Fulfilled: The Chosen King: Spirit Filled with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

Well, I do want to welcome you to MetaCurch.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here.

And wherever you're joining us from, I'm so glad that you are joining us.

If you're here in one of our physical locations, if you're here in Helotus, I'm so glad that you came in.

And if you're with us online or even watching Archived in the Future, I hope that this message will bless you.

Now, we just read Jesus quoting out of Isaiah that he came to bring good news to the poor.

And we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

So with the Christmas season upon us, there's something we have done every year for years here at MetaCurch.

We partner with the ministry called Arms of Hope.

And Arms of Hope during the Christmas season is specifically standing in the gap for under-resourced single moms.

Now you guys know this is near and dear to my heart.

When I met my wife, Katie, she was a single mom.

I quickly learned that single mothers are absolute superheroes.

It's incredible what they do and how they take care of their kids.

And uh sometimes Christmas is hard.

So there's a lot of ways to get at that.

Um, one thing a lot of people do, we thank God for this.

A lot of people do toy drives.

It's a wonderful idea.

Um, however, the reason we go with arms of hope is because of their strategy.

Uh, what you're gonna see on your way out of our services today, if you're here at one of our venues, is that there are little stars that you can grab that have different dollar amounts on them.

You can pray about that and what makes sense for your family in this season.

Next Sunday, this timeline's important.

You pick up a star this Sunday, you come back next Sunday, you bring a gift card of that amount.

All of the instructions will be on there.

The reason we like this is because we are not buying the toys for their kids.

We are giving the mothers the dignity of going shopping and buying their kids what their kids actually want.

Does that make sense?

And so every time we have an opportunity to stand up and to be the church in our community, you guys always rise to the occasion.

Right after service, I hope you'll prayerfully consider partnering with us, partnering with Arms of Hope for this.

Now, uh, we are going through the Gospel of Luke.

If this is your first time with us, we are really, really taking our time.

This first series we have called the Chosen King.

And this is all about the preparation for Jesus to begin his ministry.

I've got some great news, metachurch.

We are 25 weeks into the Gospel of Luke, and Jesus today starts his ministry.

Yeah.

So we have been going through all of the buildup.

The buildup matters because as we see Jesus prepare for his purpose, it demonstrates how we prepare for ours.

And you do need to know this at MetaCurch, we believe God created you on purpose, and he created you with purpose.

And that means you are meant to move and to build God's kingdom, to engage in the spiritual battle that is all around us.

It means you have a ministry.

You don't just come to a ministry at Metachurch.

God has placed a purpose on your life for you to be the light of the world wherever God has placed you in your circle of influence.

And so we're learning all of this from Jesus.

Uh, we just saw the last step.

Jesus was in the wilderness, he went through the temptations.

Man, if you missed those, youtube.com slash metachurch really, really helpful.

You can get caught up on that.

Today, Jesus is going to step out into his ministry.

Now, something a lot of you know about this, uh uh know about me.

I've used this uh analogy a lot.

Um I historically have been a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Anyone else who has been a huge fan, notice I say I I have been currently not so sure, okay?

Uh post-Avengers Endgame.

It's been rough, okay?

Uh we're praying for Doomsday to like come through and make all these loose threads make sense.

Um if you're not like an absolute nerd, the next three minutes are gonna be lost on you, just by the way.

Um, but the Infinity saga, which is Iron Man to Endgame, was like the most killer cinematic moment of my life, okay?

I saw Endgame in theaters, and you know how much theaters cost, and you know how frugal I am.

I went to the theaters four times to watch in game, right?

I was very invested, I went full nerd, I read the blogs, I watched the videos, I knew all the Easter eggs, alternate endings, I knew all the timelines, like I was caught up on all of it, right?

Now it all starts with Iron Man.

And Iron Man really distinguishes the Marvel universe from other superhero universes at the end of the Iron Man movie.

And here's what I mean.

If you think about the DC characters, a big part of their superhero identity is that it is separate and hidden from their real life identity.

So you're not supposed to know that Bruce Wayne is Batman in their world.

You're not supposed to know that Clark Kent is Superman in their world.

Iron Man is different.

It starts off the MCU.

