Jesus, The Expository Preacher - [Luke 4:14-22]

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Well, I know it's only theoretical, but what if the Lord Jesus, bodily, walked into church this morning, to Bethlehem Bible Church?
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What would you think? What would you do? Would you be bothered if He sat in your seat?
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Would you be super glad that you drove out even though it was going to snow a little bit today? I wonder how you'd act.
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I thought to myself, how would I act? Would I say, Lord, I'd love to have you preach for me today, or would
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I say, I think I still want to preach a sermon in front of the Lord Jesus? At times, we have guest speakers, and I always think to myself, if they say something wrong, at least
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I give the benediction I can get up and correct them. I'll never forget the time I was at a Master's Seminary at graduation, and there was a guest speaker, and he got up and preached a message.
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And then after that, John MacArthur got up and said, well, we all know the real meaning of the passage is,
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I'm positive if Jesus got up here and preached, I would not have to do anything of the sort.
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And today, while we don't see Jesus walking into our own building, we're going to learn what happened when
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Jesus walked into a synagogue and was asked to preach. Please turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 4.
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This is one of those times in life that we see in Luke 4 that you wish you could kind of go back in a time machine and just be there with the drama, with the anticipation, with the worship, and just to see what the
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Lord Jesus would say and what He would do. I have a simple purpose this morning, and that is just that you appreciate the
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Lord Jesus more. Just watch Him as He preaches, that you would admire Him, that you would love
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Him, that you would continue to believe in Him. To just see Him in Luke chapter 4,
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Jesus the preacher. And I don't know if you know this congregation, but week after week, as we study the
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Lord Jesus, God is transforming you. If you're a Christian, the Spirit of God dwells in you.
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And as you see Jesus, week by week, as you read Him in your own scriptures, you are being transformed from one level of glory to another.
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Imperceptible, but certain. And so many times we're wanting to have a lot of practical application, and certainly there's practical application in light of who
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Jesus is, and we'll see some today. But there's nothing like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, watching
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Jesus, and learning about Jesus. There's a time to serve like Martha, that's for certain. But today we're going to look at Jesus and listen to Him preach.
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And by the way, if Jesus did get up to preach here at Bethlehem Bible Church today, I wonder what His subject would be. The answer would be
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Himself. He determined to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and that's what we'll see today as well.
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So we've been going through the Gospel of Jesus according to Luke, and of course, there is more to Jesus than His preaching.
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There's more to Jesus than His proclamation. He's going somewhere. He's set
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His face towards Jerusalem like a flint, and He is on His way to die, of course, as a substitutionary, redeeming, atoning
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Savior. Peter writes of something similar, Christ also died for the sins, once for all, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.
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Of course, Jesus is on the way to die, but His preaching is still important. Paul writes,
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Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on the tree.
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Yes, Jesus dying on what we call Good Friday is crucial, it's critical. But what did
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Jesus say on the way there? Do we just fast forward to His death and say, that's enough for us to study?
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Even John, the disciple, the apostle writes, the next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said,
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Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Of course, the death of Jesus is important and mandatory, but what does
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Jesus say on the way to the cross? How does Jesus preach? And of course, Dr.
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Luke, the physician, is putting together and has put together a very orderly account, a biography, if you will, a theological biography of Jesus.
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And he has done it in such a way that, as you read it, you'll think, that's right, Jesus is the
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Messiah. That's correct, Jesus is the one to be trusted. You should say to yourself, by faith,
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I will trust my eternal soul to this God -man, who was announced by the angel, who was born of a virgin, conceived by the
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Spirit of God, who has a forerunner named John the Baptist, and I am willing to go to hell if Jesus isn't right, if He isn't
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God. I'm all in, there's no other Messiah. I know I'm a sinner, I know
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God's holy, I know I'm going to die one day, and so is there any hope for me? Is there any hope for you?
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And so what Luke wants to make sure you know, is if you're going to research financial advisors'
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CVs, if you're going to research doctors' resumes, how much more do you need to research the one that you're going to have to trust to bring you into the presence of God on that day, when you breathe your final breath?
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Actually, what's happening here is, remember, Luke is showing you that Jesus is the last
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Adam, and where the first Adam failed, the last Adam succeeds. And we see the parallel, as Romans 5 says, for if, because of one man's trespass, the first Adam, death reigned through that one man,
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Adam, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,
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Jesus Christ, the last Adam. So this morning, we're coming to Luke chapter 4, verses 14 and following.
