May 17, 2026 - The Gospel of Luke - Week 4 - Right Message, Wrong Response

Highland Christian Church - Asheville, NC

Communicator - Tim Bryant

Luke 4:14-30 - "The Scripture you've just heard read has been fulfilled this very day." Jesus announces that He is the fulfillment of all the freedom Israel has been waiting for, but hometown folks resist. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome in everyone. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the pastors at Highland Christian Church. And on behalf of our team, I just wanted to say thanks for taking some time to journey with us through the scripture. Our hope is that these words would cause you to think carefully about this Jesus we proclaim and that you would choose to trust him in your day-to-day. And as always, if you're in the Asheville area, whether you live here or you're visiting, we'd love for you to come join us at the corner of Livingston and Depot Street in person at the Dr. Wesley Grant Senior Southside Center. Our prayer is that God's words would equip you for every good work that He's prepared for you to do today.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Luke's highlights Jesus' compassion and the inclusion of the Gentiles, which is really what makes makes the Jews mad in this scene coming up. Forgiveness for all. And the book could really be summed up in Luke 19, verse 10, which says, For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. If you ever wonder why Jesus came, there it is in a nutshell. So we're going to pick up the story of Luke in uh uh chapter 4, verse 14 this morning. Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit's power. Reports about him had spread quickly through the whole region, and he taught regularly in their synagogues, and was praised by everyone. When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read the scriptures. The scroll of Isaiah, the prophet, was handed to him, and he unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written. For he has anointed me to bring the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come. There he rolled up the scroll and he sat back down, handed it back to the attendant, and all eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently, and then he began to speak to them, and he said, The scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day. So they're just kind of getting used to this. Um Jesus is beginning to say who he really is. And everyone spoke well of him, verse 22. And they were amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. How can this be, they ask, though. Isn't this Joseph's son? You know, I don't know if you you notice this, but we kind of lose Joseph in the word. He he doesn't show up when the brothers show up, he doesn't show up with Mary later on. Uh there's some thought that he probably has passed away somewhere after Jesus' 12th uh birthday when they go to find him uh in the temple. We don't we don't hear from Joseph anymore after that, but they remember who he was. This is his hometown. Then he said, verse 23, you will undoubtedly quote me this proverb, physician, heal yourself, meaning, do the miracles here in your hometown, like those you did in Capernaum. But I tell you the truth: no prophet is accepted in his own hometown. Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine devastated the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a foreigner, a widow at Zarephath in the land of Sidon. And many in Israel had leprosy in the time of the prophet Elisha. But the only one healed was Naaman the Syrian. When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. And jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built, and they intended to push him over the cliff. But this wasn't his time, of course. And in verse 30, it says, He passed right through the crowd and went on his way. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for Jesus and the stories about Jesus and all the things that you teach us through your word. And Father, as we celebrate graduates this morning and we celebrate uh uh uh Jesus' homecoming as well, we just ask you to open it up, open the eyes of our hearts, Father, and and and bless this time in Jesus' name. Amen. In these verses, we find that Jesus was at the very beginning of his public ministry. Um, he'd already turned water into wine at Canaan, and he was becoming well known in the community. He returns to the region of Galilee, which is where Nazareth was, filled with the Holy Spirit and teaching in the synagogues and praised by many. And everything seemed to be going pretty well until he goes home. Home changes everything. Home changes everything. Remember what it was like to go home if you're an adult now. You go off to camp or some weekend retreat, you meet God in a really special way. I mean, there's there's prayer, there's there's a real sense of his presence. You go home thinking that everything's gonna be different. I'm gonna have a quiet time every morning. I'm gonna have a prayer life. I'm going to clean my room without my parents asking me. But you end up back in your old room and back where the people who know you too well, and you just walk right back into your default