If you remember the end of the movie, Tony Stark, who does not seem much like a hero, stands at a press conference and at the very end, he just lets the cat out of the bag.

He famously says, I am Iron Man, right?

And it shocked everyone in the movies because superheroes are supposed to keep their identity secret.

And it shocked everyone in his fictional world because they had a hard time imagining him as a hero.

Now, to be fair, Tony Stark wasn't much of a hero.

And this is interesting, it's a little bit off topic, but every great hero narrative is really just stealing from the ultimate hero archetype, which is Jesus, which is why the next time he says, I am Iron Man, is when he learns that true heroism comes through self-sacrifice at the end of Avengers Endgame, which was the last good movie in the MCU, right?

So this moment set the course, and people struggled to believe that he was a hero today.

We're gonna see Jesus go to his hometown.

These are the people who know his mom and dad.

They know his siblings, Jude and James, his other siblings.

They watched Jesus grow up, and they're like, yeah, Jesus was kind of a strange kid, but a hero?

Like the guy who's come to save the entire world, his own hometown had a hard time picturing Jesus as the hero of their story.

This moment is really, really important, and it's interesting how Luke situates it.

And I'll I'll show you what I mean by that today.

First, let's get a little bit of context.

Uh, in Luke chapter 4, if you're following along, if you're taking notes, verse 13, it says, After the devil had finished every temptation, he, Jesus, departed from him for a time.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Uh, then in verse 14, it says, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the spirit, and news about him spread throughout the entire vicinity.

I want you to pay attention to this.

Jesus returned in the power of the spirit.

Now, we're going very slowly.

I've mentioned that a lot.

Um, sometimes we have trouble like getting something out of the word, and it's because it's like just something we have to check off every morning, or we feel bad about not reading the Bible.

So we just read it in like three minutes and we read 40 verses, we should read it very fast.

If you'll just slow down, one of the things you'll start noticing is things that are repeated over and over again.

Those things are important.

So just in Luke chapter 4, we see Jesus come out of the baptism waters and he is affirmed by the Spirit.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Then we see him led by the Spirit, we see him filled by the Spirit, and now in verse 14, he goes and starts his ministry in the power of the Spirit.

Now we're trying to understand Jesus in his ministry, and we're trying in in our journey through Luke to know the real Jesus because we're following Jesus, we believe in Jesus, our hope is in Jesus.

We need to know the real Jesus.

And the real Jesus was filled by the Holy Spirit.

And we have a hard time with this, and uh, a lot of Christians are like, I don't really feel the presence of the Holy Spirit.

I'm not sure if I am filled with the Holy Spirit.

And I think it is largely because we have used a very wrong analogy, very incorrect metaphor to understand what it means to be filled by the Spirit.

And so I'm gonna actually show you what I mean.

Uh, most of us think about the filling of the Holy Spirit, kind of like we are a vessel who at any given time carries different amounts of spirit filling.

So you may think like this.

It's like, you know what?

I went to bed listening to worship music, so I'm gonna wake up really filled with the spirit, you know?

But then my spouse woke up a little bit less spirit, you know?

So I prayed about that a little more spirit, and then my children woke up.

No spirit, you know?

I prayed about that a little spirit.

I had to sit in car line.

Uh, if there's anything less than 0% spirit, that's where I'm at.

So I feel bad.

The way to work, a little bit of K love.

That'll fill me right back up with the spirit, you know.

But then my boss is at work, so a little bit, and we just think that we have these different amounts, we're half full of the spirit, we're an eighth full of the spirit.

I don't really feel the spirit today, I don't have the spirit today.

This is an incorrect view of how the Holy Spirit operates in your life, and you need to know that.

We don't get different amounts of the Holy Spirit.

Uh scripture tells us this very plainly.

Paul is writing to the Ephesians, who are a little confused about this as well.

And um, what he tells them is when you put your faith in Jesus, you receive the Holy Spirit, all of the Holy Spirit, and you are sealed by that Holy Spirit until Jesus comes and takes you home.

You have all of the Spirit.

So I'm gonna give you a uh more helpful analogy.

And it comes right out of the text, which is where our thinking should be formed in scripture.

So in the New Testament, which was written in Greek, the word for spirit is the word pneuma.

The same spelling as like pneumatic, like pneumatic pressure.