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We just saw the temptation account the last two weeks, as Jesus, the last Adam, does what
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Adam failed to do, overcomes the temptation of Satan. Jesus does what Israel did not do, trust in the
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Lord even through temptation. So today we're going to look at Jesus, the preacher. Jesus, the expositor.
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I don't know if you've ever thought about Jesus as an expository preacher, but that's what we're going to look at today. The prophet himself,
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Jesus. I wrote a book a long time ago called Jesus Christ, Prince of Preachers, and I asked someone to write a little blurb on it, like a little recommendation.
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They call those puffs. I always think of pastries when I think of puffs. And they said, you know what, we'll do it, because we think the content's okay, but the title's bad, because when you hear
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Prince of Preacher, everybody thinks of Charles Spurgeon. And I thought,
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I respect you, but I don't agree with you. And then I found a quote by Thomas Watson of Puritan.
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Jesus alone is the Prince of Preachers. He alone is the best of expositors. So I think
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Charles Spurgeon would have no problem with Jesus being the Prince of Preachers.
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And again, Christ's only mission is not preaching. He's on his way to the cross, that's true.
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He's coming to do something, not just say something, but what he says is very, very important.
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And now Jesus comes to Galilee. What will he say? What will happen? What will
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Luke show us to bolster our faith? Luke chapter 4, verses 16 through about verse 22 or so is going to be our section.
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We'll see how far we get today. If you're looking for an outline, if you like outlines to see where we're going, it's super simple.
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It's the setting and the sermon. The setting and the sermon. Or maybe I could say the setting, the scripture reading, and the sermon.
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So if you're a visitor here today, we don't always alliterate, but today it's easy. I should spend like 20 minutes trying to figure out how to alliterate something.
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Let's just get to the studies. Let's get to the good stuff. Unless it's easy. Let's look at the setting first,
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S -E -T -T -I -N -G, as we see the Lord Jesus in public ministry preaching.
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Verse 14 of Luke 4. And Jesus, tying it together with the last section of the temptation, and Jesus, focusing on his humanity, the word
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Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, returned in the power of the
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Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country.
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And he, Jesus, taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.
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So Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted, remember, and now
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Jesus goes to Galilee and he's returning in the power of the Spirit. And what we see here is
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Jesus, the incarnate God -man, coming to preach.
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Most scholars think there's about a year difference between the end of the temptations to this. It's called his year of obscurity.
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It makes no difference to us because the writer Luke is trying to get us to see that Jesus is empowered by the
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Spirit of God. What he says is important. What he does is important. And what happens is there's a report about him went out throughout all the surrounding country.
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The news is spreading. By the way, the word report there is where we get our word fame. There's a good report, fame.
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Matter of fact, if you take that word fame and put blast in front of it, it's blast fame -y.
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And so this is a good report. News is spreading and pretty positive so far.
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Lots of things are happening. He's doing lots of things. They've heard it through the grapevine that Jesus has done wonderful things and who he is, and so now they're wondering what's going on.
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I just looked up, why is it called heard it through the grapevine? And I know it's not because of a Marvin Gaye song.
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It's through something else. What is the background to heard it through the grapevine? First used before the
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Civil War. They had to run a telegraph from California all the way to the
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East Coast. And a Colonel Frederick A .B .E .E. in 1859 ran that telegraph through Humboldt Telegraph Company.
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Those lines. And the lines would go on trees, and they would be weird, and they kind of looked like California wild grapevines did those lines, and so they called it
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I heard it through the grapevine. Be warm to be filled. Certainly Proverbs is right when it says bright eyes gladden the heart.
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Good news puts fat on the bones. And here's good news. Coming around the land through the grapevine,
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Jesus is here. And everything about this shows us the Spirit of the Lord is working in and through Jesus.
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Chapter 4, verse 1, Jesus full of the Holy Spirit. Here, power of the Spirit.
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Talks about the Spirit upon him in chapter 4, verse 18. This reminds me of Romans chapter 8, everywhere you go, the
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Spirit of God, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God, and Jesus. So far, it says, teaching in their synagogues, being glorified by all.
