Looking Back & Looking Ahead | Charles Zimmerman | Calvary Church

Well, good morning everybody. Welcome to

week two of the main thing living like

Jesus. And what we're doing, we're

looking at select passages from the

Gospel of Luke, trying to understand

what was Jesus main thing. And if we

could figure that out, we would be doing

well if we would adopt that same main

thing in our lives. Now, um when I

learned how to drive, and contrary to

what my wife says, I do know how to

drive. Um, one of the things we're

always told, look back before you move

ahead. Now, that meant for me looking,

turn right arm on the back. You weren't

allowed to take your hands off the

steering wheel, but I would look back,

squint, look out the rearview mirror,

look out the rear window, then look up,

look in the rearview mirror. You don't

have to do any of that today. We got

cameras everywhere, and so you can kind

of look forward and see what's happening

at the cameras, but the point is still

the same. In order to safely move

forward,

you need to first look behind. You need

to look behind. Well, that's what we're

going to do today. And we're going to do

it in two different ways. We're going to

do it kind of a smaller picture and then

the bigger picture. So, uh, let me give

you the small picture looking back from

the passage we're going to look at in

Luke 4. Looking back in Luke to see how

Luke sets up what's going to happen in

Luke 4. So, let me remind you of a

couple of things from last week because

uh I'm not sure you would remember, but

the second part of last week's message

was all about Jesus sunship. And so, we

said in the temple, Jesus reminds his

parents as the father reminds him that

he's the son. And Jesus says to Mary and

Joseph, "Don't you know I have to be

about my father's business?" So Jesus is

understanding his father, his ultimate

heavenly father needs to set the

business plan that Jesus will then live

out. That becomes crystal clear in the

next chapter in Luke. Jesus understood

his sunship in the river. Now here's

what happened. John the Baptist baptizes

Jesus. When he lifts Jesus from the

water, the father booms from heaven and

says, "This is my son whom I love. with

him I am well pleased. Now um we said

sunship has to preede ministry but also

kind of testing precedes ministry too.

So let's look back just a minute and

I'll show you that how this is going to

lead into what we're going to talk about

today. After Jesus is baptized, he hears

sunship ringing in his ears. He's been

declared he's a he's the son. He God

then ushers him into the desert and he's

tempted by the devil in the desert. Now

the picture is just like Israel, right?

Old Testament. Just as Israel was

declared God's son, Moses then leads him

out to the wilderness and they failed

the test. Now God graciously still leads

him to the promised land. They failed

the test in the wilderness. So Jesus now

the perfect Israel. Jesus now shows up

declared to be the son led into the

wilderness and he's going to be tempted

there. Remember sunship declared in the

river. What does the enemy say when he

comes to tempt Jesus?

If you are the son of God, he says it

twice. What did the father say in the

pre? You are my son with whom I'm well

pleased. What's the temptation? If

you're the son of God, turn these stones

to bread. If you're the son of God, jump

off the temple and the angels will catch

you. Jesus is succeeding. He's passing

the test. He's not failing the

temptation the way he is. He succeeds.

Sunship testing. Well, that that raises

the question then what did the son come

to do? Like we looked at how Luke

described this is what I'm writing here.

Who Jesus is the who the sons suffering

servant and the reigning king Messiah.

Well, what's the mission? What did he

come to do? That's what Luke now gives

us in the sermon in Nazareth. So, if you

have your Bibles,

turn to Luke chapter 4. You can use your

Luke 4 · chapter mention

phone, your iPad, or just listen. And um

notice what Luke's doing. He's laying

out an orderly account what Luke is

going to do. Jesus is declared the son

in the temple, declared the son in the

river. He passes the test of sunship in

the wilderness. Then we're told at the

sermon in Nazareth, Jesus now declares

why he's here. So beginning in uh Luke

Luke 4:14

4:14,

let's read about this first sermon.

Jesus returned to Galilee in 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 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 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."

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 said. Jesus said to them,

"Surely you will quote this proverb to

me. physician, heal yourself and you

will tell me do here in your hometown

what we've heard you did in Capernaum.

