If you would turn with me back to Luke chapter 4, we’ll pick back up in our study of this gospel with Luke 4:14. That can be found on page 859 in the Bibles located in the pew in front of you. And tonight we are coming to the last sermon in our series on the first four chapters of the gospel of Luke. And we’ll take a break next week first for the Mission Conference and then for a series on the prayers of Paul in his letters to the churches. But then we’ll plan to pick back up with Luke in the month of April and continue to examine the life and the ministry of Jesus.
Our passage tonight, Luke chapter 4, is somewhat of a transitional passage. In some ways it is the climax of all that we’ve looked at over the last seven weeks. This is the moment that has been anticipated by the announcements and by the birth and by the prophet and by the temptation. They have all been leading up to and pointing our attention to this moment, to the ministry of Jesus Christ. And now, the ministry of Jesus begins in full. But this is also a transition. It’s the beginning, it’s the starting point of what the next section of this gospel is all about, and that is, Jesus’ preaching and teaching and working miracles in the land of Galilee. In almost all of Luke 4:14 to 9:50 takes place in the land of Galilee. And yes, Jesus will find favor with the crowds. He will provoke awe and amazement at what He says and what He does. But there also will be conflict and hostility and opposition that Jesus faces in the next section of this gospel.
And we will see both of those things; we’ll see both of those things in this passage that we study tonight. The main focus of this passage and the main focus of those next chapters, in fact the main focus of all of Jesus’ ministry, is this – it is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God. And we may know something of the kingdom of God. We may hear talk of the kingdom mentioned in Christian jargon. We may even know the classic definition of the kingdom of God – that it is God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing. But we need to look again, and we need to encounter again tonight all that Jesus has come to do in establishing the kingdom of God. We need to encounter that and to believe that and to live that, to live as members of God’s kingdom, and then to preach it. We need to be witnesses of God’s kingdom whenever God sends us and to whatever opportunities He presents to us. So we’ll see two things in this passage tonight. We’ll see the authority of Jesus and the kingdom of God. And before we look at this passage, let’s pray and ask God’s help.
Our Father, we bow down before Your Word as those who are under Your authority. You have made us and You have redeemed us. You have made us Your own so that we might understand and live out Your Word. We pray that You would show us again tonight something of the amazement and the wonder of Jesus and the beauty of our salvation. There are those here who have not come to know that, that You would draw them to Yourself, that You would work by the Spirit, that You would help us to see Jesus, perhaps for the first time, and to come to embrace Him in love and faith. We can’t understand this on our own. We need Your help. And so we ask that You would do that for Your glory and for our good. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Luke chapter 4, starting in verse 14:
“And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
‘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.’
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ And he said to them, ‘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.’ And he said, ‘Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.’ When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent and come out of him!’ And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. And they were all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!’ And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region.
And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf. And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them.
Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.
And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, ‘I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.’ And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
The Authority of Jesus
The dateline is the first part of a news article. It’s short, and oftentimes we overlook the dateline, but it sets the context for the article by naming the location and sometimes the date at which the story took place. So it may say something like, “Washington, DC -” and then the article begins after that. We oftentimes skip right over that and don’t even think about what we’ve just read. Well the dateline for this first account for the ministry of Jesus is in His hometown. It’s in Nazareth. But if we want to find the broader context of when these events took place, we have to go back a few verses to chapter 3 verse 1 and we find that the context for John the Baptist’s ministry was in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar with Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene. Now that puts John the Baptist’s ministry beginning sometime in the late 20s AD, and Jesus followed not very long after John the Baptist.
And that little verse tells us something. It tells us something about the people who are in power at the time that Jesus began His ministry. It was people like Tiberius and Pilate and Herod. We can read in between the lines of those names stories of power struggle and military strength and political influence and the abuse of authority. They had that with which the devil had tempted Jesus in the last passage that we studied last week. They were the kingdoms of the world and they had authority and glory in earthly terms. You see, this is not generic power or authority. No, this is power that has a name, it has a land. There are places associated with this power. There is Rome and Jerusalem and there are citizens, people, who are living under their rule. And it’s Luke’s custom to give us these details, to give us details of these names of the rulers and authorities that were in rule at the time of Jesus. We read about Augustus and Tiberius and Pilate and Herod. And if we keep on going into the book of Acts, we find that Luke includes the names of Felix and Festus and Agrippa. These are real people. They have real power over real lives and in real places.