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So news is spreading, and you would imagine that it would. God is on earth. That's news worth spreading.
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Peter said in Acts, As for the word that he has sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he is
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Lord of all. You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee, that's where we are now in the passage, after the baptism that John proclaimed.
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How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
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And we are witnesses of all that he did, both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.
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They put him to death by hanging him on the tree, but God raised him on the third day.
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These things, as Paul went on to say, are not done in a corner. They are done very publicly, and Jesus just kept preaching.
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Dear congregation, liberalism in evangelical circles, liberalism in modern churches that call themselves
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Christian, they're really after what we can do, feeding the poor. Nothing wrong with that.
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Soup kitchens and ministries and all these other things. And they don't really want much teaching about Jesus, they want the actions.
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And I just want you to see in this passage, in the next few weeks as well, the importance of teaching, the importance of preaching, the importance of proclamation of God's truth, and not just curing social ills.
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When I first got to the church, some three decades ago, we had a soup kitchen ministry, and I said to the leader of the soup kitchen, well tell me when's the time you get to speak, and to preach the gospel, and to share the good news, because our ministries are hand out of track.
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We're not allowed to do that. And I said, well then it seems to me that this shouldn't be a ministry of the church, because the ministry of the church is we're preaching the good news, and then of course we can do other things after that, but if we can't preach the good news, it's not a
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Christian ministry. If you'd like to go on Saturdays with your children, fine, but it can't be run by the church.
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And of course, being the new pastor, I almost ran out of town. They didn't like that, because somehow we're supposed to do all these social things.
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Note again, Jesus teaching, teaching, teaching. Chapter 4 goes on to say down in verse 31, just to show you an example,
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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.
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Verse 43 of the same chapter, But He said to them, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to all other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose.
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One of the bedrock things of Christianity that you know as a congregation is teaching, proclamation, preaching.
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Miracles draw attention to the Lord's work, but teaching is what Luke wants to emphasize. And what's the response?
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Glorified by all. You see that in the end of verse 15? Praised by all. Most of the time, that word glorified is in reference to God.
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And here Jesus, the God -man, is beginning to receive praise. And He's at the synagogues.
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It's almost a pattern with the apostles, right? Jesus shows up. Temple worship was difficult after exile and all that, and so now the realm of teaching is in synagogues, and Jesus shows up on a
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Saturday to a synagogue to preach and to teach. And these people were praising the
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Lord. These people are, at least at the beginning, like those who would say, when Jesus' triumphant entry happens,
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Hosanna in the highest, blessed be the name of... Here is
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Jesus, the prophet. Oh, they're so thankful. Could this be the one who can release us from the shackles of Rome?
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Could this be the one who can free us? And Jesus is teaching in their synagogues.
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Probably there is focused on Luke the Gentile, and he's saying he's teaching in their synagogues.
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Far from Satan handicapping Jesus in the wilderness, far from Satan prohibiting
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Jesus in the temptation account, far from somehow restricting
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Jesus, the Spirit of God that impelled Jesus into the wilderness is having Him go into Galilee with great power, and Jesus is preaching.
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Preaching, preaching, preaching. The big picture in mind,
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Luke is wanting us to know, Jesus Messiah comes proclaiming the good news. Now, if you were asked the average
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Christian today, to what threefold office was Jesus anointed? I wonder what the average
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Christian would say. To what threefold office was Christ anointed? That's in Luther's small catechism.
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And probably many people would say, I didn't know Jesus ever held a public office. But you wouldn't say that, would you?
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What are the three offices of the Lord Jesus? Anybody out loud? If Jesus was here,
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He'd be very happy that you knew that. That is exactly right. Prophet, priest, and king. By the way,
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His body isn't here, but of course, His divine nature is here. Certainly. Christ was anointed to be our prophet, priest, and king.
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Of course, you might say Jesus is a trusted friend, and He's a close comforter, and He's a lover of my soul.
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But He is prophet, priest, and king. Now, if I ask you this, what do these men have in common?
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Isaiah, Daniel, Amos, Nathan, Jonah, and Elijah? The answer, they're prophets.
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If I ask you, what do these men have in common? Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eli, Zadok, and Abathar?
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And you'd say? Priest. Good. If I ask you what these men have in common, Saul, Solomon, Asa, Ahab, Rehoboam, you'd say kings.
