“The Case for Christ - Rejected by His Own”

Luke 4:28-29: ‘And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath. And rose up, and thrust Him[Jesus] out of the city, and led Him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong.’

In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, John spoke of the significance of Jesus having come into the world. He spoke of Jesus as having made the world and when He came into the world, He gave it ‘Light’.

Even though He created the world and He gave it its light for living life, when He came, ‘...the world did not know Him’. 

And - ‘He came unto His own and His own received Him not’ John reported in Jn 1:11.

No - not even His own townspeople really knew Him. He had come to His own people, ‘And He entered, as His custom was, the synagogue.’

He went to the place where He had lived as a boy, where He had often been seen about town. And He went to the synagogue, the place where He certainly was no stranger either.

He went to the place where the stories and the passages 
from Moses and the prophets were often read for the congregation - they knew them well. 

He went to those who had often heard of how much Jehovah loved His people, of how He dealt with His people throughout the years. 

He went to those who often read and studied about how God was working out His plan of deliverance through His people.

Yes - He went to the place where they had read and knew about the Messiah Who would be coming. 

He came back to His own hometown - back to the synagogue He had frequented so often and He was rejected there - they did not receive Him.

And all He did was to simply make the announcement of the Scripture being fulfilled in Himself, that the appointed time for the coming of God’s kingdom was here, and He explained what that meant - that was all!

He had come as the Messenger of God’s Good News of salvation, and as the embodiment of God’s favor to all people. This is what He told them - and they were ready to cast Him out immediately.

Why and how why did this happen? 

Let us examine this present situation here in the synagogue for the next few minutes. 

Having come into the synagogue, Jesus stood up to read. That was the custom: not only would the priests and scribes read a portion from either the Law, the Prophets, or the Writings, but anyone could participate in reading - he needed only to stand to indicate this desire. After the reading, the scroll was taken back to its cabinet, the reader would sit down, and then give some instruction about what he read. This was the natural and orderly procedure in the reading of the sacred scrolls.   

So, when Jesus stood, the attendant handed Jesus the scroll from the prophet Isaiah to read.

He read from the Isaiah 61:1-2 portion, a reading that deals with the Servant of Jehovah, the Messiah to come.

After Jesus finished reading, He sat down and said: ‘This day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears.’

The Scripture in Luke does not indicate whether Jesus said more: actually, He probably gave a sermon, and, no doubt, this was the key note of what He had to say. But - whether He did or did not expound on this announcement at this time is not important. 

What is important is what He said in that one sentence: ‘This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.’

These words were jolting - that we know! Imagine - after waiting for four hundred years for the ‘consolation of Israel’ (Luke 2:25), Jesus announced that the centuries of waiting on the blessing of God’s grace are now ended at this very moment: ‘Today is this Scripture fulfilled...’. 

Isaiah’s words spoke of an anointing by the Spirit, about the work of a prophet and His dramatic signs of God’s redemption.    

So, Jesus was essentially saying, ‘The Kingdom of God that you have been waiting so long for is here - right here before you - the power of the Kingdom of God in the Person of His Messiah has come.’

What could have been more exciting for them than that!

The people of Nazareth, the town out from ‘whom could come no good thing’(Jn 1:46), were hearing Jesus telling them about the best ‘Thing’ yet - they were being honored by hearing it for the first time from the very mouth of Him Who was its fulfillment!

It must have been more than electrifying - for the record says that His hearers ‘all bare Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth...’. (Lu 4:22)

Yes - they were impressed - at least, temporarily - they fully admired Him - they could not find any flaw in what He said to them up to that moment - they had no dispute with that news.

Is that not similar today? There are many, many who, for centuries, and still in our day, yes - there are many good church-going people today who listen regularly to the Scriptures being read each week and who admire it while they are listening. They do not always argue with it, although many do try to interpret it to suit themselves. Sometimes, we even feel a kind of intellectual pleasure in hearing a good, powerful sermon.

And, so it was with these listeners this day - they felt ‘good’ about what they heard - at least, so far.

But - wait - He had more to say to them! The climax of His sermon was yet to be reached!

He told them that His victories were not going to be over worldly enemies, even though they were so sure God was coming in the form of the Messiah to free them from their hated enemies. 

But Jesus was telling them of a freedom from sin and its effect - His deliverance was not going to be political - it was going to be a spiritual deliverance, a deliverance for all people. This is how they were to see this prophecy of Isaiah about to be fulfilled.

And how are we sure of this?

We know this because Jesus went on to confirm this by letting them know that it was not going to be limited to Israel only - God would bless all peoples - all who needed deliverance - and that included the Gentiles!

Yes - Gentiles would be included!  

‘Did He say the Gentiles were going to be included in this work of the Messiah?’, we can just hear them questioning among themselves.

It was shocking news - the news that God’s grace and favor would flow out to Gentiles, too, through His coming as the Scripture’s Messiah hit them hard! 

He went on to explain how the Scriptures bore witness to God’s blessing on the Gentiles - how the power and blessing of God stepped beyond their nation to reach out to the Gentiles.

He went back to Elijah and to Elisha, two of their greatly, admired prophets, and said: ‘There were many widows there in Israel in the days of Elijah; but it was not a widow of Israel to whom the prophet was sent, but a widow in Sidon. 

And there were many lepers in the time of Elisha, but only Naaman was healed, and he belonged not to Israel, but to Syria.’

‘..it was not a widow of Israel, but a widow of Sidon(a Gentile nation)’.

And, it was ‘...only Naaman who was healed, and he belonged not to Israel, but to Syria’(another Gentile nation).’

Yes - God had used Elijah and Elisha to speak to the Israelites in showing them God’s heart.

But many, many of the Israelites did not see this nor were they able to receive His divine blessings; yet, there were those Gentiles who did benefit from God’s blessings through Elijah and Elisha and Jesus reminded them of that. 

