say Jesus has come to preach the good news.

And we understand that intellectually in our heads.

Salvation, free from sin.

We're no longer slaves to those things.

But how quickly we do the same thing that the Jews did.

We translate that.

Now give me what I want here now.

Heal me of my physical ailment now.

Provide for me financially now.

Give me clarity on who I should marry and provide a spouse for me now.

Give me deliverance from these things now.

We heard the message just like they heard the message.

And we're like, yeah, I want the Messiah.

I will take the Messiah.

Can I have some of the Messiah?

Can he do those things for me?

And quickly we think, well, I'm not that blind.

I'm not that oppressed.

I'm not that spiritually poor.

I need, what I need is Christ to give me these desires of my heart.

And what Christ is saying is, your desires apart from me aren't even good.

Your desires, and some of them might even sound good, but if I'm not at the center of those things, if I'm not the focal point, if I'm not the beginning and the end of your desires, then they're not good.

And they're not what you need.

And I'm here to give you, as the Messiah, what you need.

And that is a new heart.

That is new desires, a new nature.

You need a savior.

So Jesus makes it clear who he is, that he is the Messiah.

He says that with his words, he displays that with his actions.

He keeps serving the people sacrificially.

Not like the kings of old, not like the wicked judges who kept using their authority for themselves.

He keeps sacrificing for the people.

And then he will make the ultimate sacrifice for their salvation.

And that compels us and should push us.

So my question to you as we close church this morning is these claims that Jesus makes, that he is the Messiah, that he is the Messiah, that he is also the judge.

He gives life to whom he gives life, he gives breath and salvation to whom he desires.

These claims of Jesus, that he is just and right and good in all that he does.

Do you believe him?

Do you believe that he is the Messiah?

Do you believe what he says about you is true?

That you're in need of a Savior.

That not just like a little bit of need.

Like you're you have no other hope.

Every part of you is hopeless without Christ.

Do you believe his actions?

His ability to heal, the power and authority that he has?

Come to preach the good news.

Do you believe these things?

Do you believe his selflessness?

That he has come and given himself again and again.

It's interesting when we think about Jesus giving of himself.

It's easy for us.

It's like, well, I've got to give and give and give and give too.

But Jesus also rested.

He went away and took time and he rested.

Do we rest?

Do we take time to be renewed in the things of the Lord?

And just to be honest, you know, we live in a culture and there's our heritage in the Midwest and in America.

You know, we're industrious people.

We get a lot done, and that's a there's a good thing element to that.

But what's the downside, the negative side to that is we don't rest well.

We work and we work and then we come home and we work and somehow we go on vacation and we work.

We don't rest well.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Jesus prioritized time away.

Time to rest.

But the thing is, he's not just like coming out like, hey, I just need to get my uh podcast on, I'm gonna cut the grass.

It's a good thing.

Or I'm just gonna put some football on and chill.

Another good thing.

He's working, he's prioritizing being with the Father, communing through the Spirit, being renewed.

And that is a challenge.

So often we work hard and then we really don't know how to rest.

We don't know how to be renewed, to take a season away, let alone 15 minutes or an hour, to just be renewed in the things of the Lord.

But Jesus makes these claims that he's the Messiah.

He has these actions that he's a healer.

He comes with power and authority.

He is selfless again and again and again and again, and then he rests.

How do we respond to that?

How do you respond to that?

Do you believe it?

Just not sure what to do with it?

C.S.

Lewis has the really famous words that Jesus is either a liar or he's a lunatic or he is the Lord.

He can't be just a good teacher, a moral thing, a moral rabbi.

It's not the same, but it's similar.

Like either we believe this or we don't.

So my my pressing, what I would press on you this morning and myself is that we would encourage one another all the more.

That we would respond to Jesus with obedience and with joyful faith.

That we would look to Him and say, Yes, we believe those things.

Help us in our unbelief.

Lord, we believe that your way is right.

Help us to walk in that.

That we would say, we trust you.

When you say you've come to deliver, that you will deliver.

That there isn't anything in our life that you cannot deliver us from.

And sometimes, for some people, that deliverance is here and now in a moment.

I mean, there's stories in our congregation of people who've been delivered from things in a moment.

Just freed.

It's gone.

But for most things, there is a putting to death of the sin.

There is a crucifying of our fleshly selfish desires.

As we look to the ultimate hope, when Christ will return and set all things right, our sinful man will be separated from us.

We will be free completely and utterly to worship our Savior as we have been designed.

So let us press into those things.

Let us selflessly serve.

Let us truly believe that when Jesus says He's come, we are in need of a Savior.

That those around us are in need of a Savior.

That we would be bold to share the good news of Christ with those around us who might scoff at us.

Or might just be like, hey man, happy that you found religion.

Good for you.

Don't press that on me.

But that we would be tireless and bold in these things.

That we would be a people of prayer.

That we would not sit back and say, Well, God, I'm okay if you do this.

But if you do this, I'm not okay with that.

I'm happy to serve you.

I'm happy to have you as my Messiah and my Savior.

As long as you bring salvation the way I want it to be brought, and as long as you liberate the things I want you to liberate me from.

As Jesus said, I've come to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, to bring deliverance to God's people.

May we have hearts that long to be delivered and pray for the deliverance of others.

Because as Jesus said, I'm sent to preach the good news as followers of Jesus.

So we have now been sent to proclaim the good news one to another, to our children, to our neighbors, to be faithful to this.

And church, I'm right here with you.

It's so easy to be caught up in just the lull of the world.

We're all gonna go home, we've got to eat, feed our kids, or do homework or some tasks.

Wake up tomorrow, it's Monday, the week starts, or the second day of the week, the work week starts.

It's so hard to hold the tension of these massive realities about who God is and what his word says with just the mundaness of life.

I want to encourage you to not grow weary and not grow bored, to not dismiss obedience in the small things.

When Christ is saying to us, come and follow me, he's saying it in the really big things.

Trust him for deliverance, trust him for salvation, for freedom.

And also when you're feeding your kids in the morning, when you need to unplug and you need to rest and be with the Lord.

When there are burdens of work in life that feel the that they want to crush you, the mundaness of it all, that we would be a people who follow Christ day in and day out.

And so when people look at our life, we're not Christ.

But they look at the life of Christ and they look at our lives and say, man, this person's got some issues, and they got some baggage and they got some stuff going on.

But man, I do see them.

There's a pattern.

They're following Christ.

They're not following the ways of the world, they're following Christ.

And may we respond with obedient, joyful hearts.

Because we have a Christ who has come for us, revealed himself to us, delivered us from our sin.

Because he lived a perfect life, died for our sin, paying the price for it on the cross.

So we would walk in obedience.

And may we not grow tired of that gospel message.

We need it, I need it, you need it.

If you're bored with it, I'm just telling you, you need it more than you realize.

Let's pray.