Uh pneuma refers to air or wind.

And so uh a better metaphor would not be the filling of liquid, uh, it would be opening your sails to the wind of the spirit.

You don't have more or less wind, you're just making yourself available so it can set the direction.

And so if you guys would bring the sailboat out on, oh yeah, we couldn't afford that.

Um I wanted a sailboat, and they said we can afford 0% of a sailboat.

So uh this is different, but it's the same idea.

I don't have a sailboat, I have a trash bag.

Um and as long as the bag is open, then very simply you can just cinch it up and grab a lot of air.

Like a lot, like fully full of air.

Now, this bag did not create the air, the air was already there and already available, it just filled with it.

And so, is it really that easy?

Well, I want to give you two primary reasons that we as Christians are struggling to live lives with our sails filled by the wind of the Holy Spirit.

Uh, the first is very simple, and it's that we are not open to the Holy Spirit.

And so I can do this all day, but if it is closed, it catches no wind.

And so, what do I mean that we are closed to the Holy Spirit?

It is unique, especially here in the West and especially in America.

We seem to be very comfortable in the church with Jesus, we seem to be pretty comfortable with God the Heavenly Father, and we don't think about the Holy Spirit much, and we don't pray to the Holy Spirit much, and we don't sing about the Holy Spirit much.

As a matter of fact, a famous author called the Holy Spirit, the forgotten God.

We know the Son, we know the Father, we forget the Spirit.

And so, are you in fact open to the Holy Spirit?

Are you open to his work?

Are you open to the reality that he has placed gifts in you that you do not know about yet, but you can trust him with?

Are you open enough to the spirit to take steps of faith, even if you feel out of your depth, trusting that the Holy Spirit will fill you and fill in the gaps when you are walking in God's ways?

Do you pray to the Holy Spirit?

Do you ask him to move in you?

Do you ask him to come in and change you?

Do you worship the Holy Spirit?

For most of us, the Holy Spirit is the forgotten God.

We are not open, and so we are not being filled.

Can I tell you the second problem?

We have to be open and we have to be empty.

And most of us are not living lives that are empty and ready to be filled.

And instead, we fill our lives with all kinds of things.

We fill our life with pride.

We talked about this in the temptations.

This is self-reliance, this is self-protection, this is selfish ambition.

I can do it on my own.

This is living to build your own kingdom instead of the kingdom of God.

If you are living to try and attain fame and status and affluence and influence that is for your benefit and not for the benefit of the kingdom of God, you are trying to sail your boat against the winds of the Holy Spirit, and you will not recognize that you have the wholeness of the Spirit, and you just are not empty.

We fill our life with all kinds of things.

We fill our life with fear.

The Spirit of God drives out fear, and yet we live with great fear.

This is also self-protection.

This is worry about the future.

This is constantly telling the worst narrative, assuming the worst about everyone around you, unable to love them properly, because if you were to open yourself up to them, who knows how they might be able to hurt you.

We fill our lives with all kinds of things.

We are filled with envy.

We are the comparative generation.

We are constantly online.

We are digitally informed.

We are seeing filtered lives who have what we do not have, who are living how we are not living, who are taking the vacation I cannot afford, who drive the car that I want.

We are filled with envy.

Envy is the thief of joy.

We know that.

And joy is a fruit of the Spirit.

Envy and joy cannot occupy you at the same time.

We fill our lives with all kinds of things.

We fill our life with lust.

Lust has been a problem for as long as humans have been in existence, but never before has it been so accessible to us all of the time.

The Holy Spirit is leading you, guiding and directing you into a great marriage, and yet you cannot receive that great marriage because all of the emotion and intimacy that is meant for your wife is going to strangers online.

We are not empty and we are not open, and so we are not experiencing the Holy Spirit.

This is so critical.

I've shared with you before.

I hope that it edifies you.

Um, I pray the same prayer every single time before I step on stage.

And I pray to the Holy Spirit, and I ask for the Holy Spirit to empty me, because I promise you, I know me.

You don't need me on this stage.

You don't need my ideas, you don't need my ambition, you don't need my pride, you don't need my interpretation, you need me to be an empty conduit of the Holy Spirit so Spirit can speak to the Spirit of God inside of you and give you exactly what it is that you need.