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That's right. Most of the time, people had one office. You were either a prophet, priest, or a king. But a couple of times, people had two offices in Scripture.
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Moses was a priest and a prophet. Samuel was a priest and a prophet. But what we need is we need a man who's going to be prophet, proclaiming
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God's word, priest who intercedes for God's people and is a sacrifice for God's people, and a king, one who provides for and protects and rules and reigns.
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We need somebody who's not just prophet and priest, somebody who's not just priest and king. We need prophet, priest, and king.
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And of course, the Lord Jesus fulfills all three of those offices at the same time on earth, true, and in heaven.
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Jesus, in other words, Luke is trying to show us, has the proper credentials. He's the right one to trust.
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And as I've said almost every Sunday, when things get very difficult in our lives and we start thinking about things wrongly, we need to be reminded, even as Christians, I'm trusting in the right prophet, priest, and king.
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One of the Reformed catechisms asks this question, why is Christ called the anointed?
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Answer, because he's ordained of God the Father and anointed with the Holy Ghost to be our chief prophet and teacher, who fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption.
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And to be our high priest, who by the one sacrifice of his body has redeemed us and makes continual intercession with the
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Father for us. And to be our eternal king, who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who defends us and preserves us in that salvation that he has purchased for us.
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Jesus, on earth, Luke 4, preaching. He's the Word incarnate and he reveals
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God through the preaching of the Word sent by the
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Father. Jesus is a prophet, priest, and king. Probably 10 years ago, I led a group of you to Greece and we were going to places like Corinth and Athens and Philippi and Berea and Thessalonica, Thessaloniki, and seeing all these places where Paul was.
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And I got up and I talked about in one of the sites how Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. And so when you go on these tours,
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I'm kind of the designated Bible teacher and the guy you talk to if you lose your passport. Did you know some of the
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Bethlehem Bible Church people lost their passport? You know who they are. I won't tell you. And then we have a guy that kind of takes care of some of the hotels and he gives a little more history and locations of geography and all that.
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And I got up and I was so excited. Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. Yes, he dies for us, true, but he proclaims
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God's Word. He reveals the mind of God. How do you know the mind of God? Well, Christ proclaims that.
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And he's also the king. And in front of the group, as I'm teaching, he looked at me and shook his head and he said,
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Jesus isn't a prophet. My dad used to be a boxer.
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That was true. I said, Sir, I'm the teacher and Jesus is the prophet, priest, and king.
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He didn't get a big tip. Jesus even called himself the prophet.
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For it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside Jerusalem. Was it not
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Deuteronomy 18 that said, Yeah, Moses is a good prophet, but there's going to be a greater prophet. Who's the greatest preacher?
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It's the Lord Jesus, the word incarnate. And now this spirit -filled prophet starts to preach.
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Verse 16. Still in the setup. And he came to Nazareth, tiny little town, hometown, where he had been brought up.
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And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read.
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Luke, you have my attention. Luke, I'd like to know what's going on. I can kind of feel the suspense.
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I figured out what's going on here. I know that there's some tension. What would the message be?
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What would Jesus say? What does He do? And by the way, add to this, usually when Jesus shows up and it's a
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Sabbath, there's controversy. Right? Should there be healing on the Sabbath? Do you do this on the
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Sabbath? And remember, later Jesus will say, I'm Lord of the Sabbath. So when you're thinking Sabbath, you're thinking synagogue, you're thinking trouble.
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Could there be trouble? Could there be dissension? Could there be controversy? What's the message? What's the controversy?
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What does this man say in a tiny little village? By the way, Jesus, I think you've got this all wrong.
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If you're going to show up and start preaching, Rome might be a good spot, or maybe Jerusalem.
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But some tiny place in the backwoods of nowhere? You know, we envy evangelicalism.
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We're all about the ABCs of ministry, are we not? Attendance, buildings, and cash.
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That's what we're after. And that one word in the English, whatcha running? How many people attend?
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Here Jesus, out of nowhere, shows up at this tiny little out of the way place called
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Nazareth. And He's been brought up there. Now, if you've ever been to a synagogue back in those days, it might have been different than the current synagogues, but you would show up at a synagogue and they would have a liturgy.
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There would be a flow of service. Sometimes the flow of service in our day is you have 40 minutes of praise songs and you have a 30 minute message.