Truly I tell you, he continued, no

prophet is accepted in his hometown. I

assure you that there were many widows

in Israel in Elijah's time when the sky

was shut up 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 in Zerapath in

the region of Siden. And there were many

in Israel with leprosy in the time of

Elisha the prophet. Yet not one of them

was cleansed. Only non the Syrian. All

the people in the synagogue were furious

when they heard this. They got up, drove

him out of the town, took him to the

brow of a 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. Boy, that

sermon started good and went bad. Uh,

what the heck happened? Well, um, first

of all, we need to look at the promise

given the text of the sermon. Now, let

me kind of set the stage for you. This

is a familiar passage. We've actually

spoken about it before, but if we're

going to look at Luke, we have to

understand this is Jesus coming out

event. This is Jesus calling card. This

is why I'm here. We know who he is. He's

the son. He's passed the test. What did

he come to do? That's what he tells us

in the first sermon. The promise is

given. Here's the situation. Jesus is in

his hometown. Now, here's what that

means. Small hometown. Everybody in the

synagogue knew Jesus. Everybody in the

synagogue knew Joseph and Mary. He was

their carpenter. They probably saw Jesus

working there. They knew Joseph. They

knew Mary. And so, they knew each other.

Jesus knew all of them and they knew

him. And here's this hometown kid. He's

traveling around speaking different

places and he's making quite a name for

himself. Now, he hasn't preached at home

yet, but he travels home and he goes

into the synagogue. And my guess is the

people are said, "Well, Jesus is here.

Let let him talk. We want to hear what

the other people are hearing. How why

are they so amazed at what he says? Let

him let him give us one of those amazing

sermons." And so, the attendant walks

over with the Isaiah scroll. You got to

remember back then people didn't have

their own copies of the Bible. Too

expensive. You had to handw write the

copies of the Bible. And so a synagogue

may have a copy of the B. Maybe not even

the whole Old Testament. But when you

show up at the synagogue, they would

hand someone the scroll the scroll to

read. You unroll it and read. So they

hand Jesus the Isaiah scroll. And Jesus

takes Isaiah scroll, kind of unrolls,

comes to Isaiah chapter 61. And here's

Isaiah 61 · chapter mention

what he reads.

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, recovery of

sight for the blind, to set the

oppressed free, to proclaim the year of

the Lord's favor. Now, if you remember

the words that the father spoke over

Jesus in the river, you are my son with

you I'm well pleased. The first part of

that comes from Psalm two. The second

part of that comes from Isaiah and it's

a servant song. And what what the

father's doing, he's giving us the

two-pronged mission of Jesus. He is the

victorious king, the Messiah, but he's

also the suffering servant who comes to

pay for the guilt of those that that

have failed.

This comes from a servant song. And so

Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 and um he

says, "I'm here. I've arrived. I'm

here." Now, you have to understand a

couple of things about this.

Isaiah

didn't invent everything in that quote.

Isaiah was kind of well schooled in the

Bible. He knew what the Old Testament

taught. But the pattern that he

describes in Isaiah 61 is actually the

pattern that's first started all the way

back in Leviticus 25. In Leviticus 25,

that that p that chapter is all about

the year of Jubilee. Isaiah does not

quote anything from Leviticus 25. But he

does mention the pattern. The pattern is

all about freedom. The pattern is all

about liberty. In fact, on the Liberty

Bell in Philadelphia, the ver a verse

from Leviticus 25 is engraved on the

Liberty Bell. What does it say? Proclaim

liberty throughout the land. That's what

Leviticus 25 is about. That's what they

were doing. Ringing the liberty bell.

Freedom from England. Well, Leviticus

25. Freedom from oppression. Freedom

from all these. Now, Jubilee had four

prongs to the to the freedom. And let me

mention them because this is in mind as

Jesus is reading. The first theme of the

pattern was freedom from debt. Freedom

from debt. Now look, we're among friends

so we can answer. How many of you have

debt of any kind? Raise your hand. Yeah.

If you don't have your hand up, you're a

liar. Uh yeah, you have a mortgage, you

have a car payment, you're paying off

student loans, you have credit card. We

have debt all over the place, right?

Well, what was one of the first themes

of Jubilee?

God promises freedom from debt. We've

incurred debt. Living in our world, you

almost have to acquire debt. Hopefully,

you pay it off quickly. But you can't

live without some kind of debt. You

realize you can't rent a car without a

credit card. As soon as you put on a

credit card, you have debt until you pay

it. Well, what what's the announcement?

What's the first theme of Jubilee?

Freedom from debt. Not just freedom from

debt, though. Freedom from bondage,

freedom from oppression. You got to

remember all the way back in Leviticus,

that's Moses' time.

Who was the oppressor of Israel in

Moses' day?

Egypt, right? Egypt. And so the

Israelites are slaves. They're in

bondage. They're in captivity in Egypt.

What does Jubilees say? You're going to

be freed from bondage. In Isaiah's day,

they're not freed from bondage, though.

But not out of Egypt. Now it's Assyria.

Assyria has them in bondage. They have

to pay taxes. They're they're servants

of Assyria. And Assyria's brutal. After

Assyria, Babylon becomes the rulers. And

now Babylon's kind of beating on them.