setting. Happens all the time. I went to a program over in Franklin called Disciplined Life in Christ in 1977. Um, and they had a big garden there. It was a bunch of young people we were there for the summer. I think we were there for six weeks, and then we spent the last two weeks as camp counselors at a big camp in uh Georgia called the Tennessee-Georgia Christian Camp. But I remember my dad loved to garden. My dad could grow a tomato that was like a steak, and to cut it and put it on a piece of white bread with some mayonnaise and some pepper. I mean, it was just amazing. But I hated the garden. And I always told him, I said, that's a part of the curse. Don't you know? Weeds grow up. Come on, you got pregnant, you got uh pain and labor, and you got gardens and weeds. Come on. Who wants to do that? Anyway, I remember writing my dad, telling him, you know, I talked to him on the phone, I would tell him, yeah, I I'm so different now. You you're I'm gonna come home, I'm gonna help you with your garden. I've learned some things about how to set the rows just right, you know, all that stuff. Um I went back home, went back to my room, couldn't get out of bed, didn't have a quiet time, gave up on most of that stuff, and my dad just knew it was gonna happen that way, you know. So, anyway. So I also remember when I graduated from high school graduates, listen to this. I um I went back to my 10th high school reunion. Angie was with me, and uh she had been a year behind me, but um we went back to this high school reunion, and for the first time in 10 years, I'm in the same pecking order with the same people. All the cool people are all still cool, sort of. Um the funny thing was the the goofiest guy in our class was like becoming a doctor. Um, sorry, Alex, and um the uh the coolest guy in our class was doing the same stupid things he did 10 years earlier. So going home has its problems, but even in these scriptures, we'll see it it even had problems for the Son of God. Now, I could spin a scenario about Jesus going back to his old room with his with the posters of Moses and Joshua and David on the walls and his brothers making fun of him, but there's really no need. I mean, it's all right here in the Word. Uh, we knew where we know where they stand later on. Um, they actually thought he was crazy. Can you imagine your brother saying, I'm the son of God now? Oh, really? Yeah. So Mark 3, uh verse 20 and 21 says, One time Jesus entered a house and the crowds began to gather again. Soon he and his disciples couldn't even find time to eat. When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. He's out of his mind, they said. And a few years later, John mentions in uh John 7, verse 1 through 5, he says, After this, Jesus traveled around Galilee and he wanted to stay out of Judea, where the Jewish leaders were plotting his death. But soon it was time for the Jewish festival of shelters or of booths. And Jesus' brother said to him, Hey, why don't you leave here and go to Judea where your followers can see your miracles? Can you you can just feel a brother saying this stuff? You can't become famous if you hide like this. If you can do such wonderful things, show yourself to the world. For even his brothers didn't believe in him. So going home has its challenges for sure. So back to the synagogue in Nazareth. Uh, Jesus, probably the guy, the rabbi who handed Jesus the scroll, was most likely a rabbi that Jesus knew, that he'd grown up uh under, perhaps, um, and that he had been taught by and learned to read, you know, and stand up and read these readings that they did. Um so here he is with the, you know, that rabbi. I mean, I I remember I've got some English teachers in my past who would not believe that I can put two sentences together and write, write an email, write a sales letter, write a write a sermon for that matter, actually. They would just be shocked. His mother and brothers were likely around, if not even in the synagogue that day. Likely they were in the synagogue. The people who thought they knew him were there. Isn't this Joseph's son? Going home has its problems. And the reason is because they think they know you too well, they think they know who you are. Let's look at Matthew's version of this scenario, a piece of it. He returned to Nazareth to his hometown in Matthew 13. And when he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was amazed and said, Where does he get this wisdom and the power to do miracles? Ah, but 55. Then they scoffed. He's just a carpenter's son. We know Mary, his mother, his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, Judas. All his sisters live right here among us. Where did he learn all these things? And they were deeply offended and refused to believe him. Then Jesus told them, A prophet is honored everywhere, except in his own hometown and among his own family. And so he did a few miracles there, uh, only a few miracles there because of their unbelief. Isn't that something? The Son of God gets uh, I I don't want to say shut down, but I mean he just with their unbelief in the room, he doesn't even know which way to turn. He's telling them the truth, but they think they already know him. They think they already know uh everything about him. So why did he choose Isaiah 61? Uh starting in 17, the scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him, and he unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written. So Isaiah was the reading, but Jesus found this spot, and he chose the scripture. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, and he has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, and the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the Lord, the time of the Lord's favor has come. To the people of Nazareth, Isaiah 61 was a long anticipated messianic promise. It was about political revenge and it was about liberation for the Jews, it was about uh vengeance against the Gentile oppressors and restoration for the Jewish community. When Jesus applied this text to himself, they were initially kind of amazed at his words and they admired his words, but they would have noticed that he left out part B of verse 19. And that part says, and with it the day of God's anger against their enemies. So the scripture that he he left out is when he says, He sent me to proclaim the captives to be released, the blind will be will see, the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come. He sits down, but there's another part of that verse, and with it the day of God's anger against their enemies. You see, they longed for a deliverer. They were expecting a guy with a horse and a sword, a guy who would take over, uh take, take the kingdoms back, um, kill all the Romans, do all the things that they had been expecting a messiah to do. Um, they longed for a deliverer, but a redeemer came instead. Isaiah 61 was a political message for a political Messiah to them. The listeners viewed the liberty of captives to be uh Israel or their freedom from the Roman captives and uh and foreign oppression. The year of the Lord's favor, they expected this to be a time when God favored the Jews while bringing judgment and vengeance and everything else on the Gentiles. And then even in 61, verse 4, there's a indication of a rebuilding of the cities, of the things that have been broken down, of the things that have been torn down will be uh rebuilt. But Jesus refined or redefined the whole mission for the Messiah from vengeance and restoration to one of grace. Now, you'd think that that would be okay somehow, but but I don't I think if we insert ourselves into the Jewish community and the feelings that they had and how they'd grown up, and I mean the Romans and what they had done to them, it it's it's unit's easily understood. They longed for a deliverer, but a redeemer came instead. So there's a little bit of comfort in familiarities. If you notice, they uh initially they were with Jesus, they were right there. He was the hometown boy becoming known around the region. But then what we'll call the comfort of familiarity starts to creep in. The people say, Well, wait a minute, isn't this Joseph's son? Isn't this Joseph's son? Sorry about that chair. That chair has been in a school in this county for many, many, many years, and they blow every now and then. So isn't this Joseph's son? It sounds harmless, but underneath it's really resistance. They're like, wait a minute, I know this guy. They're reducing Jesus to what they already know about him, and familiarity can duller our ability to receive God. And we do the same thing. We have scriptures we've heard so many times, we think we know everything about it. Um, we think we know how things work or how God works or how what he's gonna do next. We say things like, Well, I know who Jesus is, or I know what he would do here. You know, a lot of times when I say those things, he says, Oh, really? And he he does something else. He does something in his wisdom and grace. But in doing this, we stopped listening, and the people of Nazareth couldn't see beyond their assumptions, they couldn't see uh they wanted a Messiah they could manage that would be predictable and local and contained a messiah who would do what they always expected him to do: tear down the conquerors, restore Israel to its proper place. But Jesus refuses to be confined to their expectations, and he still does today. Keith Green wrote a song um called A Song for My Parents, and it was a plea for them to hear him. Apparently, I mean, if you listen to the song, you can tell that his parents didn't know Jesus, and his heart was just so broken that they could hear him and understand. And the the the subtitle of the song says, uh, I only want to see you there. And the third verse says this isn't that Jesus, isn't that Joseph and Mary's son? Well, did he grow up right here? He played with our children. What? He must be kidding. He thinks he's a prophet. Well, prophets don't grow up from little boys, do they? Prophets don't grow up from little boys. Of course they do. But that's the way we see things. I mean, if I was uh if I'd known Alex when we grew up and we used to ride bikes together, and then I go into his office. And he's a doctor, I might be going, 'This knucklehead, he doesn't know any. What would he know?' I remember one time uh Angie's mom was looking for a different dentist in High Point, and we uh we asked our dentist up here, he