And so I beg the Holy Spirit to just empty me of me and then to fill me.

Fresh filling, fresh clarity, fresh power, fresh direction.

Are you open to that?

Are you open to actually seeking the Holy Spirit?

And are you emptying yourself of what might be getting in the way?

This is imperative for us to understand because Jesus' ministry is marked by being filled and aware of the Holy Spirit at all times.

Jesus is always open and always empty and always moving according to the Father's will through the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

And that is the path to your most powerful life as well.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, let's look again.

Verse 14.

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread throughout the entire vicinity.

Verse 15, he was teaching in their synagogues, he was being praised by everyone.

Let me give you some context of what's happening here.

For those of you who are taking notes, you might want to jot some of this down.

Jesus has begun his ministry, and Luke has decided he is going to tell this part of the story out of chronological order.

Let's ask the question: why is Luke writing this document?

Luke did not have any conception that 2,000 years later a long-haired, tattooed pastor would be in San Antonio, Texas, reading out of this document.

That's not why he wrote it.

He tells us in the first four verses, he wrote it to his friend, so his friend would be convinced of all the things that Jesus had fulfilled among us.

And so Luke just showed his hand.

Jesus is in the ministry.

He says, News about him is spreading.

Matthew tells this story in chronological order.

And so we know that Jesus has been going to the synagogues teaching.

His teachings are blowing minds.

He has healed people, he's healed the blind, he has healed a leper.

He's called some of his disciples already.

He has people who have committed their lives to following him, and he has even cast out a demon through the power of God.

So all of this is spreading.

He's in Galilee, just so you kind of have a picture.

Jerusalem is the urban center, Galilee is rural, Nazareth is the sticks, all right?

He's in Galilee going synagogue to synagogue, and all there is are rumors and whispers.

Did you hear about this Jesus guy?

Odd enough, he's from Nazareth.

I heard he healed a guy.

I heard he cast out a demon.

I heard he's preaching and blowing people's minds.

Nobody could go IG live on one of these miracles.

You know what I'm saying?

Like no one has proof.

His sermons are not broadcast on YouTube, so it's just rumors and whispers.

And Jesus is about to pull up to his hometown.

Verse 16.

Says he came to Nazareth where he'd been brought up.

As usual, so this is what he's been doing in Galilee.

As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read.

Let me kind of break down what this would look like.

The synagogues were basically representations of the temple locally.

And so what they did in their order of service was largely prescribed by the temple.

In other words, they weren't getting up just like willy-nilly deciding what they were preaching on that day.

It was prescribed liturgically, which means there was an order they were expected to follow.

A synagogue service would kind of look like this.

They would come in, they would sing a few songs, typically out of the book of Psalms.

Then they had some verses that were very important to the Jewish culture.

Everyone had them memorized, they'd recite them together.

After that, there would be a reading from the law.

That's the first five books of the Old Testament, also called the Pentateuch.

After that, they would read a passage from the prophets.

Now, if there was someone qualified like a rabbi, they would be allowed to read.

They would stand while they read the word, and then they would sit down and they would teach, expounding and giving revelation about that word.

I thought about having a chair here and actually demonstrating my ADHD.

I was like, I'm not sitting down.

I'm gonna just keep standing and preaching.

So that's what's expected.

That's what usually happens, and the way it works is the temple has told you your passage.

And so they're not working out of a leather-bound Bible, they're in a scroll.

And so before synagogue even starts, the leader of the synagogue they would bring it right to that passage and just set it there.

So all you had to do was open and just preach what the temple told you to preach.

Does that make sense?

You have to keep that in mind for the next verse.

Verse 17.

The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to Jesus, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it is written.

What suggested here is that they handed him the text that was supposed to be read, and Jesus starts scrolling.

He's not going to read what the temple has asked him to read.

He scrolls and unrolls until he finds what he wants to read.

Now, here's my guess.

My guess in this Jewish culture, where customs and norms were everything, tradition was everything, that as soon as he started scrolling, there was an audible gasp in the synagogue.

I bet at least one person was like, No, he didn't.

I was trying to think of like what might be something similar here.

Because we're not built on a lot of tradition here, but I was imagining this like if I had a guest preacher, and I was like, Man, I'm so excited for Pastor So and so, they're here today.