Babylon is subjugating them. Babylon

extracting taxes. Babylon's cruel. And

in Jesus day, he shows up. It's not

Egypt. It's not Assyria. It's not

Babylon. When Jesus read from Luke 4,

who was the oppressor?

Now it's Rome. Rome. But through

history, the Israelites, God's people,

have never known a time of long-term

freedom. But Jubilee is God says through

Moses, "One day, one day there going to

be freedom from debt. All the debt

you've incurred is going to be taken

away. All the oppression, all of the

subjugation, the servitude you're

experiencing, being under people's

thumb, it's going to be taken away. Not

just that, freedom from loss. Freedom

from loss. Now, remember back in the Old

Testament times and even in Jesus day,

your real worth was in your land. That's

still true, right? People say, "Oh, real

estate worth." Your real worth was in

your land. Well, it was easy to lose

ownership of your land. Let me give you

two big reasons. Sickness

and stupidity.

So if you got sick, you would lose your

land. Nobody take care of it. If your

kids weren't old enough to take care of

it, you'd lose your land. If you were

stupid, you'd lose your land. What did

Jubilees say? Every 50 years, ownership

will always revert back to the owners

that were originally given the promised

land. Freedom from debt, freedom from

oppression, freedom from loss. And one

more thing, you read the beginning of

Leviticus 25. All of the freedom

mentioned in Leviticus 25 begins, the

announcement begins on the day of

atonement,

freedom from sin. So this big

announcement of freedom, freedom,

freedom of debt, freedom from debt,

freedom from oppression, freedom from

loss, freedom from sin.

They waited and waited. The promise

comes all the way back in Leviticus. One

day, Jubilee's coming. Well, Isaiah is

like in se in the 8th century, 700,

still hadn't [laughter] come. Isaiah

says, "Oh, but Jubilee's coming.

Jubilee's coming."

Jesus shows up in Luke chapter 4. He

Luke 4 · chapter mention

carefully chooses the text that becomes

his business card event. I am Jubilee. I

have now arrived. I am bringing this

freedom. The promise

was given. Now Jesus says the promise is

fulfilled.

Look at how Jesus says it. He reads

that. He sits back down and uh I I

always like that's kind of cool. You in

most synagogues even today, but

certainly in Jesus day, you would stand

to read God's word. You sit down when

the preacher's talking. [laughter]

That's you respect what God say.

semi-respect with the preachers. Same as

today, right? You stand and sit. Here's

what Jesus says. Short little sermon.

Today,

this scripture is fulfilled in your

hand. Today, think about that. They

waited and waited

day after day, week after week.

Eventually, I think, is this stuff true?

Like God's promising all this freedom,

all this liberty. It they waited month

after month,

year after year,

decade after decade,

century after century,

and Jesus shows up

in a synagogue in his hometown, and he

says, "Uh, Jubilee has now arrived."

Now, I want to show you something that

you may miss, but just to make sure you

didn't miss it, I printed both sections

on your outline. So, if you have your

outline

under the promises given, I actually

quote there Isaiah 61. See it? Then at

the bottom of the page, I list where

Jesus quotes Isaiah 61, but it's a

little different. Um, let me call your

attention to the last three lines of

Isaiah 61.

Um, I don't think Jesus made a mistake.

Here's how Isaiah originally wrote it as

he lists the pattern of Jubilee from

Leviticus 25, last three lines. The

servant will come to proclaim the year

of the Lord's favor

and the day of vengeance, our God, and

to comfort all who mourn. Now look at

the bottom of the page.

To proclaim the year of the Lord's

favor, period. Huh?

Why Jesus mess up?

Why did he not

read what was in the Isaiah text? Right?

And so the scroll Jesus has in his hands

as he's reading from Isaiah 61 has the

day of God's vengeance. He stops

reading, proclaim the year of God's

favor, clos the scroll, gives it back.

Did he make a mistake? Did he Was that

written on the next page and he kind of

skipped and did? I don't think so. He's

communicating an important principle.

There will be a pause.

Here's what Jesus. There will be a pause

between the proclamation

of Jubilee

and the enactment of justice and

vengeance. Isaiah didn't know about that

pause. Moses didn't know about that

pause. Jesus shows up and by stopping

where he stopped reading Isaiah 61, he

says, "There will be a pause. Right now,

I'm here to proclaim the year of the

Lord's favor.

Pause.

Make no mistake. Justice and vengeance

will come, but not today.

Not this time. Knows what he's doing,

right? Exactly according to plan. So,

the promise was given. The problem

promises fulfilled. And the people in

the synagogue, they love it. They love

it. and we would love it too, right? So,

think about what they're thinking.