said, 'Oh, yeah, chip, so-and-so, or whatever. Her mother said, 'I taught him math in eighth grade. There's no way I'd let that boy put his fingers in my mouth. Just too familiar. Prophets don't grow up from little boys, do they? And then we've got the demand for proof. They always want proof. Actually, we want proof all the time. That's really what we really like. Jesus anticipates their next thought. Do here in your hometown what you've heard that I did in Capernaum. They always want signs, they always want proof, they always want a performance. We hear the echoes of this later on when the people taunt him on the cross. You said you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Well, then save yourself and come down. Save yourself and come down from that cross. And then we will believe. Or when the teachers and the priests said, let the Messiah, this King of Israel, come down from the cross so we can see him and believe in him. Even the men who crucified Jesus, were crucified with Jesus, ridiculed him. Can you imagine? They always want signs, they always want proof, they always want performance. Instead, he tells them a hard truth. A prophet is not accepted in his own hometown. And then, as only Jesus can do, he turns the heat up just a little bit more in the room. He brings up two stories that were very familiar stories to them. Elijah sent not to Israel, but to a widow in Sidon. Elisha hearing, healing not an Israelite, but Naaman the Syrian. Luke 25. Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine devastated the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a foreigner, a widow of Zarephath, in the land of Sidon. And many in Israel had leprosy in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only one healed was Naaman, a Syrian. Both stories make the same point. God's grace is not limited to the people we think deserve it. God's grace is not limited to the people we think deserve it. And that's where things go off the rails. Luke 4, 28. When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. And jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. And they attend they intended to push him off the cliff. Man, when we think we're right, don't you get in my way, don't you challenge me? Don't you try to change a thing. Verse 30, but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way. Now I can hardly uh let this go without some assumptions here. I mean, I just love this. When I was a kid, I remember reading this scripture or hearing taught and um, and then later on, you know, you see Star Wars and Obi-Wan disappears, you know, as he dies or whatever, and you just think of Jesus as just taking his cloak and going, I mean my guess is I mean, I I saw this scene in The Chosen, I thought they handled it pretty well. He just looked straight at them and walked straight through the crowd, basically saying, This isn't happening now. That hill is fascinating. It's called, not surprisingly, Mount Precipice, and it's in Nazareth. You know what? That's the other thing. I always just think of the the Middle East as just flat desert, you know, no mountains, no whatever. Of course, if you read very much, there's Mount Gabor and Mount Tabor and Mount Sinai, so there's plenty of mountains, but anyway, Mount Precipice is 395 meters high. That's almost 1,300 feet. And they were, they took him out there to throw him off this cliff. It offers a panoramic view of the Jezreel Valley. So they drove Jesus out of the temple and up to this cliff. And they were ready to really end this. Now you might think, well, how silly is that? And yet, look at where we live. We live in a country right now where we are sometimes so divided that we cannot stand each other. So sometimes so angry that we can almost justify anything. Nothing much has changed. The Jezreel Valley is fascinating to me. It was the primary battleground and an international quarter in the biblical world. So here is Jesus, an angry crowd in front of him, a 1,300-foot drop behind him. But just listen to what's happen what happened in this valley. In fact, I almost I almost can picture Jesus turning around just looking down in the valley below, ignoring the people behind him. There were judges and deliverance in this valley. The prophetess Deborah and the military leader Barak defeated the Canaanite general Sisera at the foot of Mount Tabor in the valley of Jezreel. When a rainstorm caused the Kishon River to flood, the Canaanites' iron chariots were rendered useless as they sunk into the mud, and the battle was won. Guess what else happened in this valley? Gideon used the natural spring at the base of Mount Gilboa to select his army of three hundred, eventually routing the invading Midianites. That's Judges verse seven, chapter seven. There was tragedy in this same valley. King Saul and his sons perished on Mount Gilboah after facing a crushing defeat by the Philistines in 1 Samuel. Queen Jezebel orchestrated the murder of Noboth for his vineyard in the city of Jezreel, an act that led to her own violent death years later, when King Yehu or Jehu overthrew the royal house and ordered her body thrown over the palace wall. And then there's prophecy in the Jezreel Valley as well. King Josiah