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That's a liturgy. That's a service style. And for us, you know, we start with New Testament reading and we sing a couple of hymns.
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There's this response and this revelation that goes back and forth. We hear God's Word, New Testament reading, and we sing.
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We hear God's Word, we give. We hear God's Word in a sermon preached, and then we sing.
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There's this give and take. It was the same thing back then. They had singing. They had scripture reading. They had blessings. They had preaching.
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The oldest account we have of a synagogue service is that there was a singing of a psalm, the reading of the
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Shema, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one, a repetition of 18 blessings, a reading of the law, a reading of the prophets, a sermon on the scripture, and then a blessing.
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So now Jesus, as is custom, shows up for worship, and verse 17, it says, the scroll of the prophet
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Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written. So they've done the singing.
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They've done the reading of the Shema. They've done the blessings. They've done the Old Testament Torah reading, something from Moses, in one of the first five books of the
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Old Testament. And the prophet now needs to be read. One of the prophets.
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One of the Old Testament prophets. What I did notice as I was working through here,
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I thought, is Jesus custom to worship on Saturday when you're supposed to worship back in those days?
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I'm sure Jesus could have said, why would I go worship when there's going to be some frail, sinful, less than perfect leader of the synagogue?
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Why would I even show up to that? I can commune with the Father at the beach of the
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Sea of Galilee. I can commune with the Father in the mountains. Here Jesus, the true man, the perfect man, shows up for worship, for public worship, for corporate worship.
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Corporate worship, dear congregation, as you know, is very, very important. And the scroll of the prophet
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Isaiah was given to him. We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that can be contained in one large scroll.
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We have books. This is a scroll. This Spirit -filled day is going to prove to be exceptional.
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Jesus arrives for worship. Most likely, He's asked by the people because of the fame that's gone before Him to do the
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Scripture reading and to give the message. The servant of the synagogue gets the box that contains the scroll.
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He grabs the scroll and he brings the scroll to Jesus. Jesus stands in traditional reverence as He's going to read the passage for the day.
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And I like this here because it's a Dr. Luke. And I used to work in the operating room, so these things grab me.
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He unrolled verse 17, the scroll. He spreads it out like King Hezekiah did the word before the
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Lord. This is to open up. This is to open up a body for surgery. I've been in a lot of surgeries before, but the first time
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I saw an open heart surgery and they have to cut your sternum open with a skill saw.
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That's basically a skill saw except it's a medical skill saw so they're $5 ,000 instead of $200 because it's medical.
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And they're sawing the sternum open. And then they open up the sternum so you can have access to the heart for the bypass.
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Here, Jesus. Opening up not a body, but the Scriptures. Opening up essentially the
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Messiah's mission. The Messianic ministry. The Messianic era is going to be opened up.
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Now, we've got two options. Option one is there's a regular reading of Isaiah and Jesus in the sovereignty of God shows up when
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Isaiah 61 is to be read. Isaiah 60 was read the previous week. That's an option.
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Now Jesus shows up. Perfect timing. Isaiah 61 is read. It's as if Jesus doesn't show up to Bethlehem Bible Church during Isaiah 38
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Scripture reading. He shows up for Isaiah 61 message.
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But most likely, because if you look at the text again, He enrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written.
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He deviates from the regular Scripture reading. He now, the Messiah, finds the place that's going to talk about Him.
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He does it on purpose. And if you somehow were a detractor, you'd think there's no greater fit of arrogance in the entire world.
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I'm going to do the Scripture reading and find the part about Isaiah and say that applies to me. Only people like Stephen Furtick do that.
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And he's done it. Here, it's delivered to Jesus and he finds the place where Isaiah 61 is.
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Jesus was truly man. He had to study. You don't have chapter divisions back in those scrolls.
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You don't have verse divisions back in those scrolls. How many chapters in Isaiah? We're realizing it's a pretty big book.
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And Jesus knows right where to go because He knew the Scriptures. He knew right where Isaiah 61 was.
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Here, Jesus in corporate worship with leadership that had flaws, still was there worshiping. And He knows what the
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Scripture is and He finds it. They had patterns of reading through Scriptures at Sabbath synagogues just like we do.
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And now Jesus is going to open up more than just a scroll. Messianic ministry as Jesus deliberately turns to Isaiah 61.