Freedom from debt.

Freedom from oppression. Who's the

oppressor? They're all thinking, who's

the oppressor in in Luke 4? Rome.

Freedom from loss. My guess is some

people in the synagogue had lost because

of sickness, stupidity, or some other

reason. They lost the deeds to their own

property.

and they were often feeling the weight

of their sin. [clears throat]

They knew what it was like during the

Babylonian captivity to have the temple

destroyed. So now the temple started

again and can can these animal

sacrifices really somehow forgive my how

does this work? Promise given, promise

fulfilled. My guess is they're thinking

finally

this guy, our hometown kid is going to

bring all this freedom. We don't know

how he's going to do it. Doesn't make

sense to us. is Joseph's kid. He

promises it. He said he's going to do

it. I'm in.

Then look what Jesus does. He extends

the promise

and their joy turns to anger and their

applause

turns to murder.

They're praising the sermon. This is our

hometown son. Now they want to throw him

off the cliff and kill him. Why? Well,

it all has to do with two illustrations

he gives. And you may not uh

understand the illustrations. We don't

have time for me to lay them all out in

detail. Let me just tell you briefly

about the two illustrations. One's with

Elijah and one's with Elisha. I know

their names sound alike. Um if you want

to know who always comes first, J comes

before S. And so Elijah comes before

Elisha. J before S. That's how it works.

So, you can check these out. They're in

the Old Testament, right? One's in First

Kings, one's in Second Kings 5. Here's

how they go.

Um, [clears throat]

Elijah is a prophet in the northern

kingdom of Israel. The king of Israel at

that time is Ahab.

And he's a terrible king. He's wretched.

He's more wretched than the pagan

nations around him. Now, one of the

things that Ahab does to kind of

consolidate power, he marries Jezebel.

Now, Jezebel comes from Siden. And

Jezebel comes from a family of priests

that worship idols in Siden.

And uh back in Elijah's day, God says,

"I had enough of this." And so, I'm

going to bring a famine on the land. Oh,

the whole ter there's going to be a

famine. And so for three and a half

years, Jesus quotes this, three and a

half years there's a famine. You know,

in three and a half years, nothing's

growing. There's no water. I mean,

things are terrible, right? There's a

drought. So God says to Elijah, "Hey,

Elijah, look, I don't I don't want you

to die like all the other people." So

you are to go to Zerapath.

Where's Zerapath?

Oh, yeah. In Siden. What? Imagine you're

Elijah. Elijah, you want me to go to

Jezebel's hometown? You want me to go

where the idolatrous

pagans are? Jezebel's killing all the

prophets of God in Israel. You want me

to go back to her home? That's right.

You go there. Well, he goes there and um

eventually God says, "I'll take care of

you there." And one of the first people

he meets is an older woman, a widow, and

she's gathering sticks.

And he says, "Hey, God sent me here. Um,

have a little mission for you. Would you

give me something to drink and uh, you

know, bake me a little piece of bread,

little roll, no hot dog, just a roll.

Bring me a roll. I'm really hungry. I

haven't had much to eat and drink. Would

you get bake me a little piece of bread,

little biscuit, and uh, bring me some

water?" She says, "Uh, huh? You're

asking the wrong woman.

You know why I'm gathering these sticks?

Because I've only got enough flour. I

can't even fill my hand with it. And so

I'm gonna make I'm here gathering sticks

to start a little fire. I'm going to

make a little tiny biscuit for my son

and me. We're going to eat the biscuit

and die because there's nothing else

that we have. Elijah is persistent. Ah,

yeah. Yeah, yeah, I hear. Make make me

make me a biscuit first.

And she does. And you know what? The

flour and the oil never run out until

the famine's over.

God sent Elijah

to a gentile widow in Zerapath

Siden. What's the point? Well, you can

figure it out from Jesus' sermon. There

were lots of widows. There were lots of

widows that were starving in Israel. But

God didn't send Elijah to any of them.

He sent them to pagan Zerapath and Siden

where all the idoltors are. And God

through Elijah rescued a woman who

didn't have the resources to survive.

He said, "Oh, but I'm not talking." I

got another illustration. Then there was

a name. There's a guy named Non. Now,

this is Elisha s, right? Elisha.

Non is also a gentile. Non's also a

pagan. And um non is not from Siden.

He's from Syria. And in a lot of ways,

Non's the opposite of the woman. The

woman's dirt poor. Non is filthy rich.

The woman's a widow. Non has a wife. The

woman is disconnected from everyone,

right? She can't hold a job. She's

disconnected from society being a widow.