And then there’s Jesus. Jesus lived a quiet, anonymous life for thirty years in the little town of Nazareth. You’ve heard the old slam on Nazareth. It’s got a rank as one of the top five put-downs in the Bible. It was what Nathaniel said when he first heard about Jesus. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” is what he said. If we look on a map in the back of our Bibles, oftentimes you will find a map of Palestine, of Galilee during Jesus’ day, and you will find, most likely on that map, the location of the town of Nazareth. That probably wouldn’t have been the case back in Jesus’ day. It would not have been worthy of registering on the map. Nazareth was one of those towns sort of like those communities that are in Mississippi that we only hear about when the weather man is tracking a tornado across the map. Names like Possumneck and Chunky – noname towns. That was Nazareth! In fact, if you were to go back and look at the text from the early Roman period, Nazareth does not appear in any text from the early Roman period except for the New Testament. That’s how small and insignificant it was. It was a small town and it was poor.
And Jesus came from a poor family. You remember back after Jesus was born when Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem to offer the sacrifice that was prescribed for them in the law, it says that they offered a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. Why was that their sacrifice? It was because they could not afford a lamb. They were poor. And there was nothing remarkable about Jesus’ first thirty years. In this passage that we just read, we find Him in the synagogue service in Nazareth and the people say in response to His reading and teaching, they say, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” In other words, there was nothing that set Jesus apart from the other people in Nazareth. There wasn’t anything particularly prominent about Jesus, even by Nazareth standards. He didn’t have prestige. He didn’t have influence. He wasn’t well-connected. He didn’t have wealth. Jesus didn’t sit on a throne. He didn’t hold a political office.
But Jesus had unmistakable authority, and that’s the point of this passage. It’s that Jesus has authority. And we are told that when He went around teaching in the synagogues of Galilee that the people were astonished. They were astonished at His teaching because His word possessed authority. Jesus had authority in His teaching. You know when we read about Jesus in the synagogues we have in our mind that the synagogue was a specific type of religious structure and it had a set order of worship that went along with the synagogue. We might envision the synagogue as being something of a miniature temple or maybe a first century version of a sanctuary like this. But that may not have been the case. In fact, there’s actually not very much archeological evidence of that kind of synagogue existing in Jesus’ day. And instead, commentators say that the synagogues were more gathered people rather than buildings or structures. And so most village synagogues were probably modified rooms of private homes where people would gather together on Sabbath Day to worship. And they would worship by reading Scripture and praying together. But even their worship was probably less structured than we think of it. It was not like the modern worship liturgy that we are accustomed to.
And all that to say, is that when Jesus is in the synagogue and He is teaching and preaching on the Sabbath Day, His authority is not conferred to Him. It is not bestowed upon Him because of anyone or anything associated with the synagogue. No, His authority comes from Himself. It comes from within. It came because of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It came because Jesus interpreted the Scripture decisively. He taught the truth. He taught the truth no matter what. He showed no partiality. His words were binding and there was no middle ground with Jesus. Either you accept Him and His teaching or you reject Him. There’s nothing in between with Jesus.
And the authority of His teaching was confirmed by His authority or His power to work miracles. And we find that in this passage, that in verse 33, He went down to Capernaum. There was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon and Jesus rebuked him and He commanded the demon to come out of the man and he came out. And it says that the demon came out of the man and had done him no harm. And we are told in verse 36, “The people were amazed and said to one another, ‘What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out.’” And then Jesus goes to Simon’s house, to his mother-in-law who has a high fever. It says that Jesus rebuked the fever and immediately it came out and she rose up and continued to carry about her household chores. She began to serve them. Verse 40 says that, “All those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him and laid His hands on every one of them and healed them.”
You see what Jesus is doing? He is demonstrating His authority not only with His teaching but also with His healing power. Now I imagine that for most of us the mention of demons or unclean spirits is not only unfamiliar and foreign but it’s also just plain strange to us. And here’s how J.I. Packer explains this phenomenon in the gospels. He says, “The level and intensity of demonic manifestation in people during Christ’s ministry was unique. It had no parallel in the Old Testament times or since, but that it was doubtless part of Satan’s desperate battle for his kingdom against Christ’s attack on it.” And that’s what we find all throughout the gospels and we read elsewhere in the New Testament. Satan is called “the ruler of this world,” and “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one,” John says in 1 John 5:19. Paul says in the book of Ephesians, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities and the cosmic powers over this present darkness.” There are components of spiritual warfare mentioned all throughout the New Testament. These are the things that we talked about last week in Jesus’ temptation.