I've asked him to preach out of Luke 4.

Man, God's gonna have a word from us in Luke 4.

They were telling me they know Luke 4.

I've opened it for him right here, so he's gonna come out.

Man, welcome Pastor So and so, so he can preach on Luke 4.

And he came up just real stoic and just started turning.

You know, even here, some of y'all would be like, Pastor, he's not, you're not obeying the pastor.

What's he guessed he's like, Daniel chapter 3?

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

That's not Luke 4.

Like, what are we doing?

There was an assignment.

If you know where this story is headed, the people in Nazareth do not take well to Jesus' time in the synagogue.

The story ends with them trying to throw him off of a cliff.

Jesus comes in and he interrupts the norm.

He chooses his own scripture.

You need to know this.

Um, Jesus gets to do what Jesus wants to do because he's Jesus.

Amen?

Amen.

Now I tricked you because that's easy to say amen to, but let me let me put it in a different frame that's gonna be harder to say amen.

Jesus gets to interrupt your life, your plans, your success, your dreams, your relationships, your children, your life in any way he wants to, because he's Jesus.

Man, we love that when it's the Pharisees.

Boo, Pharisees, yay, Jesus, interrupt them.

The temple's corrupt, get them, Jesus.

It's like, what about when it's you and you've had an expectation from the time you were seven years old, and now you're 37 years old, and it still hasn't come to pass, and you're wondering where God is at and why your life isn't going according to plan.

It's a lot harder when it's you, and the wedding ceremony was great, and the reception was great, and the honeymoon was real great, but then three weeks later you're like, Who do I call for a divorce?

Like, this is crazy.

I didn't sign up for this.

When you've like really built a career at your job, and you've done really, really well, but you're also one of the higher earners.

So when things go down to the left, you're the one who got let go.

It's very, very difficult to have Jesus interrupt our life.

And let me promise you something.

If you are going to for real, for real, try to follow Jesus, like deny myself, pick up my cross, follow after him.

Let me promise you something.

Jesus is going to interrupt your life.

Let me tell you why.

I know that.

I can promise you that.

Because he's God and you're not.

He can see the end of history from the beginning of history and the beginning of history from the end.

He has all knowledge, he has all power, he has all wisdom, and you can barely book a flight and get to the airport on time.

So, like, he's a better planner than you.

We often are very short-sighted, and so we start heading down paths of convenience and affluence, and we do not have the foresight to understand we are actually on a path to destruction, and so Jesus is gonna step in your path and go, I hate to interrupt you, but I love you, and you're headed towards death.

And what's really fascinating about how God created us is he created us with freedom of the will.

And so typically, Jesus will even give you the freedom when he interrupts you to push him to the side and continue down your path.

You need to know this when Jesus interrupts you, it kind of doesn't matter if it makes sense to you or not, because if he's God and you're not God, his idea is better than yours.

And I can't see it and I can't perceive it, but I can trust God anyway.

Here's what Jesus knows: for you to reach your potential, it will require sacrifice and it will require suffering.

The two things our culture avoids at any and all cost.

Jesus interrupts us with consequence.

Maybe you haven't thought of it that way.

He allows you the natural consequence of your sin to get your attention and turn you back towards his path.

So often we've gone so far down a path, we've sunk so much time and so many costs into it, we just keep incurring the consequence because it feels too costly to turn around.

We think our reputation is on the line, our pride will not allow us to admit that we were wrong.

God will put people in your path, he'll set believers in your path.

You know, in the Old Testament, there was a guy who was headed right towards his death, and God used his donkey and he wouldn't listen to his donkey.

He kept whipping his donkey.

I'm gonna avoid a joke I can make right there, and then it's like God wanted his attention so bad the donkey started talking.

He went full Shrek just to get this guy's.

It's like God is interrupting your life for your good, and typically he will let you push him to the side and walk right on to your own destruction.

And God will be patient, and Jesus will wait until you've walked all the way off the cliff and hit rock bottom, and he will still be there very lovingly.

Like, are you ready now?

Can you trust me now?

Can we get on the right path now?

Now that you've tried it your way, I'm here.

Let's do this.

Okay, so you're gonna get interrupted.

Um, the interruptions are for your good.