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Let's read verses 18 and 19. Here's the Scripture reading from Isaiah 61.
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There's been the Torah reading. Now there's the prophets reading. The Spirit of the
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Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
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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
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Lord's favor. So now we move into the second part of the outline. We've seen the setting and now we see the
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Scripture reading slash sermon. So Jesus is reading from Isaiah 61.
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My guess is He reads more than that but Luke gives us just these words. And before we work through this passage of Scripture so that you can understand it and know why
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Jesus gave it, let's look at the first couple lines to understand what's going on here a little bit better.
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The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Did Jesus know
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He was the Messiah? Obviously yes. Some people don't think He did. Did Jesus know He was anointed by the
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Spirit of God? Yes, this verse proves it. Jesus is acting by the authority of the
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Spirit of God. Peter said in Acts 4, Your holy servant Jesus, whom You, Father, anointed.
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Peter goes on to preach in Acts 10, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the
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Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
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They put Him to death by hanging Him on the tree, but God raised Him on the third day. Not only is the
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Spirit anointing Him, but verse 18 says, right there towards the end of the verse, or the middle of the verse,
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He has sent me. I want you to notice that before we get into Jesus' Scripture reading and what it means.
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He's sent me. Now we regularly at BBC talk about Jesus' pre -existence.
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The Son's pre -existence. And we have regularly talked about no one talks like this except an eternal person.
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Because even when we talk about our birth, we don't say, I was sent into the world. We say,
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I was born. We don't say, I was manifest in the flesh. We say, I was born.
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Jesus only says of Himself, I've been sent or I have come. With one exception,
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He does say, I was born. And then He adds, to this end, I came into the world. The incarnation of Jesus, the second person of the
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Trinity, adding human flesh, shows that He is the Eternal Son.
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The doctrine of pre -existence. I'll take that as an amen.
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He's got His Bible open. His hymnal open. It's awesome. He sent me.
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And I'm here right now. I'm in your midst. The Messianic era starts today. By the way,
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Israel was rebuked in Isaiah 58 for not doing something. Here's what they were told to do,
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Isaiah 58. Cry aloud. Do not hold back. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. Declare to My people their transgressions.
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And to the house of Jacob their sins. That's what the Messiah is supposed to do. Israel failed to proclaim the
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Word and now the Messiah is going to proclaim the Word. You want to know what the ministry of Jesus was all about?
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You want to know why He was sent? It's found right here in the message.
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And before we look at this in a little more detail, I also want to add one more thing. Look at the focus of preaching and proclaiming in this section.
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Verse 18. To proclaim good words. That's where we get the good news. That's where we...
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It's good words too, by the way. Proclaim good news. That's one Greek word. That's where we get the word to euangelion, to preach good news.
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And there's also a heralding involved. Verse 18. To proclaim liberty. To proclaim good news to the poor.
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So we've got good news to proclaim liberty. And then in verse 19, to proclaim the year of the
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Lord's favor. Jesus is a preacher. You said, Mike, you've already said that.
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I know, but I want to hammer it forth because you see that right here. Jesus the prophet comes to preach.
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And He's going to preach deliverance and salvation and good news.
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Now, sometimes I just sit back and think, okay, let me just analyze this a little bit more. What don't
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I see in this passage? What do I see in this passage? That's a good way to study the Bible. What don't
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I see in verses 18 and 19 in Isaiah 61 with a little Isaiah 58 there?
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I don't see anything to do for us. Because it's about Jesus' mission. I don't see four things that we've got to accomplish in order for the
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Messiah to come. I don't see that we have to do something so that He can do something. Do you notice everything in here is what
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God is going to do? He's preaching. He's recovering the sight of the blind. He's setting at liberty. He proclaims the year of the
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Lord. I don't see any law in there for us. I see Jesus who's coming to seek and save the lost.
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I see gospel. I don't see law. Law for Jesus, certainly, but not law for us.
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The gospel is good news. The law isn't good news. What if Jesus came just to give the law?
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He did come to affirm the law. That's true, but what if He only came to give the law? That's not good news.
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Unless you can keep the law. We can't keep the law. That's why Jesus had to come.
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The second Adam. To obey. He is coming to preach good news.
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Earlier in Isaiah it says this, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, You're God.