Why did Gentiles, like the widow of Sidon and Naaman, benefit and, yet, so many in Israel missed out? What was the message God was trying to impress upon Israel at the time?

It was simply that God would respond to any heart - Jew or Gentile - if He saw a heart of faith and trust in Him. He did not respond on the basis of a racial or national relationship.

I repeat, He does not respond on any racial, national - and, let us add - social, or religious basis! 

Yes - they were a privileged people, but Israel missed this message all through their history - and, now, they were about to miss it still.

But - where did their underlying problem lie?

You see, Jesus was reading and interpreting the Scripture -  and His interpretation was quite different from the way they read it. They were interpreting the Scripture in their spiritual blindness. 

They were looking at the Word God had spoken through His prophets according to their selfish, nationalistic view - they were centered upon themselves!

The ‘Gentiles’ were going to be grafted into God’s grace through the Messiah He sent?

Impossible! They hardly even dared to utter the word ‘Gentile’, much less accept them into their religious world!

But - but Jesus was opening up the view for them - Jesus was giving them ‘LIGHT’ - Jesus was showing them ‘heaven’ - Jesus was explaining how the grace of God went beyond them - Jesus was impressing them that the true character of God’s Messiah was not exclusively just for them! 

JESUS WAS BRINGING THE REALITY OF THE GRACE AND OF THE MERCY OF GOD TO THE WHOLE WORLD!

But what was it that was so deeply lodged in their thinking for centuries and centuries that was so hard to dislodge?

It was that the root of their religious heritage lay in their father, Abraham.

They knew that Abraham had received blessing - in fact, an   unprecedented blessing - from God.(Gen 17:1-9) However, they mistakenly thought that anyone not blood related to Abraham was excluded from that same blessing.

Jesus was challenging that now: this was anathema to them, it was abrasive, but, if they would read the Scripture aright, they would see that Abraham would also be the spiritual father to all who have faith in God. 

The promise to Abraham was that through him and his offspring blessing would come to all - Jew and Gentile alike.

This promise was going to be fulfilled by Christ Who was the Offspring of Abraham. It would come pre-eminently through Christ, the Subject of Isaiah’s prophecy Jesus had read to them that day!

And this is why Jesus concluded His reading with: ‘This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.’

Because these people had closed themselves to sharing this bounty of God’s grace and deliverance with others, what was the result? What happened?

It was this: they themselves were unable to open their hearts to receive it for themselves. By excluding others, they excluded themselves - and they were blind to anything else.  

And it was their blindness that affected their interpretation of the Scriptures. They read it as promises of God’s exclusive covenant with them, a covenant that excluded all others - and how wrong they were in their interpretation of it!

Yes - where the law is concerned, Israel was certainly ‘set above all nations’ - they had the advantage over all nations since the law was given to them directly from the hand of God. (Deut 28:14)

But, where divine grace and response to it through faith was concerned, Jews and Gentiles were now being put on equal footing with God. 

Christ came so that the blessing given to Abraham would be equally extended to all people - to the whole world - Gentiles as well as Jews - ‘...that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith’. (Gal 3:14)

In fact, let me read that Scripture in its entirety to you, starting with the first part of verse 13 (Gal 3:13-14): ‘Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law...that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.’

In Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham was to be imparted to the Gentiles - that blessing promised to Abraham was going to reach the Gentiles through their Messiah, Jesus Christ!

That is what was missed for many generations and that proved to be the hindrance leading to their spiritual blindness.

To misinterpret the coming of Christ and the scope of His work is the sure path to spiritual blindness, the sure path to never ‘seeing’ Him!

To try to keep going on in our own glory and in our own arrogance, to try to re-fashion God’s Word and His Work in Christ is the product of our own dogmatic, spiritual blindness. 

Jesus upset their thinking in this area of their theologically devised idea of their Messiah. 

What He would yet need to do would go on - whether His own people received Him or not. And it would go on no matter how they interpreted the Scripture!

When Jesus ended His sermon, we can see how it affected them - hostility toward Him broke loose! 
 
Yes - they had felt the wonder of His words, at first; they were strangely moved in their minds by the words He spoke but they were never moved in their hearts. 

Instead, the message Christ gave them filled them with wrath - so much wrath that they expelled Him from Nazareth. They were ready to push Him over a cliff to His death, in fact! 

Hostility toward Him showed itself right from the very beginning of His public ministry, but hostility had absolutely no power over the Son of God - it could do nothing to Him until His ministry was fully completed here upon earth. 

So, ‘He passing through the midst of them, went His way.’

This is how the public ministry of the Man of Nazareth, of Jesus, of God’s Word Who was made flesh, began.

And He entered the fulfilling phase of His ministry by this solemn beginning of He ‘coming to His own but of His own receiving Him not.’

I will stop here for tonight but let me just leave you with a brief illustration.

The story goes of a very, devout religious man who had a high office in the church, taught religious classes, visited the sick, prayed diligently every day of his life, engaged himself in many other good works for over fifty years.

One day, as he was reading a paper about Christ and His saving work, he came across this statement: ‘The Gospel brings us, not a work to do, but a word to believe about a work done.’

That struck him. ‘I see it now,’ he said. ‘I have been working at the keyhole, struggling with my key to get in and the door has been open all the time! My fifty years of religion and diligent church work is all for nothing for Christ has opened the door and all I need to do is walk through it!’ 

His blindness was removed - he could now interpret it all                  aright - he was no longer struggling at the keyhole!    

Once again, let me encourage you to let the ‘Word of Christ dwell richly within’ this week - let it become that ministry of spiritual life that becomes deeper to each of our hearts. May the Lord bless it to you in that way! 

Amen!

Let us pray.