You should allow the interruptions, you should listen carefully to them, and you should choose the course that the Holy Spirit has set you on.

Can I tell you what will determine whether or not you allow the interruptions of Jesus to turn you around?

It will be whether or not you are empty and open to the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Have you opened your sails to the wind of the Spirit in order to allow him to change the direction of your life?

Jesus is not content with where he has been asked to preach.

He's not there really to preach a sermon, he is there to make a statement and to let people know who he is and why he has come.

He's in the book of Isaiah.

It's interesting.

I I may like publish this somewhere where you can see it at some point.

We're only like four and a half chapters in, three and a half chapters into Luke.

I have a running list of all of the cross-references that Luke has already taken us to all over scripture.

It's incredible.

A few weeks back, I guess a couple months ago at this point, we spent a lot of time talking about the Babylonian exile.

You guys remember this?

Where because of Israel's sin, Babylon conquered them and carried them off to a far and foreign land where they had to live as strangers in exile, away from their home.

One of the prophets that God sent to the Babylonian exiles was Isaiah.

This is what Jesus is quoting from.

Look at the first phrase in verse 18.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me.

I'm telling you, if we do not figure out how to be open and empty to the Spirit, we will not know how to follow Jesus.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

We can talk all we want about why we think Jesus came to earth.

Jesus just told us why he came.

Why did he come?

He came to preach good news to the poor.

Jesus will later say in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed.

Happy, fulfilled, blessed are the poor in spirit.

You know what that means?

It means that they are not looking to the things of the world to fill them, they are looking only to God.

He has come to preach good news to those who have not found fulfillment in anything of this world and are willing to finally look to God.

He has come not just to preach good news to the poor, but to release the captives.

Let me ask you something.

We come here to be very brutally honest, so that this isn't just a religious exercise to come to a Sunday service.

Are you being held captive?

Are you held captive by your thoughts?

Your thoughts constantly pull you into anxiety, pull you into worry, pull you into pride.

Are you held captive by a habit?

Or maybe something that was a habit and now is a full-blown addiction?

Are you held captive by a toxic relationship?

Have you sunk five years into a romantic relationship?

You moved in together, you bought a dog together, but this person is not who God has for you.

They are not on the same faith journey as you.

They are leading you astray, they are pulling you back from your purpose.

You're cohabitating, you haven't been married, but you don't know how to break up, you feel captive.

Are you held captive by a toxic friend group?

You're nervous, you don't make friends well, you have these friends from back in the day, you're BC before Jesus' days.

Every time you hang out with them, if you're honest, you're not a witness to them, they are pulling you away.

Are you held captive by bad theology?

You come in and you spend all Sunday service just fighting with me in your mind.

Because you've been sold a version of Jesus who's supposed to be a genie.

You can rub that lamp, you can get whatever you want.

You've been sold a version of our Heavenly Father who is nothing but angry.

You have been sold sold a version of Scripture where you can't actually have assurance of your salvation.

You're held captive by bad theology, people taking the culture and putting it on the word instead of holding up the word and using it as the lens to see culture.

What did Jesus come to do?

Good news to the poor, release of the captive, sight to the blind.

We know this literally.

As Jesus says this in Nazareth, he has literally opened the eyes of the blind.

But you need to know this.

There are men and women who have 20-20 vision and are as blind as any person born physically blind.

You cannot see the things of God, you cannot see people for who they are, you cannot believe the best about anyone.

You are not aware of the spiritual world, you are not aware of what God is doing.

You don't see how you affect people, you don't know how you come off.

People have tried to tell you you're a little harsh, you know?

Hey, you're a little pride, you come off a little prideful.

You're like, you don't know me, bro.

You can't judge me.

Only God can judge.

God is judging you.

You're prideful.

He's put someone in your life to interrupt you, so you will stop being like that.

You don't know how you're diminishing your spouse.

You don't know how you are not showing up for your kids.

You are blind to how you're prioritizing your work over your family.

You're blind.

It's like Jesus will open your eyes, but you have to be willing to see.

You have to have faith enough to allow him to set the direction.

He releases the captive sight to the blind.

He sets free the oppressed.

It's like captives oppressed.

What's the difference?

If you are captive, you got there by your own behavior.