of Judah was famously killed in the valley by the Egyptian Pharaoh at a fortified city called Megiddo. And finally, in that valley, Jesus would know that there was a battle yet to come. In the New Testament, the valley specifically centered around the ruins of Megiddo is identified in the book of Revelation as the location of the final battle. Anybody ever heard of Armageddon? Commonly known as Armageddon in Revelation 16 16. So let's picture this final scene one more time. The crowd surges, pressing Jesus towards the edge of a cliff. A cliff where he had likely played as a boy. He probably threw rocks over that, jumped all over all over the place, maybe found caves. Who knows what else was there? A cliff with a rich view of biblical history. And Jesus, we know, was with his father through the ages. He had watched it all unfold. He saw Deborah's battle. He saw the things that occurred there. He saw Saul and his sons lose their lives. And he would know, of course, that this cliff would be the very place where it would all come to an end. When finally God and evil would battle each other in the final battle in Revelation. The boy who grew up among them, the carpenter's son, the promised Messiah, the Savior of the world. But they can't bear what he represents. Because he was a grace too wide for their pride. A grace that disrupts what they'd been taught all their lives. A grace that extended beyond them to those they hate. John, I hope your mansion's next to mine, brother. Jesus does something remarkable at this moment. He just turns and walks right through them. Steady, fearless, purposeful, and powerful. You see, this wouldn't be the hill he would die on. He was moving towards another hill. Not the one outside of Nazareth, but the hill outside of Jerusalem called Calvary. There another crowd would gather, and again there'd be rejection and hatred and cries for death. But on that hill, Jesus didn't walk away. He gave himself willingly. Why? So that sinners like us could receive freedom, forgiveness, healing, salvation, and eternal life. The people of Nazareth asked the question: Isn't this Joseph's son? Come on. We know this kid. But the greater question is: do we recognize him for who he truly is? The anointed one, the savior, the son of God, the king of glory. And the other question, will we surrender to him? Because the same Jesus who stood in that synagogue still speaks today. And his message remains the same. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the captives, to open blind eyes, and set the oppressed free. That good news is still available today. This morning we're honoring graduates. You guys are about to head out. Leave your hometown, maybe. Finally free. My message to you this morning is the same. You have to choose Jesus. You know, I mentioned that I went to my 10-year high school reunion. It was so weird, and we were all back in the same stupid little pecking order. This November I go to my 50th high school reunion. But it's not going to be such a big deal because nobody will recognize anybody and there will be no pecking order anymore. Well, all too old for that. But graduates, um, as you move into college or whatever your next thing is, and I hope you get a chance to move out of your high your uh childhood room, but maybe some of you will stay there a while. When I went to college in at Western and uh a long, long, long time ago, let's just say, my my roommate didn't show up that summer. And um, I remember thinking I can do anything I want, and nobody will know. Now I forgot that the Holy Spirit was sitting there on my shoulder smiling, and the Lord was like, Oh, really? Oh, really? But I realized in those years later that I had to make a choice. Is it my parents' religion that I'm just hanging on to? Or is it my choice? Is it my decision to follow Jesus? And I'll tell you what, um, I made the decision to follow him, and I haven't regretted it at all. I mean, there's been ups and downs, and there will be. I mean, I'm not gonna turn this into a graduation speech, we'll just wrap it up here, but I mean, you're gonna have trouble and you're gonna have great times, and you're gonna have amazing things, and you're gonna have amazing sorrow or sadness. It's just the way life is. But just remember that Luke 1910 says the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. Don't go and get lost for crime anyway. Go and seek him and share him with those that you meet. So while the man plays this closing song this morning, if you find yourself on that list that Jesus read, the poor, the captive, the blind, or oppressed, we'd be glad to pray with you. Um, and as this last song goes, I'll just be down here. And if you be ready to turn your heart to Jesus, come down. If you're willing, if you're wanting to go turn your heart back to Jesus, come on, we'll pray.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

We just wanted to say thank you for listening to the Highland Christian Church podcast today. And if you ever want to connect with us, send prayer requests, ask questions, or for any other reason, you can visit our website, www.highlandchristian.com, or you can send us an email at info at highlandchristian.com. God bless you guys.