Now that does not mean that God is not in control. He is. He is in absolute control. It just means that this world is under the reign of sin ever since the fall and that this is the realm in which Satan operates. But what Jesus demonstrates by His teaching and by His healing and by His casting out demons is that He has authority. He has authority over the effects of sin. He has authority over the cosmic forces of evil. There is no part of this creation over which Jesus does not have authority.
There’s a story from the ministry of Robert Bruce in 16th century Scotland and King James, of the King James Bible, was a part of the congregation there. He would come and worship under Robert Bruce’s ministry. And he had a habit, he had had a conflict with Bruce and he had a habit of talking and carrying on conversation during the preaching. He would talk loudly to people around him so that all could hear it. And so on one occasion, Bruce stopped preaching until King James was quiet. But as soon as he started preaching again, King James started talking again and talking loudly. And so that happened three different times and then finally Bruce paused and he said, “It is an expression of the wisest of kings that when the lion roars all the beasts of the field are quiet. The Lion of the tribe of Judah is now roaring in the voice of His Gospel and it becomes all the petty kings of the earth to be silent.” That’s bold.
In Luke chapter 4, Jesus is beginning His ministry and He puts everyone, He puts everything on notice that He has all authority. He has authority over nature and He has authority over diseases. He has authority over the demonic forces. He has authority over the petty kings like Tiberius and Pilate and Herod. In fact, those names, we wouldn’t even really know them if they weren’t included in the story about Jesus. And we can also take from this passage that Jesus has authority over the petty kings of today – over Putin and Biden and Trump and Xi Jinping and whoever else you want to include on that list of authority figures today. They’re petty kings compared to Jesus. He has all authority.
The Kingdom of God
Why is that? How do we understand Jesus’ authority? In what context? Well verses 16 to 30 provide us with the interpretation. It gives us the lens through which we understand all that Jesus says and does. And it’s this – it’s that Jesus brings in the kingdom of God. And it would be hard to overstate the significance of these verses for recognizing who Jesus is and what He came to do. And Luke puts this story of Jesus in Nazareth in His hometown in the synagogue reading the prophet Isaiah, he puts it right here in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry so that we can understand that everything that comes after this point is because of what happens here. “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.” And then Jesus says in verse 21, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And Jesus is saying that He is the fulfillment of all of the promises and all of the expectations of the prophets and He has come to bring salvation, He has come to bring about the restoration of the fallen world, to deal with sin and suffering and poverty and injustice and to deal with those things once and for all. And that His ministry of nothing less than the initial stage of the breaking in of the new creation into this fallen creation. And so He announces the year of the Lord’s favor and He proclaims, He preaches the good news, the Gospel of the kingdom of God and says that He was sent for that purpose – to preach the Gospel of the kingdom of God.
It’s the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God, you see, is on full display in the life and the ministry of Jesus Christ. In fact, if you want to put a seminary word with that it’s the eschatological kingdom of God that is on display in Jesus’ preaching and ministry. It’s end time blessings that are breaking into the present age. That’s what Jesus has come to do – to bring and to establish the kingdom of God and He will ultimately establish that kingdom by His death and His resurrection. And He will return at the end of history to complete what He has already accomplished and to make all things new. You see, that’s where we find our fears banished. That’s where we find our hopes satisfied and fulfilled. It’s in Jesus Christ, the One who has authority, the One who brings about the kingdom of God.
And the tragedy, the tragedy of this passage is that those who knew Him best, who knew the most about Him, the people from His own hometown, from Nazareth, what did they do with Him? They dismissed Him. They missed His message. They wanted nothing to do with His message. They wanted to eliminate Him and throw Him off a cliff. And yet in the very next part of the passage we have those who are in most opposition to Jesus and who most hated Jesus, the demons, the cosmic forces of evil, they are the ones who recognize who Jesus really is. The demons call Jesus in verse 34, “the Holy One of God.” Verse 41, “the Son of God.” Verse 41 also, “the Christ.” They recognized who Jesus was and yet they are also trying to derail His ministry in their own ways.