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Oh, the beautiful feet of Jesus who comes to say, I am your Messiah. He doesn't say,
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By the way, God helps those who help themselves. By the way, that's what people think the
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Reformation is about. But that is not from the Reformation. That's from a man named who?
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Who said that? Benjamin Franklin. That's right. He didn't say,
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God will not deny His grace to those who lies within their power. That's what they say in the medieval times.
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Roman Catholic Church. He doesn't say, Be like me, Jesus. He doesn't say,
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Have your best life now. He doesn't say anything about us. I want you to know when
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Jesus comes, the Prophet comes, He comes preaching good news and He says, This is what I'm going to do for you.
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And all of us should be very, very glad that Jesus comes to rescue us because we know we're dead and blind and enslaved to sin and we cannot do anything.
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We need help. We don't need an educator. We need a Savior. It's not how you feel, or you need to do this or to do that.
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You just need to let go and let God. He doesn't even say, You need to repent and believe.
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Although that's good. That's a response to what Jesus did. But here it's all about Jesus and what
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He's come to do. This is called gospel preaching. I love
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Romans 8 for what the law was impossible to do in that it was weak through the flesh.
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God did by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and condemned sin in the flesh through sin that the righteousness required by the law, perfection, might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the
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Spirit. So Jesus comes to the synagogue, to the worship service.
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Fame is preceding Him. They're all wondering what He's going to do. He opens up the scroll to the exact spot of Isaiah 61 and He says,
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That's about Me. And after you do the
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Scripture reading, you preach a sermon. And He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.
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I stand to preach. Those days, you stand for Scripture reading, but you sit to preach.
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Maybe one day I'll be old enough, I'll have to do that. But for now, I stand. But Jesus sits down because you sit down to preach.
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And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. Comes a sermon.
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And He began to say to them, And wouldn't you know it, we only have the first sentence of the sermon.
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Today, He began to say to them, There's more to be said. Today, the
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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.
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Literally, the words of grace. And they said, Is this not
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Joseph's son? I mean, they're in Nazareth. Is this not Joseph's son? The Lord Jesus reads
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Isaiah 61, a messianic prophetic word, says, That's me. And now
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He says, In your presence, the Scripture has been fulfilled. It's amazing to me.
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It's wonderful to me. So next week, here's what we're going to do.
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We're going to look at verses 18 and 19 and say to ourselves, What does that really mean? And then it's going to magnify what
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Jesus said at the beginning of His sermon. We're also going to ask the question,
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What does it mean to be an expository preacher? And then we'll see that not everybody is like you, dear congregation.
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Some people don't like what Jesus says. Some people want to muzzle Him. Some people want to kill
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Him. And what's the response to the preaching of the Lord Jesus? As a teaser, and then
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I'll close, verses 18 and 19, You should be very glad, Christian, that Jesus came and said this, if any of these things apply to you.
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Verse 18, Poor. Do you have any spiritual resources of your own to stand before God on Judgment Day?
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Or do you need something from God? Liberty to the captives.
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Before you were a Christian, were you enslaved to sin? Were you captive to the world system?
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Well, then you need the Lord Jesus. Were you blind? Maybe physically, but certainly spiritually, not able to see the light of the world?
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Don't you need Jesus to come and show you? To set at liberty those who are oppressed and abused in every way, shape, and form?
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And to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor? If you're a sinner, you need the Lord Jesus.
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And this is what He's come to do. And we could turn these into five praises about what Jesus came to do as the
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Messiah. Luke wants you to know this is the right Messiah. Do you believe
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Him? I trust you do. Let's pray. Father, I thank You for this morning and Your Word.
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I'm thankful that when it comes to the Lord Jesus, Satan's not some equal power, but just an evil power.
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He is a created being and the Lord Jesus triumphed over him in every way. We're thankful for that.
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We're thankful that the Lord Jesus came preaching good news. We realize the law says, love you and love our neighbor.
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And we can't do it, so we need a Savior. And the Lord Jesus showing up in a synagogue with the
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Spirit of the Lord upon Him, reading God's Word and proclaiming the truth, we're thankful for such a
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Savior. We're thankful that we don't have to figure out how to get to heaven on our own. We don't have to get to heaven on our own because both of those would be impossible.
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Thank You for the Lord Jesus and the words of grace that were coming from His mouth. And we pray in Jesus' name,