If you are oppressed, you got there by someone else's.

Jesus has the keys to release you from both.

Most of us are both.

We're held captive by some of our own worst ways, our own false narratives.

And we also know what it's like to be oppressed.

Not because of anything we've done, just somebody who is against us, who has set themselves against us, or maybe even the enemies of God have set somebody against us.

What is it like to be oppressed?

Some of you have felt oppressed from the devil himself.

It's only the power of Jesus who can set us free.

Now, all of those make sense to us, but I'm gonna put verse 19 back up.

Because the last thing he says is the Spirit of the Lord is on me to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

It's important that we give a little bit of context to this.

Number one, I want to talk about the year.

Now, he's quoting out of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, year is the word senat.

It can mean a calendar year.

Most often, though, it's used metaphorically, not as a calendar year, but as an era, an age, a span of time.

I've come to proclaim the era of the Lord's favor.

Put a pin in that thought.

We will come back to it very soon.

Let's look at verse 20.

It says, He then rolled up the scroll, he gave it back to the attendant, he sat down.

Remember, they stood to read, they sat to preach, he sat down, and the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him.

What's happening is wild.

Jesus, a hometown boy from Nazareth, a town of like five or six hundred people, small town.

They all know Jesus.

He shows up, he blows up their traditions, he interrupts everything, he reads this kind of random passage from Isaiah, and then he sits down, and everyone's thinking the same thing.

What in the world is Jesus about to say?

You could have given them a million guesses, they wouldn't have got it right.

Verse 21 Jesus began by saying to them, Today, as you listen, this scripture has been fulfilled.

You know what this is?

I am Iron Man.

This is I am Iron Man times infinity, eternity, quadrillion, billion.

Okay?

This is like the rescuer and redeemer who will heal the brokenness of this world, the Messiah, the last and final chosen king, prophesied hundreds of years ago by the prophet Isaiah.

Jesus goes, Hey, I am that dude.

As you are listening to these words, Jesus says, it's me saying them.

See, when I read Isaiah, I'm reading the words of Isaiah, and then I tell you the context of it.

Jesus is going, No, no, no, no, these aren't Isaiah's words anymore.

These are my words.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me.

I have come, I will preach the good news, I will set you free, I will open your eyes, I am here, and nothing will ever be the same.

This is a big pill to swallow.

And the hometown, Nazareth, they can't really handle it.

Eventually, they're gonna have enough and try to run him out of town, try to even take his life.

They could not imagine that the hometown boy that they watched grow up could be the hero of all heroes who God had sent as the final chosen king to change the world and bring salvation to all people.

This is why we got into Luke.

Because some of us are worshiping a version of Jesus who never really existed.

We have to know the real Jesus and decide do we really want to follow him?

Even if he interrupts our life, even if he has told us that in order to follow him, we must accept the cross.

What's maybe even more interesting is what Jesus did not say.

Now we're learning the scripture uh at Meta Church.

We have a lot of people who are very young in the faith.

You don't have a biblical background.

Look, you've got the Holy Spirit, you've got your testimony, you have what you need to get going, building the kingdom of God.

Uh, but scripture does tell us to study the word, to show ourselves as approved in handling the word.

And so we try to build your confidence.

I tell all of you all the time, you need to go through our academy, you need to sign up for one of these semesters.

Yesterday morning I spent three hours with about 50 students in the academy.

Three hours.

We went from Genesis all the way to Revelation, just building their confidence and handling the word, so that you can do that as well.

Because we don't know scripture, we definitely don't know much of the Old Testament, so we don't pick up on this.

The people in the synagogue that day probably would have.

And what they would have known is that Jesus quoted Isaiah, he read it out of the scroll, but he stopped in the middle of a sentence.

What Jesus did not say that day is just as powerful as what he did say.

Jesus stopped at a comma.

You learn that in second grade.

You pause at a comma, you do not stop at the comma.

You run it until the period, not Jesus.

So let me tell you what it says after the comma in Isaiah.

Jesus read, I have been sent to proclaim the year, the era of the Lord's favor.

Isaiah concludes that thought, and to proclaim the day of God's vengeance.

Why did he stop?

He stopped because Jesus was announcing his mission statement for his time on earth.