Non is wellconed. In fact, he names the

king as a friend. Non seems to have

everything you need in life. Oh, yeah.

One other thing, non has leprosy.

And you know what?

If you have everything

and you have leprosy,

you've got nothing.

The woman doesn't have the resources to

feed herself.

Name doesn't have the resources to heal

himself.

Different ends of the continuum.

They're both dying. They are both

helpless. They are both hopeless.

And God saves each of them. Gentile

idoltors disconnected from God. Wealthy

po. God say now the people in Nazareth

are ticked. Why are they ticked? Well,

because we want this Jubilee, all this

freedom stuff to be for us. We don't

want it to be for We don't want to share

it with them. Especially not with these

pagans. Especially not with these

Gentiles. We don't want anybody from

Zerapath coming. We certainly don't want

Syrians coming. We don't want any of

them to come. They're angry. In fact,

rather than say, "hm, I wonder if I had

this thing right." No, they want to

destroy the messenger rather than

question if the message is correct.

They want to kill Jesus. Well, Jesus

just kind of walks through the crowd and

moves on. Now, remember, we're looking

back. We look back the little bit of

Luke. We look back at Isaiah. Look all

the way back at Leviticus 25, Jubilee.

Um, let me show you what Luke's doing.

Luke uses Luke 4 and this sermon where

the promise is given, the promise is

fulfilled, the promise is extended.

That now becomes the outline of his

gospel.

More than any other gospel,

Luke is always speaking how Jesus comes

for the outsiders.

I'm guessing uh

Luke maybe teared up a little bit

when he heard about a gentile widow and

we heard about a gentile

general

because Luke was a gentile.

Luke was not a Jew.

Dr. Luke was a gentile.

My guess is he wrote his gospel and you

you we're going to read through these

next few weeks. You read it on your own.

Luke's always listed lifting up the gent

you know what Jesus came for Gentiles

too. Luke's lifting up women. Women play

a priority role in Luke's gospel. The

unclean people, the filthy, the

Samaritans. The parable of the good

Samaritan. That's in Luke.

What's Luke saying? Jesus came, he

extended the promise. And what does Luke

do in his gospel? He keeps extending the

promise, extending the grace that Jesus

came to purchase.

Now, you can probably guess before we uh

conclude here,

maybe I'll say it like this.

The problem with the congregation in

Nazareth,

they drew the boundaries of God's grace

a little too tight.

Jesus extended the boundaries and they

hated it.

I just wonder,

do we try to do we draw the boundaries

too tight?

This freedom, this deliverance, all this

stuff, this freedom, it's for me and

people like me. It's for people of my

political party and my socioeconomic

level, my educational level, people who

are like me more than unlike me. Um,

that's what the congregation in Nazareth

was saying.

And the rest of Luke's gospel says, "You

better stop drawing boundaries because

we draw them, God keeps breaking them.

God extends the gospel of grace.

And can I tell you one other thing?

Jubilee, Isaiah 61, Luke 4,

all about freedom.

Freedom from debt.

Freedom from oppression, bondage,

freedom from loss, freedom from sin.

Here's an interesting thing.

The Bible often uses

physical and material problems,

difficulties to speak to spiritual and

eternal realities. You ever wonder why

um sometimes for one case they bring a

paralytic to g the guy can't walk and

what's Jesus say? Your sins are

forgiven. I'm thinking Jesus the guy

can't walk. Why would he forgive?

Sometimes he uses physical maladies to

talk about our spiritual. How often do

we do the same thing? We speak about the

debt of our sin, the bondage of the

enemy. We speak about the loss that

we've incurred because of rebellion

against God. And we speak and what's

Jubilee really about. Now, don't get me

wrong. All of those physical material

things will occur.

But right now, we live in the pause.

He's been Jesus has come to proclaim

good news to the poor. You got to admit

you're poor. Admit you're hopeless,

helpless. And when you do, you're in a

perfect position to first receive the

deliverance that Jesus brings for our

sin. Jubilee happened on the day of

atonement. And one day all of that

freedom and liberty will be experienced

when Christ brings Jubilee in

completeness.

All in a sermon in his hometown. The joy

and praise applause went to thoughts of

homicide very quickly. I hope that's not

our case. Let's pray.

Lord, we give you thanks for the sermon.

And Lord, even uh with our

very myopic view, we can look back and

see some really cool things in Luke. We

look back further in the Bible and we

see it really is one big story and Jesus

is the point and the purpose. Lord, help

us to uh look back and look ahead to

experience all that Jesus brings in the

proclaiming good news to the poor. But

help us also to look forward to the day

when true justice and grace will be

experienced in full jubilee to the

utmost forever. We pray in his name.

Amen.