With this preaching of the good news of the kingdom of God, there is also a strong note of judgment. There’s judgment on those in Nazareth who knew Him and heard Him and rejected Him. Don’t let that be a word of judgment to you tonight, because the truth is, every one of us here most likely is very familiar with Jesus. And we know the facts of Jesus’ life very well, I’m sure. Don’t miss Him. Don’t dismiss Him. Don’t resist Him. Submit to His authority. Bow the knee to Jesus as your Savior and Lord by faith because one day every knee will bow to Jesus and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. For many it will be bowing the knee to Jesus in judgment. But the call of this passage tonight, the offer of the good news of the Gospel, the good news of the kingdom of God, is to bow the knee to Jesus in mercy and love. In His great love for you in which He was sent and came to redeem you out of the brokenness of this creation and to bring you into the blessings of the kingdom of God, bow the knee to Him in His mercy, in His love, and take hold of those blessings of the kingdom of God forever. It comes simply by faith – by turning from self and turning from sin, turning to God in faith and trust and receiving the blessings of the kingdom of God.
And once you come under the authority of Jesus by faith, you become forever members, citizens, of the kingdom of God. No one can take away that right as a citizen of God. And while there is a future or an end time dimension to the kingdom of God, it’s also right now. And the kingdom of God impacts the way that we live. It impacts what we say and what we do right now, today, on February 20, 2022. As I’ve thought about this passage this week, I’ve been reflecting on the kingdom of God. I can’t help but hear our own Day School students in their declaration. Our school is called “a kingdom school,” and the students say in their declaration, “I go to First Presbyterian Day School, a kingdom school.” Now that’s an easy thing to say, but it’s also countercultural and a radical thing to say to be a member of God’s kingdom. To say that, to be a kingdom school, means to live by the priorities and the principles of the kingdom of God. And at the primary purpose, the distinctiveness of our school should be not to live for sports or arts or academic awards, but for the teaching of the Gospel and the good news of the kingdom of God and to honor Christ’s name and to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit in the lives of the students who come through here.
And that has application for the rest of our lives in other places as well. There’s a countercultural message and a challenge for us to live as members of the kingdom of God, to live as citizens of the kingdom of God in this present age. It means that parenting is not about trophies and awards and popularity. But it’s about pursuing the souls of your children. It means that our finances are not about extending the reach of our worldly dominion but it’s about using and incorporating our finances for the sake of expanding the reach of God’s kingdom. It means that in whatever we do and whatever God calls us to do, wherever God calls us to be, that we must always think of ourselves as citizens or members of the kingdom of God before members and citizens of whatever kingdom of this world we exist in. That means in our relationships, at work, with our sexual ethic, with our involvement in the community, that we are viewing ourselves and living under the priorities and the principles of the kingdom of God in obedience to the authority of our Savior, Jesus. It means to be distinctive. To be distinctive in whatever we do, in whatever God has called us to be. That we would be people of humility and patience and kindness and joy and forgiveness and love and sacrifice and self-denial. Those things do not come easily, and yet that’s what God calls us to do and to be as members of His kingdom. And then we have to be prepared to face conflict and even rejection because of that.
And then there’s one more thing. One last thing. “How shall they hear?” is the question. That’s the theme of our Mission Conference this year. And next week we’ll start the Mission Conference based on Romans chapter 10 – “Faith comes by hearing” – and how shall they hear unless there is a preacher. You see, that’s how the kingdom of God spreads. The kingdom of God spreads through the preaching of the Gospel and as being witnesses of Jesus Christ. So let’s come to this conference this year in the next weeks prepared to be challenged to speak and to be bold as witnesses, as representatives of God’s kingdom to our family and to our friends and to our neighbors and to our community. The ministry of Jesus is what we are called to take up. Why? Because we recognize something of the awe and the wonder and the amazement, the beauty of who He is and the beauty of His salvation, the glory of the kingdom of God and the wonder that we would be called to be a part of it and then we want to go and tell others about that. We probably won’t do that if we want to remain comfortable and at ease, and yet that’s the purpose for which Jesus was sent – to preach the good news of the kingdom of God. And He calls us to do the same. Let’s ask God to help us as we take up that call and challenge. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we pray that You would unsettle us from our comfort and from our ease, that You would turn us from our sin and our disobedience. Help us to see the beauty of Jesus, His authority over our lives. Help us to bow the knee to Him and to worship Him, to live lives of distinctiveness wherever You call us to serve and to live. We pray that You would receive all the glory for it, and we pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.