“Scripture is Fulfilled”
Text: Luke 4:16-30
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
There’s a questions that has been asked at many times and in many ways, but simply put, “what if Jesus came to our town this morning? What if He showed up right here in our church? What if He stood up and walked to the lectern and opened up the lectionary and began reading to us? And then came over here to the pulpit and preached a sermon? I’ll tell you what, I’d step back in a heartbeat. And I wouldn’t even complain if His message went a little over 15 minutes. Wouldn’t that be incredible? Because it would be an opportunity to hear a message straight from heaven!
It’s certainly a hypothetical for us today, but that’s precisely what Jesus did in our text today when on the Lord’s Day he entered the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth. He’s recently been baptized and is fresh off His 40 days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness and the whole town turned out to see their famous son preach a sermon. So, this morning we’re going to take a look at how the account unfolds.
Luke begins, “And as was His custom, Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day.” There’s certainly a third commandment message in here about keeping the routine of weekly worship, not despising preaching and the Word, but that’s only part of what we’ll focus on today. But this is the custom that Jesus would maintain throughout His life and travels and ministry and it’s good and right that we should follow this example. And on this particular Sabbath, Jesus goes with family, friends, and neighbors to worship in his hometown synagogue.
It’s worth noting that Jesus doesn’t seek to worship God in his own way, choosing to be somewhere else, but as God desires, He’s in God’s house on the Lord’s Day. You might imagine that, being the Son of God, Jesus wouldn’t benefit from attending such a worship service. What’s He going to hear that He doesn’t already know? And…they’re talking about Him. Yet, this is precisely what he does. He models the habit of being where we’re all called to be and showing that the hearing of the Word as a precious thing.
During the traditional service in the synagogue, Scripture is read and then expounded upon by the leader of the synagogue, or by a guest. It’s not all that different than our scripture readings and the pastor’s sermon relating to them. It’s not clear if Jesus is invited to read and comment, or if He just gets up and does it, but either way this becomes His preaching debut. Standing before the people, he opens the scroll to Isaiah 61. There had to have been a huge amount of anticipation as He begins to read from the prophet. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
When he finishes, Jesus rolls up the scroll and sits down. To our ears it sounds like He’s done. He sits down. But sitting down in this context was to take up the position of a teacher who would sit before the assembly and speak. And His opening line is a bombshell: “Today,” he says, “this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
And at first, the people are pleased with what Jesus says. In fact, “all spoke well of Him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.” But once they actually consider what Jesus said, they’re offended. I think this happens more often that we’d like to admit. We hear someone speaking and they’re eloquent. They speak well. The words coming from their mouth seem nice to our ears. But then when we actually dissect the message, we may be less inclined to be happy about what they’ve said.
This is what happens here. And when it does, the mood changes quickly. Jesus senses this and even anticipates their wrath. He knows that they must be thinking, “How can this carpenter’s son claim to be the Christ, the Savior sent by God? We know this guy and he’s from down the street, not from heaven.” All this murmuring and conjecture leads them to the conclusion that Jesus has just blasphemed the holy name of God.
What they fail to consider is that Jesus is, in fact, the Son of God, the fulfillment of all of God’s promises, just as He said. And what these people in the synagogue in Nazareth are thinking and saying is the same conclusion that Caiaphas and the other religious leaders will use to justify Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s just too much to believe that this ordinary hometown Jewish man is God’s own Son.
But it’s not just the claim of divinity that Jesus is making that gets the crowd upset. It appears there’s a little jealously going on here as well. It seems like the people are resentful that Jesus performed signs in nearby Capernaum but not for them in His own hometown. None of this is said, but Jesus reveals their thoughts when He says, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb: ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. . . . Truly, I say to you,” he continued, “no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.”
Anticipating that the congregation would demand a sign to prove His claim of divinity, Jesus reminds them that many Gentiles in days past were more receptive to God’s Word than they are. “But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
To this crowd this kind of talk is outrageous. And they immediately understand that Jesus is saying that just being a member of this group doesn’t get them a thing. It’s like claiming that having your name on the membership roles of the church means that your ticket to heaven is forever and irrevocably punched. God is looking for something much more than a name written in a book tucked away in the drawer of a church office somewhere. This week a couple stopped by the church office unannounced, which I love by the way. Come by anytime. Sit in the office and chat. Anyway, they were looking to see if we possibly had the record of an ancestor that had been baptized at St John in Sherman Center in 1905 and who they thought might have been confirmed here sometime in the late 19 teens. So, I got to pull out that old record book, carefully turn the worn pages, and search the written-in-German records for a name they weren’t quite sure of the spelling of. I loved it. But it also got me thinking about all those names in that book. Since 1916, 629 baptisms, 667 confirmations, and 207 weddings. Generations of members of the same families, in addition to newcomers. And then I got a little sad, realizing that in all likelihood there are some, maybe many, of those names that don’t represent souls that are currently resting in the arms of the Lord. Because that book, housed in the bottom drawer of our office file cabinet, isn’t the book we need our name to be written in. The book we need our names written in is the Lamb’s Book of Life. Where the names of those who have faith in the saving power of Jesus death and resurrection are written in His blood. Never to fade away.
It’s not our pedigree. It’s not the hoops we’ve jumped through. It’s the faith given by God, and nurtured by the Holy Spirit, that when it endures till the end, will ensure that we are on the correct side when Christ returns to gather His flock. And that’s what Jesus is saying to those gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth that day. But they’re unwilling to hear it. And so, they reject their famous son, even seek to murder him. They grab him and drag him toward the hill on which the town is built, planning to throw him off. Violence is the sinful response to the inconvenient and unflattering truth Jesus has spoken against them.
But miraculously, Jesus eludes the crowd so that they can’t fulfill the evil in their hearts. But others will accomplish it. Their leaders will crucify Jesus, despite their own custom of providing liberty to a captive at Passover. A captive will go free, while Jesus goes to the executioner. We all remember Barabbas who certainly deserved the fate that befell Jesus far more than Jesus did. And yet, it had to be that way. On perfect final offering was necessary for the salvation of all mankind. All in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.
It’s horribly ironic that the very people who could see Jesus in person, those who knew him best and lived near him, refused to see him as their Savior. How blind they were! And sadly, as far as we know, Jesus left Nazareth that day never to return. Their rejection of Jesus seems to have been irreparable and complete.
Back to our initial questions. What if Jesus did come to our town this morning? What if He came right here to our church? What if he stood here in the pulpit and preached a sermon? Wouldn’t that be incredible?
Today, Jesus has come to our town, as is His custom each week. And He is present with us in this house of God. Today, Jesus is here with us in his Word and in the Sacraments. Today, in God’s house, Jesus “proclaim[s] good news to the poor” in spirit. Here each week, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon [us],” to proclaim liberty to all of us who are captive to our sins. Here each week, Jesus offers “recovering of sight” for our spiritual blindness, so we all might see Him clearly as our Savior, whose forgiveness sets us free from fear and death. “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Because
TODAY WE HAVE HEARD FROM CHRIST HIMSELF.
And since it remains “the year of the Lord’s favor,” may his Spirit be upon us all. And may our presence in the Lord’s house today strengthen us for the week to come. Amen.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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