We have the year of the Lord and the day of God's vengeance.

Let me help you think about this.

This is the first and the second coming of Christ.

Jesus came the first time to save the world, to cover our sins, and to inaugurate the era of the Lord's favor.

You need to know this.

You as the church are living in the era of the favor of the Lord.

Now, some of you are like, I don't buy it.

I don't feel very favored.

Life is hard, my marriage is hard, parenting's hard, I don't have enough money, I don't have enough friends, I don't like my job, I don't like my what's favored about my life?

Be careful.

Let me tell you what it means to live in the era of the Lord's favor.

It means we live in the age after the God of the universe stepped off of his throne and climbed onto a cross that had my name on it and had your name on it.

That's what favor looks like.

What favor looks like is the 39 lashes that disfigured him where he couldn't even be told as a man.

That's what favor looks like, the punishment that belonged to me.

What favor looks like is an empty grave that Jesus Christ walked out of to prove to you that he could give you life after death.

What favor looks like is that the Spirit of God no longer resides locally in a temple, but the very spirit and presence of God lives in your life.

The fact that we are in exile, there's a reason he quotes Isaiah.

We were created for a paradise, a garden to be face to face with the presence of our God.

Our sin ruined it.

Just like Israel's sin put them in exile.

Our sin, we live outside of the garden, separate from God because of our sin.

Jesus came to cover our sin.

Yes, one day we will see God face to face, but even now, Jesus has sent us the Spirit of God, the very presence of God in our life, which means you can be in exile, and every day you have access to the garden you were meant for.

If you stay empty and you stay open, you allow the sails of your life to be filled with the Spirit, the presence of God.

We are in the age of God's favor, that's the church age.

So let me ask you are you wasting your favor?

Are you filling your life with the nonsense of this world?

Are you open?

Are you empty?

Are you hearing from God?

Because when Jesus comes back, it is not the era of favor, it is the day of judgment.

There is a reason, believers who are here listening, there is a reason that you continue down the path of destruction.

And as many times as Jesus tries to interrupt, you keep pushing him aside and heading down off the cliff.

There's a reason.

It's because you don't live like the day of judgment is real.

You are so infatuated with today that you never set your eyes on eternity.

Jesus lived every day.

The apostles lived every day.

The men and women who started the movement of Jesus, they lived every day anticipating that Jesus would return.

They lived every day knowing that every single person will stand in judgment someday.

Believers, we will stand at the judgment seat of Christ.

This isn't to determine our eternal destiny that was decided by your faith in Jesus.

We will stand in front of our Savior who gave his life for us, and we will have to answer the question: what did you do with the life you were given?

And if you chose again and again the path of destruction, whatever excuse you have, I promise you on that day it will fall eternally short.

If you don't know Jesus, there's a reason I preach with so much urgency.

There's a reason we give you a chance to respond every week.

There's a reason we're so passionate about this because you are not promised tomorrow.

And if you do not know Jesus, your future is insecure, and you can fix that today and you should.

This right now is Jesus who loves you, interrupting you on the path to death and destruction.

And if the Holy Spirit has gripped your heart and you don't know Jesus, today you should surrender your pride and put your faith in Him.

We are in the era of God's favor, the era of revival, the era of the Spirit, and we should take advantage.

Let's pray as we close across our venues.

If you bow your head and close your eyes.

Look, I want to get right into it.

With everyone's eyes closed, if you're at one of our venues or you're with us online, you've never had a moment in time where you've made a conscious decision to put your faith in Jesus as your only hope for eternity, I want you to do that today.

Time is of the essence.

And so what I'm gonna ask is for a moment of bravery, right now with everyone's eyes closed, if you are ready for the first time to say, I do believe in Jesus, I believe he died for my sins, I believe he rose from the grave.

If that's you, I want to ask you right now to just simply raise your hand right where you're sitting.

Raising your hand is a symbolic gesture that says, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know God sees and accepts your faith, forgives all of your sins, and has brought you into an eternal relationship with Himself.

That's a gift that no one and nothing could ever take away from you.

And all I want to do is for those who raised a hand, I want to lead you through a very simple prayer, acknowledging your decision.

I'm gonna ask all believers at our venues to pray this out loud as well.

Let's pray like this: Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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